Social and Organizational Psychology Summary (Book and Lectures!)
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Course
Social and Organisational Psychology
Institution
Universiteit Leiden (UL)
Very compact (yet comprehensive in detail) notes on the material from the books, completed with additional information from the lectures of the course. Especially good for a complete overview before the exam!
1. Social Psychology (B&B) - Interaction → health, well-being, identity; social brain hypothesis (the larger the
group of the species, the larger the neocortex); Kurt Lewin (founder)
social psychology = Understanding how and why people behave, think and feel in social situations
- Scientific nature: follow set of values and methods: accuracy, replicability,
objectivity (no bias), skepticism, open-mindedness → more conclusive, clear results
- Social contexts/ experiences → self-identity → social behavior
- Factors of influence:
1. Actions and characteristics of others
2. Cognitive processes (attributions, social cognition)
3. Physical world (whether, smells…)
4. Biology (epigenetics, evolutionary psychol.: variation, inheritance, selection)
5. Culture
- Search for basic principles (consistent across time and cultures)
advances - integrating cognition and behavior in social situations
- role of emotions
- importance of social relationships, groups to well-being
- social neuroscience: relating neurological processes to social events
- the role of implicit (conconscious) processes
- taking social diversity/ cultures into account
research - to answer questions and increase knowledge
- Systematic observation: naturalistic observation, survey (representative, wording)
- Correlation: predictions (not causality, confounding var.), spurious correlation
- Experiments: systematic intervention, explaining, independent and dependent
variable, random assignment, control over conditions; external validity?
- mediating variable = intervening btw. independent and dependent variable (why)
- meta-analysis: explain large body of research; points gaps and biases in the
literature; moderators = affects effect of indep. var.
role of theories - explain why of a phenomenon
- theory → make prediction (hypothesis) → testing → accepted/ improved → testing
- never proven! = research is to gather evidence, not to prove!
dilemma of deception - ethical issues: disturbing w/ own reaction; upset w/ lies (→ negative view of science)
- passive deception = concealing the purpose of the study
- misleading info = assistants as participants; lies…
- Institutional Review Boards: informed consent, debriefing, cost-benefit analysis
2. Social Cognition (B&B) = how we think about the social world, attempts to understand complexities, why no
rational…: 1) avoid effort; 2) efficient info processors; 3) cognition affect
Heuristics = simple rules for making complex decisions/ drawing inferences in fast way
- information overload = demand of cognitive system is greater than capacity
- when under conditions of uncertainty
representativeness - based on resemblance w/ prototype (base rate fallacy: does not make statistical
sense; conjunction fallacy: less probable of being in subcategory); judging
magnitude of effect basing on magnitude of cause
availability - judging frequency/ probability based on ease / amount of retrieval (e.g. risk-taking
as gambling in economic threat);
- rely more on ease for <3 judgements, rely more on amount for difficult ones
anchoring and adjustment - courts, starting price, donations, portion size effect (how much you eat)
status quo - "what is, is good"; preference to old brand, people, tradition and longevity
Schemas = mental framework for guiding perceptions & actions
- info incongruent w/ schema is the focus of attention & encoding; retrieval better
what is consistent w/ schemas, but inconsistent info is also strong in memory
, - experience → priming of a schema → influences thought
- unpriming is possible when schema is somehow followed/ expressed
- schema persists even in face of inconsistency (perseverance effect), self-fulling
- metaphor: figures of speech influence how we interpret the world
Automatic & Controlled - controlled processing = logical, effortful, systematic, prefrontal cortex
Processing - automatic processing = intuitive, ~ effortless, rapid, amygdala (limbic system), <3
- can occur together
- automatic processing affects overt social behavior (priming a schema prepares
individual to interact with it);
- automatic processing is efficient in retrieving info, better for taking complex
decisions (no limit for info, reflect our real preferences)
Errors of Social Cognition - tendencies; o en stems from errors of omission (info, feedback is crucial)
- Optimistic Bias = overlook risks; expect (golden) future → only feel bad temporarily
when not so bright outcome happens
- Negativity Bias = what is bad stands out more, more impact
- Overconfidence Bias = overconfident on own beliefs/ judgements
- Planning Fallacy = underestimating time needed for a task; stronger when highly
motivated or in position of power (focus on completion rather than steps)
- Counterfactual Thinking = "what if.."; belief in free will (vs. determinism); affects
mood reaction to event; the better you imagine how it would have been, the + regret
- Magical Thinking = compelling assumptions, not logical; law of similarity (if it
looks alike, share basic properties; e.g. insect cake); about terror management
(anxiety that we will die)
Affect & Cognition - interplay
influence of affect - feeling good, perceiving as good; attributions accordingly
Mood congruence effect = current mood filters attention & encoding of info
Mood-dependent memory = easier to retrieve info compatible w/ current mood (cue)
