Chapter 14 Groups Today’s OutlineGroupsDeindividua

Chapter 14
Groups
Today’s Outline
Groups
Deindividuation
Social facilitation
Social loafing
The accuracy of group decisions & thinking
Wisdom of crowds
Groupthink
Risky/Stingy Shifts
Leaders and leadership
Toxic and dangerous leaders
Leadership styles and power
What groups are and do
We divide ourselves into many different groups
Sometimes even just two people, a dyad, can count as group
Ideally, people want to have enough in common with a group to
feel close to them, but also stand apart in some ways, called
optimal distinctiveness
Groups, roles, & selves

Being in groups is double-edged sword
They help us to feel like we belong
Even when the group is complete nonsense (e.g. you were
seated at table 1 with other people due to a coin flip) , called the
minimal group effect from Ch. 13 on prejudice
When our group does well we tend to ‘bask in the reflective
glory’ and feel like we have done well also
E.g. when your favorite team wins an important game
Groups, roles, & selves continued
But groups can also have major downsides
We tend to assume there’s less variability within groups than
between groups, but it’s the opposite
Deindividuation is a huge problem with groups!
A loss of self-awareness and individual accountability
when in groups (E.g. mob violence)
- Said another way, being anonymous. Often results
in aggression, we’ll come back to this in Ch. 10
Group action – Social Facilitation
If you play or played sports, did you like it when your parents
or friends came to watch your games?
Personally I disliked it, felt like it made me play worse, I told
them not to come lol
But research shows observers can indeed affect us
Recall back in chapter 1, Triplett’s original social psychology
study that found bikers biked faster against people than against
the clock

Social facilitation
Since Triplett’s studies, much
more research has been conducted!
One finding showed that if you replaced other bikers with just
observers, people still biked harder than with no observers
Thus people called that evaluation apprehension
Concern about how others perceive you and your performance,
we want it to be favorable
This can lead to more effort and better performance
But, the presence of others can make people perform worse too
and ‘choke’ under pressure
Social facilitation
How do we resolve that discrepancy then?
Do people watching make us perform better or worse?
Zajonc (1965) proposed his social facilitation theory
Based on animal behavior, how the presence of animals of the
same species increases an animals arousal and its most common
response/behavior
Zajonc’s Social Facilitation Theory
Presence of other people leads
to arousal
Arousal leads to an increase in the
dominant response
Aka most common/typical
response

If that response is correct, you
perform better (social facilitation)
If it’s incorrect, you perform worse,
(social inhibition)
**Put more simply, if you’re
great at something and people
watch you, you’ll do better. If you
suck, you’ll do even worse
Social facilitation continued
Understood another way, if a task is new to you, observers will
be harmful
Also if a task is complex, observers will be more likely to be
harmful, but if it’s simple, observers will likely be helpful
You may recall our discussion of narcissists from before
Narcissists generally perform better when being observed
because they’re ‘glory hounds’
They relish the chance to prove themselves superior
This can elicit resentment from teammates, who know they’re in
it for individual instead of team glory
Evaluation apprehension
Evaluation apprehension can crop in other places too
Binge eating and purging can be a problem among younger
women
Strangely though it went from an unheard of problem to
relatively common…
One study found that sorority members who binge ate were
more popular or highly regarded than ones who didn’t binge eat
We observe similar others and are tempted to engage in similar
behavior, which spreads the problem

Social Loafing
As we touched on earlier, farmers noticed that increasing
farmhands didn’t result in more output
Social loafing: people reduce effort when working in a group
compared to working alone
Research on this asked participants to make as much noise as
they can (as measured in decibels)
6 people didn’t really make any more noise than 3 people
Social loafing continued
Generally, people aren’t aware they’re socially loafing
If asked, participants will say they’re working their hardest
A similar, but distinct pattern, is ‘the free rider problem’
Where people deliberately don’t contribute
Free rider references the subway system in Europe where people
were supposed to pay but didn’t
Have you ever done a group project with a free rider? Are you
glad we don’t have any group projects? ;)
Social loafing continued
Explanations – why does social loafing occur
Research has shown that if people are not anonymous and their
individual contribution to the effort is known, social loafing is
greatly reduced
This gets back to the idea of deindividuation being bad
Accountability is good
Once group members suspect or find out someone else is
loafing, they don’t want to be a sucker and do all the work, so
then they loaf too!

Called the bad apple effect
Social Loafing continued
How do people react to social loafers?
Psychologists have studied this using game paradigms
Surprisingly, if a player finds out another player is socially
loafing, that person will undermine their own chances of
winning the game to punish the loafer
These findings surprised economists who assume people will act
in their own best interest
The idea of altruistic punishment arose from this, that
ultimately it’s in society’s best interest to punish social loafers
Tragedy of the commons
Regarding deindividuation and social loafing,
have you noticed how public rooms or public
areas usually get messy and/or damaged?
The ‘commons dilemma’ explains this
A tendency for jointly owned spaces, things, or resources, to be
squandered
Explains, in part, why communism doesn’t work
Selfish impulses, like “should I just litter here or walk way over
there to the trash can” often win out
How groups think
Are two heads really better than one?
Brainstorming
E.g. your boss calls a meeting and asks everyone to brainstorm
some ideas about how to resolve a problem
People rate brainstorming as effective and rate it as enjoyable;
boosts morale
But the output is actually worse than that of individuals
If done right though, it can have the desired effect

