Principles of Social Psychology

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Social psychology is the scientific study of how our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are profoundly shaped by both our individual characteristics and—often more powerfully—by the social situations and people around us.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What social psychology studies: how we feel, think, and behave toward others, and how others influence us in return.
• The person-situation interaction: behavior results from both individual characteristics and social context, with the situation often being the stronger influence.
• Two fundamental human motivations: self-concern (protecting ourselves and those close to us) and other-concern (connecting with and helping others).
• Common confusion: we often wrongly assume people act purely from personal traits, underestimating how much the social situation drives behavior.
• Social norms and culture: shared ways of thinking and behaving vary across cultures (e.g., individualism in the West vs. collectivism in East Asia) and powerfully guide our actions.

📜 Historical development of the field

📜 Early foundations (before 1900–1950s)

• The first social psychology experiments on group behavior appeared before 1900.
• The first textbooks were published in 1908.
• Kurt Lewin (known as "the father of social psychology") and Leon Festinger refined experimental methods in the 1940s–1950s, establishing social psychology as a rigorous science.
• Lewin emphasized dynamic interactions among people; Festinger stressed systematic measurement and laboratory experiments (sometimes requiring deception).

📜 Post-WWII expansion (1950s–1970s)

• Researchers sought to understand how Adolf Hitler produced extreme obedience and horrendous behaviors.
• Key studies:
  • Conformity: Muzafir Sherif (1936) and Solomon Asch (1952) showed the power of group pressure.
  • Obedience: Stanley Milgram (1974) demonstrated that authority figures could lead ordinary people to inflict severe harm.
  • Prison study: Philip Zimbardo found that role-playing guards and prisoners became so violent the study had to end early.
• Other topics emerged: helping behavior (Darley & Latané), aggression (Berkowitz), group decision-making (Janis), and intergroup relations (Allport, Sherif).
• Social psychologists contributed expert testimony in landmark cases like Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

📜 Cognitive turn and modern expansion (1970s–present)

• The field became more cognitive in the 1970s–1980s, studying how people process social information, form attitudes, and make judgments.
• Leon Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory became a foundational model.
• Researchers (Eagly, Fiske, Higgins, Nisbett, Ross, Taylor, and others) explored social cognition: how knowledge about the social world develops and influences memory, attitudes, and judgment.
• Research revealed that human decision-making is often flawed due to cognitive and motivational biases.
• In the 21st century, the field expanded into health, evolutionary psychology, culture, and social neuroscience (how social behavior and brain activity influence each other).

🧩 The person-situation interaction

🧩 Lewin's fundamental equation

Behavior = f(person, social situation)

• This equation means: a person's behavior at any moment depends on both their individual characteristics and the influence of the social situation.
• Social psychologists emphasize that the social situation is often a stronger determinant of behavior than personality.
• Example: In analyzing events like the Holocaust, social psychologists focus more on situational factors (strong leaders, group pressure) than on the perpetrators' individual traits.

🧩 Why we underestimate the situation

• We often wrongly assume that people act entirely on their own accord, without external influences.
• It is tempting to think that people who commit extreme acts (terrorists, cult members) are inherently unusual or extreme.
• Research shows these behaviors are caused more by the social situation than by individual characteristics.
• Don't confuse: attributing behavior to personality alone vs. recognizing the powerful role of context.

🧩 What "person" means

• Person refers to individual characteristics: personality traits, desires, motivations, emotions.
• These characteristics exist because of evolutionary adaptation: genetic traits that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce.
• Humans are born with social skills (recognizing faces, learning language, forming friendships) that were selected through evolution.
• Our large brains provide us with exceptional social intelligence.

🎯 Two fundamental human motivations

🎯 Self-concern: protecting the self and kin

Self-concern: the motivation to protect and enhance our own life and the lives of people psychologically close to us.

• The most basic tendency of all living organisms is to survive: find food, water, shelter, and avoid danger.
• We also protect and enhance our relatives (those genetically related to us).
• Kin selection: strategies that favor the reproductive success of relatives, even at a cost to the individual, because they increase the survival of the group as a whole.
• We extend this care to our ingroup: people we view as similar and important, even if not genetically related (e.g., close friends).
• Example: Helping friends move furniture, even when you'd prefer to study or relax, because you feel close to them.

🎯 Other-concern: connecting and cooperating

Other-concern: the motivation to affiliate with, accept, and be accepted by others.

• Humans desire to connect with and be accepted by people more generally, not just close kin or ingroup members.
• We live, work, worship, and play together in communities and groups.
• Affiliating with others (even strangers) helps us meet fundamental goals, like finding romantic partners and accessing opportunities we couldn't have alone.
• We engage in mutual cooperation: trading goods and services, which benefits everyone.
• Humans behave morally toward others: we understand it is wrong to harm people without strong reason, and we display compassion and altruism.
• Negative behaviors (bullying, cheating, stealing, aggression) are unusual and socially disapproved—hostility and violence are the exception, not the rule.

🎯 When motivations conflict

• Sometimes self-concern and other-concern align: falling in love benefits both ourselves (we feel good) and the other person.
• Other times they conflict: Example: seeing someone threatened with a knife—do you intervene (other-concern) or protect yourself from danger (self-concern)?
• We must decide which goal to prioritize.

🌍 Social influence and social norms

🌍 What social influence is

Social influence: the process through which other people change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and through which we change theirs.

• Social influence can be passive: we adopt beliefs and behaviors of those around us without awareness (e.g., a child adopts parents' values; someone starts liking jazz because a roommate plays it).
• Social influence can be active: deliberate attempts to change beliefs or behaviors (e.g., jury members persuading a dissenter; celebrity endorsements; cult leaders directing followers).

🌍 Social norms

Social norms: the ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members and perceived by them as appropriate.

• Norms include customs, traditions, standards, rules, and general values.
• We learn what people actually do ("Americans eat scrambled eggs in the morning") and what we should or shouldn't do ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you"; "do not make racist jokes").
• Norms guide almost every social behavior and have a big influence on our actions.
• Even when alone (e.g., stopping at a stop sign on a deserted road late at night), we are influenced by internalized norms—we carry our social experiences with us.

🌍 The power of the social situation

• Our relationships with others are among the things we value most.
• We depend on others to help us meet goals (class projects, volunteer work, jury duty).
• We are influenced not only by people physically present but also by those in our thoughts and memories.
• Key principle: Although individual characteristics matter, the social situation is often a stronger determinant of behavior than personality.

🌏 Cultural differences in social norms

🌏 What culture is

Culture: a group of people, normally living within a given geographical region, who share a common set of social norms, including religious and family values and moral beliefs.

• Culture affects our thoughts, feelings, and behavior through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission.
• Our culture defines our lives as much as our evolutionary experience does.

🌏 Individualism vs. collectivism

Dimension	Western cultures (individualism)	East Asian cultures (collectivism)
Primary focus	Self-enhancement and independence	Harmonious relationships and interdependence
What children learn	Develop and value personal self; feel special; seek personal achievement	Focus on group togetherness, connectedness, duty to family
Self-description	"Do my own thing"; live independently; base happiness on personal achievements	Concerned about interests of others, close friends, colleagues
Source of happiness	Personal accomplishments	Connections with other people

• Western cultures (U.S., Canada, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand): norms emphasize individualism—self-enhancement and independence.
• East Asian cultures (China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia): norms emphasize collectivism (interdependence)—being fundamentally connected with others.
• Example: East Asians are more likely to experience happiness from connections with others; Westerners from personal accomplishments.

🌏 Other cultural variations

• Time orientation: Some cultures are strict about schedules; others are more flexible.
• Pace of life: Fastest in Western countries (and Japan); slowest in economically undeveloped countries (measured by walking speed and postal clerk speed).
• Social norms vs. individuality: Cultures differ in how much people are bound by social norms vs. free to express individuality.
• Personal space and communication styles: Cultures vary in how close people stand when talking and how they communicate.

🌏 Why cultural awareness matters

• People from different cultural backgrounds increasingly interact due to travel, immigration, and the Internet.
• In Canada, for example, roughly 21% of the population is foreign-born (highest among G8 countries).
• By 2031, visible minorities are projected to make up 63% of Toronto's population and 59% of Vancouver's.
• These changes create potential for greater understanding and productive interaction, but also potential for social conflict.
• Being aware of cultural differences is an important part of understanding social psychology.

💪 The importance of social connections

💪 Social support and mental health

• People with adequate social support (a network of others they can rely on) report being happier and have fewer psychological problems (eating disorders, mental illness).
• They are less depressed overall, recover faster from negative events, and are less likely to commit suicide.
• Married people report being happier than unmarried people; a happy marriage is an excellent form of social support.
• Effective psychotherapy helps people generate better social support networks because such relationships have positive effects on mental health.

💪 Social support and physical health

• People with adequate social support are more physically healthy.
• They have fewer diseases (tuberculosis, heart attacks, cancer), live longer, have lower blood pressure, and have fewer deaths at all ages.
• Athletes with higher social support are less likely to be injured and recover more quickly from injuries.
• These differences appear to be due to positive effects of social support on physiological functioning, including the immune system.

💪 The pain of exclusion and ostracism

• The opposite of social support is feeling excluded or ostracized.
• The pain of rejection may linger even longer than physical pain.
• People rate memories of social pain (e.g., betrayal) as more intense than memories of intense physical pain.
• When threatened with exclusion, people express greater interest in making new friends, increase their desire to cooperate, form more positive first impressions, and become better at distinguishing real from fake smiles.
• Ostracism as a tool: Withholding social communication (e.g., the "silent treatment") is a powerful weapon for punishing individuals and forcing behavior change.
• Ostracism is used in various contexts: Amish religion (Meidung), parent-child relationships, Internet games and chat rooms.
• Ostracized individuals report feeling alone, frustrated, sad, unworthy, and having lower self-esteem.
• Ostracism is particularly painful for adolescents.

💪 Practical takeaway

• One of the most important things you can do for yourself is develop a stable support network.
• Reaching out to others benefits both them (you are in their network) and you (substantial benefits for mental and physical health).

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Social psychology relies on three interrelated human capacities—affect (feelings), behavior (interactions), and cognition (thought)—that work together to help people create successful social interactions and maintain their lives effectively.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• The ABC framework: Social psychology is based on affect (feelings), behavior (interactions), and cognition (thought), which are interrelated and work together.
• Social cognition as active interpretation: People use schemas and attitudes to process social information, but different people may interpret the same events differently based on their own mental frameworks.
• Affect serves adaptive functions: Moods and emotions guide social behaviors, signaling whether things are going well and influencing whether we approach or avoid others.
• Common confusion—mood vs emotion: Moods are background feelings in everyday situations; emotions are brief, intense, and triggered by specific unusual events.
• Social exchange and reciprocity: People balance self-concern with other-concern, cooperating through reciprocal altruism while tracking fairness to detect "cheaters."

🧠 The three core capacities

🧠 What the ABCs represent

The excerpt defines three basic capacities humans rely on for successful social interaction:

Capacity	What it means
Affect	Feelings
Behavior	Interactions
Cognition	Thought

• These three aspects directly reflect social psychology's focus: studying feelings, behaviors, and thoughts of individuals in social situations.
• Although discussed separately, all three work together to produce human experience.
• Don't confuse: they are not independent—they are interrelated and function as a system.

🧩 Why this framework matters

• The ABCs help us "effectively maintain and enhance our own lives through successful interaction with others."
• Each capacity contributes to how we navigate social situations.
• Understanding all three is necessary for a complete picture of social psychology.

🧠 Social cognition: thinking about the social world

🧠 The biological foundation

• The human brain contains about 86 billion neurons, each connecting with tens of thousands of others.
• The cerebral cortex is the part involved in thinking—the distinguishing feature in mammals, especially humans.
• Humans use cognition in every part of their social lives.

🔍 What social cognition is

Social cognition is cognition that relates to social activities and that helps us understand and predict the behavior of ourselves and others.

Cognition: the mental activity of processing information and using that information in judgment.

• People develop "social knowledge" containing information about self, other people, social relationships, and social groups.
• This knowledge accumulates over time through experience.

📚 Two key types of social knowledge

Schemas:

A schema is a knowledge representation that includes information about a person or group.

• Example: "our knowledge that Joe is a friendly guy or that Italians are romantic."
• Schemas help us quickly judge whether someone or something is good or bad, helpful or hurtful.

Attitudes:

An attitude is a knowledge representation that includes primarily our liking or disliking of a person, thing, or group.

• Example: "I really like Julie"; "I dislike my new apartment."
• Attitudes allow quick judgments about whether to seek out or avoid someone or something.

Why they matter:

• Both schemas and attitudes enable judgment "quickly and without much thought."
• They have "an important influence on our social information processing and social behavior."

🎭 Active interpretation and different conclusions

• Social cognition involves active interpretation—not passive reception—of events.
• Different people may draw different conclusions about the same events because of their own schemas and attitudes.

Examples from the excerpt:

• When Indira smiles at Robert, he might think she's romantically attracted; she might think she's just being friendly.
• When Mike tells a joke about Polish people, he might think it's funny; Wanda might think he's being prejudiced.
• Twelve jurors hear the same evidence but may interpret it differently based on their own schemas and attitudes.

Implications:

• Different interpretations make life interesting but can lead to disagreement and conflict.
• Social psychologists study how people make judgments about the causes of others' behavior.

💭 Social affect: feelings in everyday life

💭 What affect is

Affect refers to the feelings we experience as part of our everyday lives.

• Includes feelings like happy, sad, jealous, grateful, proud, or embarrassed.
• Affect is not purely negative—it normally helps us function efficiently and increases survival chances.

🚦 Affect as a signal system

Affect signals whether things are going well or poorly:

Signal type	Examples	What it means
Positive	Good mood, joy, serenity	Things are going all right
Negative	Bad mood, anxiety, upset, anger	Things are not going well

• Affect leads us to engage in appropriate behaviors: when happy, we seek out others; when angry, we may attack; when fearful, we may run away.
• Don't confuse: affect is not just "feeling good or bad"—it's a functional system guiding behavior.

🌤️ Mood: background feelings

Mood refers to the positive or negative feelings that are in the background of our everyday experiences.

Characteristics:

• Most of the time, we are in a relatively good mood.
• Moods occur in "normal, everyday situations."
• Longer-lasting and less intense than emotions.

Effects of good mood:

• Encourages us to do what needs to be done and make the most of situations.
• Opens up thought processes; makes us more likely to approach others.
• Increases friendliness and helpfulness.
• May enhance creativity.

Effects of bad mood:

• More likely to prefer remaining alone rather than interacting.
• Creativity suffers.

⚡ Emotions: intense and specific

Emotions are brief, but often intense, mental and physiological feeling states.

How emotions differ from moods:

Feature	Mood	Emotion
Duration	Longer-lived	Shorter-lived
Intensity	Milder	Stronger
Specificity	General background	Specific, focused
Trigger	Normal situations	Unusual/out-of-ordinary events
Arousal	Lower	High levels

Adaptive role:

• Emotions serve to guide social behaviors.
• Example: We run from a snake because it elicits fear; we try to make amends when we feel guilty.
• We experience emotions "only when things are out of the ordinary or unusual."

🤝 Social behavior: interaction and exchange

🤝 Cooperation and exchange

• We interact with and influence each other every day.
• We have developed abilities to make interactions proceed efficiently and effectively.
• We cooperate to gain outcomes we couldn't obtain alone.
• We exchange goods, services, and other benefits—essential for survival in any society.

⚖️ Social exchange framework

Social exchange: the sharing of goods, services, emotions, and other social outcomes.

Social rewards (positive outcomes):

• Attention, praise, affection, love, financial support.

Social costs (negative outcomes):

• Frustrations from disagreements.
• Guilt from acting inappropriately.
• Effort to develop and maintain harmonious relationships.

Example from the excerpt: A first-year student deciding whether to join a club must weigh:

• Costs: dues, effort to make friends, attending meetings.
• Benefits: friends with similar interests, social network, activities.
• The student weighs both social and material costs and benefits before deciding.

🎯 Balancing self-concern and other-concern

• People generally prefer to maximize their own outcomes: gain social rewards, minimize social costs.
• This is consistent with self-protection and self-enhancement goals.
• But: these goals are "tempered by other-concern"—respecting, accepting, and cooperating with others.
• Result: social exchange is "generally fair and equitable, at least in the long run."

Example:

• If someone asks you for a favor and you do it, they realize you would expect them to return a similar favor later.
• Both parties understand this expectation, preventing purely selfish behavior.

🔄 Reciprocal altruism

Reciprocal altruism: the mutual, and generally equitable, exchange of benefits, where people give benefits to those in need with the expectation of a return of benefits at a future time.

How it works:

• Developed over thousands of years of humans living together in small groups.
• An individual who is temporarily sick or injured benefits from help during that time.
• Other group members give help because they expect similar help if they need it.

The tracking requirement:

• For reciprocal altruism to work, people must keep track of how benefits are exchanged.
• Everyone must "play by the rules."
• If someone takes benefits without paying them back, this violates reciprocity.

Detecting cheaters:

• Research shows people are particularly good at detecting "cheaters"—those who don't live up to obligations.
• These individuals are judged extremely negatively.
• This ability helps maintain fairness in social exchange systems.

🔗 How the ABCs work together

🔗 Integration in social life

• Although the excerpt discusses affect, behavior, and cognition separately, it emphasizes they work together.
• All three capacities combine to produce human experience and successful social interaction.
• Understanding social psychology requires considering how feelings, thoughts, and actions interact.

🎯 Practical application

The excerpt provides a framework for analyzing social situations:

• Cognition: How are you interpreting the situation? What schemas and attitudes are active?
• Affect: What mood or emotions are you experiencing? How are they signaling and guiding you?
• Behavior: What social exchanges are occurring? Are you balancing self-concern and other-concern?

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Social psychologists rely on systematic empirical methods—observational, correlational, and experimental designs—to uncover relationships and causal mechanisms in social behavior that common sense alone cannot reliably predict.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Why empirical methods matter: Common sense and intuition often fail to predict social behavior accurately; the hindsight bias makes us think we "knew it all along" even when we couldn't have predicted outcomes.
• Three main research designs: Observational (snapshot of current behavior), correlational (tests relationships but cannot establish causation), and experimental (manipulates variables to establish causation).
• Common confusion—correlation vs. causation: A correlation between two variables does not mean one caused the other; reverse causation and common-causal (third) variables are always possible in correlational designs.
• How experiments establish causation: Random assignment creates initial equivalence between groups, so any differences after manipulation can be attributed to the independent variable.
• Validity and replication: Internal validity (confidence in causal claims) and external validity (generalizability) are assessed through replication across different populations, settings, and measures.

🔬 Why social psychology needs empirical research

🧩 The limits of common sense

• Social behavior seems intuitive because we observe people daily, leading many to believe social psychology is "just common sense."
• However, common sense is unreliable:
  • We often cannot predict research findings accurately ahead of time.
  • Example: The excerpt mentions contradictory "common sense" claims like "opposites attract" vs. "birds of a feather flock together"—both cannot be true, yet people believe whichever one they hear.

🔄 The hindsight bias

The hindsight bias: the tendency to think that we could have predicted something that we probably would not have been able to predict.

• After learning a research outcome, we convince ourselves we "knew it all along."
• We recall cases that support the finding, making it seem obvious in retrospect.
• This bias obscures how surprising or counterintuitive the finding actually was.
• Don't confuse: Hindsight bias with genuine prediction—feeling like you knew something after the fact is not the same as being able to predict it beforehand.

🤔 Misunderstanding our own behavior

• People often don't accurately understand why they do what they do.
• Research by Daniel Wegner shows:
  • Thinking about a behavior before doing it makes us believe the thinking caused the behavior, even when it didn't.
  • People overestimate their contribution to solving a problem when they believe they worked harder, even if effort didn't actually increase their contribution.
• Why this matters: Self-reports of motivation and causation may not reflect true causes.

📚 The empirical approach

Empirical: based on the collection and systematic analysis of observable data.

• Social psychologists use systematic scientific methods rather than casual observation.
• Research often uncovers surprising results that contradict intuition.
• The scientific approach tests hunches rigorously, exposing ideas to scrutiny.

📏 Measuring social psychological variables

🎯 Conceptual vs. operational definitions

Conceptual variables: the characteristics that we are trying to measure.

Operational definition: the particular method that we use to measure a variable of interest.

• Any broad concept (e.g., "liking") can be measured in many ways.
• The operational definition turns an abstract idea into a concrete measurement.
• Example: To measure "Sarah likes Robert," researchers might:
  • Ask Sarah directly (self-report).
  • Observe how much time she spends with Robert (behavioral measure).
  • Code how much she smiles when talking to him (behavioral measure).

📝 Self-report measures

Self-report measures: measures in which individuals are asked to respond to questions posed by an interviewer or on a questionnaire.

• Typically use multiple questions and average the responses for better reliability.
• Example: Three questions about liking Robert, each rated on a 1–6 scale, then averaged.
• Advantage: Easy to administer and can ask many questions.
• Disadvantage: People may not have perfect insight into their own thoughts/feelings, or may be unwilling to tell the truth.

🎬 Behavioral measures

Behavioral measures: measures designed to directly assess what people do.

• Observe and record actual behavior rather than asking about it.
• Examples from the excerpt:
  • Number of seconds to honk a horn (aggression).
  • Number of hours volunteering per week (altruism).
  • Pupil dilation when looking at another person (attraction).
• Advantage: Can be more valid than self-report when people can't or won't accurately report their own states.

🧠 Social neuroscience measures

Two main brain-imaging techniques:

Technique	What it measures	Advantages	Limitations
EEG (electroencephalography)	Electrical activity via electrodes on the scalp	Participants can move; tracks changes in real time	Measures large brain areas; less detailed structure
fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)	Blood flow indicating brain activity	Very clear, detailed images of brain structure and function; noninvasive	Expensive; participant must lie still in scanner

• fMRI is now the most common method for studying brain structure in social psychology.
• Used to study social cognition, attitudes, morality, emotions, rejection, prejudice, and more.

🔍 Observational research design

📸 What observational research does

Observational research: research that involves making observations of behavior and recording those observations in an objective manner.

• Creates a "snapshot" of what is happening at a given time.
• Describes current behavior without testing relationships between variables.

✅ Advantages of observational research

• Sometimes the only possible approach:
  • Cannot create earthquakes, terrorist attacks, or cult situations in a lab.
  • Must observe naturally occurring events systematically.
• People are doing what they normally do, often unaware they're being recorded.
• Example: Festinger's study of a doomsday cult (described in When Prophecy Fails):
  • Observed cult members over months as they predicted the world would end on December 21, 1954.
  • Recorded conversations, conducted interviews, and observed reactions when the prediction failed.
  • Provided rich information about indoctrination and responses to disconfirmed beliefs.
  • Helped develop the theory of cognitive dissonance.

⚠️ Limitations of observational research

• Only describes what is occurring; does not explain relationships between variables.
• Cannot answer questions about causation or even correlation.
• Don't confuse: Observational research with correlational or experimental research—observation alone cannot test hypotheses about relationships.

🔗 Correlational research design

🎯 Research hypotheses

Research hypothesis: a specific prediction about the relationship between the variables of interest and about the specific direction of that relationship.

• States both that a relationship exists and the direction of that relationship.
• Example: "People who are more similar to each other will be more attracted to each other."

Falsifiable: the outcome of the research can demonstrate empirically either that there is support for the hypothesis or that there is actually no relationship between the variables or that the actual relationship is not in the direction that was predicted.

• A good hypothesis can be proven wrong by data.

📊 What correlational research does

Correlational research: designed to search for and test hypotheses about the relationships between two or more variables.

• Tests whether two variables are associated (correlated).
• Example: Testing whether playing violent video games correlates with aggressive behavior.

Pearson correlation coefficient (r): used to summarize the association, or correlation, between two variables.

• Ranges from −1 (strong negative relationship) to +1 (strong positive relationship).
• Example: The correlation between violent video game use and aggression is about r = .30.

✅ Advantages of correlational research

• Studies people in everyday life situations (more naturalistic than lab experiments).
• Allows prediction: If we know someone's score on one variable, we can predict their likely score on another.
  • Example: High-school grades predict university grades.
  • Example: Number of violent games played predicts aggressive behavior.

⚠️ The fundamental limitation: correlation ≠ causation

🔄 Reverse causation problem

• The causal direction might be opposite to what was hypothesized.
• Example with violent video games:
  • Hypothesis: Playing violent games → increased aggression.
  • Alternative: Increased aggressiveness → more interest in violent games.
• Both directions are consistent with the same correlation; we cannot tell which is correct.

🎭 Common-causal (third) variables

Common-causal variables (third variables): variables that are not part of the research hypothesis but that cause both the predictor and the outcome variable and thus produce the observed correlation between them.

• An unmeasured variable might cause both observed variables.

• Example: Students who sit in front get better grades.

  • Does sitting in front cause better grades?
  • Or does student motivation cause both sitting in front AND better grades?
  • Motivation is the common-causal variable.

• Example with violent video games and aggression:

  • Possible common-causal variables: family background, diet, hormone levels (e.g., testosterone).
  • Any of these might cause both more game-playing and more aggression.

• Think of common-causal variables as "mystery variables": Their presence and identity are usually unknown because they haven't been measured.

• Because we cannot measure every possible variable, there might always be an unknown common-causal variable.

• Bottom line: Correlation does not imply causation.

🧪 Experimental research design

🎯 The goal: establishing causation

Experimental research designs: research designs that include the manipulation of a given situation or experience for two or more groups of individuals who are initially created to be equivalent, followed by a measurement of the effect of that experience.

• Designed to understand causal relationships among variables.

🔑 Key concepts: independent and dependent variables

Independent variable: the situation that is created by the experimenter through the experimental manipulations.

Dependent variable: the variable that is measured after the manipulations have occurred.

• The hypothesis: The independent variable causes changes in the dependent variable.
• Diagram: Independent variable → Dependent variable
• Example: Viewing violence (IV) → aggressive behavior (DV)

📖 Example: Anderson and Dill (2000) video game experiment

• Research question: Does viewing violent video games cause increased aggressive behavior?
• Participants: Male and female undergraduates.
• Independent variable (manipulation): Type of video game played for 15 minutes:
  • Group A: Violent game (Wolfenstein 3D).
  • Group B: Nonviolent game (Myst).
• Dependent variable (measurement): Level and duration of white noise blasts delivered to an opponent in a competitive task.
• Result: Students who played the violent game gave significantly longer noise blasts.

✅ Two key advantages of experiments

1️⃣ Temporal precedence

• The independent variable occurs before the dependent variable is measured.
• This rules out reverse causation.

2️⃣ Control of common-causal variables through equivalence

• Random assignment to conditions: Determining separately for each participant which condition they will experience through a random process (e.g., drawing numbers, using randomizer.org).
• Creates equivalence between groups before the manipulation.
• Example: Anderson and Dill randomly assigned ~100 participants to each group.
  • Before the manipulation, Group A and Group B were, on average, equivalent on every possible variable (family, peers, hormones, diet, everything else).
• After creating equivalence, the only difference between groups is the manipulation (which game they played).
• Therefore, any difference in the dependent variable must be due to the independent variable.

Internal validity: the extent to which changes in the dependent variable in an experiment can confidently be attributed to changes in the independent variable.

• Experiments with proper random assignment and manipulation have high internal validity.

⚠️ Limitations of experimental research

🏢 Laboratory vs. real life

• Experiments are usually conducted in labs, not in everyday settings.
• We don't know if lab results will hold in real life.
• Partial solution: Field experiments.

Field experiments: experimental research studies that are conducted in a natural environment, such as a school or a factory.

• Difficult to conduct because random assignment is often not possible in natural settings.