Heuristics and Creativity: facilitated when w/ good mood (especially high in arousal)
influence of cognition - Two-factor theory of emotion: we infer what we feel basing on the outside context
- Activation of schema w/ affect component influences our <3 response
Affective Forecast = prediction of what we would feel about an event we did not live
(forecasting ≠ experiencing; ≠ processing of info)
- Regulation of affective states: giving in to temptation when feeling bad is a
conscious decision, influenced by belief that moods can change; cheating/ unethical
behavior is self-satisfying
social neuroscience Two systems (logic & affect) interact during problem solving
3. Social Perception (B&B) = gathering and analysing what we see in others (perceiving ≠ seeing)
Nonverbal Communication - relatively irrepressible
basic channels 1. Facial Expressions: anger, fear, happiness, sadness, disgust; ≠ combinations and
degrees; ~universal in use and recognition; those who intentionally express
emotions have higher accuracy in recognizing others'
2. Eye Contact: the more, the friendlier; staring = hostility, weird
3. Body Language (gesture, posture & movements): + movements = + arousal;
squirming = lying; hand gestures (≠ meanings across cultures)
4. Touching: depends on context, who touches, nature of touch…; handshake
nonverbal cues - Paralanguage = tone, volume, etc (how we speak)
- love gazing, holding hands
- facial feedback hypothesis = facial expressions trigger <3
recognizing deception - difficult even for experts! better when in bad mood (increased attention to relevant
cues); we usually rely on invalid cues; but <3 still are transmitted (visual cliff)
- valid cues: microexpressions; interchannel discrepancies; exaggerated facial
expressions; linguistic style (high pitch, slow answering)
Attribution - we want to understand why of others' behaviors
, theories Correspondent Theory (Jones & Davis) = we are most likely to conclude others' traits
based on their behavior when behavior is 1) freely chose; 2) yields noncommon
effects (behavior caused by specific factor only); 3) is low in social desirability
Kelley's Covariation Theory (attribution theory) = to explain behavior, we apply:
1) consensus (= how much behavior matches what others would do);
2) consistency (of the behavior in individual across time);
3) distinctiveness (how much the individual reacts the same way to ≠ stimuli)
External causes = high/ internal causes = low
attributing others' behavior to external/internal/both causes
- Other dimensions: 1) factors are stable over time? 2) are factors controllable?
- Fate attributions: conviction of existence of God + belief of complex causality
- Action identification: how much abstraction we put in our interpretation of
behaviors (reflecting more than just the action itself)
basic sources of error Correspondence Bias (fundamental attribution error) = attributing others' behavior
to internal causes and own behavior more to external causes
- (even when knowing about external causes!) → person has more perceptual salience
- we start by assuming internal, then correct for external (but not enough weight)
Actor- Observer Effect = tendency to attribute others' to internal; own to external
- we are more aware of the situational causes of our actions, but not others'
Self-Serving Bias = own positive outcomes to internal; negative outcomes to external
- because we expect to succeed/ to protect our self-esteem
- stronger in Western cultures
application - interventions and insights
- Depression: self-defeating pattern (opposite of self-serving); no control over events
- Terrorism: justified by harm done to own people (USA to Muslims; external); more
justifiable than when another group does harm
Impression Formation = developing views of others
- Asch: we perceive traits of other in relation to one another (as in Gestalt)
- 1st impressions: slightly better than chance; quick (.04 sec depending on the trait)
- changing 1st impressions: w/ new info; rejecting current info; reinterpreting info
Impression Management - self-enhancement (↑ own appeal): physical or professional
- other-enhancement (make other feel good)/ self-handicapping (down-playing skills)
- when tactics are overdone, result is negative!
4. The Self (B&B)
Self-Presentation = Managing the self in different social contexts
- Self-Other accuracy: we can be bad predictors of our own behavior because we
know our intentions (biases our perception); but we recognize our bias
tactics - self-promotion = convincing others we are good
- self-verification = how we lead others to agree w/ our promotion; but also good to
be conceived how we are by close others
- ingratiation = presenting ourselves as respecting others (sometimes we overdo it)
- self-deprecation = imply we are not as good as the other
- there is a discrepancy in how we are and how we like seeing ourselves
Self-Knowledge = determining who we are
- Introspection (finding reasons for our actions): misleading when the behavior is
driven by unconscious <3; in affective forecasting bias (predicting <3 in future)
- Take observer point of view (dispositional attributes rather than situational)
Personal vs. Social Identity Social identity theory = we describe ourselves ≠ depending on where we are on the
personal-versus-social identity continuum (which side is momentarily salient)
- intragroup comparison = w/ individuals of same group (experience as individual)
- intergroup comparison = w/ other groups, emphasize similarities w/ own group
- we maintain coherent self-view, recognizing we differ according to ≠ situations
- Social Context influences self-view: time, place, which self-identity and group
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