Participants must brainstorm individually and independently,
then come together, and pool all of the ideas
‘The wisdom of crowds’
Sir Francis Galton started many lines of research later continued
by psychologists
In general he thought people were pretty dumb and groups of
people even dumber
He attended a county fair and asked everyone to guess (write on
a sheet of paper) the weight of a cow
Well, specifically how much the cow would weigh after it had
been slaughtered and chopped into piles of meat
The answer was 1,198 pounds
He tallied results from 800 tickets
The average estimate was 1,197 pounds. Incredibly close!
‘The wisdom of crowds’ continued
Sir Galton was forced to admit, the crowd did indeed have
astounding wisdom
Similar results have been replicated in many settings
E.g. the final betting line in sports is always more accurate than
any one expert
E.g. and the stock market predicts winning stocks better than
any individual stock broker
Note that the conditions for all these studies meet the criteria of
‘independence’
This prevents conformity and allows for a diversity of opinions

Groupthink
Irving Janis came applied the term groupthink to social
psychology
It explains the tendency of group members to think alike
Specifically, the group clings to some mistaken belief, which
ends up resulting in bad decisions
There are many potential applications of groupthink in the real
world
E.g. juries, business meetings, political committees, etc.
The root of groupthink is people’s desire to get along with one
another
Groupthink continued
Several factors contribute to making groupthink more likely to
occur:
Group members are similar to each other
A strong leader that people don’t want to contradict
The group is isolated from the opinions of others
The group has high self-esteem/feels elite/morally superior
There’s a pressure to conform
The decision/s appear to be unanimous
Some group members may be censoring themselves if they
privately disagree
Illusion of invulnerability (“There won’t be consequences!”)
The group underestimates opponents
Foolish Committees
Stasser and Titus (1985) were able to demonstrate that
committees mostly spend time discussing what they agree on,
for the sake of getting along, instead of points of contention
Their methodology
The committee consisted of 7 members
They were deciding whether to hire Anderson or Baker

Each group member received a card with information for
him/her
Each member received a card with the same 4 reason to hire
Baker, and 1 reason to hire Anderson
But each card had a different reason for why to hire Anderson,
so 7 in total
But the groups never caught on that there was a total of 3 more
reason to hire Anderson than Baker because everyone was too
busy agreeing with each other
Those findings bode poorly for committees, as the whole point
is to pool the individual knowledge each member has
The Risky Shift
The tendency for groups to take greater risks than any
individual member of the group would have taken
The group discussions lead the group to a more extreme point of
view over time
But there was also a ‘stingy shift’ that occurred in studies,
toward more conservative decisions
How do we reconcile these two findings?
It turns out that which ever direction a committee was initially
leaning, will result in a shift in that direction
This is called group polarization
It is extremely similar to the coherence shifts we covered last
class (where people had an initial leaning and then their
opinions of the case polarized) but this time it’s on a group
level
Leaders and Leadership
A good CEO or leader often adds 14% of the company’s value
or 25 million in revenue
Compared to average CEOs
In a case study of 11 successful CEOs, some common traits
emerged

Modest & humble
Fierce resolve
Decisive
Competent
Integrity
Vision
Good leaders succeed at two realms of leaderships
1. Task oriented: sets goals, plans, coordinates, etc.
2. Relationship oriented: takes care of members, resolves
conflicts, boosts morale
Unfortunately, narcissists often become leaders (or toxic
leaders)
In a study that arranged participants into groups of 4, people
who scored highly on the trait of narcissism often emerged as
leaders
Narcissists like to seek attention, have the confidence to speak
up, and are assertive
Good leaders have just the right amount of assertiveness
though, and not too much
Too much can stifle group morale
Patterns that make for toxic leaders:
1. The leader lacks ability to do the job, may have been
promoted without the requisite knowledge
2. Builds a shoddy team due to bad hiring choices
3. Has poor interpersonal skills & is arrogant
E.g. “Do it because I said so!”

Dangerous national leaders
Mayer (1993) reviewed data from past national leaders and
found the while most have sound cognitive abilities, their
emotional lives are potentially the most important
He identified 3 main criteria that constitute a dangerous leader,
with classic examples being Napoleon and Hitler
1. Indifference toward people’s suffering
2. Disregard for criticism
3. Grandiose sense of national entitlement
Can you think of any leaders of a nation who meet those 3
criteria?
A British nobleman named Lord Acton once said, “Power
corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
Some researchers have attempted to test that assertion!
Leaders and leadership
Research by Kipnis (1976):
He made participants managers and gave them either low -power
(just worked with the staff, no real difference) or high-power
(power to fire, promote, withhold money, etc.)
The staff and their actions were the same/controlled
He found that the managers used completely different strategies
Low-power managers praised workers, gave advice, etc.
High-power managers made threats, ‘threw their weight
around’, etc.
Leaders and leadership styles
In general, authoritarian leaders (‘do as I say’) are less

successful than autoritative leaders (‘come with me’)
Same goes for authoritarian vs authoritative parenting styles
Explaining to a kid why he must do something is more effective
than saying “Because I told you to.”
Authoritarian leaders are the type to throw their power around
instead of inspiring their workers
The effects of power
In some situations power can lead to good, in others it can lead
to bad
But one thing it almost always leads to is more action being
taken
Opposite of that, people in positions of less power have a wait
and see mentality
In one study (Galinsky et al, 2003) participants were assigned to
be either manager or a worker
Following that activity, they played some blackjack
Managers were more likely to hit (ask for another card),
whereas workers were more likely to hold (keep what they had)
(
NR326
Mental
Health
Nursing
RUA:
Scholarly