🚫 Cannot manipulate all variables

• Some important social variables cannot be ethically or practically manipulated.
• Examples:
  • Cannot manipulate mob size to study destructiveness.
  • Cannot assign people to join or not join suicide cults.
• These relationships must be studied with correlational designs.

🧩 Factorial research designs

Factorial research designs: experimental designs that have two or more independent variables.

• Study the effects of multiple independent variables simultaneously.

Main effects: the influence of each variable on the dependent variable.

Interaction: how the variables work together to influence the dependent variable.

• Factorial designs can demonstrate person-by-situation interactions.

📖 Example: Meier et al. (2006) aggression study

• Two independent variables:
  1. Priming: Aggression-related words vs. neutral words.
  2. Participant agreeableness: High vs. low (measured, not manipulated, but treated as a factor).
• Dependent variable: White noise level selected (measure of aggression).
• Result (interaction):
  • Low-agreeableness participants: Aggression priming increased noise levels.
  • High-agreeableness participants: Aggression priming did not increase noise (even decreased it slightly).
• Interpretation: The social situation (priming) affected aggression, but differently for different people.

🎭 Deception and ethics in experiments

🎬 Why deception is sometimes used

• Participants often cannot be told the real hypothesis because it would change their behavior.
• Example: Cannot tell participants a study is about racial prejudice because they may hide their true attitudes.

Cover story: a false statement of what the research was really about.

• Example: Anderson and Dill told participants the study was about learning motor skills, not about aggression.

Experimental confederate: a person who is actually part of the experimental team but who pretends to be another participant in the study.

• Helps make the cover story believable.

✅ Ethical safeguards

• Informed consent: Participants are told as much as possible before the study begins.
• Debriefing: At the end, participants receive complete information:
  • The real hypothesis.
  • The nature of any deception.
  • How the data will be used.

🌍 Validity and generalizability

🔁 External validity and replication

External validity: the extent to which relationships can be expected to hold up when they are tested again in different ways and for different people.

• A finding is only important if it can be replicated.

Replication: the repeating of research.

• Sometimes exact replication; more often with variations:
  • New operational definitions.
  • New conditions or variables added.
  • Different populations (ages, backgrounds, cultures).
• Replication tests both external validity and the limitations of findings.

📊 Meta-analysis

Meta-analysis: a statistical procedure in which the results of existing studies are combined to determine what conclusions can be drawn on the basis of all the studies considered together.

• Researchers don't conduct a new study; instead, they analyze existing studies statistically.
• Example: Anderson and Bushman (2001) meta-analysis:
  • Combined all studies on violent video games and aggression.
  • Included children, adults, college students, non-students, various cultures.
  • Found a clear positive correlation (r ≈ .30) across all studies.
• Meta-analysis allows stronger conclusions about external validity.

🏗️ The cumulative nature of science

• No single study proves a theory or hypothesis.
• Research builds on, adds to, and expands existing work.
• Scientists read prior research before designing new studies.
• Over time, findings accumulate into a systematic body of knowledge.
• Don't confuse: A single study with scientific consensus—science relies on the accumulation of evidence across many studies.

📋 Summary of research design comparison

Design	Goal	Advantages	Disadvantages
Observational	Snapshot of current state	Complete picture of what's occurring; allows question development	Does not assess relationships between variables
Correlational	Assess relationships between variables	Tests expected relationships; allows prediction; studies everyday life	Cannot infer causation
Experimental	Assess causal impact of manipulations	Allows causal conclusions	Cannot manipulate many important variables; may be expensive and time-consuming

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Social psychologists use both correlational and experimental research designs to identify and test causal relationships between variables, with experiments providing stronger internal validity through random assignment while correlational studies reveal associations when manipulation is not possible.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Research hypothesis: Social psychologists state predictions as precise statements and test relationships between variables.
• Correlational vs experimental designs: Correlational research finds associations using the Pearson correlation coefficient; experimental research establishes causality by manipulating independent variables and measuring dependent variables.
• Random assignment: The most common method for creating equivalence among experimental conditions and increasing internal validity.
• Common confusion: Correlation does not equal causation—a significant correlation between two variables means they are related, but does not tell us which causes which (or whether a third factor is involved).
• External validity and meta-analysis: Relationships must be tested across different contexts and populations; meta-analyses combine findings from many studies to assess consistency.

🔬 Research approaches in social psychology

🔬 Starting with hypotheses

Research hypothesis: a precise statement predicting relationships between variables.

• Social psychologists begin by stating their predictions clearly before collecting data.
• The goal is to look at relationships between variables, not just describe single phenomena.
• This approach applies to both correlational and experimental studies.

📊 Correlational research

• Purpose: Search for and test hypotheses about relationships when manipulation is not possible or ethical.
• Method: Uses the Pearson correlation coefficient to summarize the association between variables.
• When to use: Sometimes the only way to learn about and study social events (e.g., naturally occurring behaviors, existing individual differences).
• Limitation: Cannot establish causation—only that variables are related.

Example: Finding a correlation between self-esteem and conformity to fashion norms means the two variables change together, but does not tell us whether self-esteem causes conformity, conformity causes self-esteem, or both are caused by something else.

🧪 Experimental research

• Purpose: Determine causal relationships among variables.
• Key components:
  • Independent variable (IV): the variable the researcher manipulates
  • Dependent variable (DV): the variable the researcher measures
• Why experiments are preferred for causation: By controlling and manipulating the IV, researchers can isolate its effect on the DV.

Example: To test whether message type affects persuasion, a researcher randomly assigns participants to read either a one-sided or two-sided message (IV = type of message), then measures attitudes (DV = attitude score).

🎯 Ensuring valid conclusions

🎯 Internal validity through random assignment

Random assignment to conditions: the most common method of creating equivalence among experimental conditions.

• What it does: Ensures that groups are equivalent before the manipulation, so any differences afterward can be attributed to the IV.
• Why it matters: Increases internal validity—confidence that the IV caused changes in the DV, not pre-existing differences between groups.
• Don't confuse: Random assignment (assigning participants to conditions) vs random sampling (selecting participants from a population).

🌍 External validity

External validity: the extent to which relationships can be expected to hold up when tested again in different ways and for different people.

• A finding with high external validity generalizes across:
  • Different methods
  • Different populations
  • Different contexts
• Meta-analyses: Combine results from many studies to assess whether observed relationships are consistent and robust.
• Trade-off: Experiments often have high internal validity but may sacrifice some external validity; correlational studies of real-world events may have lower internal validity but higher external validity.

⚠️ Common confusions

⚠️ Correlation does not equal causation

The excerpt emphasizes this through the self-esteem and fashion conformity example:

What the correlation tells us	What it does NOT tell us
Self-esteem and conformity are related	That self-esteem causes conformity
When one changes, the other tends to change	That conformity causes self-esteem
The relationship is significant (not random)	The direction of causation

• A significant correlation means the variables are related to each other, not that one causes the other.
• Possible explanations: A causes B, B causes A, or a third variable causes both.

⚠️ Independent vs dependent variables

• Independent variable (IV): what the researcher manipulates or controls.
• Dependent variable (DV): what the researcher measures as the outcome.
• Example: In the message persuasion study, the type of message (one-sided vs two-sided) is the IV because the researcher assigns it; the attitude score is the DV because it is measured as the outcome.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Our social knowledge is built through three learning mechanisms—operant, associational, and observational—and once formed into schemas, this knowledge tends to maintain itself through assimilation rather than accommodation, even when faced with contradictory evidence.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Three learning pathways: operant learning (learning from consequences), associational learning (linking stimuli with emotions), and observational learning (learning by watching others).
• Schemas as stored knowledge: our experiences consolidate into mental representations (schemas) stored in the prefrontal cortex that guide future social judgments.
• Assimilation vs accommodation: new information can either change our schemas (accommodation) or be reinterpreted to fit existing schemas (assimilation)—assimilation is far more common.
• Common confusion: people assume they update beliefs when faced with new evidence, but confirmation bias and other mechanisms make assimilation the default, not accommodation.
• Why schemas resist change: they direct attention toward confirming information, distort memory to favor schema-consistent facts, and create self-fulfilling prophecies.

🎓 How we learn social knowledge

🔁 Operant learning

Operant learning: the principle that experiences followed by positive emotions (reinforcements or rewards) are likely to be repeated, whereas experiences followed by negative emotions (punishments) are less likely to be repeated.

• Learning from the consequences of your own actions.
• Example: A child touches a hot radiator → feels pain → learns not to touch radiators again (and generalizes to avoid all radiators).
• Example: A bully threatens classmates → gets his way → continues bullying because the behavior is rewarded.
• Why it matters for social psychology: explains how we learn which behaviors are appropriate in social situations—we repeat actions that are rewarded and avoid those that are punished.

🔗 Associational learning

Associational learning: occurs when an object or event comes to be associated with a natural response, such as an automatic behavior or a positive or negative emotion.

• You develop feelings toward something because it appears alongside something else that triggers emotion.
• Example: Driving past a favorite pizza place makes you hungry because the sight has been paired with the pleasure of eating pizza.
• Example: Viewing someone standing next to an attractive person makes you rate them more favorably—the positive feelings "transfer."
• In advertising: ads pair products with enjoyable music, cute babies, or attractive models so that positive feelings become associated with the product. Fear-based ads (e.g., graphic cigarette warnings) work the same way by pairing the product with negative emotion.
• Don't confuse with operant learning: associational learning links two stimuli (product + pleasant music), while operant learning links behavior with consequences (action → reward/punishment).

👀 Observational learning

Observational learning: people learn by observing the behavior of others.

• You don't need to experience consequences yourself—you can learn by watching what happens to others.
• Bandura's bobo doll study: children who watched an adult violently hit an inflatable doll later imitated the same aggressive behaviors, especially when the model was rewarded.
• Example: Children learn not to touch a hot stove not only from their own burns but also by seeing a sibling get hurt.
• Why it's adaptive: allows learning without the risk of trial-and-error. As Bandura noted, "one does not teach children to swim...by having them discover the appropriate behavior through the consequences of their successes and failures."

🧠 Schemas: how knowledge is stored

🗂️ What schemas are

Schemas: knowledge representations that include information about a person, group, or situation.

• Stored primarily in the prefrontal cortex, the "social" part of the brain.
• They are mental databases built from past experience that help us predict future events.
• Example: If you've watched Italian movies or visited Italy, you might develop a schema that "Italians gesture a lot when they talk."
• Function: schemas allow us to understand new information quickly, fill in blanks when things are uncertain, and avoid starting from scratch every time we meet someone new.

🔄 Two ways schemas respond to new information

Process	What happens	Example
Accommodation	Existing schemas change based on new information	You meet a shy Italian (Bianca) → you update your belief: "Italian women may be less expressive than Italian men"
Assimilation	New information is reinterpreted to fit existing schemas	You meet shy Bianca → you decide "she's just nervous at a new school" or "she's expressive at home" → your schema stays intact

• The key insight: assimilation is far more common than accommodation—we tend to preserve our beliefs rather than change them.

🔒 Why schemas resist change: the power of assimilation

🔍 Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias: the tendency for people to seek out and favor information that confirms their expectations and beliefs.

• We actively look for evidence that supports what we already think and ignore or downplay contradictory evidence.
• Ross, Lepper, & Hubbard study: students were told (falsely) they were good, average, or poor at detecting fake suicide notes. Even after being told the feedback was completely random and fake, students still believed their assigned "ability" level and predicted future performance accordingly.
• Why it happens: once we form a belief, we generate reasons to support it, making the belief feel even more solid.
• Real-world impact: may have contributed to the 2008 financial crisis—decision-makers kept seeking evidence that high-risk strategies were working and ignored warning signs.

👁️ Selective attention and memory

• Attention: schemas direct us to notice schema-consistent information and overlook inconsistent information.
  • Example: If you believe Italians are expressive, you'll watch for signs of expressiveness in Bianca and may miss her quietness.
• Memory: we remember information that confirms our schemas better than information that contradicts them.
  • Example: If you stereotype women as bad drivers, you'll remember the times you saw a woman drive poorly but forget the many times you saw women drive well.
• Reconstructive memory bias: we often remember things in ways that align with our current beliefs, even reshaping past memories to fit.

🗣️ Asking biased questions

• Trope & Thompson (1997): people ask fewer questions of others about whom they already have strong expectations, and the questions they do ask tend to confirm those expectations.
• Example: If you expect Bianca to be expressive, you might ask "What do you like to do for fun?" (expecting an animated answer) rather than "Are you more introverted or extroverted?"

🔮 Self-fulfilling prophecy

Self-fulfilling prophecy: a process that occurs when our expectations about others lead us to behave toward those others in ways that make our expectations come true.

• How it works: Your expectation → you act based on that expectation → the other person responds to your behavior → your expectation is confirmed.
• Example: You believe Italians are friendly → you act warmly toward Bianca → she reciprocates your warmth → you conclude "Italians really are friendly."
• Example: You believe Italians are boring → you act disinterested → Bianca becomes reserved around you → you conclude "Italians really are boring."
• Don't confuse with confirmation bias: confirmation bias is about selective attention and memory; self-fulfilling prophecy is about how your behavior actively shapes the other person's behavior.

⚡ Schemas as cognitive shortcuts

🪫 When we rely on schemas most

• Schemas function as energy savers—we use them more when cognitive resources are limited.
• Stangor & Duan (1991): participants remembered more stereotype-consistent information when learning about four groups than when learning about one or two groups. The more complex the task, the more we lean on schemas.
• Bodenhausen (1990): participants relied more on stereotypes when judging court cases at times of day when they were normally fatigued (morning people stereotyped more at night; evening people stereotyped more in the morning).

🧩 The trade-off

• Benefit: schemas help us process information efficiently when we're overwhelmed or tired.
• Cost: increased reliance on schemas means more assimilation and less accommodation—we're less likely to update inaccurate beliefs when we're cognitively taxed.

🎯 Practical implications

⚖️ Eyewitness testimony

• Once an eyewitness forms a belief (e.g., "I saw Person X commit the crime"), assimilation makes it very difficult to change that belief, even when presented with contradictory evidence.
• The witness will reinterpret new information to fit the original judgment.

💼 Financial decision-making

• Confirmation bias can lead investors to ignore warning signs and seek only information that supports their current strategy.
• The 2008 financial crisis may have been worsened by decision-makers assimilating evidence into overly optimistic schemas rather than accommodating new risks.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Stereotypes and prejudice

• Associational learning can create unjust prejudices: if media frequently shows certain racial groups associated with violence, viewers may develop negative schemas.
• Lewicki (1985): students who had a negative interaction with a short-haired, glasses-wearing experimenter later avoided a different person with similar appearance—the negative association "rubbed off."
• Carlston's finding: when you say negative things about others in public, listeners associate those negative traits with you (not just the target).

🧪 Cultural differences

• Kastenmuller et al. (2010): confirmation bias is stronger in individualist cultures than collectivist cultures, possibly because collectivist cultures emphasize self-criticism, which is less compatible with seeking only confirming evidence.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Our schemas and expectations powerfully shape social judgments through automatic cognitive processes that, while often efficient, can lead to systematic biases affecting decisions from everyday choices to critical legal and professional contexts.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Automatic vs. controlled cognition: Most social judgments happen quickly and outside awareness, though we can engage in deliberate thinking when motivated and able.
• Salience and accessibility drive which schemas we use: We judge based on what stands out (salience) and what comes easily to mind (accessibility), not always what is most informative.
• Common heuristics create predictable biases: Availability, representativeness, anchoring, and other mental shortcuts save effort but can lead to errors like ignoring base rates and overconfidence.
• Key confusion—heuristics vs. accuracy: These shortcuts feel right and work quickly, but salient or accessible information may be less statistically relevant than harder-to-retrieve data.
• Real-world consequences: Cognitive biases affect eyewitness testimony, financial decisions, health behaviors, and professional judgments, though awareness and training can help reduce errors.

🧠 Automatic and controlled thinking

⚡ Automatic cognition

Automatic cognition: thinking that occurs out of our awareness, quickly, and without taking much effort.

• Frequent activities (riding a bike, using a remote) become automatic over time.
• Social judgments are often automatic because we evaluate people constantly.
• We may have no memory of automatic actions (e.g., where you put your keys after unlocking the door).
• Why it matters: Automatic thinking frees mental resources but can lead to unnoticed biases in judging others.

🤔 Controlled cognition

Controlled cognition: when we deliberately size up and think about something, for instance another person.

• Requires effort and time, which are often limited.
• Don't confuse: We might assume controlled thinking is more common, but automatic processing dominates because thinking is costly.
• Example: You might automatically assume someone is expressive based on nationality, but controlled cognition would involve considering individual characteristics more carefully.

🔬 Priming demonstrates automatic influence

The Bargh et al. (1996) study showed automatic cognition in action:

• Students unscrambled words related to elderly stereotypes (e.g., "Florida," "bingo," "forgetful") or neutral words.
• Those primed with elderly-related words walked 12% more slowly afterward.
• Participants had no awareness the words influenced their behavior.
• Key point: Social situations can shape judgments and behaviors entirely outside conscious awareness.

🎯 What determines which expectations we use

🔦 Salience

Salience: characteristics that attract our attention when we see someone with them.

• What makes things salient: unusual, negative, colorful, bright, moving, or infrequent features.
• We judge people initially on sex, race, age, and physical attractiveness because these features are highly salient.
• Infrequency increases salience—if someone is the only Italian in your community, that characteristic becomes more noticeable.

Problem with salience: We may judge based on salient but less informative information while ignoring more diagnostic data.

Example: You research phones online and find one model rated higher, but at a party a friend shows you her different phone and complains about problems with your choice. The vivid, salient experience may outweigh the statistical evidence, even though one person's opinion shouldn't change overall ratings much.

🧲 Cognitive accessibility

Cognitive accessibility: the extent to which a schema is activated in memory and thus likely to be used in information processing.

• Schemas that are important to self-concept or frequently used become highly accessible.
• Example: For "football nuts," football is a highly accessible construct that influences how they judge people and situations.
• Situational factors: Recent or frequent thoughts about a topic increase its accessibility temporarily.

Individual differences: People vary in which schemas are chronically accessible—some focus on health, others on sports, environmental issues, etc.

🎲 Common heuristics and their biases

📊 Base rates and the representativeness heuristic

Representativeness heuristic: when we base our judgments on information that seems to represent, or match, what we expect will happen, while ignoring more informative base-rate information.

Base rates: the likelihood that events occur across a large population.

The hospital births puzzle: Most people think a pattern like Boy-Girl-Boy-Girl-Girl-Boy-Girl-Boy looks more likely than Girl-Girl-Girl-Girl-Boy-Boy-Boy-Boy because it "looks random," but both patterns are equally probable.

The gambler's fallacy: After five heads in a row, people bet on tails, ignoring that each flip has a 50% base rate regardless of history.

The lawyer/salesperson problem:

• Description: "analytical, argumentative, involved in community activism"
• Most guess lawyer because it matches stereotypes
• But salespeople vastly outnumber lawyers in society, making salesperson statistically more likely
• Consequence: Can maintain stereotypes by classifying people based on superficial matches

🔍 The availability heuristic

Availability heuristic: the tendency to make judgments of the frequency of an event, or the likelihood that an event will occur, on the basis of the ease with which the event can be retrieved from memory.

The R-letter problem: More words have R as the third letter than begin with R, but we think the opposite because words beginning with R are easier to retrieve (we store words by first letter).

Plane crashes vs. car crashes: People fear plane crashes more despite car crashes being far more dangerous, because plane crashes receive more media coverage and are more easily recalled.

Post-9/11 driving deaths: Gigerenzer estimated approximately 1,500 additional U.S. road deaths in the year after September 11, 2001 (six times the number killed on the planes) because people switched from flying to driving, overestimating aviation risk.

⚓ Anchoring and adjustment

Anchoring and adjustment: the problem where we weight initial information too heavily and insufficiently move our judgment away from it.

The multiplication study (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974):

• Problem A: 1 × 2 × 3 × 4 × 5 × 6 × 7 × 8
• Problem B: 8 × 7 × 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1
• Estimates: ~512 for A, ~2,250 for B (true answer: 40,320)
• People anchored on early calculations and adjusted insufficiently

Arbitrary anchors: Ariely et al. (2003) had students note their social security number's last two digits, then bid on auction items. Those with higher numbers bid up to 346% more, even though the anchor was completely irrelevant.

Marketing applications:

• "Four for $1.00" sells more than "$0.25 each" (anchors on four)
• Car salespeople start high and work down to anchor on the high price

💭 Processing fluency

Processing fluency: the ease with which we can process information in our environments.

The assertiveness study (Schwarz et al., 1991):

• Some students listed 6 examples of assertive/unassertive behavior (easy)
• Others listed 12 examples (difficult)
• Those who completed the easy task rated themselves as having more of that trait
• Why: We react positively to information we can process quickly and use this feeling as a judgment basis

Task difficulty	Number of examples	Self-rating
Easy	6	Higher on the trait
Hard	12	Lower on the trait

When we rely on fluency: Under time pressure, when tired, or when unwilling to process deeply—exactly when careful thinking matters most.

🪞 Biases about ourselves and others

🤝 False consensus bias

False consensus bias: the tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people hold similar views to our own.

• Our own beliefs are highly accessible, so we over-rely on them when predicting others' views.
• Example: If you favor abortion rights and oppose capital punishment, you likely think most others share these beliefs.
• Study evidence: Krueger & Clement (1994) found students who agreed with personality test items thought others would agree; those who disagreed thought others would disagree.

Projection bias: the tendency to assume that others share our cognitive and affective states.

Exception to false consensus: We don't show this bias for positive personal traits we value—instead, we see ourselves as better than average (better sense of humor, more likely to wear seatbelts, brighter futures).

Cultural differences: Collectivist cultures show less self-enhancing bias than individualistic cultures.

Financial crisis connection: The false consensus effect contributed to the 2008 collapse—investors overestimated how much others shared their market judgments, leading to inaccurate predictions.

🏅 Counterfactual thinking

Counterfactual thinking: the tendency to think about events according to what might have been.

The Olympic medals study (Medvec et al., 1995):

• Videotaped athletes winning silver (2nd) or bronze (3rd) medals
• Raters judged emotions without knowing which medal was won
• Result: Bronze medalists appeared happier than silver medalists on average
• Why: Silver medalists thought about winning gold (better outcome); bronze medalists thought about getting no medal (worse outcome)

Legal implications: People awarded more compensation to accident victims when the accident "almost didn't happen" than when it seemed inevitable, even though the harm was identical.

📈 Overconfidence bias

Overconfidence bias: a tendency to be overconfident in our own skills, abilities, and judgments.

Spelling study (Adams & Adams, 1960): People were only 80% correct on difficult words they claimed to spell with "100% certainty."

Prediction accuracy (Dunning et al., 1990): Students consistently overestimated how accurately they could predict both strangers' and roommates' behavior.

Prediction target	Confidence level	Actual accuracy
Strangers	High	Significantly lower
Roommates	High	Significantly lower

The Dunning-Kruger effect: Poor performers are "doubly cursed"—they can't predict their skills accurately and are most unaware of this inability.

Serious consequences:

• Eyewitness confidence doesn't correlate well with accuracy, leading to wrongful convictions
• Professionals (economists, traders, doctors, lawyers) make the same mistakes
• Contributed to the 2008 financial crisis

🌤️ Optimistic bias

Optimistic bias: a tendency to believe that positive outcomes are more likely to happen than negative ones, particularly in relation to ourselves versus others.

• Most people underestimate risks of divorce, illness
• Most overestimate likelihood of promotions, long life
• Cultural variation: Less pronounced in collectivist cultures
• Exception: People with clinical depression show "depressive realism"—more accurate, less positively skewed judgments

Planning fallacy: a tendency to overestimate the amount that we can accomplish over a particular time frame, and underestimate resources and costs.

Why it persists:

• People orient to the future, ignoring past difficulties
• Plan for things going smoothly, not for problems
• Stronger when highly motivated (wishful thinking)
• Examples: course assignments, construction projects, Olympics budgets

Possible benefits: Mild optimism can enhance motivation, self-esteem, and predict success and health.

🙈 Bias blind spot

Bias blind spot: the tendency to believe that our own judgments are less susceptible to the influence of bias than those of others.

• We underestimate how biases affect our own thinking
• Incorrectly believe we are less biased than average
• Bias blind spot level is unrelated to actual bias shown
• Paradox: Higher cognitive ability predicts larger bias blind spot

Hope for improvement:

• Awareness alone rarely reduces bias significantly
• Systematic cognitive retraining can help
• Kahneman suggests developing common vocabulary about biases to discuss them in communities
• We may recognize bias in others' thinking better than our own (consistent with bias blind spot)

⚖️ Real-world consequences and applications

👁️ Eyewitness testimony problems

Why eyewitnesses are often wrong:

• Over 75% of people exonerated by DNA were victims of mistaken eyewitness identification
• Little correlation between witness confidence and accuracy
• Overconfident witnesses are barely more accurate than uncertain ones

Encoding problems:

• Crimes happen quickly under stress, distraction, arousal
• Brief glimpses, poor lighting, distance
• Weapon focus: If a weapon is present, witnesses focus on it rather than the perpetrator's face

Own-race bias: People are more accurate identifying members of their own race than other races (Meissner & Brigham, 2001 convenience store study).

Memory distortion over time:

• Post-event information from others or media can distort original memories
• New, inaccurate information becomes more accessible than older, accurate information
• Reconstructive memory bias: Memory shifts to fit current beliefs

The car crash study (Loftus & Palmer, 1974):

Question wording	Estimated speed
"contacted"	Lowest
"hit"	Medium
"smashed"	Highest

All participants saw the same accident, but question wording influenced memory.

Children as witnesses:

• More likely to make incorrect identifications than adults
• Subject to own-race bias
• Problematic when children are the only evidence (abuse cases)

False memories:

• Over half of children generated stories about made-up events when asked to "think really hard"
• Remained insistent events occurred even when told they couldn't have
• College students also susceptible to implanted memories

Recovered memory controversy:

• Some therapists claim patients repress childhood trauma and recover it later
• Critics argue painful memories are usually well-remembered, few are repressed
• Therapist procedures may implant false memories rather than retrieve real ones
• Hundreds accused/imprisoned based on "recovered memories" that may be false

Improvements being made:

• Better education for judges, juries, lawyers about eyewitness inaccuracy
• Guidelines for questioning child witnesses without bias
• Fairer lineups: fillers resemble suspect, clear suspect might not be present
• Accurate identifications made faster than mistaken ones

🌍 Broader societal impacts

Lottery and gambling: People ignore low base rates (availability of winning) and focus on salient huge prizes (representativeness).

Astrology belief: Maintained by salience of correct predictions; incorrect predictions forgotten.

Risk miscalibration: People prepare more for unlikely salient events (terrorism) than likely ones (diabetes, stroke), creating misallocated individual and societal costs.

Media influence: Heavy violent TV viewers see the world as more dangerous (accessibility of violent images).

Relationship judgments: We overestimate our contributions to joint projects because our own contributions are salient.

Global warming beliefs: People more likely to believe in global warming on hot days or after heat-related priming.

Professional decisions: Time pressure and threat increase heuristic use—exactly when professionals need careful thinking.

🛠️ Can we reduce biases?

Challenges:

• Awareness alone rarely sufficient
• Biases persist even when we know about them
• Bias blind spot makes self-correction difficult

What can help:

• Better feedback: Weather forecasters are accurate partly because they get clear feedback
• Consider alternatives: Thinking about multiple possibilities and opposite outcomes reduces accessibility biases
• Education: Graduate training (especially in psychology) improves reasoning ability
• Community discussion: Shared vocabulary helps identify bias in each other's thinking

Evolutionary perspective: Some researchers argue heuristics offer "fast and frugal" ways to reach sound judgments often enough to have adaptive value—we may not always be pretty in our reasoning, but we often arrive at the right destination.

