Chp 13 Social Psychology Physical attractiveness has been recognized as a powerful social cue Berneburg others 2010 Judith Langlois and her colleagues found that even infants as young as 3 to 6 months of age showed a preference for looking at attractive faces versus unattractive faces as rated by adults Hoss Langlois 2003 Ramsey others 2004 Attractive individuals are generally assumed to have a variety of other positive characteristics including being better adjusted socially skilled friendly likable extraverted and likely to achieve superior job performance Langlois others 2000 Th ese positive expectations for physically attractive individuals have been referred to as the beautiful is good stereotype Th at fi rst impression can have lasting eff ects Ambady Skowronski 2009 Recall the primacy eff ect from Chapter 7 people s tendency to attend to and remember what they learned fi rst N H Anderson 1965 Th e power of fi rst impressions is likely due to just such an eff ect How quickly do we make these initial impressions of others In one study judgments made after just a 100 millisecond exposure time to unfamiliar faces was suffi cient for individuals to form an impression Attribution theory views people as motivated to discover the underlying causes of behavior as part of their eff ort to make sense of the behavior Internal external causes Internal attributions include all causes inside and specifi c to the person such as his or her traits and abilities External attributions include all causes outside the person such as social pressure aspects of the social situation money the weather and luck Did Beth get an A on the test because she is smart or because the test was easy Attitudes are our feelings opinions and beliefs about people objects and ideas Cognitive dissonance a concept developed by Festinger 1957 is an individual s psychological discomfort dissonance caused by two inconsistent thoughts According to the theory we feel uneasy when we notice an inconsistency between what we believe and what we do Cognitive dissonance is at the root of that uncomfortable feeling of being a hypocrite McConnell Brown 2010 college students to engage in a series of very boring tasks such as sorting spools into trays and turning wooden pegs Th ese participants were later asked to persuade another student who was in fact a confederate to participate in the study by telling him that the task was actually interesting and enjoyable Half of the participants were randomly assigned to be paid 1 for telling this white lie and the other half received 20 Afterward all of the participants rated how interesting and enjoyable the task really was Curiously those who were paid only 1 to tell the lie rated the task as signify cantly more enjoyable than those who were paid 20 Festinger and Carlsmith reasoned that those paid 20 to tell the lie could attribute their behavior the high value of the money they received On the other hand those who 1 experienced cognitive dissonance Th e inconsistency between what they tell a lie and what they were paid for it just 1 moved these individuals to change their attitudes about the task I wouldn t lie for just 1 If I said I liked the task I must have really liked it We can reduce cognitive bystander eff ect the tendency of an individual who observes an emergency to help less when other people are present than when the observer is alone Most bystander studies show that when alone a person will help 75 percent of the time but when another bystander is present the fi gure drops to 50 percent Conformity is a change in a person s behavior to coincide more closely with a group standard Conformity takes many forms and aff ects many aspects of people s lives in negative and positive ways Conformity is at work for example when a person comes to college and starts to drink alcohol heavily at parties even though he or she might have never been a drinker before Conformity is also at work when we obey the rules and regulations that allow society to run smoothly Asch s Experiment Put yourself in this situation You are taken into a room where you see fi ve other people seated along a table A person in a white lab coat enters the room and announces that you are about to participate in an experiment on perceptual accuracy Th e group is shown two cards the fi rst having only a single vertical line on it and the second having three vertical lines of varying length You are told that the task is to determine which of the three lines on the second card is the same length as the line on the fi rst card You look at the cards and think What a snap It s so obvious which is the same What you do not know is that the other people in the room are confederates who are working with the experimenter On the fi rst several trials everyone agrees about which line matches the standard Th en on the fourth trial each of the others picks the same incorrect line As the last person to make a choice you have the dilemma of responding as your eyes tell you or conforming to what the others before you said Obedience is behavior that complies with the explicit demands of the individual in authority We are obedient when an authority fi gure demands that we do something and we do it Note that in conformity people change their thinking or behavior so that it will be more like that of others while in obedience there is an explicit demand to comply Milgram experiment shows obedience in humans His experiment had people in one room and they had a button through which they could give the shock to the person in the other room if the person in the other room does a mistake After a while the experimenter increased the voltage but the person was still giving the person to give the shock to the person even when the voltage was high Affective component this involves a person s feelings emotions about the attitude object For example I am scared of spiders Behavioral or conative component the way the attitude we have influences how we act or behave For example I will avoid spiders and scream if I see one Cognitive component this involves a person s belief knowledge about an attitude object For example I believe spiders are dangerous There is negative correlation between number of people and bystander intervention meaning if there are more people there are going to be less bystander intervention Diffusion of responsibility is a psychological phenomenon in which people are less likely to take action or feel a sense of responsibility in