Article
Review
Guidelines
)Purpose
The student will review, summarize, and critique a scholarly
article related to a mental health topic.
Course outcomes: This assignment enables the student to meet
the following course outcomes.
(CO 4) Utilize critical thinking skills in clinical decision-
making and implementation of the nursing process for
psychiatric/mental health clients. (PO 4)
(CO 5) Utilize available resources to meet self-identified goals
for personal, professional, and educational development
appropriate to the mental health setting. (PO 5)
(CO 7) Examine moral, ethical, legal, and professional
standards and principles as a basis for clinical decision-making.
(PO 6)
(CO 9) Utilize research findings as a basis for the development
of a group leadership experience. (PO 8)
Due date: Your faculty member will inform you when this
assignment is due. The Late Assignment Policy applies to this
assignment.
Total points possible: 100 pointsPreparing the assignment
1) Follow these guidelines when completing this assignment.
Speak with your faculty member if you have questions.
a. Select a scholarly nursing or research article, published
within the last five years, related to mental health nursing. The
content of the article must relate to evidence-based practice.
· You may need to evaluate several articles to find one that is
appropriate.
b. Ensure that no other member of your clinical group chooses
the same article, then submit your choice for faculty approval.
c. The submitted assignment should be 2-3 pages in length,

excluding the title and reference pages.
2) Include the following sections (detailed criteria listed below
and in the Grading Rubric must match exactly).
a. Introduction (10 points/10%)
· Establishes purpose of the paper
· Captures attention of the reader
b. Article Summary (30 points/30%)
· Statistics to support significance of the topic to mental health
care
· Key points of the article
· Key evidence presented
· Examples of how the evidence can be incorporated into your
nursing practice
c. Article Critique (30 points/30%)
· Present strengths of the article
· Present weaknesses of the article
· Discuss if you would/would not recommend this article to a
colleague
d. Conclusion (15 points/15%)
· Provides analysis or synthesis of information within the body
of the text
· Supported by ides presented in the body of the paper
· Is clearly written
e. Article Selection and Approval (5 points/5%)
· Current (published in last 5 years)
· Relevant to mental health care
· Not used by another student within the clinical group
· Submitted and approved as directed by instructor
f. APA format and Writing Mechanics (10 points/10%)
NR326 Mental Health Nursing
RUA: Scholarly Article Review Guidelines
NR326 Mental Health Nursing
RUA: Scholarly Article Review Guidelines

NR326_RUA_Scholarly_Article_Review_V4b_FINAL_MAY21
1
· Correct use of standard English grammar and sentence
structure
· No spelling or typographical errors
· Document includes title and reference pages
· Citations in the text and reference page
For writing assistance (APA, formatting, or grammar) visit the
APA Citation and Writing page in the online library.
Please note that your instructor may provide you with additional
assessments in any form to determine that you fully understand
the concepts learned in the review module.
Grading Rubric Criteria are met when the student’s application
of knowledge demonstrates achievement of the outcomes for
this assignment.
Assignment Section and Required Criteria
(Points possible/% of total points available)
Highest Level of Performance
High Level of Performance
Satisfactory Level of Performance
Unsatisfactory Level of Performance
Section not present in paper
Introduction
(10 points/10%)
10 points
8 points
0 points
Required criteria
1. Establishes purpose of the paper
2. Captures attention of the reader
Includes 2 requirements for section.

Includes 1 requirement for section.
No requirements for this section presented.
Article Summary
(30 points/30%)
30 points
25 points
24 points
11 points
0 points
Required criteria
1. Statistics to support significance of the topic to mental health
care
2. Key points of the article
3. Key evidence presented
4. Examples of how the evidence can be incorporated into your
nursing practice
Article Critique
(30 points/30%)
30 points
25 points
11 points
0 points
Required criteria
1. Present strengths of the article
2. Present weaknesses of the article
3. Discuss if you would/would not recommend this article to a
colleague

Conclusion
(15 points/15%)
15 points
11 points
6 points
0 points
1. Provides analysis or synthesis of information within the body
of the text
2. Supported by ides presented in the body of the paper
3. Is clearly written
Article Selection and Approval
(5 points/5%)
5 points
4 points
3 points
2 points
0 points
1. Current (published in last 5 years)
2. Relevant to mental health care
Includes 4
Includes 3
Includes 2
Includes 1
No requirements for
(
NR326
Mental
Health
Nursing

RUA:
Scholarly
Article
Review
Guidelines
)
NR326_RUA_Scholarly_Article_Review_V4b_FINAL_MAY21
1
3. Not used by another student within the clinical group
4. Submitted and approved as directed by instructor
requirements for section.
requirement for section.
this section presented.
APA Format and Writing Mechanics
(10 points/10%)
10 points
8 points
7 points
4 points
0 points
1. Correct use of standard English grammar and sentence
structure
2. No spelling or typographical errors
3. Document includes title and reference pages
4. Citations in the text and reference page

Total Points Possible = 100 points
Chapter 5
Social Cognition Part 1
Today’s outline
Social cognition in general
Elaboration likelihood model
A model that explains two possible routes for processing
information and making decisions
Controlled vs automatic processing
Knowledge structures
Schemas, scripts, priming, framing
Cognitive coherence
A model that explains how people make decisions in the real
world
Development of social cognition
Behaviorism had been focused on observable actions and not
internal states
But social psychologists contended that we can still
measure/access thoughts, both directly and indirectly, using
clever methodology
E.g. Measuring behavior after a discussion with someone of
another race, in order to assess racist attitudes
Social cognition
Social Cognition: the study of any kind of thinking by peopl e
about people or social relationships