Example: Which Spanish city is larger, Madrid or Valencia? Most quickly answer Madrid, using availability (heard more about Madrid) to infer the general rule that larger cities get more coverage—and they're usually right.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Our emotions and thoughts continuously shape each other in social situations—affective states influence how we judge people and events, while our cognitive interpretations determine which emotions we experience and how well we regulate them.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Affect influences cognition: Current moods shape social judgments (e.g., positive mood → more positive evaluations), often through the affect heuristic—relying on automatic emotional responses to guide decisions.
• Cognition influences affect: How we interpret arousal determines which emotion we feel (two-factor theory); cognitive reappraisal can help us manage emotional states.
• Self-regulation requires effort: Controlling emotions depletes cognitive resources, like a muscle that tires, but can be strengthened through practice.
• Common confusion—affective forecasting: We systematically overestimate how much future events will affect our happiness; we adapt more quickly than we predict.
• Positive cognition matters: Optimistic thinking, self-efficacy, and perceived control improve well-being and help us cope with stress.

🎭 How affect shapes our thinking

😊 Mood effects on judgment

• Whatever mood we're in colors our evaluations of people, places, and ideas.
• Example: Meeting someone new while in a good mood → more positive first impression than meeting them while in a bad mood.
• Positive mood has been linked to reduced prejudice (people who were smiling showed less bias).

🌦️ Mood as information

Research by Schwarz and Clore (1983) demonstrated how subtle mood influences work:

• Participants called on sunny days reported better well-being than those called on rainy days.
• When researchers first asked about the weather (making participants aware it might influence their mood), the weather no longer affected well-being ratings.
• Key insight: People use their current mood ("I feel good today") as information about their overall life satisfaction—but only when they don't realize external factors are influencing that mood.

Mood-dependent memory: the tendency to better remember information when our current mood matches the mood we were in when we encoded that information.

Mood congruence effects: being more able to retrieve memories that match our current mood.

Example: Feeling sad makes sad memories come to mind more readily than happy ones.

🧠 The affect heuristic

Affect heuristic: a tendency to rely on automatically occurring affective responses to stimuli to guide our judgments of them.

• We often substitute complex judgments with simpler emotional reactions.
• Attribute substitution: replacing a difficult calculation (e.g., "Which job candidate is most qualified?") with an easier one (e.g., "Which candidate do I like most?")—without conscious awareness.
• This happens spontaneously and emotionally, with little deliberate thought.
• Example: Choosing a product because its packaging evokes a favorable feeling, or hiring someone primarily because we like them rather than systematically evaluating their qualifications.

🔄 Indirect pathways

Mood affects not just what we think but how we think:

• Positive mood can increase reliance on cognitive heuristics rather than effortful analysis.
• Negative states like anger can increase stereotypical judgments.
• Mood activates different schemas and influences which memories we retrieve.

Don't confuse: Direct effects (mood → judgment content) vs. indirect effects (mood → thinking style → judgment).

🧩 How cognition shapes our emotions

🏷️ Two-factor theory of emotion

The excerpt describes emotion as requiring both:

1. Physiological arousal (physical sensations)
2. Cognitive label (interpretation of what the arousal means)

• Arousal alone is not sufficient for emotion; we need to interpret it.
• The same arousal can be labeled as different emotions depending on the situation.

🔀 Misattribution of arousal

Misattribution of arousal: when people incorrectly label the source of the arousal that they are experiencing.

Classic study by Schachter and Singer (1962):

• Male participants were injected with epinephrine (creates arousal: tremors, flushing, rapid breathing).
• Informed condition: told the true effects of the drug.
• Uninformed condition: told false effects (numb feet, itching).
• Then exposed to a confederate acting either euphoric (playful) or angry.

Results:

• Uninformed participants (who had no label for their arousal) adopted the emotion displayed by the confederate.
• Informed participants (who attributed arousal to the drug) did not experience as much emotion.
• Implication: When we lack an explanation for arousal, we look to the social situation to label it.

🖼️ Framing effects

Framing effects: when people's judgments about different options are affected by whether they are framed as resulting in gains or losses.

• People feel more positive about options framed positively.
• Example: "95% fat free" feels better than "5% fat," even though the information is identical.
• Survival rates vs. death rates for medical treatments produce different preferences.
• Applies to charitable donations, environmental practices, and financial decisions.

🎯 Self-regulation and emotion control

💪 What self-regulation involves

Self-regulation: the process of setting goals and using our cognitive and affective capacities to reach those goals.

• A significant part involves regulating emotions.
• Better self-regulation → more success in personal and social encounters.
• Requires effort and cognitive resources.

🔧 Cognitive reappraisal

Cognitive reappraisal: altering an emotional state by reinterpreting the meaning of the triggering situation or stimulus.

Example: An employee who failed at promotion twice could reappraise a new opportunity as a chance to apply lessons learned, rather than viewing it as another potential failure.

🍪 The marshmallow test

Mischel's classic study:

• Four- and five-year-olds offered a snack (cookie or marshmallow).
• Choice: eat it now, or wait a few minutes and get two snacks.
• Some children could delay gratification (self-regulate); others could not resist.

Long-term outcomes:

• Children who delayed gratification grew up with better SAT scores, more social competence, and better stress management.
• Key finding: Self-regulation in childhood predicts positive life outcomes.

😓 Self-regulation as a limited resource

Study by Muraven, Tice, and Baumeister (1998):

Condition	Handgrip before movie	Handgrip after movie	Change
Increase emotional response	78.73	54.63	–25.1
No emotional control	60.09	58.52	–1.57
Decrease emotional response	70.74	52.25	–18.49

• Participants watched an upsetting movie about environmental disasters.
• Some were told to amplify emotions, some to suppress them, some given no instructions.
• Those who regulated emotions showed significantly less physical strength afterward.
• Metaphor: Self-control is like a muscle—it gets tired when used.

Other findings:

• People who resisted temptation, made important decisions, or conformed to others performed worse on subsequent tasks requiring energy.
• Self-regulation is especially difficult when tired, depressed, or anxious.

🏋️ Training self-regulation

Good news: Self-regulation can be strengthened through practice.

• Students who practiced difficult tasks (exercising, avoiding swearing, maintaining good posture) later performed better on laboratory self-regulation tests.
• Like physical training, cognitive training in self-control builds capacity.

✨ The power of positive cognition

🌟 Optimism and self-efficacy

Optimistic explanatory style: a way of explaining current outcomes affecting the self in a way that leads to an expectation of positive future outcomes.

Self-efficacy: the belief in our ability to carry out actions that produce desired outcomes.

Benefits of positive thinking:

• Optimists are happier and experience less stress.
• High self-efficacy leads to active, constructive responses to threats (seeking information, talking to friends, facing difficulties).
• People who believe they can control outcomes experience less stress.

🎛️ Perceived control

Evidence for control's importance:

• Workers with control over their environment (moving furniture, controlling distractions) experience less stress.
• Nursing home patients who can choose daily activities fare better.
• Study: Participants who believed they could stop a loud noise experienced less stress than those without the option—even though those with the option never used it.
• Higher social status (which often means more control) is associated with longer life.

Can we learn optimism?

• Yes—pessimistic cancer patients given optimism training reported more optimistic outlooks and less fatigue after treatments.

🔮 Affective forecasting: predicting our feelings

📊 What affective forecasting is

Affective forecasting: our attempts to predict how future events will make us feel.

Example: Applying for a promotion partly because we forecast the higher salary will make us happier.

❌ Why we're often wrong

Key finding: Our affective forecasting is often inaccurate—we tend to overestimate our emotional reactions to events.

The adaptation principle:

• Positive and negative events make less difference to our well-being than we expect.
• Effects wear off quickly for both positive and negative events.
• We are resilient and adapt to new circumstances.

Classic studies:

• Lottery winners (who won over $50,000) were not happier than before winning or than a control group.
• People paralyzed in accidents were not as unhappy as expected.

🔍 Why forecasting fails

Reason 1—Resilience and coping: We bring coping skills into play when negative events occur.

Reason 2—Adaptation/habituation: We don't continually experience extreme affect; we adapt to current circumstances.

• Like enjoying the second chocolate bar less than the first, we habituate to positive outcomes.

Reason 3—Changing comparisons: Our reference points shift.

• Wealthy people compare themselves to other wealthy people.
• Poor people compare themselves to other poor people.
• When our status changes, our comparison group changes, affecting happiness.

Reason 4—Focalism: When predicting, we focus only on the event in question and forget about everything else that won't change.

• Study: When people were asked to consider all the regular activities they'd still be doing (working, socializing, going to church), their predictions about major events became less extreme.

💡 The happiness equation

What doesn't buy happiness (as much as we think):

• Money beyond the minimum needed for food and shelter doesn't generally increase happiness.
• Citizens in many countries have several times the buying power of previous decades, yet overall reported happiness hasn't increased.
• Wealth, health, and life circumstances account for only 15% to 20% of well-being scores.

What matters more:

• The main ingredient in happiness lies beyond external factors.
• Even serious disability or illness shows only slightly lowered mood levels—less misery than most people expect.
• People with disabilities experience overall positive happiness levels despite concerns about health, safety, and acceptance.

Don't confuse: What we think will make us happy (external events, circumstances) vs. what actually determines happiness (internal factors, adaptation, social comparison).

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Social cognition shapes how we interpret events and judge people, often leading to both accurate insights and systematic errors that profoundly influence our daily lives.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Self-reflection on schemas and attitudes: Our existing expectations about people and groups are shaped by learning experiences and can persist even from single encounters.
• Expectation-driven misinterpretation: We often assimilate information into existing beliefs, leading to biased judgments (e.g., seeing referees or media as favoring the other side).
• Information-processing biases: Salience, accessibility, counterfactual thinking, and heuristics like representativeness can lead to systematic errors in judgment.
• Common confusion: Distinguishing between judgments based on accurate statistical information versus those based on what someone "should be like" (representativeness heuristic misuse).
• Cognition-affect interplay: Social cognition and emotional states are deeply intertwined in how we understand our social worlds.

🧠 How schemas and learning shape our views

🧠 Formation of schemas and attitudes

• The excerpt prompts reflection on schemas and attitudes toward people we've met (school, family, social groups) and those we've only heard about (other countries, cultures).
• These mental frameworks are influenced by operant learning and modeling behavior after others.
• Example: A single negative encounter with one person can create lasting dislike for that person or their entire social group.

⚠️ Persistence of initial impressions

• Early experiences can create expectations that endure over time.
• The excerpt emphasizes how one encounter can shape long-term attitudes, illustrating the power of initial schema formation.

🔍 When expectations distort reality

🔍 Misinterpreting events through existing expectations

The excerpt describes "misinterpreting events or judging people incorrectly because your opinions were influenced by the operation of your existing expectations."

• We may falsely assume someone has a characteristic and then assimilate new information to fit that assumption.
• This is assimilation bias: fitting information into pre-existing schemas rather than adjusting schemas to fit reality.

🏈 Examples of expectation-driven bias

The excerpt provides two concrete scenarios:

• Sports: Thinking referees favor the other team rather than your own.
• Politics: Believing media treats the candidate you oppose better than the one you prefer.

Both illustrate how attitudes and beliefs influence interpretation of the same information differently depending on pre-existing views.

🎯 Information-processing biases in action

🎯 Salience and accessibility effects

• The excerpt asks readers to recall times when salience (what stands out) or accessibility (what comes to mind easily) influenced their judgments.
• These biases affect which information we notice and use in making decisions.

🔄 Counterfactual thinking

Counterfactual thinking: imagining alternative outcomes to events that already occurred.

The excerpt gives two examples:

• Feeling bad about getting 94 when 95 would have earned an A.
• Regretting changing an answer on an exam instead of sticking with the original.

Both involve comparing what happened to what "could have been," leading to negative feelings even when outcomes are objectively good.

📊 Representativeness heuristic misuse

• The error: Judging someone based on what they "should be like" rather than on accurate statistical information.
• Don't confuse: stereotypical expectations (representativeness) with actual probability or evidence-based assessment.
• This is a systematic bias where we rely on how well something matches a prototype rather than base rates or real data.

🔗 The cognition-affect connection

🔗 Intertwined processes

• The excerpt emphasizes reflecting on "all the ways in which your social cognition and affective states influence each other."
• These processes are described as "intertwined" in understanding social worlds.
• Neither operates independently: thoughts shape feelings, and feelings shape thoughts.

🌍 Real-world impact

• The excerpt references "the story with which we opened this chapter" to illustrate how social cognitive biases affect understanding of the world.
• Social cognition produces both:
  • Accurate judgments: useful understanding of social situations.
  • Inaccurate judgments: systematic errors that can mislead us.

💡 Practical implications

💡 Awareness of impression formation

• Understanding how you form impressions of others.
• Recognizing that others form potentially erroneous impressions of you.
• The excerpt frames this awareness as "new and useful ideas."

💡 Life influence

• The closing statement emphasizes: "In many ways, our lives are influenced by our social cognition."
• Understanding these processes helps us navigate social worlds more effectively and recognize when our thinking may be leading us astray.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Social cognition—how we process and judge information about our social worlds—is generally efficient and accurate but prone to systematic errors caused by our reliance on schemas, heuristics, and automatic processing.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Core definition: Social cognition explores how we process and use information about our social worlds, which is critical for understanding others and predicting their responses.
• Efficiency vs. accuracy trade-off: Our thinking is fast and often automatic (using schemas and heuristics as energy savers), but this efficiency can lead to predictable errors.
• Learning mechanisms: Social knowledge develops through operant learning (rewards/punishments), associational learning (linking objects with responses), and observational learning (modeling others).
• Common confusion: Assimilation (fitting new information into existing schemas) versus accommodation (changing schemas based on new information)—assimilation is often more powerful.
• Practical implications: Understanding social cognition helps us recognize both accurate and inaccurate judgments about ourselves and others, encouraging more modest and careful thinking.

🧠 How We Learn Social Knowledge

📚 Three learning pathways

Operant learning

• Experiences followed by positive emotions (rewards) → more likely to repeat
• Experiences followed by negative emotions (punishments) → less likely to repeat

Associational learning

• Objects or events become linked with specific responses
• Can involve behaviors or emotional reactions (positive/negative)

Observational learning

• Learning by watching and modeling others' behavior
• Does not require direct personal experience

🔄 Two ways knowledge changes

Process	What happens	Which is stronger
Accommodation	Existing schemas/attitudes change based on new information	Less common
Assimilation	New information is interpreted to fit existing knowledge	More powerful

• Don't confuse: Assimilation makes conflicting information "fit" rather than changing our beliefs; accommodation actually updates our mental models.

⚡ Automatic vs. Controlled Thinking

⚡ Automatic cognition

Automatic cognition: thinking that occurs quickly and without taking much effort.

• Happens when we lack time or motivation for careful analysis
• Relies heavily on shortcuts and existing knowledge
• Generally efficient for everyday social interactions

🤔 Controlled cognition

• Occurs when we have time and motivation
• Involves deliberate, careful thinking
• More thoughtful processing of information

🎯 Mental Shortcuts and Their Pitfalls

🎯 Why we use heuristics

• We are often overwhelmed by the amount of information to process
• Schemas and heuristics function as "energy savers"
• Allow quick judgments without exhausting mental resources

🔍 Key heuristic: Representativeness

Representativeness heuristic: basing judgments on information that seems to represent or match what we expect will happen.

• We judge based on how well something fits our expectations
• Can lead to ignoring statistical information in favor of stereotypes
• Example: Judging someone based on what they "should be like" rather than accurate data

📊 Cognitive accessibility effects

Cognitive accessibility: the extent to which knowledge is activated in memory and thus likely to be used to guide reactions to others.

Common errors from accessibility:

• Availability heuristic: Overestimating frequency of easily recalled events
• False consensus bias: Assuming others share our views more than they do
• Counterfactual thinking: Imagining "what might have been" (e.g., feeling bad about a 94 when 95 would give an A)
• Anchoring: Over-relying on initial information without sufficient adjustment

👁️ Salience effects

• We pay particular attention to stimuli that are:
  • Unique
  • Negative
  • Colorful or bright
  • Moving
• Salient information disproportionately influences our judgments

⚠️ Overconfidence and Blind Spots

😌 The overconfidence problem

• Tendency to be overconfident in judgments about:
  • Ourselves
  • Others
  • The future
• Our judgments feel right and accurate even when they may be wrong

🙈 Bias blind spots

• We tend to have blind spots about our own biases
• Often fail to recognize how much biases affect our social cognition
• Important reminder: Consider the possibility that judgments may simply be wrong, no matter how accurate they feel

🤝 Moving forward

• Best hope: Becoming better at recognizing and challenging biases in each other's thinking
• Encourages more modest approach to our judgments
• Understanding social cognition helps us think more accurately about ourselves and others

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

The self-concept—a complex knowledge structure containing our beliefs about our traits, roles, and characteristics—powerfully shapes how we process information, behave, and experience self-awareness, with important variations across cultures and individuals.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What the self-concept is: a rich schema containing knowledge about our physical characteristics, personality traits, and social group memberships that develops from infancy through adulthood.
• How it affects cognition: information related to the self is processed faster and remembered better (the self-reference effect), and the self-concept's accessibility influences our attention and behavior.
• Structural variations matter: self-complexity (having many independent self-aspects) and self-concept clarity (having a well-defined, stable self-view) both relate to better psychological outcomes like higher self-esteem and stress resilience.
• Common confusion—self-awareness vs. self-consciousness: self-awareness is the general extent to which we focus on our self-concept; self-consciousness is the specific publicly induced form that occurs when we feel observed and judged by others.
• Cultural and individual differences: collectivistic cultures emphasize external/social self-aspects more than individualistic cultures, and people vary in private self-consciousness (focus on inner thoughts) versus public self-consciousness (focus on outer image).

🧬 Development and core nature of the self-concept

🧬 What the self-concept contains

Self-concept: a knowledge representation that contains knowledge about us, including our beliefs about our personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles, as well as the knowledge that we exist as individuals.

• The self-concept is not a single idea but a collection of beliefs organized into different domains.
• It develops progressively: infants recognize themselves in mirrors by 18 months; by age two they understand gender; by age six they can describe traits like "I am a nice person."
• By grade school, children understand they are unique individuals and become aware that others observe and judge them.

🗂️ Self-schemas: organized aspects of self

Self-schemas: a variety of different cognitive aspects of the self that organize and direct processing of self-relevant information.

• These are domain-specific beliefs (e.g., schemas about school performance, appearance, athletic ability).
• Self-schemas function like other schemas—they guide attention and memory for relevant information.
• Example: someone with a strong "athlete" self-schema will notice and remember sports-related information more readily.

🧠 Where self-knowledge lives in the brain

• Neuroimaging studies show self-information is stored in the prefrontal cortex, the same region that stores information about other people.
• This suggests the self is processed as a special case of person perception, but with privileged access and importance.

🔍 How the self-concept influences cognition

🔍 The self-reference effect

Self-reference effect: the finding that information that is processed in relationship to the self is particularly well remembered.

• Classic study by Rogers, Kuiper, and Kirker (1977) gave students adjectives to process in four ways:
  • Structural (uppercase or lowercase?)
  • Phonemic (does it rhyme with another word?)
  • Semantic (is it a synonym?)
  • Self-reference (does it describe you?)
• Students recalled significantly more adjectives in the self-reference condition than any other.
• Why it matters: relating study material to your own experiences can improve memory.
• Don't confuse: this is not just about paying more attention—it's about the unique organizational power of the self-schema.

👂 Heightened sensitivity to self-relevant information

• Our own name is highly accessible because it's central to our self-concept.
• Example: at a noisy party, you can easily hear your own name mentioned in background conversations (the "cocktail party effect" for self-relevant information).
• Self-related information is processed quickly and efficiently compared to other information.

📊 Three main components of self-concept content

📊 What people include when describing themselves

The Twenty Statements Test (TST) asks people to complete "I am ___" twenty times, revealing the most accessible parts of self-concept.

Component	Description	Examples
Physical characteristics	Appearance and bodily features, especially those that make us different	"I am tall," "I am overweight," "I am blonde"
Personality traits	Stable characteristics that describe behavior patterns	"I am friendly," "I am shy," "I am persistent"
Social identities	Group memberships and social roles	"I am a mother," "I am Jewish," "I am an artist"

🌍 Cultural differences in self-concept content

• Collectivistic cultures (e.g., Asian): emphasize social roles and group memberships more; include more references to other people and relationships.
• Individualistic cultures (e.g., Western): emphasize internal characteristics and uniqueness more.
• Example study: Asian participants were more than twice as likely to include references to other people in their self-descriptions.
• These differences reflect broader cultural values: interdependence versus independence.

🎭 Cultural priming affects self-concept

• Bicultural individuals shift their self-descriptions based on cultural context.
• Study: Chinese-Canadians showed more interdependent self-aspects when writing in Chinese versus English.
• This demonstrates that self-concept is not entirely fixed but responds to situational cues about which cultural frame is relevant.

🆚 Cultural differences in behavior: the pen study

• Kim and Markus (1999) offered airport participants a choice of pens: either 3-4 of one color and 1-2 of another.
• European Americans preferred the uncommon color (expressing uniqueness).
• Asian Americans preferred the common color (expressing conformity/harmony).
• This behavioral difference stems from whether the self-concept emphasizes standing out versus fitting in.

⚧️ Gender differences in self-concept

• Females on average give more external and social responses than males on the TST.
• These gender differences are stronger in individualistic nations than collectivistic ones.
• This suggests gender roles interact with cultural context in shaping self-concept.

🧩 Structural aspects: complexity and clarity

🧩 Self-complexity

Self-complexity: the extent to which individuals have many different and relatively independent ways of thinking about themselves.

• High self-complexity: many distinct self-aspects (e.g., student, girlfriend, daughter, psychology student, tennis player) that don't overlap much.
• Low self-complexity: few self-aspects or aspects that are highly interconnected.
• Example: someone who sees themselves primarily as "student" or "soccer player" has low self-complexity.

💪 Benefits of high self-complexity

• People with higher self-complexity experience:
  • Higher self-esteem
  • Lower stress and illness
  • Greater tolerance for frustration
• Why: different self-domains buffer against negative events in any one domain.
• Example: if Maria only cares about medical school and doesn't get in, she's devastated; if Marty also values music and friendships, he can turn to those when facing the same setback.

⚠️ Limitations of self-complexity benefits

• High self-complexity helps people react more positively to good events but doesn't always reduce negative reactions to bad events.
• Benefits are stronger for people who:
  • Have high self-esteem
  • Have positive (not negative) self-aspects
  • Feel they have control over outcomes
• Don't confuse: self-complexity is not automatically protective—it depends on the nature of the self-aspects and other personal characteristics.

🔎 Self-concept clarity

Self-concept clarity: the extent to which one's self-concept is clearly and consistently defined.

• This is independent of complexity—you can have many self-aspects that are either clear or unclear.
• Higher clarity is associated with:
  • Higher self-esteem
  • Better stress management
  • Greater relationship satisfaction
• Why clarity helps relationships: clear self-concept allows consistent communication of who you are and what you want, reducing misunderstandings and promoting compromise without threatening autonomy.

🌏 Cultural differences in clarity

• Members of collectivistic cultures tend to have lower self-concept clarity because their self-concept is based more on changeable external roles than stable internal traits.
• In collectivistic cultures, clarity is also less strongly related to self-esteem than in individualistic cultures.
• This makes sense: if your culture expects you to adapt across situations, consistency is less valued and less necessary for well-being.

👁️ Self-awareness and self-consciousness

👁️ What self-awareness means

Self-awareness: the extent to which we are currently fixing our attention on our own self-concept.

• Self-awareness varies moment to moment depending on the situation.
• It's not a trait but a state—how much you're thinking about yourself right now.
• Certain situations increase self-awareness: mirrors, cameras, audiences, hearing your recorded voice.

😳 Self-consciousness: publicly induced self-awareness

Self-consciousness: the publicly induced self-awareness that occurs when our self-concept becomes highly accessible because of our concerns about being observed and potentially judged by others.

• This is a specific type of self-awareness triggered by feeling watched.
• Emotions like anxiety and embarrassment arise when self-consciousness makes us painfully aware of how we appear to others.
• Example: giving a presentation and being acutely aware everyone is looking at you.

🪞 Effects of heightened self-awareness

• When self-aware, people compare their current behavior to internal standards.
• This can lead to behavior change to align with those standards.
• Study: children were less likely to steal candy (14.4%) when a mirror was present versus absent (28.5%).
• Other effects: people on diets eat better, people act more morally when self-aware.
• Practical application: to stick to difficult goals, increase your self-awareness by focusing on yourself and your standards.

👥 Deindividuation: loss of self-awareness

Deindividuation: the loss of individual self-awareness and individual accountability in groups.

• Occurs in large crowds, when wearing masks/uniforms, or when identities are hidden.
• Example: Ku Klux Klan members wearing robes and hoods.
• Early theories suggested deindividuation leads to antisocial behavior because people lose self-control.
• Modern view (SIDE model): deindividuation doesn't eliminate identity but shifts focus from personal to collective identity, making people conform to group norms in that situation.

🚨 Deindividuation and rioting

• Early view: riots involve mindless, antinormative violence due to loss of individual identity.
• Evidence against this: rioting often shows restraint and selectivity, not indiscriminate violence.
• SIDE model perspective: rioters adopt collective identity and follow group norms that may seem rational to them (e.g., targeting police but not other civilians).
• Practical implications for riot control:
  • Don't label rioters as "mindless thugs"—this ignores legitimate grievances
  • Indiscriminate police force escalates violence
  • Allow legal protest; only target illegal behavior
  • Police should communicate intentions before using force

🔍 Two types of self-consciousness

Type	Definition	Characteristics
Private self-consciousness	Tendency to introspect about inner thoughts and feelings	"I'm always trying to figure myself out"; behavior guided by internal beliefs; focus on personal accomplishments
Public self-consciousness	Tendency to focus on outer public image and others' standards	"I care what others think of me"; checks appearance in mirrors; behavior guided by others' opinions

🌏 Cultural differences in public self-consciousness

• East Asian (collectivistic) cultures show higher public self-consciousness than Western (individualistic) cultures.
• Study: Canadian students became more self-critical and less likely to cheat when in front of a mirror; Japanese students showed no change (already high in public self-consciousness).
• This person-situation interaction shows cultural baseline differences in self-focus.

⚖️ Self-discrepancy and self-affirmation

⚖️ Self-awareness theory

Self-awareness theory: when we focus our attention on ourselves, we tend to compare our current behavior against our internal standards.

• Heightened self-awareness triggers comparison between actual self and ideal self.
• When we fall short, we experience distress.
• When we meet or exceed standards, we experience positive affect.

😟 Self-discrepancy theory

Self-discrepancy theory: when we perceive a discrepancy between our actual and ideal selves, this is distressing to us.

• The distress is greater when self-awareness is high.
• Study: people felt more distressed about self-discrepancies when sitting in front of a mirror versus not.
• This distress relates to cognitive dissonance—discomfort from seeing ourselves as inconsistent.

🔧 Responses to self-discrepancy

Common strategies to reduce discrepancy-related distress:

1. Change behavior to align with ideals
2. Adjust ideals to match current state
3. Reduce self-awareness by focusing on other things (e.g., watching videos after negative feedback)

💪 Self-affirmation theory

Self-affirmation theory: people will try to reduce the threat to their self-concept posed by feelings of self-discrepancy by focusing on and affirming their worth in another domain, unrelated to the issue at hand.

• Used when direct discrepancy reduction is difficult.
• Example: someone addicted to drugs (can't easily quit) focuses on healthy eating and exercise instead.
• This restores overall sense of self-worth even if the original problem persists.

