PSY 101 1st Edition Lecture 24 Outline of Last Lecture I. Social psychologyOutline of Current Lecture II. HappinessIII. Course overviewa. Wrap upCurrent Lecture-Milgram’s obedience studies (shock experiment, participant shocks people)-social influence-social facilitation: improved performance of tasks in the presence of others-occurs with simple or well-learned tasks but not with tasks that are difficult or not yet mastered-social loafing: tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually challenged-deindividuation: loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity-stereotype: a generalized (sometimes accurate, but often overgeneralized) belief about a groupof people-prejudice: an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members-involves: -affect: hostility, contempt-behavior: discrimination (unjustifiable negative behavior)-cognition: negative stereotype-the person-situation debate:-personality is in the eye of the beholder-there is no stable personality that you maintain over time-situations are much more powerful than personality in predicting behavior-critical evidence:-Walter Mischel’s book showing that the “personality coefficient” is r=.3-but, the “situation coefficient” is also around the same size-what is the meaning of life?-what are conditions of human well-being?-Socrates Q: “what is the good life” A: the pursuit of wisdom-well-being: “eudaimonia,” not exactly “happiness”-4 big questions:-what can happiness change?-does money matter?-do life events matter?-what can I do to improve my happiness?-a typical overview of SWB research-life circumstances account for a very small percentage of the variance in happiness-for example: the association with income is tiny; even becoming a quadriplegic doesn’t matter-the only thing that might affect us is the quality of our social relationships-in contrast, personality seems to matter and this is due to the fact that we inevitably adapt back to genetically determined set points-why?-happiness is heritable-twin studies find 50% heritability-longitudinal twin study found that the stable component was 80% heritable-personality matters-extraversion correlates about .40-neuroticism correlated about .50-other traits also predict-are we doomed to stay the same?-your happiness next year is strongly correlated with how happy you are now-but, your happiness the next year is a little less strongly correlated with how happy you are now-your happiness in 25 years correlates about .25 with your happiness right now-probably reflects genetic influence; but lots of change too-does income matter?-psychologists love to say that money does not buy happiness-the correlation is small, about .18-but this translates into relatively large differences between the rich and the poor-do life circumstances matter?-old view: we adapt to anything-problem with this: no good data-new view: we do not adapt to everything-varies by event and by person-what can you do?-our best guess is that Freud might have been right-happiness is to love and to work-major themes1. correlation does not equal causation2. antagonistic systems push against each other to reach a shifting balance point3. the divided self. You may feel like a unified person but you contain several “intelligences” that sometimes conflict4. your brain is constantly adding information, but you don’t know it5. everything psychological is simultaneously biological6. there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so7. the situation matters more than you
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