It’s a good thing social psychologists decided to look into social
cognition because it turns out we think more about people than
any other subject (Fiske & Taylor, 1991)
Social psychology
Do you like to think?
Humans have the largest prefrontal cortex of any animal, but…
Do humans like to think???
Turns out, no!
Conscious, rational thought requires a lot of energy and effort
Social cognition
Social psychologists developed the term ‘cognitive miser’ to
describe human thought
Just as a miser doesn’t like to spend money and does so rarely,
so do cognitive misers avoid thinking
*Notable exceptions:
When it comes to people’s favorite things (hobbies, sports,
interests, etc.) people can and do readily think and devour
knowledge
Some people do like to think in general, how do we know?
Need for cognition
Caccioppo & Petty (1982) developed a scale called Need for
Cognition (NFC)
It measures the “tendency for an individual to engage in and
enjoy effortful thinking”
Going back to persuasion from last lecture, someone’s NFC
level is an audience (to whom) characteristic
Those high in NFC are more easily persuaded by strong

arguments, but do not find weak arguments compelling
Example of strong argument: college students should have to
take comprehensive exams at the end of senior year because that
boosts starting salaries
Example of a weak argument: college students should have to
take comprehensive exams because graduate students
complained that because they have to, undergrads should too
Brief Note:
Before we continue, we are going to use a lot of terms in this
chapter to mostly express the same things concerning the two
different modes of thinking and the duplex mind:
Conscious vs. non-conscious
Central vs. peripheral
Systematic vs. heuristic
Controlled vs. automated
At different points we will use different terms, only because
those were the terms the researchers used for their specific
studies
But it’s important to recognize the themes and similarities
Elaboration Likelihood Model
Petty and Caccioppo (1986) later proposed a general model of
how people process information to make decisions
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM):
There are two routes to processing information or something a
speaker says
Central route: conscious, systematic, slow, deliberative
processing that evaluates the content of a message
Peripheral route: involves automatic, heuristic, non-conscious
decision-making that is influenced by simple cues, e.g. the
speaker is attractive

Elaboration Likelihood Model continued
So which route of processing (central or peripheral) will
someone use?
Well, it depends!
How high is their ‘need for cognition’?
If high, they will most likely use the central route
The other huge determinant of route is motivation
Someone who is only passingly concerned with whatever
they’re hearing/reading will most likely digest the information
through the peripheral route
I suspect this happens with evaluating the arguments of
politicians
Whereas if the information is extremely important, e.g. about
your health, your bills, etc., someone will likely use the central
route
Which route
Distraction is also a factor, it often forces people to process the
information peripherally
Ability to understand the aspects of the decision matter as well
E.g. if you had to sit in on an advanced lecture on biochemistry,
you may be processing it peripherally because you lack the
requisite knowledge to process it centrally
In 1980 Petty & Caccioppo demonstra ted this by showing that
men were more easily persuaded by an article about current
fashion trends, whereas women were more easily persuaded
about a football article
Attitude change from a message processed peripherally tends to
be weaker than one processed centrally

Some peripheral cues people often attend to:
Experts know best
What’s beautiful is good
The more arguments the better
Good products are more expensive
Controlled vs automatic thinking
There are 5 key differences:
Effort
Automatic processing does not leave one feeling tired and taxed
like controlled thinking does
Intention
Automatic processing occurs regardless of our intention, like
when tried reading the Stroop test (black) quickly but automatic
processing got in the way
Efficiency
Automatic processing happens faster
Awareness
Automatic processing happens outside of awareness, e.g.
driving a very familiar route
Control
We don’t have control over automatic thinking (which is good
and bad)
Automatic thinking
One way that automatic thinking is able to help us and save us
time/effort is by making use of ‘knowledge structures’
Organized packets of information that are stored in memory
When people think about a concept, it becomes active in
memory, and so do related concepts
When activated enough times, those concepts become a set, they
run together like an airplane on autopilot
The following are some examples of this; automatic thinking in
action

Schemas
Schemas are an important way we go through life without
expending too much effort to understand the world
We have schemas for everything
A fish (scales, slimy, gills, fins, etc.)
Playing golf (club, golf balls, tees, golf carts)
Driving in a car
When something unexpected occurs that violates our schema,
this can give us pause and shift us into conscious, controlled
thinking
Scripts
Scripts are schemas for events
They guide our expectations and behavior in social situations
E.g. how to act at: a job interview, lunch with your mom, a
party, a grocery store, etc.
They can be learned from direct experience
Or just from observational learning
You probably saw movie scenes from what a college party looks
like long before you ever attended one
Priming
*Priming is an incredibly important concept
Concepts are linked together in memory
E.g. chalk and board, apple and juice
When a concept becomes active, so to do the other
nearby/related concepts
William James described priming as, the “wakening of
associations”
Let’s review how we know this happens from the wide variety
of research on priming

Priming continued
If you are doing a word sorting task, and you sort ‘nurse,’ and
then you are given ‘doctor’, you will sort doctor faster if the
preceding word was nurse but not if it was aardvark
Participants were primed with a set of words that included
neutral words (him, as, usually) and then either a rude word
(bother) or a polite word (courteous)
Participants then have an interaction with an experimenter and a
confederate; the participant must wait until they are finished
talking
If primed with a rude word, participants are annoyed they had to
wait and rate the experimenter as rude
This does not occur if primed with the concept of polite
Priming continued
Other studies in priming have yielded interesting results as well
If participants do a study during which subliminal images of old
faces are flashed
Those participants walk down the hall more slowly when
leaving the study than control condition participants
Legal psychology studies have demonstrated really clearly that
guns prime violence
When participants came in for a study and saw objects on a
nearby table, some saw a gun, some saw a racquet
Those who saw the gun behaved more aggressively (gave more
shocks and higher voltage shocks) to an imagined confederate
Priming continued
Consider, for a moment, all of the implications of priming
If you have a bad interaction/argument with your roommate,
how does that taint your perception of ambiguous events that

follow it?
Would you think the cashier at the store was rude to you too?
If Sue works with kids all day, would the concepts of youth,
energy, naivety, etc. all just be permanently primed for Sue?
If someone carries a gun, does that prime them to interpret
ambiguous events as hostile?
Will that person be more likely to escalate a situation that could
have been diffused because concepts of violence are already
active in their mind?
Framing
Would you rather eat a hamburger that’s 10% fat or 90% lean?
Functionally, the same thing
But research says you’d be more likely
to eat it if it said 90% lean
Gain-framed appeals
Eating vegetables will prevent diabetes
Gain-framed appeals more effective when targeting behaviors
that prevent a disease
Loss-framed appeals
If you don’t floss, you’ll have bad breath
Loss-framed appeals more effective at getting people to detect a
disease they already have but are unaware of
Automatic processing
We just covered different ways in which automatic thinking can
occur
Schemas
Scripts
Priming
Framing
We will essentially cover more next lecture when we discuss