⚠️ Potential downsides of self-affirmation

• While self-affirmation reduces dissonance, it can have negative effects.
• Study: people who self-affirmed and then encountered threatening hypotheses showed:
  • Greater confirmation bias (seeking evidence for their views)
  • More illusory correlations supporting their positions
• Possible explanation: self-affirmation elevates mood, leading to more heuristic (less careful) processing.

🎮 Online environments and ideal self

• Massively multiplayer online (MMO) games let people create avatars representing themselves.
• Players design avatars closer to their ideal than actual selves, especially if they have lower self-esteem.
• These environments allow exploration of ideal selves freed from physical world constraints.

📱 Self-awareness and affirmation on social media

• Facebook and self-awareness: viewing and updating profiles increases self-awareness and self-esteem.
• Potential negative effects: increased self-awareness from Facebook activity can decrease perspective-taking ability (too much self-focus).
• Self-affirmation on Facebook: users view profiles in self-affirming ways; they look at profiles more after threats to self-concept to restore self-esteem.
• The dynamics of self-awareness and affirmation are similar online and offline.

🌍 Cultural differences in self-discrepancy responses

• Study comparing Canadians (individualistic) and Japanese (collectivistic):
  • Canadians reduced dissonance by adjusting ratings after making choices (classic dissonance reduction)
  • Japanese did not show this pattern
  • Canadians who received self-affirmation didn't need to reduce dissonance
• Why: individualistic cultures emphasize cross-situational consistency, making discrepancies more troubling; collectivistic cultures expect situational adaptation, so inconsistencies are less distressing.

🔦 The spotlight effect and illusion of transparency

🔦 Overestimating others' attention to us

• Although self-awareness is powerful for the person experiencing it, people overestimate how much others notice them.
• Spotlight effect: people think others are paying much more attention to them than they actually are.
• Study: people in group interactions thought others noticed them much more than those others reported.
• Good news: that embarrassing comment you made probably wasn't noticed as much as you think.

👀 Age differences in self-consciousness

• Teenagers are particularly prone to believing others are watching them.
• They think extensively about themselves and assume others must be thinking about them too.
• This explains why teens are easily embarrassed by parents' public behavior or their own appearance.

🎭 The illusion of transparency

Illusion of transparency: people mistakenly believe their internal states show to others more than they really do.

• Study: students played a lie-detection game where one person lied each round.
• Liars predicted 44% of others would detect their lies.
• Actually only 25% correctly identified the liar.
• Key learning: although we feel our self-view is obvious to others, it often isn't.
• Don't confuse: this is about overestimating how visible our internal states are, not about whether we're self-aware.

🎯 Practical implications

• When you feel self-conscious or worried about how you appear, remember others are likely paying less attention than you think.
• Your internal anxiety or discomfort is probably less visible to others than it feels to you.
• This can reduce social anxiety by providing a more realistic perspective on how closely others are observing you.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Self-esteem—the positive or negative feelings we have about ourselves—is shaped by our performance, appearance, and relationships, and functions both as a stable trait and a fluctuating state.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What self-esteem is: the positive (high) or negative (low) feelings we have about ourselves, not just cognitive beliefs.
• How cognition and affect link: our view of ourselves combines both thinking (cognition) and feeling (affect); they are inseparable.
• What determines self-esteem: how we view our performance and appearance, plus how satisfied we are with our relationships.
• Trait vs. state: self-esteem is partly stable over time (some people consistently higher or lower) but also fluctuates.
• Common confusion: self-esteem is not purely cognitive—it is the feeling component of the self, distinct from the self-concept's cognitive side.

🔗 Cognition and affect in the self

🧩 The inseparable link

• The excerpt emphasizes that "cognition and affect are inextricably linked."
• Our sense of self is "partly determined by our cognition" but "also the product of our affect."
• In other words: what we think about ourselves and how we feel about ourselves work together.

📐 Self-discrepancy theory example

• The excerpt references self-discrepancy theory (from earlier in the text) to illustrate the cognition-affect link.
• When we perceive a gap between our actual self and ideal self, we feel distress.
• This shows how a cognitive comparison (actual vs. ideal) produces an emotional outcome (distress).

💭 Defining self-esteem

💭 Core definition

Self-esteem: the positive (high self-esteem) or negative (low self-esteem) feelings that we have about ourselves.

• It is not a neutral description; it is an evaluative feeling.
• High self-esteem: we feel good and worthy; we believe others view us positively.
• Low self-esteem: we feel inadequate and less worthy than others.

🔍 High vs. low self-esteem

Self-esteem level	How we feel	Belief about others' views
High	Good and worthy	Others view us positively
Low	Inadequate and less worthy	(Implied: others view us negatively or we compare poorly)

• The excerpt frames self-esteem as a subjective experience: "we experience the positive feelings" or "we experience the negative feelings."
• Example: Someone who believes they are competent and valued by friends experiences high self-esteem; someone who feels they fall short and are not valued experiences low self-esteem.

🧱 What shapes self-esteem

🧱 Three main factors

The excerpt identifies three determinants:

1. How well we view our own performance: our assessment of how we are doing in tasks, goals, achievements.
2. How we view our appearance: our evaluation of our physical self.
3. How satisfied we are with our relationships with other people: the quality and fulfillment we get from social connections.

• All three are subjective evaluations, not objective facts.
• Example: Two people with similar performance may have different self-esteem if one views their performance more positively than the other.

⚖️ Trait and state components

• Trait self-esteem: "stable over time"—some people consistently have relatively high self-esteem, others consistently lower.
• State self-esteem: the excerpt notes "self-esteem is in part a trait" but also implies it can fluctuate (the sentence is incomplete in the excerpt, but the phrase "in part" signals that it is not only a trait).
• Don't confuse: self-esteem has both a stable baseline (trait) and situational variation (state); it is not purely fixed or purely variable.

🎯 The "feeling self" vs. the "cognitive self"

🎯 Distinguishing the two aspects

• The excerpt introduces this section as examining "the feeling self," contrasting it with earlier discussions of "the cognitive self: the self-concept."
• The cognitive self is about what we think about ourselves (beliefs, knowledge, self-concept).
• The feeling self is about how we feel about ourselves (emotions, evaluations, self-esteem).
• Both are part of the overall sense of self, but they emphasize different psychological processes.

🔄 Why the distinction matters

• The excerpt states "our sense of self is partly determined by our cognition" but "also the product of our affect."
• This means a complete understanding of the self requires looking at both thinking and feeling.
• Example: You might know (cognition) that you are a student, but whether you feel proud or ashamed (affect) about that identity is a separate dimension captured by self-esteem.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Self-esteem—the positive or negative feelings we have about ourselves—is shaped by our performance, appearance, and relationships, and functions as both a stable trait and a state that fluctuates over time.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What self-esteem is: the positive (high) or negative (low) feelings we have about ourselves, not just cognitive beliefs.
• How it is determined: by how we view our own performance and appearance, and how satisfied we are with our relationships with others.
• Trait vs. state: self-esteem is partly stable over time (some people consistently have higher or lower self-esteem), but it also fluctuates.
• Common confusion: self-esteem is not purely cognitive—it is the feeling component of the self, inextricably linked to cognition (e.g., self-discrepancy theory shows how perceived gaps between actual and ideal selves cause distress).
• Why it matters: the excerpt sets up that self-esteem has benefits (high self-esteem) and limits (narcissism), and that it varies by culture, gender, and age.

🧩 What self-esteem is

🧩 Definition and core nature

Self-esteem: the positive (high self-esteem) or negative (low self-esteem) feelings that we have about ourselves.

• Self-esteem is the feeling self, not just the cognitive self-concept.
• High self-esteem: we feel good and worthy, and believe others view us positively.
• Low self-esteem: we feel inadequate and less worthy than others.
• The excerpt emphasizes that self-esteem is about feelings, not just thoughts.

🔗 Link between cognition and affect

• The excerpt notes that cognition and affect are inextricably linked (as explored in Chapter 2).
• Example from self-discrepancy theory: when we perceive a gap between our actual self and ideal self, we feel distress—this is how cognitive self-perception produces emotional outcomes.
• Don't confuse: self-esteem is not a separate, isolated feeling; it arises from how we think about ourselves, but it is the emotional response to those thoughts.

🧱 What determines self-esteem

🧱 Three main sources

The excerpt identifies three factors that shape self-esteem:

Factor	What it means
Performance	How well we view our own performance
Appearance	How we view our own appearance
Relationships	How satisfied we are with our relationships with other people

• These are not independent; they interact to produce overall self-esteem.
• Example: someone who views their performance positively but is dissatisfied with their relationships may have mixed self-esteem.

⏱️ Trait and state components

• Trait component: self-esteem is partly stable over time—some people consistently have relatively high self-esteem, others have lower self-esteem.
• State component: the excerpt also notes "But self-esteem is..." (the sentence is incomplete, but it implies self-esteem also varies situationally or over time).
• Don't confuse: self-esteem is not only a fixed personality trait; it can fluctuate based on circumstances and experiences.

🌍 Diversity and context (preview)

🌍 Cultural, gender, and age differences

• The excerpt's learning objectives indicate that self-esteem varies by culture, gender, and age.
• The text does not provide details in this excerpt, but it signals that self-esteem is not uniform across all people or contexts.

📈 Maintenance and enhancement

• The learning objectives mention that people attempt to increase and maintain their self-esteem.
• This suggests self-esteem is not entirely passive; individuals actively work to protect or boost it.

⚖️ Benefits and limits (preview)

⚖️ High self-esteem benefits

• The excerpt's learning objectives outline that high self-esteem has benefits (details not provided in this excerpt).

⚠️ Narcissism as a limit

• The excerpt signals that self-esteem has limits, specifically highlighting the negative aspects of narcissism.
• Don't confuse: high self-esteem is not the same as narcissism; the excerpt will distinguish between healthy self-esteem and its problematic extremes.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Social psychologists study the self through both cognitive and affective lenses, examining how self-concept clarity, self-awareness, cultural context, and self-esteem shape our understanding of who we are and how we feel about ourselves.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Self-concept clarity matters: clearer, more stable self-concepts are linked to better psychological well-being and relationship quality.
• Self-awareness has dual effects: objective self-awareness can lead to self-regulation but also to distress when discrepancies are noticed.
• Cultural boundaries shape the self: individualist cultures emphasize independent self-construal while collectivist cultures emphasize interdependent self-construal, affecting spontaneous self-descriptions and behavior.
• Common confusion—self-esteem vs. self-concept: self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves (positive or negative affect), while self-concept is how we think about and describe ourselves (cognitive content).
• Self-complexity as a buffer: having multiple, distinct self-aspects may protect against stress, though research shows mixed findings about when this buffering works.

🧠 Cognitive aspects of the self

🔍 Self-concept clarity

Self-concept clarity: the extent to which self-beliefs are clearly and confidently defined, internally consistent, and stable over time.

• What it measures: how well-organized and coherent your self-knowledge is.
• Why it matters: research shows that higher self-concept clarity is associated with:
  • Better coping with stress (Ritchie et al., 2011)
  • Higher relationship quality (Lewandowski et al., 2010)
  • Lower psychological distress (Gramzow et al., 2000)
• Cultural variation: self-concept clarity has "cultural boundaries" (Campbell et al., 1996), meaning its structure and importance may differ across cultures.
• Example: Someone with high clarity can quickly and consistently describe their values and traits; someone with low clarity feels uncertain or contradictory about who they are.

🧩 Self-complexity

Self-complexity: the number of distinct self-aspects a person has and how independent those aspects are from one another.

• The buffering hypothesis: Linville (1987) proposed that greater self-complexity protects against stress—if one self-aspect fails, others remain intact.
• Mixed evidence: reviews (Koch & Shepperd, 2004; Rafaeli-Mor & Steinberg, 2002) show inconsistent support for the buffering model.
• Important moderator: McConnell et al. (2005) found that self-aspect control—how much you can manage which self-aspects are active—moderates the relationship between self-complexity and well-being.
• Don't confuse: self-complexity is about how many distinct selves you have; self-concept clarity is about how coherent your overall self-view is—you can have many selves that are still clearly defined.

🪞 Self-awareness and objective self-focus

What objective self-awareness is:

• Duval & Wicklund (1972) proposed a theory of objective self-awareness: when attention is directed inward, people evaluate themselves against standards.
• Triggers: mirrors, cameras, being watched, and even certain media (Moskalenko & Heine, 2002 found TV viewing can stimulate subjective self-awareness).

Effects of self-awareness:

• Can lead to self-regulation and improved behavior when standards are clear.
• Can also cause distress and avoidance when self-discrepancies are noticed (Greenberg & Musham, 1981).
• Heatherton et al. (1993) showed that self-awareness combined with task failure can lead to disinhibition (e.g., overeating).
• Example: Seeing yourself in a mirror while dieting may either help you stick to your plan or, if you've already "failed," lead you to give up and eat more.

Cultural variation:

• Heine et al. (2008) found cultural variation in objective self-awareness—the "mirrors in the head" metaphor applies differently across cultures.

🌍 Cultural dimensions of the self

🗺️ Independent vs. interdependent self-construal

• Markus & Kitayama (1991): proposed that culture shapes whether people view themselves as independent or interdependent.

Self-construal type	Characteristics	Cultural context
Independent	Emphasizes uniqueness, internal attributes, personal goals	Individualist cultures (e.g., Western)
Interdependent	Emphasizes relationships, social roles, group harmony	Collectivist cultures (e.g., East Asian)

• Implications for cognition and emotion: independent self-construal promotes self-focused goals and emotions; interdependent self-construal promotes other-focused goals and emotions.
• Spontaneous self-concept: Ip & Bond (1995) and Kashima et al. (1995) found that culture affects what aspects of self come to mind spontaneously.

🎭 Cultural differences in self-expression

• Uniqueness vs. conformity: Kim & Markus (1999) showed that individualist cultures value uniqueness while collectivist cultures value harmony and conformity.
• Online behavior: DeAndrea et al. (2010) found that culture influences self-expression and self-construal on Facebook.
• Language and bicultural self: Ross et al. (2002) demonstrated that bilingual individuals may shift self-construal depending on the language they are using.
• Socially desirable responding: Lalwani et al. (2009) found that cultural values, regulatory focus, and self-consciousness all influence how people present themselves in socially desirable ways.

🧭 Distinctiveness and salience

• McGuire et al. (1978): ethnicity becomes more salient in the spontaneous self-concept when it is distinctive in one's social environment.
• Principle: aspects of the self that make you different from those around you become more prominent in how you think about yourself.
• Example: A person from a minority ethnic group in a predominantly different-ethnicity setting is more likely to mention their ethnicity when describing themselves than someone in a setting where their ethnicity is the majority.

👁️ Social perception biases

💡 Spotlight effect

Spotlight effect: the tendency to overestimate how much others notice our actions and appearance.

• Gilovich et al. (1998, 1999, 2000): documented this egocentric bias in social judgment.
• People believe they are more salient to others than they actually are.
• Example: You wear an embarrassing shirt and think everyone notices, but most people don't pay attention or quickly forget.

🔮 Illusion of transparency

Illusion of transparency: the tendency to overestimate how well others can read our internal emotional states.

• Gilovich et al. (1998): people believe their emotions are more visible to others than they really are.
• This is another form of egocentric assessment—we assume our internal experience is obvious to observers.
• Don't confuse with spotlight effect: spotlight is about overestimating notice of external actions/appearance; illusion of transparency is about overestimating others' ability to read internal emotions.

👥 Imaginary audience and personal fable

• Adolescent egocentrism: Goossens et al. (2002) and Rycek et al. (1998) studied these phenomena in adolescents.
• Imaginary audience: belief that others are constantly watching and evaluating you.
• Personal fable: belief that your experiences and feelings are unique and that others cannot understand you.
• These are developmentally normal but can contribute to self-consciousness and risk-taking in adolescence.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Group processes and deindividuation

🎭 Deindividuation

• Classic view (Le Bon, 1895; Zimbardo, 1969; Festinger et al., 1952): in groups, people lose self-awareness and self-restraint, leading to impulsive or antisocial behavior.
• Valence of cues matters: Johnson & Downing (1979) showed that deindividuation can lead to prosocial or antisocial behavior depending on situational cues.
• Example: Anonymity in a crowd can lead to violence (Fogelson, 1971 on riots) or to helping behavior, depending on context.

🆔 Social identity model of deindividuation

• Reicher et al. (1995, 2011): proposed an alternative to the classic "loss of self" view.
• Deindividuation is not a loss of identity but a shift from personal identity to social identity.
• Behavior in crowds reflects group norms, not mindless chaos.
• Reicher & Stott (2011) applied this to understanding the 2011 riots in England, showing that crowd behavior follows social identity dynamics rather than irrational mob psychology.
• Don't confuse: classic deindividuation theory says people lose self-awareness; social identity theory says people shift to a different (group-based) self-awareness.

💻 Technology and the self

📱 Social media effects on self-awareness

• Chiou & Lee (2013): one-to-many communication on Facebook may induce self-focused attention, which can reduce perspective-taking.
• This suggests that broadcasting to an audience can make you more self-centered rather than more socially aware.

🪞 Facebook and self-esteem

• Gonzales & Hancock (2011): exposure to one's own Facebook profile can boost self-esteem (a "mirror" effect).
• Toma & Hancock (2013): Facebook use is underlain by self-affirmation motives—people use it to feel better about themselves.
• However, self-affirmation can have a dark side: Munro & Stansbury (2009) found that self-affirmation can lead to confirmation bias and illusory correlation when people encounter threatening information.

🧘 Self-regulation and well-being

📉 Self-discrepancies and distress

• Higgins et al. (1987): distinguished among different self-states (actual, ideal, ought) and showed that discrepancies between them predict specific emotional vulnerabilities.
• Phillips & Silvia (2005): self-awareness amplifies the emotional consequences of self-discrepancies—when you notice a gap between who you are and who you want to be, you feel worse.

🛡️ Coping and self-structure

• Self-concept clarity as a mediator: Ritchie et al. (2011) found that self-concept clarity mediates the relationship between stress and subjective well-being—clearer self-views help buffer stress.
• Private self-consciousness: Kernis & Grannemann (1988) showed that private self-consciousness is linked to perceptions of self-consistency.
• Possible selves: Oyserman et al. (2004) demonstrated that possible selves (future-oriented self-concepts) can serve as "roadmaps" for goal-directed behavior.

🧒 Developmental aspects

🪞 Self-recognition in children

• Gallup (1970): pioneered the mirror self-recognition test with chimpanzees.
• Povinelli et al. (1996): found a developmental asynchrony in young children—they can recognize themselves in live feedback earlier than in delayed feedback, suggesting that self-recognition develops gradually.

🧠 Theory of mind

• Doherty (2009): reviewed how children develop the ability to understand others' thoughts and feelings.
• This capacity is foundational for social interaction and is linked to the development of self-awareness.

📈 Development of self-representations

• Harter (1998, 1999): provided comprehensive accounts of how self-representations develop from childhood through adolescence.
• Self-concept becomes more abstract, differentiated, and integrated with age.

🧬 Neuroscience of the self

🧠 Self-reference effect

• Rogers et al. (1977): demonstrated that information processed in relation to the self is remembered better than other information (the self-reference effect).
• This shows that the self is a powerful organizing framework for memory.

🧠 Neural basis of self-knowledge

• Lieberman (2010): reviewed social cognitive neuroscience approaches to understanding the self.
• Lieberman et al. (2004): used fMRI to distinguish evidence-based self-knowledge (based on observation of one's behavior) from intuition-based self-knowledge (based on introspection).
• Different neural systems support these two types of self-knowledge.

💖 The feeling self: self-esteem

🌟 What self-esteem is

Self-esteem: the positive (high self-esteem) or negative (low self-esteem) feelings that we have about ourselves.

• Affective, not just cognitive: self-esteem is about how we feel about ourselves, not just what we think.
• High self-esteem: feeling good, worthy, and positively viewed by others.
• Low self-esteem: feeling inadequate and less worthy than others.

📊 Determinants of self-esteem

• Tafarodi & Swann (1995): self-esteem is determined by:
  • How we view our own performance and appearance.
  • How satisfied we are with our relationships.
• Trait and state: self-esteem is partly a stable trait (some people consistently have higher or lower self-esteem) but also fluctuates with situations.

---

Note: The excerpt provided is primarily a reference list and brief introductory material on self-esteem. Most of the content above is drawn from the citations and brief contextual sentences. The section on self-esteem itself is incomplete in the excerpt, so only the definition and basic determinants are covered. The bulk of the notes reflects the research themes evident in the reference list, organized into coherent conceptual areas.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Self-esteem—the positive or negative feelings we hold about ourselves—is shaped by cognition and affect together, varies across individuals and contexts, and plays a central role in how we evaluate our worth and relationships.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What self-esteem is: the positive (high) or negative (low) feelings we have about ourselves, influenced by how we view our performance, appearance, and relationships.
• Cognition and affect are linked: our sense of self is not purely cognitive; how we feel about ourselves is inseparable from how we think about ourselves.
• Self-esteem has trait and state components: it is partly stable over time (some people consistently have higher or lower self-esteem) but also fluctuates.
• Common confusion: self-esteem is not the same as self-concept—self-concept is the cognitive content ("who I am"), while self-esteem is the affective evaluation ("how I feel about who I am").
• Why it matters: the excerpt sets up that self-esteem influences well-being, relationships, and behavior, and that research examines its diversity, maintenance, benefits, and limits (including narcissism).

🧩 What self-esteem is

🧩 Definition and core components

Self-esteem: the positive (high self-esteem) or negative (low self-esteem) feelings that we have about ourselves.

• It is an affective (feeling-based) evaluation, not just a cognitive description.
• High self-esteem: we feel good and worthy; we believe others view us positively.
• Low self-esteem: we feel inadequate and less worthy than others.
• The excerpt emphasizes that self-esteem is the feeling dimension of the self, complementing the cognitive self-concept covered earlier.

🔗 How cognition and affect combine

• The excerpt states: "our view of ourselves is also the product of our affect, in other words how we feel about ourselves."
• Cognition and affect are "inextricably linked"—they cannot be separated.
• Example from the excerpt: self-discrepancy theory shows that when we perceive a gap between our actual and ideal selves (a cognitive comparison), we feel distress (an affective response).
• Don't confuse: the self-concept (Chapter 3.1, "The Cognitive Self") is what we think about ourselves; self-esteem is how we feel about what we think.

🧱 What shapes self-esteem

🧱 Performance, appearance, and relationships

The excerpt lists three main determinants:

Factor	What it means
Performance	How well we view our own achievements and abilities
Appearance	How satisfied we are with how we look
Relationships	How satisfied we are with our connections to other people

• These are not independent—they interact to shape overall self-esteem.
• Example: someone who views their performance positively but is dissatisfied with their relationships may have mixed or moderate self-esteem.

⏱️ Trait vs. state: stability and change

• Trait component: "self-esteem is in part a trait that is stable over time"—some people consistently have relatively high or low self-esteem.
• State component: the excerpt notes "But self-esteem is…" and trails off, implying that self-esteem also fluctuates (the sentence is incomplete in the excerpt, but the setup indicates variability).
• Don't confuse: having generally high self-esteem (trait) does not mean it never dips; context and events can shift how we feel about ourselves in the moment (state).

🌍 Diversity and context (preview)

🌍 Culture, gender, and age

The excerpt's learning objectives indicate that the full section will explore:

• Culture: self-esteem varies across cultural contexts.
• Gender: there are gender-related differences in self-esteem.
• Age: self-esteem changes over the lifespan.

(The excerpt does not provide details on these findings, only that they will be covered.)

🛠️ Maintenance and enhancement

• The learning objectives state that the section will provide "examples of ways that people attempt to increase and maintain their self-esteem."
• This implies that self-esteem is not fixed; people actively work to protect and boost it.

📊 Benefits and limits (preview)

📊 Benefits of high self-esteem

• The learning objectives promise to "outline the benefits of having high self-esteem."
• The excerpt does not detail these benefits but signals that high self-esteem is generally advantageous.

⚠️ Limits and narcissism

• The objectives also state: "Review the limits of self-esteem, with a focus on the negative aspects of narcissism."
• This indicates that high self-esteem is not universally positive—there are boundaries and potential downsides.
• Narcissism is highlighted as a specific negative form or consequence related to self-esteem.
• Don't confuse: high self-esteem and narcissism are related but distinct—narcissism involves excessive self-focus and entitlement, not just positive self-feelings.

---

Note: The excerpt is an introductory section and references list for Chapter 3.2. It defines self-esteem and previews the topics to be covered (diversity, maintenance strategies, benefits, and limits) but does not provide the detailed findings or mechanisms. The notes above reflect only what is present in the excerpt.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Attitudes—our relatively enduring evaluations of objects, people, or ideas—vary in strength and predict behavior most reliably when the attitude is strong, measured specifically, and expressed in social situations that match where the behavior occurs.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What attitudes are: relatively enduring evaluations (positive or negative) of attitude objects, composed of affective, cognitive, and behavioral components.
• Attitude strength matters: strong attitudes (cognitively accessible, quickly activated) predict behavior better than weak attitudes; strength increases through direct experience, repeated expression, and alignment of affect/cognition/behavior.
• When attitudes predict behavior: the attitude-behavior link is strongest when social situations match, when the same component (affect or cognition) is accessible at both measurement and action, and when attitudes are measured at a specific rather than general level.
• Common confusion: not all attitudes predict behavior equally—individual differences (e.g., self-monitoring) and situational factors moderate the relationship.
• Theory of planned behavior: attitude toward the behavior, subjective norms (social support), and perceived behavioral control jointly predict behavioral intention and actual behavior.

🧩 What attitudes are

🧩 Definition and nature

Attitude: our relatively enduring evaluation of something (the attitude object), expressed as a preference for or against it.

• Attitude objects can be people, products, social groups, activities, or ideas.
• Attitudes express a relationship between the self and the object (e.g., "I like swimming," "I hate snakes").
• Every person holds thousands of attitudes; they are a core part of self-concept.

🧬 Where attitudes come from

Attitudes are acquired through multiple pathways:

• Genetic inheritance: some attitudes are partly heritable (e.g., attitudes toward roller coasters, abortion, death penalty); these form earlier, are stronger, and resist change more.
• Direct and indirect experience: personal encounters with the attitude object shape evaluations.
• Media and social learning: attitudes are learned through media exposure and interactions with friends.
• Variation: some attitudes are widely shared (e.g., liking sugar, fearing snakes), while others are individualized (e.g., music or art preferences).

Example: A person may enjoy roller coasters partly due to a genetic predisposition for thrill-seeking and partly due to positive past experiences at amusement parks.

🧠 The ABC components

Attitudes consist of three components:

Component	Description	Example (recycling attitude)
Affective	Feelings and emotions	Feeling happy when recycling
Behavioral	Actions and tendencies	Regularly recycling bottles and cans
Cognitive	Beliefs and thoughts	Believing recycling is responsible

• Different attitudes rely more heavily on different components (e.g., chocolate ice cream = mostly affect; toothbrush = mostly cognition; note-taking = partly behavior).
• The affective component is generally the strongest and most important across attitudes.
• Different people may hold the same attitude for different reasons (e.g., voting based on policy vs. personality).

🎯 Why attitudes matter

• Attitudes enable quick, effortless decisions about which behaviors to engage in, which people to approach or avoid, and which products to buy.
• Evolutionary value: rapid evaluations (e.g., "snake = bad → run away") have survival benefits.
• Attitudes can be measured via self-report, arousal, facial expressions, implicit measures (e.g., IAT), and neuroimaging (stored in prefrontal cortex; amygdala involved in fear-based attitudes).
• Attitudes activate extremely quickly—often within one-fifth of a second.

