Assortment of Social topics

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  • Created by: freya_bc
  • Created on: 06-01-17 13:40

Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis (Dollard et al.,

Occurrence of aggressive behaviour always presupposes the existence of frustration, and the existence of frustration always leads to some form of aggression 

Frustration- intereference with the occurrence of an instigated goal-response at its proper time in the behaviour sequence 
Frustration when cannot reach a goal you wanted to reach 

Agg at having goals thwarted- target too powerful/unavailable/not a person displace agg onto alternative= Scapegoat
Prevents acting aggressively towards source so take out agg someone esle e.g. idv/group target who aren't necessarily the cause

Hovland and Sears (1940)- racial aggression and frustration- found a negative correlation 

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The self

Brewer and Gardner (1996) 3 tpes of self- 

Individual- personal traits distinguishing you from others (friendly)
Relational- dyadic relationships that assimilate you to others (mum) - embeddedness in society as this 
Collective- group membership (academic) 

Private self- thoughts/feelings/attitudes
Public self- seen/eval by others so evaluation apprehension, enjoy sucess/admiration, adhere to social standards of behaviour, avoid embarrassment 

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Heider- naive scientists, biased/intuitionist, cog

Schemas- lead to errors in our analysis (biased/intuitionist)
Can use minimal effort heuristics allowing you to get more done
Motivated tactician-think deeply only when required- think carefully/scientifically about certain things (when personally important or necessaey) use heuristics on other occasions 
Naive scientist- people are rational and scientific-like in making c&e attributions 
Biased/intuitionist- info is limited and driven by motivation therefore errors and biases 
Cognitive miser- people use least complex and demanding info processing >cog shortcuts 

Causal attribution- when you wonder why you didnt do well on something- inference process through which perceivers attribute effect to one or more causes 
Scientists use attribution in hypothesis testinng, attribute c&e to create a stable world- desire to see behaviour as intentional. Heider (1958) The Naive Scientist- 3 principles
1. need to form coherent view of wold (Hieder and Simmel, 1994) that is predictable 
2. need to gain control over envi- search for enduring properties that cause behaviour
3. need to ID internal/personal/dispositional vs external/situational factors - ascertain more about a person 

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Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) Azjen, (1987)

Attitude towards the behaviour
Subjective norm                                      Intention                   Behaviour 
Perceived behavioural control 

Predicting a behaviour from an attitude measure is improved if people believe they have control over that power
Want an A grade (attitude), the grade people want them to achieve (subjective norm) but prediction of an A would be unreliable if effort isn't put in/ability isn't available to attain one 

Role of volition (faculty/power of using one's will)

Does attitude have +/- outcomes on behaviour?
If not easy to stop smoking (perceived behavioural control) despute what others think (subjective norm- weak predictor) might not be able to do it even if it is healthier (attitude towards behaviour)

Armitage and Conner (2001) 185 TPB studies- TPB accounted for 27% of changes in behaviour and 39% of intentions BUT lots of intentions/behaviours left to be explained 

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Attitude functions- Katz (1960)

1. KNOWLEDGE FUNCTION- organise and predict soical world
Provide sense of meaning/coherence on different info
Attitude saves cog energy as don't have to work out from scratch how they will react

2. UTILITARIAN FUNCTION- (instrumentality) help people behave in socially acceptable ways therefore positive outcome in situation/social approval/avoid, especially LT
Object appraisal

3. EGO-DEFENSIVE- protect self-esttem 
Protection from threatening self-truth, keep positive view of self
e.g. I didn't like the campus it wasn't that I couldn't get the grades

4. VALUE EXPRESSIVE- facilitate expression of core values and self-concept
e.g. psychology degree because like helping people 

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Minority influence- Moscovici

- Soical influence processes whereby numerical or power minorities change the attitudes of the majority 

Effective if CONSISTENT, NOT RIGID, COMMITTED= flexible.
Majority discredit conflict, minority attitudes disrupt majority norm and forces to look at minority view

Majorities and minorities exert social influence through different processes...
Majoritiy influence produces public compliance via social comparison

Minority influences produces indirect, private change in opinion; conversion effect as consequence of active consideration if minority point of view 

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Informational and Normative Influence (Deutsch and

These are the two different reasons why we conform

INFORMATIONAL- if less certain, less likely to conform. Still conformed to 23% even when uncertainty was low
- ambiguous/uncertain situations
- need to feel confident that perceptions/beliefs/feelings correct
- influence to accept info from another as evidence about reality
               > true cognitive change 
e.g. Sherif's study- ambiguous > uncertainty > use others' estimates as infromation to resolve subject uncertainty 

NORMATIVE- 
- need for social approval/acceptance 
- avoid disapproval 
               > surface compliance- especially when under surveillance 
e.g. Asch's study- unambiguous > go along with group > especially when no anonymity/under surveillance 

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Social facilitation

How does the presence of other people affect individual performance?

Triplett (1898) track cyclists (slowest) alone > paced > in competition (fastest)
Hypothesis: presence of audience, particularly competition 'energised' performance on motor tasks
Tested using fishing line apparatus- performed better when racing against each other than alone 

Allport (1920) Social facilitation and the more generalised effect of mere presence - entirely passive and unresponsive audience that is only physically present
Improvement in performance due to mere presence of conspecifics as co-factors or passive audience

Also shown in animals but also showed social presence can cause social inhibitionan improvement in the performance of well-leanrt/easy tasks and a deterioriation in the performance of poorly-learnt/difficult tasks in the mere presence of members of the same species 

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Zajonc (1965) DRIVE THEORY

Mere presence of others= arousal and energises DOMINANT RESPONSE (what is typically done in that situ e.g. well learned/habituated response)

Unaware of what idv are going to do so alertness and readiness is almost instinctive 

If dominant response correct= performance facilitated 
If dominant response is incorrect= inhibited 

Direction can vary for task type.

Complex task that isn't well-learned the dominant response is likely to be unsuccessful

e.g. playing piano at home no mistakes, dominant response with audience is to make no mistakes so performance improved when piece of well-learned. If make mistkaes at home, same dominant response but less likely to play well as the piece is not well-learned 

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Evaluation Apprehension

General support for drive theory of social facilitation 
x questioned mere presence > drive 
x Cottreel (1972) Evaluation Apprehension Theory 

- learn about social reward/pun contingencies e.g. approval/disapproval based on others' eval 
- perception of eval audience creates arousal not mere presence 
- social facilitated= acquired effect based on perceived evaluations of others 

Cottrell et al., (1968) study 
Supported this hyp in exp with 3 conditions 
1. blindfolded
2. merely presented (passive/uninterested)
3. attentive audience 
Task well-learned, social facilitation when audience perceived to be evaluative 

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Markus (1978)

Other research is less supportive of evaluation apprehension theory 

time taken to dress in familiar clothes (easy task)/ unfamiliar clothes (difficult- lab coat/special shoes) as a function of social presence
3 conditions = (1) alone,
(2) in the presence of an incidental audience confederate not attending to task, (3) in the presence of an attentive audience.

Only attentive audience effected easy task, mere presence enough to slow performance in unfamiliarity condition

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Distraction-conflict theory

Presence of audience / co-actors > attentional conflict/distraction > increase arousal/drive that facilitates dominant responses > social facilitation effects.

Drive can overcome distraction.

DCT Strengths:  
General distraction (noise, movement, flashing lights) and can explain performance facilitation/inhibition in animal research.  

Impairs performance in difficult tasks b/c unfamiliar, improves in easy ones

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