heuristics
For now though, let’s take a break and consider how some legal
psychologists explain decision-making
Coherence Methodology
Participants read through a legal case and rated evidence at 3
different times while going through the case
Evidence Rating # 1 - Abstract Evidence Vignettes
Here participants read about unrelated, abstract situations
relating to evidence, they’re not part of a story
E.g. How compelling would you find it if a witness who
observed a crime identified the perpetrator from a line-up and
stated he/she had 90% confidence in his/her identification
These same evidence scenarios comes up again later, as part of
the case
-baseline. Unrelated. E.g. fingerprint
-Complex trial, both sides compelling. individ dm
-Same as earlier, just fleshed out now.
Mistake, no input from vet judge.
23
Participants told they will now play the role of a trial judge &
eventually render a verdict
Evidence Rating # 2
They now read through case narrative and provide their initial
feelings about the case by rating each piece of evidence
These are the same pieces of evidence from before, only now
they have the names from the trial and are strung together to
form a narrative/story/case

The case is deliberately ambiguous, some pieces of evidence
point to guilt, others point to innocence
Participants are then given some time to consider their decision
Finally, participants were asked to render a verdict of guilty or
not guilty
Evidence Rating # 3
Then they rated each piece of evidence again, after having
provided their verdict
Results
~ 50/50 split among participants in terms of voting guilty or not
guilty
we would expect this, the trial was designed to be ambiguous
but.....
Almost all participants had 'near maximum' confidence in their
decision
how?!?! How can they be so confidence with so much contrary
evidence starring them in the face
Acquitters vs. 'Convicters'
50/50 with respect to verdict. Amazing finding, pretty strong
opinions. Little insight into these shifts when asked about

them.
27
Coherence Results continued
Results from the previous slide
Over time, people’s decisions began to ‘cohere’/shift
Meaning, when a participant rated the evidence during the
second set of ratings, if a participant was leaning toward the
evidence implying the defendant’s guilt
Then by the time that participant reached a guilty verdict and
rated the evidence one final time, he/she strongly believed the
evidence implied the defendant was guilty
Even though everyone saw the same evidence, convictors
strongly believe in the suspect’s guilt, acquiters strongly
belived in the suspect’s innocence
And everyone’s ratings of each individual piece of evidence
shifted in correspondence with their eventual decision
And remember, the evidence itself never changes
Discussion
Every participant came to a polarized decision
we would have expected people to be more neutral, as that's
what the evidence reflects
When participants rated the evidence the first time, they rated it
as neutral
Implication:
***this is a huge problem for the 'beyond a reasonable doubt'
standard***
look how much reasonable doubt there should have been in this
trial. Half the evidence pointed to the defendant being not-
guilty
yet 50% of people convicted the defendant
Discussion Cont'd

What was Simon's explanation
of these 'coherence' findings?
1. The mind does NOT like ambiguity
it seeks to make complex decisions simple
coherent decisions that result in a confident choice
2. Each piece of evidence doesn't seem to have a discrete
'weight' or 'value'
they're not just added up. Or we would have seen participants
with neutral opinions
because half the evidence was inculpating and half exculpating.
Discussion Cont'd
Different from confirmation bias
they had no prior opinions to confirm
their initial ratings of evidence in the abstract were neutral
Different from Dissonance
it's not a post-decision dissonance reduction finding
their opinions shifted throughout
a follow-up Simon study had them just try to memorize the case
info (not make a decision)
people still ended up with polarized opinions!
Discussion Cont'd
The Coherence study results are an interesting illustration of
conscious vs non-conscious decision-making
Participants were consciously trying to weigh the evidence and
arrive at a verdict
Yet, when asked follow-up questions, participants did not
realize their opinions had shifted so dramatically
The non-conscious/automated mind seems to function in such a
way as to help us feel confident and secure when making our
decisions

Even when the decisions are incredibly ambiguous
Take-home point
Try to be aware of coherence in your own complex decisions
is your mind shifting towards one conclusion just to shift? or is
there really good reason for it?
Many facets of decision-making occur non-consciously
Be aware of overconfidence in decisions
Chapter 5
Social Cognition Part 2
Today’s outline
Findings about automated processing
Heuristics
Cognitive biases
Attributions
Fundamental attribution error
Social Cognition continued
Last class we discussed the theme of automated/non-
conscious/peripheral processes vs controlled/conscious/central
processes.
As you may recall seeing, another way to describe automated

cognition is called ‘heuristics’
If you don’t know how that word is pronounced/sounds, click
here and click on US
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/heuris
tic
Heuristics
Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts that the automated mind uses
to help us make decisions quickly/easily
They can, however, also be prone to certain errors
Indeed, you may recognize the name Daniel Kahneman
He won the Nobel Prize for “having integrated insights from
psychology into economic science, especially concerning human
judgment and decision-making under uncertainty”
Representativeness Heuristic
‘The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event
by the extent to which is resembles a typical case’
Which series of coin flips is more likely? (h = heads; t = tails)
HHHHH or
HTHTH
Most people say the second one, but in reality, the odds are the
same
Representativeness Heuristic continued
What’s more healthy?
Turns out rats that were fed Lucky Charms grew and were fine,
but rats fed 100% natural Quaker Oats Granola didn’t grow and