💪 Attitude strength

💪 What makes an attitude strong

Attitude strength: the importance of an attitude, assessed by how quickly it comes to mind.

• Strong attitudes: important, held with confidence, stable over time, frequently guide actions, often operate outside conscious awareness.
• Weak attitudes: less important, less confident, more changeable, minimal influence on behavior.
• Example: People can form weak attitudes even toward nonsense words (e.g., liking "juvalamu" but disliking "chakaka"), but these have little impact.

⚡ Cognitive accessibility

• Strong attitudes are cognitively accessible—they come to mind quickly, regularly, and easily.
• Measurement: if you can state your attitude quickly without much thought, it is strong; if you need time to think, it is weak.
• Accessibility can be measured by reaction time when exposed to the attitude object.

🔨 How attitudes become stronger

Attitudes gain strength through:

• Direct experience: having personal positive or negative encounters with the attitude object, especially in emotionally intense contexts.
  • Research example: People who worked on puzzles (direct experience) had stronger attitudes than those who only watched others work on them, even though both groups liked or disliked the puzzles equally.
• Repeated expression: thinking about, talking about, or stating attitudes aloud increases their accessibility and strength.
• Self-concept activation: attitudes become stronger when activated alongside the self-concept (e.g., looking in a mirror or being on camera makes people more likely to act on their attitudes).
• ABC alignment: when affect, behavior, and cognition all point in the same direction, the attitude is stronger.
  • Example: Loving your country (positive affect) + believing it is great (positive cognition) + supporting it through actions (positive behavior) = very strong attitude.
  • Counterexample: Believing exercise is healthy (positive cognition) but disliking the effort (negative affect) = weaker, inconsistent attitude that may not predict behavior well.

Don't confuse: Attitude strength is not the same as attitude extremity—a strong attitude is one that is accessible and stable, not necessarily the most positive or negative.

🔗 When attitudes predict behavior

🔗 The principle of attitude consistency

Attitude consistency: for any given attitude object, the ABCs of affect, behavior, and cognition are normally in line with each other.

• This principle predicts that attitudes (e.g., measured via self-report) will guide behavior.
• Meta-analyses confirm a significant positive correlation between attitude components and between attitudes and behavior.
• However, attitudes are not the only factor influencing behavior.

📋 Theory of planned behavior

The theory identifies three variables that affect the attitude-behavior relationship:

1. Attitude toward the behavior: the stronger the attitude, the better.
2. Subjective norms: the support of people we value (social approval).
3. Perceived behavioral control: the extent to which we believe we can actually perform the behavior.

These three factors jointly predict behavioral intention, which in turn predicts actual behavior.

Example: Sharina has a positive attitude toward recycling batteries. If she also believes her family and friends support recycling (subjective norms) and has easy access to a recycling facility (perceived behavioral control), she will form a strong intention to recycle and likely follow through.

• The theory has been especially effective at predicting physical activity and dietary behaviors.

🎭 Situational match

Attitudes predict behavior better when the social situation in which the attitude is expressed matches the situation in which the behavior occurs.

Example: Magritte tells her parents she hates smoking (expressing attitude in one social context). But when she is out with friends who smoke (different social context with different norms), peer pressure may lead her to try smoking despite her negative attitude. The mismatch in social situations weakens the attitude-behavior link.

🧪 Component accessibility match

The attitude-behavior relationship is stronger when the same component (affect or cognition) is accessible at both attitude measurement and behavior performance.

Research example (Wilson & Schooler, 1991):

• Students tasted strawberry jams (an affectively driven attitude).
• Half were asked to think about cognitive reasons for their attitudes before rating the jams.
• Students who did not list reasons had attitudes that correlated better with expert ratings.
• Why? Liking jam is primarily affective; adding cognitive analysis introduced irrelevant information that weakened the validity of their judgments.

Research example (MacDonald et al., 1996):

• Male students watched a video of a date ending in a situation where unprotected sex was possible.
• All men said unprotected sex would be foolish (cognitive component).
• Men who had been drinking alcohol were more likely to say they would have unprotected sex anyway.
• Interpretation: Alcohol made the affective component ("sex is enjoyable") more accessible than the cognitive component ("I should use a condom"), weakening attitude-behavior consistency.

🎯 Specificity of measurement

Attitudes predict behavior better when measured at a level similar to the behavior.

• Specific questions predict specific behaviors better than general questions.
• Example: "Do you think you will use a condom the next time you have sex?" predicts condom use better than "Do you think it is important to use condoms?"
• Research (Davidson & Jaccard, 1979): Specific attitude measures about birth control were much better predictors of actual birth control use than general attitude measures.

👤 Individual differences: self-monitoring

High self-monitors: people who tend to adjust their behavior to fit the social situation in order to be liked. Low self-monitors: people less concerned with fitting in; more likely to act consistently with their own attitudes.

• Attitudes predict behavior more strongly for low self-monitors than for high self-monitors.
• Why? High self-monitors allow the social situation to override their attitudes, weakening the attitude-behavior relationship.

Example: If Magritte is a high self-monitor, she is more likely to try smoking to fit in with friends, even if her attitude toward smoking is negative. If she is a low self-monitor, she is more likely to refuse based on her own attitude.

📊 Summary of moderators

Attitudes predict behavior well under these conditions:

Factor	Condition for strong prediction
Social situation	Attitude expression and behavior occur in similar social contexts
Component match	Same component (affect or cognition) accessible at measurement and action
Measurement level	Attitude measured specifically, not generally
Individual differences	Person is a low self-monitor (less influenced by social pressure)
Attitude strength	Attitude is strong (accessible, stable, confident)
ABC alignment	Affect, behavior, and cognition are consistent

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Persuasion effectiveness depends on choosing the right communicators, crafting messages that match how audiences process information (spontaneously or thoughtfully), and understanding what makes people resistant to influence.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Communicator characteristics matter: attractive, similar, trustworthy, and expert sources are more persuasive because they help recipients feel good about themselves.
• Two processing routes: messages can be processed spontaneously (quick, emotional, peripheral cues) or thoughtfully (careful, cognitive elaboration of content).
• Match message to processing style: when audiences are motivated and able to think carefully, strong arguments work best; when they process spontaneously, emotional appeals and source characteristics dominate.
• Common confusion: spontaneous vs. thoughtful processing—the same message won't work equally well in both modes; advertisers must tailor their approach to expected audience engagement.
• Resistance strategies: forewarning and inoculation can strengthen attitudes and prevent persuasion, but too much pressure can backfire through psychological reactance.

🎤 What makes communicators effective

💎 Attractiveness and similarity

• Attractive communicators create positive associations with the product and put audiences in a good mood, making acceptance more likely.
• People are more persuaded by those similar to them in opinions and values than by those perceived as different.
• Example: advertisements for teenagers use teenage communicators; ads for elderly audiences use older spokespeople.
• This works through liking—we trust people we like and accept their messages more readily.

🤝 Trustworthiness

Trustworthy communicators are effective because they allow us to feel good about ourselves when we accept their message, often without critically evaluating its content.

• Celebrities and respected figures (the excerpt mentions Oprah Winfrey, Roger Federer, and Bono) serve as trustworthy communicators.
• Trustworthiness can be undermined when communicators appear to have external motives (e.g., paid endorsements, expert witnesses paid by lawyers).
• Don't confuse: a communicator arguing against their self-interest is seen as more trustworthy because internal conviction (genuine belief) becomes the obvious explanation.

🎓 Expertise

• Experts are persuasive because audiences assume they have knowledge about the product or topic.
• Expertise is communicated not just by credentials but also by presentation style: confident, quick, straightforward speech signals expertise.
• Faster speech increases persuasiveness both by signaling expertise and by reducing listeners' ability to generate counterarguments.
• Example: race car drivers sell cars; basketball players sell athletic shoes; doctors recommend drugs.

⏰ The sleeper effect

The sleeper effect: attitude change that occurs over time, particularly when we no longer discount the impact of a low-credibility communicator.

• Initially, messages from untrustworthy sources are correctly discounted and have little impact.
• Over time, people remember the message content but forget the source.
• Result: the message gains influence later because the discount is forgotten.
• Example: during election campaigns, attack ads may be dismissed at first, but later people remember the claims while forgetting the questionable source.

Time point	Source memory	Message memory	Attitude impact
Immediately after	Strong (discounted)	Strong	Low
Later	Weak (forgotten)	Strong	High

🧠 Two routes to persuasion

🎨 Spontaneous (peripheral) processing

Spontaneous message processing: we accept a persuasion attempt because we focus on whatever is most obvious or enjoyable, without much attention to the message itself.

• Occurs when people lack time, resources, or interest to process messages fully.
• Relies on peripheral cues: communicator likeability, attractiveness, music, or social proof (others liking the ad).
• The quality of the argument matters less than surface features.
• Example: students uninvolved in a topic were persuaded by a likeable communicator regardless of argument quality; involved students focused on argument strength instead.

🔬 Thoughtful (central) processing

Thoughtful message processing: careful cognitive elaboration of the message, considering how it relates to our own beliefs and goals, and questioning the validity of the communicator and message.

• Occurs when people care about the topic, find it relevant, and have time to think.
• Involves elaboration: listing pros and cons, questioning validity, generating thoughts about the message.
• People who generate more positive thoughts express more positive attitudes.
• Creates stronger, more lasting attitudes that resist counterpersuasion.
• Don't confuse: thoughtful processing requires both motivation and ability—complex messages may force even motivated audiences back to spontaneous processing.

🎯 Matching messages to processing routes

🎭 Emotional appeals for spontaneous processing

• Humor, beauty, and positive associations work through spontaneous processing.
• Emotional ads succeed by creating positive affect, which makes us like things more and process less carefully.
• Example: Super Bowl ads are effective because they're clever and funny—we watch, remember, and discuss them.
• Associational learning links positive features of the ad with the product.

😨 Fear appeals

• Fearful messages are generally persuasive because emotional aspects make them salient and memorable.
• Fear focuses attention on negative outcomes for a specific individual, making empathy easier than statistical base rates.
• Self-concern framing works better: "Not getting a mammogram can cost you your life" outperforms "Getting a mammogram can save your life."
• Limitation: fear can backfire by creating too much anxiety, especially without self-efficacy (knowing how to respond).
• Fear messages work best when accompanied by clear action steps and a sense of ability to change.

📊 When each route dominates

The excerpt describes research by Petty, Cacioppo, and Goldman (1981) manipulating:

• Message strength: strong arguments (data, statistics) vs. weak arguments (quotes, opinions)
• Source expertise: expert (Carnegie Commission) vs. nonexpert (high school class)
• Personal relevance: high (exam before graduation) vs. low (exam after graduation)

Findings:

Personal relevance	What influenced attitudes	Processing mode
High	Argument quality (not source expertise)	Thoughtful
Low	Source expertise (not argument quality)	Spontaneous

• When the issue mattered, students engaged thoughtfully with message content.
• When the issue was irrelevant, they used the expertise cue without analyzing the message.

🛡️ Resisting persuasion

💪 Building strong attitudes

• Strong attitudes are harder to change and more likely to guide behavior.
• Strategy: help people develop well-defined negative thoughts and feelings that integrate into the self-concept.
• Example: helping someone consider all reasons not to smoke and develop strong negative affect about smoking.

⚠️ Forewarning

Forewarning: giving people a chance to develop resistance to persuasion by reminding them they might receive a persuasive message and allowing them to practice how they will respond to influence attempts.

• Prepares defenses before the persuasion attempt arrives.
• Most effective when the expected message attacks an attitude we care about.
• Example: warning someone that peers will pressure them to smoke allows them to prepare counterarguments in advance.
• When we don't care much, forewarning may cause us to simply change our belief preemptively.

💉 Inoculation

Inoculation: building up defenses against persuasion by mildly attacking the attitude position.

• Like a flu shot: a weak dose of the "virus" (weak persuasive argument) helps resist stronger attacks later.
• Involves presenting weak reasons to adopt an undesired position, allowing the person to develop counterarguments.
• Example: telling someone the weak reasons friends might give for smoking ("everyone does it," "it looks cool") helps them prepare rebuttals for real attempts.
• Creates stronger attitudes more resistant to future persuasion.

⚡ Psychological reactance (the backfire risk)

Psychological reactance: the strong emotional response we experience when we feel our freedom of choice is being taken away when we expect that we should have choice.

• Occurs when someone with power over us pressures us too much.
• Can cause us to ignore the persuasion attempt or even do the opposite.
• Example: if parents are too directive about not smoking, a child may feel distrusted and rebel by becoming more likely to smoke.
• Graphic warning images on cigarette packs can create reactance, potentially reducing effectiveness.
• Don't confuse: resistance strategies (forewarning, inoculation) with heavy-handed pressure—the latter triggers reactance and backfires.

🔍 Subliminal advertising

🤔 Does it work?

• Subliminal advertising: presenting messages (brands, ads) without conscious awareness, such as flashing them quickly.
• Theoretically attractive because people cannot counterargue with messages they don't know they received.
• Legally banned in many countries (Australia, Great Britain, United States) due to concerns about manipulation.

📉 Mixed and weak evidence

Some supporting evidence:

• One study showed Dutch students exposed to "Lipton Ice" primes (too fast to see consciously) were more likely to say they'd drink it—but only if they were already thirsty.

Stronger contradictory evidence:

• A meta-analysis of 23 studies found subliminal advertising had negligible effect on consumer choice.
• Even if perceived, subliminal messages are usually overshadowed by prior experience, current situation, or more salient stimuli.
• Conclusion from researchers: "marketing should quit giving subliminal advertising the benefit of the doubt."

🎯 Other indirect techniques

• While subliminal advertising is weak, other indirect methods work better.
• Sexual connotations in car and alcohol ads create positive associations.
• Product placement in TV shows and movies integrates brands into entertainment.
• These techniques don't require subliminal presentation to be effective.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Our behaviors can shape and change our attitudes through self-perception and cognitive dissonance, often leading us to justify our actions by altering our beliefs to maintain psychological consistency.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Self-perception: We infer our own attitudes by observing our behavior, just as we infer others' attitudes from their actions.
• Insufficient vs. overjustification: Too little external reason for behavior leads us to internalize it; too much external reward can undermine intrinsic interest.
• Cognitive dissonance: Inconsistency between attitudes and behavior creates psychological discomfort that we reduce by changing attitudes, behavior, or adding justifications.
• Common confusion: Self-perception (inferring attitudes from behavior) vs. cognitive dissonance (reducing discomfort from inconsistency)—both explain attitude change but through different mechanisms.
• Cultural variation: Dissonance effects are stronger in individualistic cultures focused on self-concept, but also occur in collectivistic cultures when relationships are involved.

🔍 Self-perception theory

🪞 What self-perception means

Self-perception: Using our own behavior as a guide to help us determine our own thoughts and feelings.

• We observe our actions and infer what our attitudes must be, similar to how we judge others by their behavior.
• This happens especially when we're uncertain about our attitudes.
• Example: Joachim (the student) might look at his repeated club-going behavior and infer "I must really value music over studying."

🧒 The forbidden toy experiment

Setup: Children rated toys, then were told not to play with a desirable toy under either mild or harsh threat.

Key finding:

• Children given harsh threats still liked the forbidden toy (strong external reason for not playing).
• Children given mild threats rated the toy as less attractive afterward (weak external reason → internal attribution: "I don't like it").

Why this matters: When external justification is weak, people attribute their behavior to internal preferences, changing their attitudes accordingly.

🎯 Everyday examples

• Nodding your head up and down while reading arguments makes you agree more with them.
• Saying cartoons are funny makes you find them funnier.
• Drinking water quickly makes you realize you were thirsty.

Don't confuse: Self-perception is about inferring attitudes from behavior when attitudes are unclear, not about consciously deciding to change your mind.

⚖️ Insufficient and overjustification

📉 Insufficient justification

Insufficient justification: When the external threat or reward is actually sufficient to produce behavior, but insufficient for the person to conclude the situation caused it.

• The person incorrectly attributes behavior to internal reasons.
• Example: The child with mild threat thinks "I didn't play with it because I don't like it" (internal), not "because I was told not to" (external).

Implication: To change attitudes, use the minimum reward/punishment needed—just enough to produce behavior but not so much that it's obviously the cause.

📈 Overjustification

Overjustification: Viewing our behavior as caused by external situations, leading us to discount our own intrinsic interest.

The marker study:

• Children naturally enjoyed playing with markers.
• Some were told they'd receive a reward for playing (expected reward).
• Others received unexpected rewards or no rewards.
• Result: Children expecting rewards played less with markers later—the reward undermined intrinsic interest.

Condition	Later play behavior	Why
Expected reward	Played less	"I did it for the reward, not because I like it"
Unexpected reward	Played normally	No attribution to external cause
No reward	Played normally	Clear internal motivation

🎓 Practical implications

• Harsh punishments may stop behavior but won't change underlying attitudes.
• Large rewards may increase behavior but decrease genuine interest.
• Praise that feels internal (acknowledging competence) works better than obvious external bribes.
• Example: Paying kids for good grades may improve performance but reduce love of learning.

😰 Cognitive dissonance theory

💥 What dissonance is

Cognitive dissonance: The discomfort that occurs when we behave in ways that we see as inconsistent with our self-concept, such as when we fail to live up to our own expectations.

• Experienced as actual pain in the anterior cingulate cortex (brain region sensitive to pain).
• Creates pressure to restore consistency between attitudes and behavior.
• Example: Joachim feels dissonance because "I'm a hardworking student" conflicts with "I've been clubbing instead of studying and failed my exam."

🧪 The $1/$20 experiment

Setup: Students did a boring task, then were paid either $1 or $20 to lie to another student, saying the task was interesting.

Results:

• $20 group: Still rated task as boring (strong external justification for lying).
• $1 group: Rated task as more interesting (weak justification → changed attitude to reduce dissonance).

The mechanism:

• Dissonant cognitions: "I'm honest" + "I lied for only $1"
• Resolution: "The task must have been somewhat interesting after all"

🔧 Three ways to reduce dissonance

1. Change behavior: Start studying more (often difficult).
2. Reduce dissonant cognitions: "It was only one test; biology isn't that important anyway."
3. Add consonant cognitions: "I'm learning about music for my future career as a producer."

Don't confuse: Dissonance reduction with rational decision-making—we often rationalize rather than change behavior, protecting self-esteem at the cost of accuracy.

🌍 Dissonance in everyday life

🚬 Smoking and self-justification

• Failed quitters experience lowered self-esteem.
• Instead of accepting this, they add consonant cognitions:
  • "My grandmother smoked and lived to 93"
  • "I'll quit next year"
  • "Smoking relaxes me"
• Problem: Short-term comfort but long-term harm; prevents actual behavior change.

🎓 Initiation and commitment

The embarrassing initiation study:

• Women joined a discussion group about psychology of sex.
• Some underwent embarrassing initiation (reading obscene passages); others didn't.
• The discussion turned out to be boring.
• Result: Women with severe initiation rated the group as more interesting.

Why: Effort creates dissonance ("I went through all that for this?") → justify by valuing the outcome more ("It must be worthwhile").

Applications:

• Fraternity/sorority hazing increases commitment.
• Expensive purchases feel more valuable.
• Even filling out paperwork increases commitment to a purchase.

🚗 Postdecisional dissonance

Postdecisional dissonance: The feeling of regret that may occur after we make an important decision.

The appliance study:

• Women rated appliances, chose one as a gift.
• Later re-rated all appliances.
• Result: Increased rating of chosen item, decreased rating of rejected item.

Mechanism: After committing to a choice, we justify it by emphasizing positives of what we chose and negatives of what we rejected.

Example: After buying a large used car instead of a small new one, you focus on money saved (not gas costs) to reduce buyer's remorse.

⚠️ The dark side of dissonance reduction

• Cheating → "Everyone cheats" or "The test was unfair"
• Hurting someone → "They deserved it"
• Creates a cycle: behavior → justification → more behavior
• Prevents learning from mistakes
• Too many choices increase opportunities for regret

🛡️ Self-esteem and dissonance

🔗 The connection

The relationship: Discrepant behavior → lowered self-worth → attitude change

💪 Self-affirmation reduces dissonance

• Reminding yourself of positive qualities in other domains reduces need for attitude change.
• Example: After cheating, if you recall volunteering at a shelter, you feel less pressure to justify the cheating.
• Implication: Dissonance is fundamentally about protecting self-esteem.

🌏 Cultural differences

Canadian vs. Japanese study:

• Canadians showed more dissonance reduction when self-esteem was threatened.
• Japanese showed less dissonance overall (less motivated to maintain positive self-image).
• However: East Asians show dissonance when focused on relationships with others (collectivistic concerns).

Culture type	When dissonance is strongest	Example
Individualistic	Personal self-concept threatened	"I'm a good person but I lied"
Collectivistic	Relationship harmony threatened	"My friend made a bad choice that affects our group"

🎯 Beyond self-concept

• Dissonance can occur even without self-concept involvement.
• Example: Lying about liking a bad-tasting drink (even on a paper immediately thrown away) increased liking for the drink.
• Key point: Any inconsistency between thoughts and behaviors can create pressure for attitude change.

🛒 Sales tactics using these principles

🚪 Foot-in-the-door technique

Foot-in-the-door: A persuasion attempt in which we first get the target to accept a minor request, then ask for a larger request.

Example studies:

• Small "Be a safe driver" sticker → 80% agreed to large lawn sign (vs. 20% without small request first).
• Helping with computer question → more likely to complete 40-question survey.

Why it works: Small commitment creates self-perception ("I'm helpful in this domain") → consistency pressure for larger request.

Application: Restaurant reservations—ask "Will you call if you change your plans?" (get "yes") instead of just saying "Please call."

💰 Low-ball technique

How it works:

1. Salesperson offers attractive deal (low price on car).
2. Customer commits and imagines owning it.
3. Salesperson reveals the deal isn't actually available.
4. Customer more likely to accept higher price than if it had been offered first.

Example: Asked to watch a dog, then told it's for 30 minutes → higher compliance than if told 30 minutes upfront.

Why: Backing out on commitment threatens self-esteem, even if commitment was obtained unethically.

🎣 Bait-and-switch technique

Bait-and-switch: Advertising a product at a very low price, but the product is unavailable when you visit to buy it.

• You've already imagined owning the product (attitude becomes more positive).
• Giving it up feels costly.
• More likely to buy alternative higher-priced product.

Example: Car dealership advertises cheap car in newspaper, but it's "sold out" when you arrive.

🚪 Door-in-the-face technique

Different principle: Uses reciprocity norm (expectation to return favors), not commitment.

How it works:

1. Make unreasonably large request (notes for entire semester).
2. Request is declined.
3. Make smaller "compromise" request (notes from one class).
4. Higher compliance because person feels obligated to mirror your concession.

🎁 Pre-giving technique

Also uses reciprocity: Charity sends unsolicited gift → people feel obligated to donate in return.

📊 Summary of persuasion paths

Principle	Mechanism	Example tactic
Commitment & consistency	We honor commitments, especially public ones	Foot-in-the-door, low-ball, bait-and-switch
Reciprocity	We feel obligated to return favors	Door-in-the-face, pre-giving
Social proof	We follow what others do	Testimonials, popularity claims
Authority	We obey authority figures	Expert endorsements
Liking	We're persuaded by people we like	Attractive spokespersons
Scarcity	Limited availability increases value	"Only 3 left!"

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Understanding attitudes as an organizing principle helps explain how beliefs, feelings, and behaviors work together, how persuasion techniques operate, and how our own behavior shapes our attitudes through self-perception and cognitive dissonance.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Attitudes as organizing principle: they help us make sense of our environment and react quickly to people, groups, products, and other objects.
• Persuasion techniques in action: advertisers match communicator, message, and message recipient to create strong attitudes that drive behavior.
• Behavior influences attitudes: self-perception and cognitive dissonance are two distinct processes by which our actions shape what we believe and feel.
• Common confusion: distinguishing self-perception (observing our behavior to infer attitudes) from cognitive dissonance (negative emotions from inconsistency that we rationalize away).
• Real-world application: analyzing ads and personal behavior through these frameworks reveals how attitudes form, strengthen, and sometimes lead to long-term consequences.

🧩 Attitudes as an organizing framework

🧩 What attitudes do for us

Attitudes provide an organizing principle that helps us understand when and how our beliefs, feelings, and behaviors work together.

• Attitudes are not isolated mental states; they coordinate multiple aspects of our psychology.
• They help us make sense of our environment and react quickly to it.
• Example: An attitude toward a social group organizes what we believe about that group, how we feel about it, and how we behave toward its members.

🎯 Attitudes toward many objects

• The excerpt emphasizes attitudes apply to "people, social groups, products, and many other objects."
• This breadth shows attitudes are a general mechanism, not limited to one domain.
• They enable fast responses across diverse situations.

📢 Understanding persuasion techniques

📢 How advertisers create strong attitudes

• Persuasion works by matching three elements: the communicator, the message, and the message recipient.
• When these elements align well, they create very strong attitudes that make people likely to act.
• Example: The iPhone campaign targeted technologically savvy consumers with messages about email, calendar, social media, and music—features that resonated strongly with that audience.

🔄 Momentum through behavior

• Once people act on an attitude (e.g., buying an iPhone), their behavior can strengthen the attitude further.
• The excerpt suggests self-perception and cognitive dissonance both play roles in "making and keeping the momentum."
• Don't confuse: initial persuasion creates the attitude; subsequent behavior reinforces or intensifies it.

🛠️ Analyzing other ads

• The excerpt encourages applying these principles to other advertising campaigns.
• Key question: Were the ads effective in matching communicator, message, and recipient?
• This framework turns passive ad viewing into active analysis.

🔁 How behavior shapes attitudes

🪞 Self-perception process

• Self-perception: we observe our own behavior and infer our attitudes from it.
• Example: After using an iPhone regularly, a person might think, "I use this all the time, so I must really like it."
• This process does not involve negative emotions; it is a calm inference from behavior.

⚡ Cognitive dissonance process

• Cognitive dissonance: inconsistency between behavior and attitudes creates negative emotions (discomfort, tension).
• To relieve dissonance, we rationalize—we change our attitudes to match our behavior.
• Example: After buying an expensive product, a person might feel dissonance ("Did I waste money?") and then convince themselves it was a great choice.

🔍 Distinguishing the two mechanisms

Process	Emotional tone	Mechanism	Example scenario
Self-perception	Neutral	Observe behavior → infer attitude	"I do this often, so I must enjoy it."
Cognitive dissonance	Negative (discomfort)	Inconsistency → rationalization → attitude change	"I acted this way, so I must believe it (to reduce discomfort)."

• The excerpt asks: "Were the attitudes changed as a result of self-perception or cognitive dissonance?"
• Both can lead to attitude change, but the path and emotional experience differ.

⚠️ Long-term consequences of rationalization

⚠️ Dissonance relief may backfire

• The excerpt warns that "rationalizations that you make to relieve your dissonance might not always have such positive outcomes in the long term."
• Rationalization solves the immediate discomfort but may lock in attitudes or behaviors that are harmful over time.
• Example: Rationalizing a poor decision ("It wasn't that bad") might prevent learning or course correction.

🧠 Reflecting on your own behavior

• The excerpt encourages self-analysis: "Can you remember times when your behavior influenced your attitudes?"
• Key reflection questions:
  • Did you feel the negative emotions of dissonance?
  • What rationalizations did you make?
  • Were the long-term outcomes positive or negative?
• This meta-cognitive step helps apply social psychology to personal growth.

🎯 Practical application

🎯 Preventing unwanted persuasion

• Understanding persuasion techniques gives insight into "how to prevent that persuasion from occurring."
• Awareness of communicator-message-recipient matching can help you recognize when you are being targeted.
• Example: Noticing that an ad is designed specifically for your demographic can prompt critical evaluation rather than automatic acceptance.