died early in their life span
Granola seems healthier, but had tons of saturated fat
OR
Availability Heuristic
Were you more afraid to fly on your first airplane or to drive
somewhere?
Most would say airplane
But the chances of dying in a car crash (1 in 5,000) are many
many many times more likely than dying in an airplane (1 in 11
million)
Car crashes remain one of the leading causes of death, alongside
heart attacks and cancer
Plane crashes, though, stand out because they’re rare and
usually covered extensively in the news
Heuristics continued
A lot of the time, heuristics can help us make decisions
But often there’s a major flaw with our brain:
Information from base rates and statistics get overshadowed by
biases, like the availability heuristic or representativeness
heuristic
Also the gambler’s fallacy, which we’ll discuss shortly
Anchoring & adjustment heuristic
In estimating the likelihood or frequency of an event, if there’s
a starting number present, people will anchor on to that and

adjust either up or down
E.g. in a negotiation, if the company offered you 60k a year.
Anchoring & adjustment heuristic
Tversky and Kahneman (1974):
Spun a random 1-100 wheel in front of participants (the wheel
was rigged to either land on 65 or 10)
Whichever it landed on, researchers would ask: “Is the
percentage of African countries in the UN higher or lower than
the # on the wheel?” Then, “What was the # of African
countries?”
Participants who were anchored by the number 10%, estimated
25%, whereas those anchored by 65% estimated 45%.
This occurs even though participants see the wheel and believe
it’s just random
Other cognitive biases
We already discussed confirmation bias in previous chapters,
though the effect of that bias cannot be overstated
Conjunction fallacy
Let’s try this out
Linda is 31, single, outspoken, very bright. She majored in
philosophy in college. As a student, she was deeply concerned
with discrimination and other social issues, and she participated
in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which is more likely?
A. Linda is a bank teller
B. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement
Conjunction fallacy
Even though b. is tempting, the answer is a.
The odds of one event occurring (she’s a bank teller) is more

likely than two separate events occurring together (bank teller
and feminist)
People perceive an increase in accuracy as information gets
more specific and tied to similar-seeming elements, but in fact,
the opposite is true
E.g. not all bank tellers are feminists, and vice versa
Illusory correlation
When two rare things occur together, they stand out as
correlated
This explains why some people have a bad view of minorities,
because if the news reports on a minority member (rare)
committing a crime (rare), that stands out
In one study, participants read about actions taken by people
from two groups, Group A and Group B.
Group A has more members than Group B
Illusory correlation continued
Some of the actions taken by people in both groups were
desirable (e.g. helped someone) or undesirable (e.g. lied to
someone).
But the ratio of desirable to undesirable behaviors was the same
for both groups
Nevertheless, after reading all of the stories, participants
estimated that members from Group B. committed more
undesirable acts than desirable ones
Base Rate Fallacy
As sample size increases, variability decreases
E.g. if you flip a coin 10 times, you might see HHHHTTHHHH,
8 out of 10 heads
But if you flipped 1000 coins, the chances of seeing 800/1000
heads is way lower

Some sports, then, are more likely to have flukes!
Any game with low scores, like
soccer; to reduce flukes, games should
have high scores and multiple matches
(e.g. best of 3)
Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand
Say you flip a coin 9 times, and the result is all heads. Will the
next one be:
A. Head
B. Tails
C. Heads or Tails are equally likely
What do you think the answer is?
Hot hand players would believe good luck would continue and
say A. Heads
Gambler’s Fallacy players would say a Tails is due and pick B.
Tails
The answer is C.
The 10th flip is a discrete event, the prior events have no impact
on the current flip
Researchers demonstrated this
by putting cameras above roulette
tables in Las Vegas Casinos
If you play any kind of board games that include dice, you’ll
catch yourself making either the Hot Hand or Gambler’s Fallacy
very often
I know I do!

Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand can be understood in the
context of the representativeness heuristic
People expect strings of numbers to look average
These two fallacies could also play into the next bias…
Illusion of Control
People have an immensely strong desire to control everything
We come to believe we can control chance events
E.g. in past times, things like rain dances
More casino research has shown people who want high numbers
roll dicer harder, and people who want low numbers roll dice
softer
Similarly, with Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand, it’s possible
people are trying to reason around random chance by explaining
in their mind why the next flip should be heads tails
Referring back to self-esteem, illusions of control are probably
a mentally healthy thing to have
Magical thinking
Any assumptions that don’t hold up to scrutiny or fact
E.g. being afraid to wear a sweater that someone who has
HIV/AIDS wore
It couldn’t be transmitted as such
Being afraid of eating a chocolate bug
Unrealistic contamination
We all get grossed out if we see a hair in our food or if a bug
just landed in it
But in reality, nothing really happens from that ;p
Statistical Regression
Sir Francis Galton came up with it
Aka regression toward the mean
Streaks can happen in anything, sports, gambling, etc., but

eventually, everything regresses back to whatever its mean is
This relates back to the base rate fallacy, as sample size
increases, variability decreases
Counterfactual thinking
Imaging alternatives to past or present events, despite reality
being set in stone
What if a different candidate won
What if you would have been on time for that date
Narrowly missing a subway train is something people find more
aggravating than missing it by 5 minutes, even though there’s
no real difference
Attributions
Attributions are an explanation of why something happened
Inferences we make to explain events in our life
E.g. Dylan said something mean because he’s a jerk
Earlier in the course we had discussed the ‘self-serving bias’
Where people attribute their success to internal characteristics
(I’m smart, hard-working, etc.)
But attribute failures to external things (my boss just didn’t like
me)
Let’s investigate another important bias…
Attributions
Fundamental attribution error (FAE)(aka correspondence bias):
tendency to attribute the actions of others to internal causes
even if they are actually caused by external forces or
circumstances (Jones & Nisbett)
e.g. Bob is late because he's a slacker (internal)
we don't assume it's due to traffic
This bias is one of the most

famous and important findings
in social psychology
Actor and Observer
Actor-observer bias: as observers, we attribute the behavior of
others to their wants, motives, and personality traits (this is the
fundamental attribution error), but as actors, we tend to find
external explanations for our own behavior
Personalizing the Fundamental Attribution Error
Can you think of an example from your recent past where you
evaluated someone's actions and made the fundamental
attribution error?
in other words, you attributed their behavior to internal causes,
even though you don't know for sure
Can you similarly think of an example where someone
attributed YOUR behavior to an internal cause, when really the
cause was external?
Personal Anecdote on FAE
I have a memory that stands out to me:
Junior year of college I had woken up after my first night back
on campus and was going to head to my first class, animal
behavior
The instructor was Dr. Yasukawa, who
was kind of intimidating and well-
regarded on campus, but I was excited
to take his class because he was the athletics
director and we had often played some sports
with students/faculty during ‘noon ball’ in
between classes during my pervious year/s