🔬 Analyzing real campaigns

• The excerpt uses the iPhone as a case study: features (email, calendar, social media, music) matched the needs of technologically savvy consumers.
• Strong attitudes led to action (purchase), and subsequent use reinforced those attitudes through self-perception and dissonance reduction.
• This cycle explains "the remarkable success" of the product.

📝 Ongoing practice

• The excerpt encourages thinking about "some of the other ads that you have seen recently."
• Apply the principles of persuasion, self-perception, and cognitive dissonance as analytical tools.
• This turns everyday media consumption into an opportunity for psychological insight.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Attitudes—our positive or negative evaluations based on affect, behavior, and cognition—guide our reactions to the environment and can be changed through persuasion or shaped by our own behavior through self-perception.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What attitudes are: positive or negative evaluations of objects, built from affect (feelings), behavior (actions), and cognition (thoughts).
• Attitude consistency: the ABC components normally line up or match, so attitudes typically predict behavior.
• How persuasion works: communicators, messages, and recipients must match; processing can be spontaneous (emotional) or thoughtful (deliberate).
• Common confusion: persuasion is not one-way—people can resist through forewarning and inoculation, and attempts may backfire as reactance.
• Self-perception mechanism: we sometimes infer our own attitudes by observing our own behavior, not the other way around.

🧩 Core concept: What attitudes are

🧩 Definition and structure

Attitudes are our positive or negative evaluations of an attitude object.

• Built on the ABCs:
  • Affect: feelings/emotions toward the object
  • Behavior: actions related to the object
  • Cognition: thoughts/beliefs about the object
• Not all attitudes are equally important; some are more useful in daily life.

💪 Attitude strength

Attitude strength: the importance of an attitude, assessed by how quickly it comes to mind.

• Stronger attitudes have more impact on daily behavior.
• The excerpt emphasizes that more important attitudes are "more useful to us."

🔗 Attitude consistency and prediction

🔗 How the ABCs align

• The affective, behavioral, and cognitive components normally line up or match.
• This alignment is called attitude consistency.
• Because of this consistency, attitudes (measured by self-report) normally predict behavior.
• Example: if you feel positively (affect), act favorably (behavior), and think well (cognition) of an object, your overall attitude will be positive and guide future actions.

⚠️ Don't confuse

• Consistency does not mean attitudes are fixed; it means the three components tend to align at any given time.
• The excerpt later shows that behavior can also shape attitudes (self-perception), not just reflect them.

🎯 How persuasion works

🎯 Three key elements

Persuasion requires matching:

1. Communicator: who delivers the message
2. Message: the content and how it is framed
3. Message recipient: the audience and their characteristics

🗣️ Effective communicators

Persuasion is greater when the communicator:

• Is attractive, trustworthy, and expert
• Presents messages confidently and fairly
• Does not appear to be influenced by situational forces (i.e., seems sincere, not coerced)
• Appeals to the recipient's self-interest

Example: An expert who speaks confidently and seems unbiased will be more persuasive than someone who appears to have a hidden agenda.

📨 Two processing routes

Processing type	When it happens	How it works
Spontaneous/emotional	Quick, automatic reactions	Positive or negative affect makes the message more salient and grabs attention
Thoughtful/deliberate	When willing and able to think deeply	More likely when the message is personally relevant and the recipient has ability and motivation

• The excerpt notes that both routes can be effective, depending on the situation.
• Thoughtful processing occurs when the information helps us "meet underlying goals"—for instance, when the message is personally relevant.

🛡️ Resisting persuasion

🛡️ Forewarning

• Reminding people that a persuasive message will be coming.
• Gives recipients time to prepare mental defenses.

💉 Inoculation

• Having people practice how they will respond to influence attempts.
• Like a vaccine: exposure to weak arguments helps build resistance to stronger ones later.

⚡ Reactance

Reactance: a negative reaction to persuasion attempts that makes them ineffective.

• Persuasion attempts may sometimes backfire.
• When people feel their freedom is threatened, they may resist or do the opposite.
• Don't confuse: reactance is not the same as thoughtful rejection; it is an emotional pushback.

🔄 Self-perception: behavior shapes attitudes

🔄 The mechanism

Self-perception occurs when individuals use their own behavior to help them determine their attitudes toward an attitude object.

• We may observe our own behavior and infer what our attitudes must be.
• The assumption: "My thoughts and feelings should be consistent with my actions."
• This reverses the usual direction: instead of attitude → behavior, it is behavior → attitude.

📱 Example from the excerpt

The iPhone case illustrates self-perception:

• People bought iPhones and started using them.
• "Once people bought and started to use their iPhones, their perceptions of their own behavior drove their attitudes to be even more positive."
• The act of using the product reinforced and strengthened positive attitudes.

🔀 Self-perception vs cognitive dissonance

The excerpt mentions both processes but does not fully explain cognitive dissonance here. Key distinction:

• Self-perception: inferring attitudes from behavior when prior attitudes are weak or ambiguous.
• Cognitive dissonance (mentioned briefly): involves "negative emotions" and "rationalizations" to relieve discomfort when behavior conflicts with existing attitudes.
• Don't confuse: self-perception is a neutral inference process; dissonance involves discomfort and motivated reasoning.

🧠 Practical applications

🧠 Understanding advertising

The excerpt encourages analyzing ads through these principles:

• Did the ad match communicator, message, and recipient?
• Which processing route (spontaneous or thoughtful) did it target?
• Example: The iPhone campaign created "very strong attitudes" in technologically savvy consumers by appealing to self-interest (e-mail, calendar, social media, music) and using effective messaging.

🪞 Analyzing your own behavior

Reflection prompts from the excerpt:

• Can you remember times when your behavior influenced your attitudes?
• Were attitudes changed by self-perception or cognitive dissonance?
• Did you feel negative emotions (dissonance)?
• Do your rationalizations to relieve dissonance always have positive long-term outcomes?

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

People form impressions of others quickly and often accurately through minimal information, relying heavily on nonverbal cues, trait integration, and cognitive shortcuts that prioritize negative information and first impressions.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Thin slices work: We can form surprisingly accurate judgments about others from very brief observations (even seconds or milliseconds), though we're often unaware of how we do this.
• Nonverbal behavior matters more than we think: Facial expressions, body language, tone, and interpersonal distance communicate status, liking, and intent—and are harder to control than words.
• Negative information dominates: Threatening or negative traits grab attention faster, weigh more heavily in judgments, and are processed more intensely by the brain than positive information.
• Common confusion—adding vs. averaging traits: We typically average trait information rather than add it, meaning moderate positive traits can dilute strong positive impressions rather than enhance them.
• First impressions stick (primacy effect): Early information shapes our overall perception and colors how we interpret later information, making it hard to change initial judgments.

🧠 How person perception works

🧠 What person perception is

Person perception: the process of learning about other people.

• Our brains are designed to judge others efficiently—it's a survival skill.
• Unlike perceiving objects (one-way), perceiving people is two-way: they're also forming impressions of us and may try to hide their true nature.
• Infants prefer faces over other visual patterns; adults can identify and remember unlimited numbers of people.
• Specific brain areas (prefrontal cortex) activate more when thinking about people versus animals.

⚡ The "thin slices" phenomenon

Research shows we can make accurate judgments from extremely brief exposures:

• 30-second teacher evaluations: Students watching 30 seconds of silent video clips of teachers made ratings that correlated highly with end-of-semester evaluations from actual students.
• Even faster: Judgments made in one-tenth of a second correlated with judgments made after several minutes.
• Real consequences: Competence judgments from one-second face exposures predicted actual election outcomes 68% of the time.
• Wide range: People accurately judged sexual orientation, political affiliation, and personality traits from brief exposures.

Important caveat: These studies involved people not trying to hide their characteristics. Strategic self-presentation complicates the process.

🤷 We don't know how we do it

• Participants making accurate thin-slice judgments claimed they were "just guessing."
• They couldn't articulate how they made their judgments.
• Their confidence in their accuracy didn't correlate with actual accuracy.
• This suggests the process happens without conscious awareness.

🎭 Nonverbal behavior as communication

🎭 What counts as nonverbal

Nonverbal behavior: any type of communication that does not involve speaking, including facial expressions, body language, touching, voice patterns, and interpersonal distance.

Components include:

• Facial expressions
• Body posture and movement
• Tone of voice and pitch
• Eye gaze and contact
• Hand gestures
• Physical distance between people
• Touch

🌍 Cultural variation in nonverbal norms

Different cultures have different rules:

Aspect	Warmer climates (near equator)	Colder climates (near poles)
Expressiveness	More animated, talk with hands	Less expressive
Touch	More touching during conversation	Less touching
Personal space	Closer (e.g., South America)	More distance (e.g., US, Western Europe)
Eye contact	Direct gaze appropriate (Latin America)	Often avoided (Japan)

🎯 What nonverbal behavior reveals

Nonverbal cues primarily communicate two things:

1. Self-concern: Our own status or dominance
2. Other-concern: Our interest in or liking of another person

Example: Someone smiling, making eye contact, and leaning toward you → they like you. Someone frowning, touching inappropriately, or moving away → they don't like you.

🔍 Why nonverbal matters more than verbal

• People frequently say one thing and do another.
• Nonverbal behavior is harder to control than words.
• When verbal and nonverbal messages conflict, we rely more on nonverbal cues.
• Example: Trying to hide anger by staying silent, but your facial expression gives you away.

📱 Nonverbal in digital communication

• Accurate communication is difficult without nonverbal cues.
• Sarcasm in email or text can be misinterpreted.
• We've adapted by creating emoticons to add nonverbal information to electronic messages.

🚶 Body movement reveals emotion

• Point-light displays (small lights at joints in dark rooms) show people can accurately recognize behavior and emotion from minimal body movement cues.
• Walking speed communicates emotion: faster walking → perceived as happier and more powerful.
• Tone of voice alone (even in degraded, incomprehensible speech) reveals personality.
• Don't confuse: Faces are actually less revealing than bodies because people can control facial expressions more easily than body movements.

⚠️ The power of negative information

⚠️ Why negative dominates positive

Evolutionary explanation: Detecting threats is critical for survival—we need to distinguish "good guys" from "bad guys."

🧪 Evidence for negativity bias

Multiple studies demonstrate negative information's dominance:

Angry face detection:

• People faster at spotting one angry face among eight happy faces than one happy face among eight angry faces.
• Fewer errors when detecting angry faces.
• Angry faces "pop out" from crowds.

Brain responses:

• Different brain areas react to positive versus negative images.
• Response to negative images is greater overall.
• Conclusion: "Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain."

General pattern:

• Negative information elicits more physiological arousal.
• Draws greater attention.
• Exerts greater impact on judgments.
• People better at recognizing angry faces than neutral ones.
• People faster and more accurate at recognizing negative words than positive words.

🎯 Practical implications

• We generally rate strangers positively (most people aren't dangerous).
• Because we expect positivity, negative or threatening people are salient and easy to spot.
• This bias helps us quickly identify potential threats in our environment.

🕵️ Detecting deception

🕵️ How good are we at catching lies?

The disappointing answer: Not very good, and experts aren't much better.

Meta-analysis of over 200 studies with nearly 25,000 people:

• Average accuracy: 54% (chance = 50%)
• Better than chance, but not by much.
• Experts no better: Police officers, detectives, judges, interrogators, customs officials, mental health professionals, polygraph examiners, federal agents, and auditors showed no significant advantage over non-experts.

🤔 Why is deception so hard to detect?

Four main reasons:

1. We don't expect to be lied to

   • Most people are honest.
   • We give others the benefit of the doubt.
   • We expect more deception on videotape than in face-to-face interactions.

2. People are good liars

   • Cues that liars give off are faint.
   • Especially when lies are about unimportant matters.
   • Easier to detect lies about important matters (e.g., sexual transgressions).

3. We're overconfident

   • We think we're better at detecting lies than we actually are.
   • This overconfidence prevents us from working harder to uncover truth.

4. We focus on the wrong cues

   • Common belief: liars avert gaze or smile wrong amounts.
   • Reality: Faces are easier to control than other body parts.
   • People better at detecting true emotions from bodies (without faces) than from faces (without bodies).
   • Liars often use false smiles that look very similar to genuine happy smiles.

📊 Actual reliable cues to deception

Compared with truth tellers, liars:

• Make more negative statements overall
• Appear more tense
• Provide fewer details in stories
• Give accounts that are more indirect and less personal
• Take longer to respond to questions
• Exhibit more silent pauses (when unable to prepare)
• Give briefer responses
• Speak in higher pitch

🔬 New technological approaches

Recent advances attempt to improve detection:

• Software analyzing language patterns
• Software analyzing facial microexpressions
• Neuroimaging techniques

Status: Whether these will be successful remains to be seen.

🧩 Judging people by traits

🧩 Why traits matter

Traits are the basic language by which we understand and communicate about people.

• Over 18,000 trait terms exist in English.
• When describing others, we use traits: "fun," "creative," "quiet," "serious," "controlling."
• Traits are the primary way we make sense of personality.

➕ How we combine trait information

The mathematical approach: People integrate traits by assigning values and then combining them.

Example scenario: Describing two friends to someone who might date one:

• Amir: smart (+5), serious (+1), kind (+4), sad (−4)
• Connor: fun (+3), happy (+2), selfish (−4), inconsiderate (−5)

Two possible methods:

1. Adding: Sum all trait values
2. Averaging: Calculate mean of trait values

In the example above, both methods favor Amir (sum: +6 vs. −4; average: +1.5 vs. −1.0).

📉 Averaging wins over adding

Critical finding: Judgments are better predicted by mental averaging than mental adding.

Practical implication: When trying to make someone like another person:

• Say the most positive things you know.
• Leave out moderate (though still positive) information.
• Moderate information tends to dilute rather than enhance extreme positive information.

Example: If you add "careful" and "helpful" (moderately positive) to an already very positive impression of Amir, the average becomes less positive, even though you added positive traits.

Don't confuse: More information isn't always better—moderate positives can weaken strong positives through averaging.

🌡️ Central traits: Warm and Cold

🌡️ Not all traits are equal

Some traits carry disproportionate weight in impression formation.

The classic demonstration (Asch, 1946): Two descriptions differing by only one word:

• Brad: industrious, critical, warm, practical, determined
• Phil: industrious, critical, cold, practical, determined

Result: "Warm" person perceived very positively; "cold" person perceived very negatively.

🎓 Real behavioral consequences (Kelley, 1950)

Students read about a professor described as either "rather cold" or "very warm," then met him for a 20-minute discussion:

Outcome	"Warm" condition	"Cold" condition
Participation	More likely to participate	Less participation
Ratings	More humorous, sociable, popular, better natured	Lower on all dimensions

Note: The professor behaved identically in both conditions.

🧊 Physical temperature effects

The warm-cold dimension appears wired into bodily responses:

• Holding hot versus iced coffee affects judgments of others.
• Making judgments in warm versus cold rooms influences perceptions.
• People judge others more positively in warm conditions.

🎯 Why warm-cold is so powerful

Central traits: characteristics that have a very strong influence on our impressions of others.

Two mechanisms:

1. Inference generation: "Warm" leads us to assume other positive traits (e.g., "nice," "funny") not explicitly mentioned.

2. Meaning transformation: "Warm" and "intelligent" together creates a different impression than "cold" and "intelligent"—the central trait colors the meaning of surrounding traits.

Practical advice: To get someone to like you, act warm toward them—be friendly, nice, and interested in what they say. This will be more powerful than any other characteristics you display.

💼 Applications beyond first meetings

The importance of warmth confirmed across contexts:

• Psychotherapy: Therapist warmth, empathy, and genuineness are the three most important traits for establishing trust and producing positive change.

⏰ First impressions and the primacy effect

⏰ What the primacy effect is

Primacy effect: the tendency for information that we learn first to be weighted more heavily than information that we learn later.

Classic demonstration (Asch, 1946): Two groups saw identical traits in reverse order:

• Group 1: Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious
• Group 2: Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, intelligent

Result: Group 1 (positive traits first) formed much more favorable impressions than Group 2 (negative traits first).

📺 Primacy in performance judgments

Study with intelligence test videos (Jones, 1968):

• Same woman, same number of correct answers.
• Condition 1: Most correct answers at beginning, more wrong near end.
• Condition 2: Same total correct, but more correct at end.

Result: Woman perceived as more intelligent when correct answers came first.

🗳️ Real-world consequences

Election outcomes:

• New York City elections: Candidate listed first on ballot won over 70% of the time.
• Laboratory studies: Similar effects for candidate preferences.

Competition judging:

• Eurovision Song Contest and ice skating: Higher marks given to competitors who performed last.
• This is a recency effect (later information weighted more), which is much less common than primacy effects.

🧠 Why primacy effects occur

Cognitive miser explanation:

• We want to conserve mental energy.
• Pay more attention to information that comes first.
• Attend less to information that comes later.
• Evidence: Reading time decreases with each new piece of information about a person.
• Primacy effects stronger when we're tired or distracted.

Schema formation explanation:

• Early traits form an initial expectancy (schema).
• Once formed, schemas are difficult to change (assimilation over accommodation).
• Example: Learning someone is "intelligent" and "industrious" creates positive expectancy.
• Later negative information is assimilated into existing positive schema.
• Negative traits don't seem as bad when they come after positive first impression.

🌟 The halo effect

Halo effect: the influence of a global positive evaluation of a person on perceptions of their specific traits.

• If we get an initially positive general impression, we see specific traits more positively.
• Demonstrated in job interviewing (Bingham & Moore, 1931).
• Demonstrated in students' evaluations of professors (Keeley et al., 2013).

Connection to primacy: The halo effect is partly explained by primacy—positive information first creates a positive general impression that colors perception of all subsequent specific traits.

💡 Strategic application

To make a good impression:

• Begin with your positive characteristics.
• Bring up negatives only later.
• This creates a much better outcome than starting with negatives.
• The primacy effect will work in your favor.

🔑 Key takeaways for practice

🔑 What we've learned

1. Speed and accuracy coexist: We form impressions quickly, and they're often surprisingly accurate (though not always).

2. Nonverbal trumps verbal: When messages conflict, we rely more on nonverbal behavior because it's harder to fake.

3. Negativity has power: One negative trait can outweigh multiple positive traits; threatening information captures attention automatically.

4. We're poor lie detectors: Despite confidence, most people (including experts) are only slightly better than chance at detecting deception.

5. Trait combination follows averaging: Adding moderate positive information can actually dilute strong positive impressions.

6. Warmth is king: The warm-cold dimension has outsized influence on all other judgments.

7. Order matters enormously: First impressions create schemas that are hard to change; positive-first sequences create better overall impressions than negative-first sequences.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Causal attribution is the process by which we determine whether someone's behavior reflects their personality or the situation they are in, using cues like how unusual the behavior is, whether the person had a choice, and patterns of consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus across situations.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What causal attribution is: the process of determining whether behavior is caused by the person (personal/internal attribution) or by the situation (situational/external attribution).
• When personal attributions are easier: when behavior is unusual or unexpected in that situation, or when the person clearly chose to act that way.
• The covariation principle: we use three types of information—consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus—to infer whether behavior is caused by the person or the situation.
• Common confusion: behavior that matches situational expectations is harder to attribute to personality; we cannot assume someone is friendly just because they act friendly in a situation that demands friendliness.
• Attributions for success and failure: Weiner's model distinguishes causes by locus (personal vs. situational) and stability (stable vs. unstable over time).

🎭 The core challenge: person or situation?

🎭 Why attribution is necessary

Causal attribution: the process of trying to determine the causes of people's behavior.

• We cannot directly observe personality traits; we must infer them from behavior.
• Behavior is influenced by both the person and the situation.
• Example: if someone hits another person, is it because they are aggressive (personal) or because they were provoked (situational)?
• The challenge is to figure out which cause—person or situation—was more important.

🔀 Two types of attribution

Type	Definition	Example
Personal (internal/dispositional)	Behavior caused primarily by the person	"They broke up because Sarah was not committed."
Situational (external)	Behavior caused primarily by the situation	"They broke up because of financial stress."

• Sometimes we attribute behavior to both causes together.
• The excerpt emphasizes that making an attribution is like conducting an experiment: observe behavior in different situations, then draw conclusions.

🔍 When personal attributions are easier

🔍 Unusual or unexpected behavior

• Key principle: It is easier to make a personal attribution when behavior is unusual or unexpected in that particular situation.
• Why: if the situation would normally produce different behavior, the person's actual behavior must reflect their personality.
• Example: at a party, shaking hands and saying "Nice to meet you" is expected, so you cannot easily infer friendliness. But if someone ignores you and walks away, that is unexpected, so you can more confidently infer unfriendliness.

🧪 The Jones et al. (1961) experiment

• Setup: participants watched a man interviewing for a job (submariner or astronaut).
  • Submariner job required an extroverted personality.
  • Astronaut job required an introverted personality.
• Manipulation: the interviewee said he was either extroverted or introverted.
• Result: participants believed the interviewee's statements more when they were opposite to what the job required.
  • When the applicant said the unexpected thing (e.g., "I'm introverted" for a submariner job), participants thought he was telling the truth about his personality.
  • When the applicant said what was expected, participants were less sure—maybe he was just trying to get the job.
• Don't confuse: behavior that matches situational demands is harder to attribute to personality; unexpected behavior is more revealing.

🎯 Choice increases personal attribution

• We make stronger personal attributions when we know the person chose to behave that way.
• Example: if a man gives his wallet to someone holding a gun, you would not infer generosity—he had no choice.
• Jones and Harris (1967) study: students read essays written by other students.
  • When participants thought the writer chose the topic, they made stronger personal attributions (believed the writer truly held those views).
  • When participants thought the topic was assigned, personal attributions were weaker.

💡 Strategic use of attribution

• People can manipulate attributions to seem more believable.
• Example: a politician giving a speech to an audience that disagrees with her will seem more committed to her beliefs than if she spoke to a supportive audience.
• Why: if there is an obvious situational reason (supportive audience), the personal attribution is harder to make.

📊 The covariation principle

📊 What the covariation principle is

The covariation principle: a given behavior is more likely to have been caused by the situation if that behavior covaries (or changes) across situations.

• When we observe someone's behavior in multiple situations, we can look for patterns.
• We assess the relationship between the person's behavior and the social context.
• The goal is to determine whether the behavior is caused by the person or the situation.

🔢 Three types of covariation information

🔢 Consistency information

Consistency information: a situation seems to be the cause of a behavior if the situation always produces the behavior in the target.

• Does the person always behave this way in this situation?
• Example: if you always cry at weddings, then weddings seem to cause your crying.

🔢 Distinctiveness information

Distinctiveness information: a situation seems to be the cause of a behavior if the behavior occurs when the situation is present but not when it is not present.

• Does the behavior occur only in this situation and not in others?
• Example: if you only cry at weddings but not at other times, then weddings seem to cause your crying.

🔢 Consensus information

Consensus information: a situation seems to be the cause of a behavior if the situation creates the same behavior in most people.

• Do other people behave the same way in this situation?
• Example: if many people cry at weddings, then weddings seem to cause crying.

🧩 How to use covariation information

• External attribution (to the situation) is more likely when:
  • Consistency is high (the person always behaves this way in this situation).
  • Distinctiveness is high (the person behaves this way only in this situation).
  • Consensus is high (other people also behave this way in this situation).
• Internal attribution (to the person) is more likely when:
  • Consistency is high (the person always behaves this way in this situation).
  • Distinctiveness is low (the person behaves this way in many situations).
  • Consensus is low (other people do not behave this way in this situation).

🎬 Example: Jane ignores Ravi at a party

• You observe Jane completely ignoring Ravi at a party, even though she came with him.
• Consistency: Does Jane always treat Ravi this way? If yes, consistency is high.
• Distinctiveness: Does Jane ignore other men she dates, or only Ravi? If only Ravi, distinctiveness is high.
• Consensus: Do other people also tend to ignore Ravi? If yes, consensus is high.
• If consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus are all high, you would make a situational attribution (something about Ravi causes this behavior).

🎥 Example: Your friend loves a movie

• Your friend says a movie is the greatest he's ever seen.
• Consensus: Do other people also love this movie? If yes, consensus is high.
• Distinctiveness: Does your friend love every movie, or only this one? If only this one, distinctiveness is high.
• Consistency: Does your friend always love this movie every time he sees it? If yes, consistency is high.
• If consensus and distinctiveness are high, you would make a situational attribution (the movie is genuinely great).

⚠️ Limitations in naturalistic contexts

• The covariation principle has been supported in studies using vignettes about strangers.
• In real life, other factors also matter:
  • Our relationship to the person (we make more favorable attributions for friends).
  • Our prior beliefs and schemas (we interpret behavior in line with what we already expect).

🏆 Attributions for success and failure

🏆 Weiner's model

• Bernard Weiner studied how we determine the causes of success or failure.
• Why this matters: understanding why we succeeded or failed helps us know what to work on.
• Weiner proposed that we attribute success or failure to either personal or situational causes, and that these causes can be either stable or unstable over time.

🗂️ Four types of causes

Cause	Locus	Stability	Example
Ability	Personal	Stable	"I did well because I'm smart."
Motivation	Personal	Unstable	"I did well because I studied hard."
Task difficulty	Situational	Stable	"I did well because the test was easy."
Luck	Situational	Unstable	"I did well because I guessed correctly."

🧠 Ability

Ability: a personal and stable attribution.

• Caused by the person (you are smart).
• Stable over time (you are smart today and will be smart in the future).

💪 Motivation

Motivation: a personal and unstable attribution.

• Caused by the person (you studied hard).
• Unstable over time (you might not study as hard next time).

📝 Task difficulty

Task difficulty: a situational and stable attribution.

• Caused by the situation (the test was easy).
• Stable over time (the next test will probably also be easy).

🎲 Luck

Luck: a situational and unstable attribution.

• Caused by the situation (you guessed correctly).
• Unstable over time (you might not be lucky next time).

⚖️ Limitations of Weiner's model

• The four types of causes do not always fit perfectly.
• Example: task difficulty may sometimes change over time, making it somewhat unstable.
• However, the model generally captures the types of attributions people make for success and failure.

🎯 Key questions about accuracy

🎯 The accuracy challenge

• The excerpt raises an important question: how accurately do we attribute the causes of behavior?
• It is one thing to believe someone shouted because they are aggressive, but another to prove that the situation (or our own behavior) was not the more important cause.
• This question sets up further exploration of attribution errors and biases (not covered in this excerpt).

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Although people are reasonably accurate in making attributions, systematic biases—such as overemphasizing personal factors, protecting self-esteem, and blaming victims—distort our judgments about the causes of behavior in predictable ways.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Fundamental attribution error: We overestimate personal causes and underestimate situational causes when explaining others' behavior.
• Actor-observer bias: We attribute our own behavior more to situations but others' behavior more to their personality.
• Self-serving and group-serving biases: We credit ourselves and our ingroups for successes but blame external factors or outgroups for failures.
• Common confusion: The fundamental attribution error vs. correspondence bias—both involve overweighting internal causes, but correspondence bias specifically occurs even when situations are heavily constrained.
• Victim-blaming biases: Beliefs in a just world and defensive attributions lead us to blame victims for their misfortunes, reinforcing social inequalities.

🎯 The fundamental attribution error

🎯 What it is and how it works

Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to overestimate the role of personal factors and overlook the impact of situations when explaining others' behavior.

• We are too quick to attribute others' behavior to their personality rather than their situation.
• This bias occurs in two ways:
  • We make strong personal attributions about others' behavior ("Cejay is generous").
  • We make more personal attributions about others than about ourselves.
• Closely related: Correspondence bias occurs when we attribute behaviors to internal characteristics even in heavily constrained situations.

🧪 The quizmaster study

A classic demonstration by Skitka and colleagues (2002):

• Setup: A professor randomly assigned students to be either quizmaster or contestant (by drawing straws).
• The quizmaster created five difficult questions from his own knowledge.
• The contestant answered only one of five correctly.
• Result: Observers rated the quizmaster as significantly more intelligent than the contestant.
• The error: Observers ignored the situational advantage (the quizmaster chose questions he knew) and attributed the outcome to personal intelligence differences.

Example: The quizmaster's superior performance was entirely due to the situation (he controlled the questions), but observers mistakenly concluded it reflected his personality.

🌍 Cultural differences

• Western cultures (U.S., Canada, Australia): More individualistic; focus attributions on the individual person.
• East Asian cultures (Japan, China, Korea, India): More collectivistic; focus attributions on relationships and situations.
• Research findings:
  • Older American children and adults made more personal attributions than Indians for the same negative behaviors (Miller, 1984).
  • Japanese students remembered more background context in images, while Americans focused on salient objects (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001).
  • Bicultural students primed with American symbols made more personal attributions; those primed with Chinese symbols made more situational attributions (Morris et al., 2000).

Don't confuse: Cultural differences are about emphasis, not absolutes—collectivistic cultures show the fundamental attribution error less often, especially when situational causes are salient, but they still make personal attributions.

🧠 Why this error happens

Three cognitive reasons:

1. Salience: Other people are visually prominent in our environment, so we focus on them rather than the situation; we don't "see" ourselves when acting, so we notice the situation more.
2. Cognitive ease: Personal attributions are easier and more spontaneous than situational attributions; processing all situational factors is cognitively demanding.
3. Sequential processing: We must first identify a behavior as a certain type (e.g., "generous") before adjusting for situational factors; the adjustment often doesn't happen or is insufficient, especially when we are tired, distracted, or busy.

⚠️ Important implication

General message: We should not be too quick to judge other people.

• It is easy to think poor people are lazy, harmful people are mean, or harsh speakers are rude.
• These attributions may overemphasize the person and underemphasize the situation.
• This can lead to blaming the victim for events they cannot control.
• Reminder: "Everyone we meet is fighting a battle we know nothing about."

🎭 The actor-observer bias

🎭 What it is

Actor-observer bias (or difference): The tendency to make more personal attributions for others' behavior than for our own, and more situational attributions for our own behavior than for others'.

• When explaining others: "Sarah is really shy" (trait attribution).
• When explaining ourselves: "I'm shy at work, but not with close friends" (situational attribution).
• When a friend helps, we think they are friendly; when we help, we recognize multiple situational reasons.

📊 Evidence from research

Nisbett and colleagues (1973) had students describe themselves, their best friend, their father, and Walter Cronkite using trait terms or "depends on the situation":

Person	Trait terms (avg. out of 20)	"Depends on situation" (avg.)
Self	11.92	8.08
Best friend	14.21	5.79
Father	13.42	6.58
Walter Cronkite	15.08	4.92

• Participants checked "depends on the situation" significantly more for themselves than for others.
• They used trait terms more for others than for themselves.

🔍 Why this bias occurs

• Greater access to our own past: We remember many situations where we behaved differently, so we see our behavior as variable; we have limited memory of others' behavior across situations.
• Trait ascription bias: We view our own personality and behavior as more variable than others'; we caricature others as "types of people" but see ourselves as nuanced and flexible.
• Same cognitive reasons as fundamental attribution error: Salience, ease, and sequential processing all favor personal attributions for others.

Don't confuse: The actor-observer bias is related to but distinct from the fundamental attribution error—the former compares self vs. other attributions; the latter focuses on overweighting personal factors for others in general.

🏆 Self-serving biases

🏆 What they are

Self-serving attributions: Attributions that help us meet our desire to see ourselves positively.

Self-serving bias: The tendency to attribute our successes to ourselves (internal) and our failures to others and the situation (external).

• These biases distort attributions to make us feel better about ourselves.
• They are not rational or scientific; they are motivated by self-enhancement.

📚 Examples

• A teacher whose students do well: "I am a great teacher!" (internal attribution for success).
• The same teacher whose students do poorly: "Why didn't you all study harder?" (external attribution for failure).
• Blaming another driver for an accident you were in, or blaming your partner for a breakup.

Interesting note: We do not show this bias as strongly when making attributions about others' successes and failures.

😠 Perpetrator vs. victim accounts

Research by Baumeister, Stillwell, and Wotman (1990) analyzed accounts of anger-causing incidents:

Role	Attributions made
As perpetrator	Emphasized situational factors; described behavior as isolated, meaningful response; asserted no lasting harm
As victim	Focused on perpetrator's character defects; described behavior as arbitrary, senseless, part of ongoing abuse; emphasized lasting harm

• These differences are dramatic and have implications for conflict resolution.
• They remind us to extend the same understanding to others that we give ourselves.

🌏 Cultural and motivational factors

• Self-serving bias is less apparent in collectivistic cultures than individualistic cultures (less self-enhancement emphasis).
• Responsibility matters: We are not just interested in causality but also in assigning blame.
  • Internal attribution = more blame; external attribution = less blame.
  • External attributions for failure may partly reflect wanting to avoid blame.

👥 Group-serving biases

👥 What they are

Group-serving bias (ultimate attribution error): A tendency to make internal attributions about our ingroups' successes and external attributions about their setbacks, and to make the opposite pattern for our outgroups.

• When our sports team makes illegal challenges: "They were provoked" (external).
• When the opposing team does the same: "They have bad character" (internal).
• In violent confrontations, the same actions are attributed to different causes depending on who is making the attribution.

🔬 Cross-cultural evidence

Morris and Peng (1994) compared reactions to two mass killings:

• Gang Lu (Chinese perpetrator): American participants made more internal attributions; Chinese participants made more external attributions.
• Thomas McIllvane (American perpetrator): American participants made more situational attributions than for Lu; Chinese participants made equally situational attributions for both.
• Finding: Americans showed group-serving bias; Chinese did not.

Why the difference? Collectivistic cultures emphasize self-enhancement less, so group-serving attributions (which enhance the ingroup) are less common.

🧩 The group attribution error

Group attribution error: A tendency to make attributional generalizations about entire outgroups based on a very small number of observations of individual members.

Two forms:

1. Generalizing from atypical cases: Hamill et al. (1980) showed students vignettes about a welfare recipient or prison guard; even when told the person was not typical, students generalized the individual's characteristics to the whole group.

   • This creates inaccurate stereotypes.

2. Attributing group decisions to individuals: Allison & Messick (1985) found that people assume all group members hold attitudes reflecting the group decision, regardless of disagreement or how the decision was made.

   • Example: If a political party passes a policy we oppose, we may assume all members and voters support it, when opinions may vary widely.
   • This shuts down dialogue and prevents finding common ground.

😔 Victim-blaming biases

⚖️ The just world hypothesis

Just world hypothesis: A tendency to make attributions based on the belief that the world is fundamentally just—that outcomes people experience are fair.

• If the world is fair, good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.
• This leads to the belief that "people get what they deserve."

🧪 Lerner's study (1965)

• Participants watched two people work on anagrams.
• One worker was randomly selected to be paid; the other got nothing.
• Result: Observers persuaded themselves that the paid worker had earned the money (even though it was by chance).
• When the less attractive worker was paid, the entire group's performance was devalued.

🔄 Positive and negative effects

Positive (for self):

• Believing the world is fair can be uplifting and is related to higher self-esteem.

Negative (for others):

• Leads to internal attributions for others' difficulties and blaming victims for their problems.
• Greater agreement with just world beliefs about others is linked to harsher social attitudes and greater victim derogation.
• Correlates with stigmatizing attitudes toward people with mental illness.
• Correlates with meritocratic attitudes (people achieve positions based on merit alone), which justify and sustain inequality and oppression.

🛡️ Defensive attribution

Defensive attribution: Making attributions that defend ourselves from the notion that we could be the victim of an unfortunate outcome, and that we could be held responsible as the victim.

• Motivated by harm avoidance ("this is unlikely to happen to me") and blame avoidance ("if it did, I would not be to blame").
• If we see ourselves as similar to the victim, we are less likely to blame them.
• If we identify more with the perpetrator, we are more likely to blame the victim.

⚖️ Legal and social implications

Context	Finding
Rape cases	Attributions about victims relate to identification with victim vs. perpetrator; men are less likely to make defensive attributions than women
Workplace accidents	Victims attribute accidents to external factors; coworkers and supervisors attribute them to internal factors in the victim
General victim-blaming	People react to crime by blaming the victim; apportion responsibility to marginalized groups (e.g., homeless people) for their predicaments

Important: These biases help sustain social inequities by linking individual attributional biases to wider community inequalities.

🌐 Who is affected most

• Marginalized groups in communities most often have victim-blaming attributions made about them.
• Consequences: Barriers to empathy, failure to understand social conditions, reinforcement of inequality.
• Individual group members may feel unfairly judged and unsupported when blamed for challenges they face.

📋 Summary table: Key biases

Bias	Definition	Example
Fundamental attribution error	Overestimating personal causes, underestimating situational causes for others' behavior	A man is aggressive because of his personality, not because of stress
Actor-observer bias	More personal attributions for others, more situational for self	"She is aggressive" vs. "I am aggressive when under pressure"
Self-serving bias	Internal attributions for own success, external for own failure	"I succeeded because I'm talented; I failed because the task was unfair"
Group-serving bias	Internal attributions for ingroup success, external for ingroup failure; opposite for outgroups	"We won because we're skilled; they won because they cheated"
Just world hypothesis	Belief that outcomes are fair and people get what they deserve	"She is homeless because she made bad choices"
Defensive attribution	Attributions that protect us from seeing ourselves as potential victims or responsible	"Accident victims must have been careless; I would never be careless"

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

People's own cognitive styles, attributional tendencies, and mental states shape how they perceive others and interpret events, often revealing as much about the perceiver as about the person being judged.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Perceiver characteristics matter: Different people notice different traits in the same person based on what is cognitively accessible to them—their impressions often reflect their own schemas more than objective reality.
• Entity vs. incremental theorists: Entity theorists believe traits are stable and make more personal attributions; incremental theorists believe traits change and make more situational attributions.
• Attributional style affects mental health: Negative attributional styles (internal, stable, global explanations for bad events) predict depression and learned helplessness; positive styles predict resilience and better outcomes.
• Common confusion: Optimism vs. unrealistic optimism—mildly positive outlooks are healthy, but overly optimistic beliefs can lead to risky behavior and disappointment.
• Self-handicapping: People sometimes create external excuses for potential failure in advance, which protects self-esteem short-term but harms long-term performance and well-being.

👁️ How perceiver characteristics shape impressions

👁️ Same person, different impressions

• Even when two people observe the same behavior by the same person (e.g., their mutual friend Janetta), they may form different impressions.
• Reasons include:
  • Different samples of behavior (seeing her in different contexts).
  • Different schemas, attitudes, and expectations brought to the interpretation.
• Key insight: Our prior experiences color current perceptions—interpretation guarantees variability in impressions.

🔍 Cognitive accessibility

Cognitive accessibility: the extent to which a person characteristic quickly and easily comes to mind for the perceiver.

• What you notice first depends on what matters to you:
  • Someone who cares about fashion notices clothes first.
  • Someone who values athletics notices physical skills first.
  • Someone focused on diversity may notice race or religion first.
• Example: If you are interested in style, you will describe friends based on their fashion choices; if you care about sports, you will describe them based on athletic ability.
• Research finding: There is often more overlap in how the same perceiver describes different people than in how different perceivers describe the same person (Dornbusch et al., 1965; Park, 1986).
  • Translation: Your descriptions reveal your own priorities more than the target's objective traits.

🧠 Need for cognition

Need for cognition: the tendency to think carefully and fully about our experiences, including the social situations we encounter.

• People high in need for cognition:
  • Process information more thoughtfully.
  • Make more causal attributions overall.
  • Take more situational factors into account.
  • Tend to make more tolerant (rather than punitive) attributions about stigmatized groups (Van Hiel et al., 2004).
• People low in need for cognition:
  • Are more impulsive and impatient.
  • Make attributions more quickly and spontaneously.
• Don't confuse: Need for cognition (general thinking style) vs. interest in people specifically—psychology majors were found to be more curious about people than natural science majors (Fletcher et al., 1986).

🧩 Entity vs. incremental theories of personality

🧩 Two views of traits

Theorist type	Core belief	Attribution tendency	Focus
Entity theorists	Traits are stable and incapable of change	Make more personal attributions	Focus on others' traits
Incremental theorists	Personalities change a lot over time	Make more situational attributions	Focus on dynamic psychological processes and changing mental states

⚡ How these theories affect judgment speed

• Molden, Plaks, & Dweck (2006) study:
  • When forced to judge quickly:
    • Entity theorists could still make personal attributions but struggled to encode situational causes.
    • Incremental theorists were better able to use situational aspects of the scene than personality traits.
• Implication: Your theory of personality shapes what information you can process under time pressure.

🎓 Impact on behavior and performance

• Entity theorists:
  • Have more difficulty adapting to new tasks.
  • Believe they cannot change to meet new challenges.
• Incremental theorists:
  • Are more optimistic.
  • Do better in challenging environments because they believe their personality can adapt.
• Research example (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007):
  • 373 junior high students completed attributional style measures at the start of 7th grade.
  • Entity theorists agreed with "You have a certain amount of intelligence, and you really can't do much to change it."
  • Incremental theorists agreed with "You can always greatly change how intelligent you are."
  • Result: Incremental theorists improved their math scores significantly more over two years.
  • Why: They believed they could improve, and this belief translated into actual skill gains.

🧠 Attributional styles and mental health

🧠 What is attributional style?

Attributional style: the type of attributions that we tend to make for the events that occur to us.

Three key dimensions:

1. Internal vs. external: Do I attribute the event to my own characteristics or to the situation?
2. Stable vs. unstable: Do I think this cause will be permanent or will change over time?
3. Global vs. specific: Do I think this cause applies broadly to many areas or is unique to this event?

⚫ Negative attributional style

Negative attributional style: the tendency to explain negative events by referring to their own internal, stable, and global qualities.

• Example statements:
  • "I failed because I am no good" (internal).
  • "I always fail" (stable).
  • "I fail in everything" (global).
• Consequence: Hopelessness and despair (Metalsky et al., 1993).
• Research finding (Alloy et al., 1999): College students with negative attributional styles at the start of college were more likely to experience depression within a few months.

🔒 Learned helplessness

Learned helplessness: experiencing an extremely negative attributional style, in which people continually make external, stable, and global attributions for their behavior.

• Origin: First demonstrated in dogs strapped into harnesses and exposed to electric shocks—some became passive and gave up trying to escape, even when escape became possible.
• Human parallel: Some people exposed to bursts of noise later failed to stop the noise even when they could.
• Core problem: People feel they have no control over their own outcomes.
• Health consequences: Increased anxiety and depression (Henry, 2005; Peterson & Seligman, 1984).

⚪ Positive attributional style

Positive attributional style: ways of explaining events that are related to high self-esteem and a tendency to explain negative events by referring to external, unstable, and specific qualities.

• Example statements:
  • "I failed because the task is very difficult" (external).
  • "I will do better next time" (unstable).
  • "I failed in this domain, but I'm good in other things" (specific).
• Benefits:
  • Persist longer at tasks.
  • Better academic success (Boyer, 2006).
  • Better mental health (Vines & Nixon, 2009).

⚠️ Unrealistic optimism

Unrealistic optimism: the tendency to be overly positive about the likelihood that negative things will occur to us and that we will be able to effectively cope with them if they do.

• Danger: Setting ourselves up for failure and depression when things don't work out.
• Example: Believing we are immune to negative outcomes of drunk driving or unsafe sex—these beliefs can be risky.
• Don't confuse: Mildly optimistic outlook (healthy) vs. unrealistic optimism (risky).
  • We cannot control everything; trying to do so can be stressful.
  • Sometimes it's better to accept what we cannot change.

💊 Attributional retraining interventions

• Premise: People's well-being can improve by shifting from negative to mildly positive attributional styles.
• Evidence: Psychotherapy based on attributional retraining has helped alleviate symptoms of:
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Obsessive-compulsive disorders (Wang et al., 2011)
• Application to relationships: Retraining couples to make more balanced attributions about each other can:
  • Promote more positive communication.
  • Increase relationship satisfaction (Hrapczynski et al., 2012).
• Therapist-client matching: When clients and therapists make similar attributions about the causes of problems:
  • Promotes mutual understanding, empathy, and respect (Duncan & Moynihan, 1994).
  • Clients rate therapists as more credible (Atkinson et al., 1991).
  • Therapists report working more positively with clients (O'Brien & Murdock, 1993).

🛡️ Self-handicapping

🛡️ What is self-handicapping?

Self-handicapping: when we make statements or engage in behaviors that help us create a convenient external attribution for potential failure.

• Purpose: Protect self-esteem by having a ready-made excuse if things go badly.
• Two main methods:
  1. Preemptive excuse: Claim an external factor ahead of time.
     • Example: Veronica says she is not feeling well before a job interview or presentation, asking the audience not to expect too much.
  2. Behavioral self-handicapping: Behave in ways that make success less likely.

🧪 Classic research (Berglas & Jones, 1978)

• Setup:
  • Participants did well on an intelligence test.
  • Told they would take a second, potentially harder test while under the influence of a drug.
  • Given a choice: take a performance-enhancing drug or a performance-inhibiting drug.
• Result: Men (but not women) chose the performance-inhibiting drug.
  • Why: It provided a convenient external attribution for potential failure.
• Gender difference: Men self-handicap more frequently, consistent with their greater concern for self-enhancement and social status.
  • Women may self-handicap by claiming stress or time constraints (Hirt et al., 1991), but less often through behavioral means.

⚖️ Costs and benefits of self-handicapping

Outcome	If you fail	If you succeed
Attribution	Blame the external handicap	Take credit: "I did well despite the handicap!"

• Short-term benefit: Protects self-esteem from failure.
• Long-term costs:
  • Makes success harder to achieve.
  • Lower life satisfaction.
  • Less competence and poorer moods.
  • Less interest in jobs.
  • Greater substance abuse (Zuckerman & Tsai, 2005).
  • More negative academic outcomes (Schwinger et al., 2014 meta-analysis).
• Conclusion: Self-handicapping is not a good long-term strategy.

✅ Healthy balance

• Most people maintain a reasonable balance between optimism and realism.
• They do not rely heavily on self-handicapping.
• They set goals they believe they can attain and make regular progress toward them.
• Key finding: Setting reasonable goals and feeling progress toward them makes us happy, even if we don't fully attain the goals (Lawrence et al., 2002).
• Saying: "Being on the journey is often more important than reaching the destination."

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Understanding the processes of person perception—including snap judgments, nonverbal cues, trait-based impressions, attribution errors, and cultural influences—can help you become more aware of how you judge others and how they judge you, ultimately improving your relationships and self-understanding.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Awareness of snap judgments: recognizing how quickly impressions form (both yours of others and theirs of you) can change how you behave and evaluate people.
• Attribution errors to watch for: the fundamental attribution error, just-world hypothesis, defensive attribution, and self-serving attributions are common traps that distort how we explain behavior.
• Common confusion: blaming people for misfortunes they didn't cause vs. recognizing situational factors—cultures often over-focus on individuals rather than situations when explaining social issues.
• Thinking styles matter: whether you perceive others thoughtfully or spontaneously affects accuracy; your attributional style influences your own behavior, mental health, and physical health.
• Practical application: using person perception knowledge can improve accuracy in reading nonverbal cues, understanding trait influence (especially central traits), and detecting your own biases.

🔍 Becoming aware of impression formation

👁️ Speed of judgments

• The excerpt emphasizes that impressions form quickly—both the impressions you make of others and the impressions others make of you.
• Awareness of this speed can change your behavior:
  • You may become more careful about how you act in front of others.
  • You may reconsider the snap judgments you make about people.
• Example: realizing that someone forms an impression of you within seconds of meeting might make you more mindful of your first words and body language.

🎭 Nonverbal information and traits

• The excerpt asks whether you are now more attuned to nonverbal information flowing in both directions (you to others, others to you).
• Traits, especially central traits, play a major role in everyday interactions.
• Being aware of which traits dominate your perception can help you understand why certain characteristics (e.g., warmth, competence) shape your overall impression of someone.
• The excerpt also mentions detecting deception: you may now be more (or less) confident in your ability to tell when someone is lying.

⚠️ Recognizing attribution errors

⚠️ Fundamental attribution error and related biases

The fundamental attribution error, just-world hypothesis, and defensive attribution are common traps that lead us to blame people for outcomes they did not cause.

• Fundamental attribution error: overestimating personal causes and underestimating situational causes when explaining others' behavior.
• Just-world hypothesis: believing that people get what they deserve, leading to victim-blaming.
• Defensive attribution: protecting your own self-image by attributing negative outcomes to others' faults rather than circumstances.
• Example: blaming someone for homelessness without considering economic or systemic factors.
• Don't confuse: these errors apply when judging others; self-serving attribution (below) applies when judging yourself.

🏆 Self-serving attributions

• Self-serving attribution: taking more credit for group successes than you deserve, or blaming external factors for your failures.
• The excerpt notes that "most people" tend to do this.
• Being aware of this bias can help you correct it—e.g., in a group project, you might catch yourself overestimating your own contribution.
• Example: after a team presentation goes well, you think "I did most of the work," even though others contributed equally.

🌍 Cultural and situational focus

• The excerpt asks whether cultures are "too focused on individuals rather than on situational factors" when explaining social issues like homelessness, addiction, and crime.
• This reflects a broader question: does your culture (and do you personally) over-attribute problems to personal failings instead of recognizing situational constraints?
• Thinking like a social psychologist means questioning whether you give enough weight to context.

🧠 Improving your own person perception

🧠 Thoughtful vs. spontaneous perception

Perception style	Description	Trade-off
Spontaneous	Quick, automatic judgments	Faster but more error-prone
Thoughtful	Deliberate evaluation of others' actions	Slower but potentially more accurate

• The excerpt asks: "Do you now do this more thoughtfully or more spontaneously? Could you be more accurate if you took more time to evaluate the actions of others?"
• Awareness of your style can help you decide when to slow down and when speed is acceptable.

🧘 Attributional style and well-being

• The excerpt emphasizes that causal attribution processes affect not only how you perceive others but also:
  • How you perceive yourself.
  • Your own behaviors.
  • Your mental and physical health.
• Attributional style (how you habitually explain events) is important enough that the excerpt suggests you "might want to try to further improve" your thinking patterns.
• Example: if you habitually attribute failures to stable, internal causes ("I'm just not smart"), this can harm your mental health; recognizing this pattern is the first step to changing it.

🛠️ Practical applications

🛠️ Preventing and correcting biases

• The excerpt encourages you to use your knowledge to prevent or correct attribution errors.
• Steps:
  1. Notice when you are blaming someone for a misfortune.
  2. Ask: "Could situational factors explain this?"
  3. Adjust your judgment accordingly.
• Example: instead of thinking "that person is lazy" when someone is late, consider whether traffic, family emergencies, or other circumstances played a role.

🛠️ Improving relationships

• Understanding attribution errors can directly improve your relationships:
  • You are less likely to unfairly blame others.
  • You are more likely to recognize your own biases (e.g., self-serving attribution in group work).
  • You become more accurate in reading others' intentions and emotions.
• The excerpt frames this as using "your broader understanding" to help relationships.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Person perception—the process of forming impressions and making causal attributions about others—is often accurate but prone to systematic biases that vary across individuals and cultures, and these patterns of attribution significantly affect our relationships and mental health.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Initial impressions form quickly: we judge others accurately within seconds using social categories, physical appearance, and nonverbal cues.
• Causal attribution drives personality inference: we explain behavior through personal attributions (internal causes) or situational attributions (external causes), using cues like consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus.
• Common biases distort attribution: fundamental attribution error (over-attributing others' behavior to personality), actor-observer effect (attributing our own behavior more to situations), and self-serving bias (crediting success internally, blaming failure externally).
• Common confusion—culture matters: individualistic cultures make stronger personal attributions and show more self-serving bias than collectivistic cultures.
• Attribution style affects health: negative attributional styles link to depression, while positive styles protect mental and physical health.

🎯 How we form first impressions

⚡ Speed and accuracy of initial judgments

• Initial impressions can be formed in a matter of seconds.
• These quick judgments are often surprisingly accurate.
• They rely on immediately visible information rather than deep knowledge.

🏷️ What drives snap judgments

The excerpt identifies three main sources:

Source	What it includes	Role
Social category memberships	Race, gender, age	Quick classification cues
Physical appearance	Observable features	Visual first impression
Nonverbal behavior	Body language, facial expressions	Behavioral signals including honesty detection

🕵️ Detecting deception

• Nonverbal cues help us determine whether people are being honest.
• Limitation: our ability to detect deception is often not very good.
• Nevertheless, some reliable cues exist that we can use.

🧩 Building deeper impressions through traits

🧩 Trait-based thinking

Once we learn more about a person, we begin to think about that person in terms of their personality traits.

• We move beyond surface features to infer stable characteristics.
• Often we average traits together to form an overall impression.

⚖️ Not all traits weigh equally

Some traits have more influence than others:

• Negative traits carry more weight.
• Central traits like "warm" and "cold" shape the entire impression.
• Primacy effect: traits we learn first have greater impact.

Example: Learning someone is "cold" early colors how we interpret all subsequent information about them.

🔍 Causal attribution: explaining behavior

🔍 Two types of attribution

The process of causal attribution: drawing inferences about a person's personality by observing his or her behavior.

When we make attributions, we choose between:

• Personal attributions: internal causes (personality, ability, effort).
• Situational attributions: external causes (context, luck, others' actions).
• Both: sometimes we attribute to multiple causes.

🔑 When personal attributions become stronger

We make stronger personal attributions when behavior is:

• Unusual or unexpected: stands out from the norm.
• Freely chosen: not coerced or constrained.

📊 Three-factor analysis over time

When we have information about behavior over time, we analyze:

Factor	What it asks	Implication
Consistency	Does the person do this repeatedly?	High consistency → personal attribution
Distinctiveness	Does the person act this way only in specific situations?	Low distinctiveness → personal attribution
Consensus	Do others act the same way in this situation?	Low consensus → personal attribution

🏆 Success and failure attributions

• We use causal attribution to draw conclusions about the causes of success and failure.
• These attributions are especially important for self-evaluation and motivation.

⚠️ Systematic biases in attribution

⚠️ Fundamental attribution error

We tend to make too many personal attributions for the behavior of others.

• We overestimate personality and underestimate situation when explaining others' actions.
• This can lead us to blame others for events that they might not have been responsible for.

Example: Seeing someone homeless and assuming it's due to personal failings rather than economic circumstances.

🎭 Actor-observer effect

We make more personal attributions for others than we do for ourselves.

• When explaining our own behavior, we see situational factors more clearly.
• When explaining others' behavior, we focus on their personality.
• Don't confuse: this is not the same as self-serving bias (which is about success/failure, not self/other).

🏅 Self-serving attributions

We tend to make self-serving attributions, which are frequently inaccurate but which do help us to meet our needs for self-enhancement.

• We credit success to internal causes (our ability, effort).
• We blame failure on external causes (bad luck, unfair circumstances).
• Accuracy trade-off: these attributions are often wrong but protect self-esteem.

👥 Group-related biases

The excerpt mentions several group-level attribution patterns:

• Group-serving bias: attributions that favor our ingroups over our outgroups.
• Just world hypothesis: blaming people for their misfortunes (assuming the world is fair and people get what they deserve).
• Defensive attribution: (mentioned in context of potential errors).