Personal Anecdote on FAE continued
So I woke up, took one look in the mirror, and saw that my eyes
were super bloodshot
It looked like I was on drugs
In fact, it was because I had severe allergies from being in the
Midwest (hay, pollen, ragweed, etc.)
Afterwards I got on allergy medication which stopped any such
problems
I tried a few things to fix the problem, but ended up not being
able to, and had to decide to just go to class, and was late at this
point
I walked in and everyone was looking at me, classes were small
at my college, only 20 people
As I was heading to my seat, he said “Hi Jon, that’s your ‘one
bite.’
Referring to animal behavior, as that was the course, and how
dogs can kind of get away with one bite, but after that they get
branded as trouble
I was so embarrassed!!! I apologized after class, but you can
tell when someone doesn’t believe what happened
He (the observer) assumed I was late because: I was just the
kind of person who ran late, was disrespectful, or had been
smoking, etc.
In reality, this was a perfect example of the FAE

He assumed internal causes for my lateness
I (the actor) knew, of course, that there was a clear, external
cause
Monitor your own judgements of people, I’ve caught myself
making the FAE many times
Factors Influencing Attributions
Discounting: downgrading internal causes as a way of
explaining an individual’s behavior when a person’s actions
seem to have strong external causes
e.g. athletes endorsing shaving cream
Consensus: degree to which people respond alike; implies that
responses are externally caused
everyone is late....traffic
Chapter 11
Attraction & Exclusion
Today’s Outline
Attraction
Belongingness
Similarity
Physical attractiveness
Reciprocity
Rejection
Causes of rejection

Effects of rejection
Loneliness
As social animals, humans are, at their core, truly concerned
with attraction and exclusion
Indeed the point of social psychology may be to understand why
some are accepted and loved, while others are rejected
Take a moment to consider times in your life where you might
have been afraid of romantic rejection or perhaps were seeking
social acceptance with a new group of peers
The need to belong is defined as the desire to form and maintain
close, lasting relationships with some other individuals
Needing to belong is considered a fundamental drive or basic
need of the human psyche
Warren Jones, “In two decades of studying loneliness, I have
met many people who said they had no friends. I have never
met any one who didn’t want to have any friends.”
Need to belong
From an evolutionary psychology perspective:
Attraction and acceptance are necessary for reproduction
Additionally, humans likely developed a herd mentality to
increase our odds of survival
Consider all the ways we know our behavior changes in groups
Monkeys can recognize that any two monkeys may have an
alliance, be forming one, or might be likely to fight
One theory is that the human brain developed more to keep
track of a highly complex social world

Two components to belongingness
1. Regular, positive social interactions
Regular is key here, many of us have formed friendships but
moved on to new situations in our life and lost regular contact
with old friends
Positive is also key, hanging out with that person you always
argue with doesn’t fill that social need
2. Stable relationship/friendship in which people share mutual
concern for each other
Typically research has shown people want about 1-5 close
friends
People are less concerned with casual friends/acquaintances
How bad for you is not belonging?
Belonging is called a need, not a want, perhaps for these
reasons
Death rates from various diseases increase among people with
no social connections (Lynch, 1979)
People who are alone have more mental and physical problems
(Uchino, Cacioppo, & Kiecolt-Glaser, 1996)
Loneliness reduces the ability of the immune system to heal the
body (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2005)
Attraction – Similarity,
complementarity, & opposites
Which old saying turns out to be true, “Birds of a feather flock
together” or “Opposites attract”
The research has pointed to birds of a feather being the clear
winner
In any relationship ranging from acquaintance to lover,
opposites are unlikely to stay connected in the long run

Typically, but not always, our friends are similar in age, race,
education level, political leaning, economic status, etc.
Note this is kind of a bad thing too, as it can lead us to assume
everyone shares the opinions of your social group
How often do you see people unfriend others on Facebook over
political disagreements?
Similarity
We tend to like friends who do the same activities that we do
Some researchers have even suggested that when a romantic
couple gets into a relationship, if their levels of physical
attractiveness aren’t quite similar, they will be more likely to
break up
Have couples who are in different physical leagues stuck out to
you as unusual?
Indeed, matching
hypothesis has been
supported, couples
are more likely to break
up if there’s a difference
in physical attractiveness
(even serious couples)
Attractiveness & Attraction
Speaking of physical attractiveness, most of us would say ‘we
know it when we see it,’ but how do researchers define and
measure it?

For starters, which of these 3 faces is the most attractive?
I chose the middle one. According to research findings, most
people would choose either the middle or the right photo
The left photo is the original
Facial symmetry
Symmetrical faces are almost always rated as more attractive
The more symmetrical, the better
The implication is that facial symmetry implies genetic fitness.
Asymmetry is a sign of genetic imperfections
To demonstrate that genetics are the explanation behind this,
researchers (Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999) took the t-shirts that
men slept in and asked women to smell and rate their scent
Some of the men had clear genetic asymmetry, length of pinky
fingers or ear lobes
Women preferred the smell of men with genetic symmetry
They especially preferred the symmetric men’s scent when
at the point in their period when reproduction was ideal
Facial symmetry continued
More research has used computer software to merge/combine
faces
For example, people rate the attractiveness of two faces, and
then the faces are combined, and they rate the composite of the
previous two faces
People mostly like composite faces better

In fact, the more faces that one combines, the more people liked
it
E.g. a 16-face facial composite is preferred over a 4-face
composite
Symmetrical, or ‘averaged,’ faces are preferred
Consider how saying someone looks inbred is the opposite
Lack of genetic diversity causes issues and is unappealing
Alright, we’ve covered faces, what about bodies?
Studies by Singh (1993) measured male ratings of silhouettes of
woman’s bodies
He manipulated the size of the waist (belly fat) and the size of
the hips
He find found that a low waist to hip ration, like .7, was
preferred. This matches the standard hourglass shape people
talk about
A small effect was found for women preferring men with a .9
waist to hip ratio
Subsequent research found the male shoulder to waist ratio was
much more important, e.g. a V-shape
Alright, but how does physical attractiveness stack up to other
aspects of attractiveness (having things in common, warmth,
career success, etc.)

It can be summed up by one of my favorite quotes from your
textbook authors:
“The fancy theories about matchmaking and similarity and
reciprocity couldn’t shine through the overwhelming preference
for the best-looking partners”
Attractiveness predicts date satisfaction more than any other
dimension
Relates back to the Halo Effect, which can also be called ‘what
is beautiful is good effect’
People (presumably) have other good traits if they’re attractive
Hortacsu and Ariely (2006) found that women stated a
preference for taller men
But that preference could be offset if the man made enough
money
E.g. for a 5 foot 8 inch guy, he could get as many dates as a
taller guy if he made roughly 150k more
E.g. a 5 foot 2 guy could keep up with taller guys if he made
277k more than them
However, other research has shown that while women state a
preference for taller guys, they don’t find them more attractive
once having met them (Sheppard & Strathman, 1989)
Similarly, short men don’t report having less dates than tall men
Beyond considering romantic or sexual partners, being good
looking confers other benefits. Good looking people are more
likely to:
Do better in job interviews

Receive more help from strangers during emergencies
Be more popular among their peers
This even applies to young children
Teachers like attractive kids better as well
Finally, even 3-month-old babies show a preference for staring
longer at attractive faces
According to principles of behaviorism:
We like people and romantic partners when they praise or
compliment us (feels good, so we have positive associations
with them)
We also like people who do us favors. This can take the form
of help, gifts, cooking food, etc.
The exception in both of those cases is when the favors or
compliments are seen as manipulative
As we discussed in the social influence chapter, reciprocity has
compelling effects
As such, when someone likes us, we are inclined to like them by
default
One exception is when we don’t like someone back and don’t
want to spend time with them
Can cause us to feel guilty and/or turn them away
Nonverbal reciprocity
Lakin & Chartrand (2005) found that participants liked
confederates better who mimicked their behavior (giggling,

putting one’s hand on one’s face, etc.) than those confederates
who didn’t mimic
Try it out in your life! Just don’t make it too obvious ;p
A few final points about attraction
The ‘mere exposure effect’ (Ch. 7) applies to liking people too
Also called the propinquity effect, we like people that we
encounter regularly
Makes us feel like our environment is stable and predictable
But like the mere exposure effect, if our initial response is
dislike, disliking gets worse
Social allergy effect: a partner’s annoying habits get more
annoying over time
Rejection
Rejection is a broad term, referring to being turned down for a
date, being dumped, being fired, being kicked off of a team, not
invited to an event with your usual friends, etc.
Ostracism is another word for it, being excluded, rejected, or
ignored by others
Why does rejection occur?
What causes rejection
Reasons differ by context
Among children, other kids are rejected if they’re:
1. Aggressive
physically or verbally
2. Withdrawn
Often just by him/herself

3. Different/deviant
Just unlike peers in some way
Among adults
Typically deviance
Just being too different from people around you
Shame on some level, because that stifles uniqueness
Bad apple
Making others of your group look bad
Romantic Rejection
When turning people down, people often cite external reasons
(too busy, not looking for a relationship, etc.)
But the reason is almost always internal (not attracted to
person, don’t like them, etc.)
Those external answers are polite, but can lead to confusion
Rejected people can become a stalkers
There has also been a trend lately of men rejected by women to
become violent and go on a shooting spree as a result
Psychological effects of rejection
The effects of rejection are uniformly bad
Pain
Illness
Depression
Suicidal thoughts
Life seeming pointless
Risky sexual behavior

People can develop rejection sensitivity
Reluctance to open up to new people for fear of being hurt
Psychological effects of rejection
Similar to shocking physical pain, sometimes the psychological
response to an important rejection is numbness
The mental distress, anxiety, and sadness come later
Rejection makes people temporarily stupid, in terms of
cognitive performance
Rejection also suppresses people’s ability to self-regulate or
control their behavior
More likely to binge eat sweets
Behavioral effects of rejection
Less generous, cooperative, and helpful
More impulsive and destructive
Higher levels of aggression
Before shootings in the U.S. became so frequent, the narrative
was that school shooters were often rejected outcasts
There may be some truth to that narrative, but it’s not always
the case and it certainly doesn’t excuse shooting people
Loneliness
When we discuss lonely people, we mean chronically lonely,
not temporarily because someone moved to a new city
Comparing lonely to non-lonely people defies a lot of the
stereotypes about lonely people
There are no appreciable differences in attractiveness,

intelligence, or general social skills between lonely and non-
lonely people
But, lonely people do seem to do a bad job of detecting the
emotional states of people they interact with
This may lead to friction in social relationships
Lonely people interact with others as often as non-lonely
(quantity), but the interaction quality is poorer
Loneliness
Recommendations:
Someone who is often lonely should get a pet! They help a lot
Improve at monitoring emotional states
Continuing to attempt to form meaningful bonds with people
Live closer to family

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