🌍 Cultural and individual differences

🌍 Individualistic vs collectivistic cultures

Culture type	Attribution pattern	Bias pattern
Individualistic	Stronger personal attributions	More self-serving and group-serving biases
Individualistic	Weaker situational attributions	Focus on individual responsibility
Collectivistic	Weaker personal attributions	Less self-enhancement
Collectivistic	Stronger situational attributions	More context-awareness

• Accessibility matters: people for whom an individualistic culture is currently highly accessible show these patterns even if not from that culture long-term.

👤 Individual differences in perception

Different individuals make different judgments about others for two main reasons:

1. Different circumstances: they see those people in different situations.
2. Different schemas: they use their own attitudes and schemas when judging.

Key insight: This can lead people to make more similar judgments about different people than different people make about the same person.

🧠 Cognitive style variables

The excerpt identifies individual difference variables that influence person perception:

• Need for cognition: how much someone enjoys and engages in effortful thinking.
• Entity vs incremental thinking: whether someone sees traits as fixed (entity) or changeable (incremental).

💚 Health consequences of attribution style

💚 Attribution and mental health

Causal attributions for our own behaviors have an important outcome on our mental and physical health.

The excerpt contrasts two patterns:

• Negative attributional style: linked to depression.
• Positive attributional style: acts as a protective factor for mental and physical health.

Implication: How we explain our own successes and failures is not just about accuracy—it has real consequences for well-being.

🔄 Self-awareness and improvement

The excerpt emphasizes that understanding these processes can help us:

• Recognize when we fall into the fundamental attribution error.
• Notice when we make self-serving attributions in group projects.
• Think more carefully about whether we judge too quickly (spontaneous) or thoughtfully.
• Question whether our culture over-focuses on individuals rather than situations when explaining social issues like homelessness, addiction, and crime.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Conformity—the change in beliefs and behaviors based on perceptions of what others believe or do—occurs through both informational influence (conforming to be accurate) and normative influence (conforming to be liked), and can be driven by majorities or minorities depending on situational factors like group size, unanimity, and task importance.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Two main types of influence: informational social influence (conforming because others seem to have accurate knowledge) versus normative social influence (conforming to be accepted or avoid rejection).
• Private acceptance vs public compliance: informational influence typically produces genuine belief change (private acceptance), while normative influence often produces only superficial behavioral change (public compliance).
• Majority vs minority influence: majorities create conformity more commonly, but consistent minorities can also produce influence—and often lead to deeper thinking and more creative solutions.
• Common confusion: informational and normative influences often occur together in real situations, making them hard to fully separate; also, public compliance can eventually turn into private acceptance.
• Situational factors matter: conformity increases with larger majorities (up to a point), unanimous groups, and varies with task importance and confidence.

🔄 How conformity happens

🔄 Passive and automatic conformity

• Conformity can occur spontaneously without conscious intent from either party.
• Example: adopting a roommate's music taste without trying, or mimicking another person's posture during conversation.
• Research by Chartrand and Bargh (1999) showed participants unconsciously imitated a confederate's face-rubbing or foot-shaking behaviors.
• When mimicked, people liked the imitator more and felt the interaction went more smoothly.
• Why it matters: this unconscious coordination helps social interactions run smoothly and may explain why we "click" with some people immediately.

🧩 Active and thoughtful conformity

• Sometimes influence is obvious and deliberate—following other passengers in an unfamiliar airport, listening to a salesperson, or responding to authority.
• People may attempt to resist pressure when they are aware of it, with varying success.
• The excerpt notes conformity is an important human adaptation, similar to birds flying in flocks—it helps us live and work together effectively.

🧠 Informational social influence

🧠 What it is

Informational social influence: the change in opinions or behavior that occurs when we conform to people who we believe have accurate information.

• We rely on experts (reporters, scientists, doctors, lawyers) because we believe they have more expertise than we do.
• We also use friends and colleagues for information—choosing a jacket based on friends' advice assumes they have good judgment.
• This influence stems from social comparison: comparing our opinions with others to gain accurate appraisal of validity.

🔍 Private acceptance

Private acceptance: real change in opinions on the part of the individual.

• Informational influence leads to genuine, long-lasting belief changes.
• Example: if you follow a crowd to the baggage carousel, you genuinely believe they know the way—it's not just outward compliance.
• Don't confuse with: public compliance, where behavior changes but beliefs do not.

👥 Normative social influence

👥 What it is

Normative social influence: when we express opinions or behave in ways that help us to be accepted or that keep us from being isolated or rejected by others.

• We conform to social norms—socially accepted beliefs about what we do or should do in particular social contexts.
• Example: starting to smoke or buying expensive shoes to impress others, not because we think it's the right thing to do.

📢 Public compliance

Public compliance: a superficial change in behavior (including the public expression of opinions) that is not accompanied by an actual change in one's private opinion.

• We may obey speed limits or wear uniforms (behavior) without believing it's appropriate (opinion).
• Example: using drugs with friends without wanting to or believing it's right, just because friends are doing it.
• Important caveat: behaviors originally performed for acceptance may eventually produce belief changes—public compliance can turn into private acceptance over time.

🔀 The two influences often overlap

• In most cases, being accurate and being accepted go hand-in-hand.
• Example: soldiers obeying officers likely do so both because others are doing it (normative) and because they think it's right (informational).
• Example: copying behavior at a new job both to be liked and because you assume colleagues know the correct procedures.
• The excerpt notes the distinction may be "more apparent than real" and may not be fully separable.

📊 Majority influence

📊 What it is

Majority influence: occurs when the beliefs held by the larger number of individuals in the current social group prevail.

• This is the most common form of conformity.
• Sherif's autokinetic effect studies (1936) demonstrated how group norms develop in ambiguous situations.

💡 Sherif's autokinetic effect study

• The setup: participants in a dark room judged how much a stationary point of light appeared to move (an illusion caused by eye movements).
• Initial phase: individuals tested alone developed their own narrow range of estimates, but these varied widely between different participants.
• Group phase: when placed in groups where everyone voiced judgments aloud, initial differences disappeared and members made very similar judgments.
• Key finding: the new group norms persisted even when individuals were tested alone again—this was private acceptance, not just compliance.
• Long-term effects: norms could persist through several "generations" of group members and influence judgments up to a year later.

📏 Asch's line judgment studies

• The critique: Sherif's task was ambiguous, so conformity might not be surprising.
• Asch's response: created a task with obviously correct answers—judging which of three lines matched a standard line.
• The setup: participants seated with confederates who all gave the same wrong answer on 12 of 18 trials.
• Results: 76% of participants gave at least one incorrect response; 37% of all responses were conforming.
• But: only 5% conformed on all critical trials, and 24% never conformed at all.
• Interpretation: this demonstrates normative social influence—participants gave clearly wrong answers out loud to match the group.

🎯 Minority influence

🎯 What it is and why it matters

Minority influence: occurs when the beliefs held by the smaller number of individuals in the current social group prevail.

• Less common than majority influence, but essential for social change and innovation.
• Historical examples: scientists, religious leaders, philosophers who expressed unusual ideas were often ridiculed initially but later respected.
• Without minority influence, there would be few new ideas and little social change.

🔑 Moscovici's color perception study

• The setup: opposite of Asch—two confederates (minority) and four real participants (majority) judged the color of clearly blue slides.
• Consistent-minority condition: two confederates called slides "green" on every trial.
• Inconsistent-minority condition: confederates called slides "green" on two-thirds of trials, "blue" on one-third.
• Results: the consistent minority produced conformity (32% of participants said green at least once; 18% of responses were green), but the inconsistent minority had virtually no influence.

💪 What makes minorities effective

• Consistency: must express consistent, unanimous opinions over time and with each other.
• Investment: must show they are invested by making significant personal and material sacrifices.
• Principle: must seem to be acting out of principle rather than ulterior motives.
• Strategy: can adopt open-minded negotiating style on less critical issues, but must be absolutely consistent on core arguments.

🌟 Deeper effects of minority influence

• Produces private acceptance—genuine attitude change, not just public compliance.
• People conform to minorities because they think they are right, not because it's socially acceptable.
• Creative thinking: minority opinions lead majorities to engage in fuller, more divergent, innovative, and creative thinking.
• Nemeth and Kwan (1987) study: participants who thought a novel word interpretation came from a minority (not majority) subsequently generated more creative solutions to new problems.

🎚️ Situational factors affecting conformity

📈 Size of the majority

• As the number in the majority increases, pressure on the minority to conform increases.
• Asch varied confederates from 1 to 16 people—larger majorities produced more conformity.
• Why: more people expressing an opinion makes it seem more valid (informational), and being different is harder with a bigger majority (normative).

📉 Diminishing returns of group size

• The social impact of each new group member decreases as the group grows.
• Milgram's street study: confederates looked up at a building window; larger groups attracted more passersby to also look up, but each additional confederate had less effect.
• Why: after about six people, the group is seen as a group rather than separate individuals, so adding more members doesn't change the perception much.
• This pattern (diminishing returns) applies to many group behaviors: tipping in restaurants, bystander helping, and work contributions all show similar effects.

🎯 Unanimity of the majority

Unanimity: complete agreement among group members.

• More important than size: consistency matters more than numbers.
• Asch found that even with 15 confederates giving wrong answers, if just one gave the correct answer, conformity dropped to only 5%.
• Moscovici found minorities only had influence when they were completely consistent.
• Even more surprising: conformity is reduced when a dissenting confederate gives a different wrong answer—any inconsistency breaks the majority's power.

🤝 Why unanimity matters

• Embarrassment: being the only different person is potentially embarrassing; having one ally makes disagreeing easier.
• Doubt: complete agreement makes the individual doubt their own perceptions (informational influence).
• Ally effect: when someone else disagrees with the majority, they become part of the group being influenced (along with the participant), validating one's own opinion.

⚖️ Task importance and confidence

Baron, Vandello, and Brunsman (1996) study:

• Task: identify which person in a lineup matched an initial photo.
• Manipulations:
  • Importance: high (eyewitness ability test, $20 prize) vs low (pilot study, not important)
  • Difficulty: easy (5 and 10 second viewing) vs difficult (½ and 1 second viewing)

Task difficulty	High importance	Low importance
Easy	Less conformity	More conformity
Difficult	More conformity	Less conformity

• Easy tasks: participants relied on their own (confident) opinions when it mattered, but went along with others when it didn't (normative influence).
• Difficult tasks: participants used others' judgments to inform their views when they were unsure but the decision was important (informational influence).
• Don't confuse: task importance doesn't simply increase or decrease conformity—it interacts with confidence and task difficulty.

🔄 Person-situation interaction

• Conformity is determined by the interaction between the person and the situation.
• Although the situation is extremely powerful, different people are more or less likely to conform.
• Conformity is a dynamic, interactive process—as you conform to others' influence, your behavior also influences others to conform to you.
• These influences occur frequently in everyday life, often without our awareness.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Social power—the ability to create conformity even when people resist—operates through multiple mechanisms including obedience to authority, different types of power bases, and leadership styles that interact with situational factors to produce influence.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Milgram's obedience studies: demonstrated that ordinary people will obey authority figures to a shocking degree (65% delivered maximum shock), even when ordered to harm others, primarily due to situational factors rather than personality.
• Five types of power: reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, and expert power differ in whether they produce public compliance only or deeper private acceptance.
• Common confusion: obedience vs. conformity—we obey authority figures through explicit orders, but conform to peers through implicit pressure; people admit to obeying but resist admitting they conformed.
• Leadership effectiveness: depends on person-situation interactions, not just traits; the same leader may be effective or ineffective depending on the situation.
• Power can corrupt: having power leads some people to misuse it, rely excessively on coercion, and view subordinates negatively, though this varies by personality orientation.

🔬 Milgram's obedience research

🔬 The basic procedure

• Participants believed they were in a learning study where they played the "teacher" role.
• They were instructed to deliver increasingly painful electric shocks (15 to 450 volts) to a "learner" (actually a confederate) for each mistake.
• The learner's protests escalated from "Ugh!" at low voltages to screaming, demanding release, mentioning heart trouble, and eventually falling silent.
• The experimenter used his authority to insist the teacher continue despite protests.

📊 Shocking results

Before the study, college students, adults, and psychiatrists all predicted virtually no one (1-2%) would deliver maximum shock. The actual results:

• 65% of participants delivered the full 450 volts, marked "danger: severe shock."
• Almost two-thirds shocked another person to apparent death as far as they knew.
• These results have been replicated worldwide with obedience rates from 16% to 90%.
• A 2009 replication found 65% of men and 73% of women complied (though stopped at 150 volts for ethical reasons).

Don't confuse: This wasn't about people being "evil"—Milgram argued it was the social situation, not individual character, that produced obedience.

🔄 Situational variations

Milgram tested how changing the situation affected obedience:

Situation change	Obedience rate	Why it matters
Original study (Yale, respected scientist)	65%	Authority's status maximized
Off-campus location (Bridgeport office)	48%	Reduced legitimacy
Experimenter gives orders by phone	20%	Reduced authority presence
Another "participant" gives orders	20%	No legitimate authority
Teacher in same room as learner	40%	Increased personal connection
Teacher must hold learner's hand	20%	Direct contact with harm
Two experimenters disagree	0%	Broken unanimity
Teacher chooses shock level	0%	Personal choice matters

Key insight: When given a choice or when authority was undermined, people did not harm others—showing they weren't inherently cruel.

🧬 Person-situation interaction

Although Milgram emphasized situation, personality also matters:

• Higher obedience linked to: authoritarianism (preferring simplicity, traditional values), conscientiousness, agreeableness.
• Lower obedience linked to: higher moral reasoning, social intelligence (reading situational cues).
• This is another example of person-situation interaction—both matter.

🆚 Obedience vs. conformity distinction

Obedience: compliance with explicit orders from authority figures. Conformity: alignment with peer group norms through implicit pressure.

Key differences:

• Source: authority figures vs. peers
• Pressure type: explicit orders vs. implicit norms
• Admission: people more readily blame authority for obedience than admit to conforming (especially normative conformity)

🔋 Five types of power

💰 Reward power

Reward power: the ability to distribute positive or negative rewards.

• Bosses can increase salary; teachers can assign high marks; anyone can offer praise, status, or gifts.
• Effectiveness depends on need: power is greater when the target strongly desires the reward.
• Example: A boss has more power over an employee with no other job options than over one being recruited by competitors.
• Outcome: usually produces public compliance only, not private acceptance—behavior is driven by the reward itself.
• Requires monitoring: the power-holder must continually check that the target is complying.

⚡ Coercive power

Coercive power: power based on the ability to create negative outcomes through bullying, intimidating, or punishing.

• Examples: reducing salary, demotion, embarrassment, firing, teasing, humiliation, ostracism.
• Often used together with reward power (carrot and stick).
• Downsides:
  • Requires energy to prevent the target from leaving the situation
  • Creates negative feelings and distrust
  • Undermines satisfaction
  • May lead to retaliation against the power-holder
  • Authorities generally prefer reward over coercive power
• Outcome: produces public compliance only, not private acceptance.
• Monitoring problem: creates mutual mistrust between power-holder and target.

⚖️ Legitimate power

Legitimate power: power vested in those appointed or elected to positions of authority, accepted by group members as appropriate.

• Examples: teachers, politicians, police officers, judges, respected scientists, elected officials.
• Why it works: members accept the authority as valid and appropriate for their society.
• Stronger than reward/coercion: can create changes in attitudes (private acceptance) as well as behavior.
• Can create and change social norms, not just individual behavior.

Two sources:

1. Formal: laws, elections, organizational structure (e.g., Milgram's experimenter as respected Yale scientist)
2. Informal: earned through contributing to the group and following group norms

Example: After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans residents had legitimate power to demand federal help because U.S. citizens believe the disadvantaged deserve fair treatment—this represents obligation-based legitimate power.

🌟 Referent power

Referent power: the ability to influence others because they identify with, admire, or want to emulate the power-holder.

The power-holder is:

• A member of an important reference group

• A charismatic, dynamic, persuasive leader

• A particularly attractive or famous person

• Example: A child mimicking an older sibling or famous athlete; a religious person following a respected religious leader.

• Outcome: generally produces private acceptance rather than just public compliance.

• Can be passive: the person being emulated may not try to influence, and the influenced person may not realize it's happening.

• Can be active: cult leaders may deliberately use their status to produce change.

• Particularly strong: because it results in acceptance of the important other's opinions, not just behavioral compliance.

🎓 Expert power

Expert power: a type of informational influence based on the fundamental desire to obtain valid and accurate information from those with superior knowledge.

• Examples: doctors, teachers, lawyers, computer experts.
• Why it works: we assume experts have valid information in their domain and accept their opinions based on perceived expertise.
• Outcome: likely to produce private acceptance because it's based on genuine belief in the information's validity.
• How to gain it: become more knowledgeable about a topic than others, making them dependent on you for information.
• Success matters: expert power increases when the advice successfully solves problems.

📊 Comparison table

Power type	Basis	Typical outcome	Requires monitoring?
Reward	Providing positive outcomes	Public compliance	Yes
Coercive	Threatening negative outcomes	Public compliance	Yes
Legitimate	Accepted authority position	Private acceptance possible	Less
Referent	Identification/admiration	Private acceptance	No
Expert	Superior knowledge	Private acceptance	No

⚠️ The dark side of power

⚠️ Does power corrupt?

Research by Kipnis (1972) examined this question:

• "Supervisors" could influence "workers" (actually preprogrammed responses) through messages.
• Half had legitimate power only (persuasive messages).
• Half had extra power: reward power (give money) and coercive power (take away rewards).

Results:

• Those with extra power used it excessively even though workers performed equally well in both conditions.
• They relied almost exclusively on coercive power rather than positive relations.
• They rated workers more negatively, were less interested in meeting them, and believed workers only performed well to obtain rewards.

Conclusion: Having power may lead people to use it unnecessarily, which then leads them to believe subordinates only comply because of threats.

🧬 Individual differences in power use

Not everyone misuses power equally (person-situation interaction):

• Self-oriented people (focus on what they get from relationships): more likely to misuse power.
• Other-oriented people (focus on helping others): more likely to use power to help.

📉 Other negative effects of power

• Power-holders may stereotype those with less power.
• They may be less likely to help people in need.
• Using excess power may work short-term but creates negative environments for both power-holder and subordinate.

✅ Positive effects of power

Having power isn't all negative:

• More confident
• More attuned to opportunities
• More likely to take action to meet goals

The key is that "a little power goes a long way"—too much can be dangerous.

👔 Leadership and influence

👔 What is leadership?

Leadership: the ability to direct or inspire others to achieve goals.

• Leaders have many influence techniques: commands with reward/coercion (producing public compliance) or reasoned arguments and inspiration using legitimate/referent/expert power (producing private acceptance).
• Classic person-situation interaction: leadership effectiveness depends on both the leader's characteristics and the situation.

🧠 Personality theories of leadership

Personality theories of leadership: explanations based on the idea that some people are "natural leaders" because they possess certain personality characteristics.

Traits associated with effective leadership:

• Intelligence: helps leadership if the leader can communicate understandably
• Social skills: ability to perceive needs and goals of group members
• Sociability: better communication ability
• Other traits: verbal skills, creativity, self-confidence, emotional stability, conscientiousness, agreeableness
• Task expertise: skills relevant to the specific domain

✨ Charismatic leaders

Charismatic leaders: leaders who are enthusiastic, committed, and self-confident; who talk about group goals at a broad level; and who make personal sacrifices for the group.

• They express views that support existing norms but also contain a vision of what the group could become.
• Use referent power to motivate, uplift, and inspire.
• Research finds a positive relationship between charisma and effective leadership.

🔄 Transactional vs. transformational leadership

Leadership style	Description	Approach
Transactional	Regular leaders who work with subordinates to help them understand requirements and get the job done	Maintain current functioning
Transformational	Charismatic leaders with a vision who stimulate and inspire workers to move beyond present status	Transform group norms; create new, better future

Example: Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are transformational leaders who saw new visions and motivated workers to achieve them.

🔀 Contingency model of leadership

Contingency model of leadership effectiveness: a model focusing on both person variables (leadership style) and situational variables.

Developed by Fred Fiedler, this model measures:

Person variable (relatively stable):

• Relationship-oriented leaders: motivated by close personal relationships (somewhat dislike least preferred coworker)
• Task-oriented leaders: motivated primarily by getting the job done (strongly dislike least preferred coworker)

Situational favorableness (three factors, in order of importance):

1. Leader-member relations: Does the leader have good relationships and support?
2. Task structure: Is the task structured and unambiguous?
3. Position power: Does the leader have power/support in the organization?

These create eight levels from most favorable (good relationships, structured task, strong power) to least favorable (poor relationships, unstructured task, weak power).

Predictions:

• Task-oriented leaders most effective in very favorable situations (can move group forward decisively) or very unfavorable situations (need decisive action).
• Relationship-oriented leaders most effective in moderately favorable situations (lack of support or unclear problems require relationship focus).

Don't confuse: The same person isn't equally effective in all situations—effectiveness depends on matching leadership style to situational favorableness.

🎯 Social identity approach to leadership

Another approach: leaders embody group norms.

• People who accept and behave according to group norms are seen as particularly good group members.
• They are seen as more trustworthy.
• They engage in group-oriented behaviors to strengthen leadership credentials.
• This makes them likely to become leaders.

🔬 The Stanford Prison Study parallel

🔬 Zimbardo's prison study

Philip Zimbardo created a mock prison with student volunteers:

• Students randomly assigned to "prisoner" or "guard" roles.
• Setting designed to look like a real prison.
• Expected to run two weeks but stopped after five days.

What happened:

• Day 2: Prisoners rebelled; guards used psychological punishment and physical abuse to stop it.
• Guards denied food, water, sleep; used fire-extinguisher spray; forced toilet cleaning with bare hands; stripped prisoners naked.
• Night 5: Guards put bags over prisoners' heads, chained their legs, marched them around.
• A former student observer declared the treatment immoral, prompting researchers to stop.

Zimbardo's conclusion: People may be so profoundly influenced by their social situation that they become coldhearted torturers. (Note: This conclusion may also apply to the research team itself, which arguably neglected ethical principles.)

🔄 Replication with different results

Reicher and Haslam recreated the study with small changes:

• Prisoners not "arrested" beforehand
• Less realistic jail setup
• Told guards and prisoners that groups were arbitrary and could change (some prisoners might become guards)

Results: Completely different—stopped early because guards felt uncomfortable in superior position, not because prisoners were abused. This "prison" didn't feel real, so participants didn't take on their assigned roles.

Conclusion: The specifics of the social situation, more than the people themselves, are often the most important determinants of behavior.

🌍 Application to Abu Ghraib

Zimbardo served as expert witness for Sergeant Chip Frederick, sentenced to eight years for abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (2004).

Frederick's situation parallels the prison study:

• Overcrowded, filthy, dangerous prison
• Expected to maintain control
• Similar situational pressures

Frederick said: "What I did was wrong, and I don't understand why I did it."

Zimbardo's argument: "Human behavior is more influenced by things outside of us than inside." External circumstances can overwhelm moral beliefs and inherent goodness. We need "inoculations against our own potential for evil" by acknowledging it can happen, then changing it.

Don't confuse: This doesn't excuse the behavior, but it helps explain how situational factors can lead ordinary people to commit extraordinary harm.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Although personality, gender, and culture all influence conformity, situational factors generally exert stronger effects than individual differences, and the small gender and cultural differences that do exist are shaped by social roles, knowledge domains, and collectivistic versus individualistic orientations.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Situational factors dominate: Research consistently finds that situational variables (e.g., majority size, unanimity) have a larger impact on conformity than person variables (e.g., personality traits, gender).
• Gender differences are small and context-dependent: Men and women show only minor differences in conformity; men tend to resist conformity more in public settings to display status, while women conform more to maintain group harmony, but these differences disappear in private.
• Cultural differences follow individualism-collectivism: Conformity is greater in collectivistic cultures (which emphasize group harmony) than in individualistic cultures (which emphasize independence).
• Common confusion—gender and leadership: Men are more likely to become leaders and are perceived as more effective, but actual performance data show no overall gender difference in leadership effectiveness; women often adopt transformational styles to navigate the "double-bind" of needing to be assertive yet likable.
• Psychological reactance: When people feel their freedom to choose is threatened, they may resist influence attempts and even move in the opposite direction from what the influencer intends.

👤 Individual differences in conformity

🧩 Personality and self-esteem

• Even under strong conformity pressure (like Asch's line-judging studies), not everyone conforms—24% of Asch's participants never conformed on any trial.
• People seek an "optimal" balance between similarity to others and individuality (Brewer, 2003).
  • When made to feel too similar, they express individuality.
  • When made to feel too different, they increase efforts to be accepted.
• Lower self-esteem → more conformity: People with lower self-esteem have a greater need to belong and are more likely to conform.
• Dependency and approval-seeking: Those who depend on others and need approval are also more conforming.

🎂 Age effects

• Middle-aged people conform less: Individuals in their 40s and 50s are less easily influenced than younger or older people.
• The excerpt does not explain why, but the pattern is consistent across studies.

🏷️ Group identification

• People who strongly identify with the group creating the conformity pressure are more likely to conform to group norms.
• Those who don't care much about the group conform less.

⚖️ Person vs. situation

Research has generally found that the impact of person variables on conformity is smaller than the influence of situational variables, such as the number and unanimity of the majority.

• Even traits like "need for uniqueness" (which leads some people to resist conformity) have weaker effects than situational factors.
• Don't confuse: Individual differences matter, but they are not the primary driver of conformity behavior.

🚻 Gender differences in conformity and leadership

🔍 Small gender differences in conformity

• Meta-analyses show only small differences between men and women in conformity.
• These differences are influenced as much by the social situation as by gender itself.

Context	Men	Women
Public settings	More likely to hold ground, act independently, refuse to conform (to display high status)	More likely to conform to prevent social disagreement (to maintain group harmony)
Private settings	Differences largely disappear	Differences largely disappear

• Self-concern vs. other-concern: Men are more concerned with status; women are more concerned with connection and harmony.
• Evolutionary explanation: Men may resist conformity to demonstrate they are good mates (Griskevicius et al., 2006 found men primed with romantic thoughts conformed less).

📚 Topic knowledge matters

• Both men and women are less likely to conform on topics they know well.
• Example: Women tend to conform to men on sports topics; men conform to women on fashion topics.
• This suggests informational influence (conforming to gain accurate knowledge) plays a role in gender differences.

👔 Gender and leadership emergence

• Men are more likely to become leaders: They hold most high-level positions (e.g., only ~20% of key political positions worldwide are held by women; fewer than 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women).
• Perception vs. reality: Men are perceived as more effective leaders, but meta-analysis found no overall gender difference in actual leadership effectiveness (Eagly, Karau, & Makhijani, 1995).
  • Women even excelled in some domains.
  • Differences were strongest when groups were first forming and faded as members got to know each other.

🎭 The "double-bind" for women leaders

• Traditional leadership behaviors (assertiveness, power displays) conflict with expected social roles for women.
• Corporate success norms are defined in masculine terms.
• The dilemma: Women must adopt masculine behaviors to succeed, but doing so makes them disliked for violating gender norms.
• Example: An experiment with MBA students found female CEOs were perceived as less capable and their companies as less attractive investments, even when qualifications and financials were identical to male CEOs.

🌸 Transformational leadership as a solution

• Women are more likely to adopt transformational leadership styles: interpersonally oriented, agreeing with others, acting friendly, encouraging participation.
• This allows them to be effective while not acting "excessively masculine."
• Don't confuse: Women adopting transformational styles is not a sign of weakness; it's a strategic adaptation to navigate social expectations while remaining effective.

📊 Leadership effectiveness by task type

Task type	Who does better	Why
"Masculine" tasks (directing, controlling)	Men	Aligns with traditional male roles
"Feminine" tasks (creating harmony)	Women	Aligns with traditional female roles

🌍 Cultural differences in conformity

🌐 Collectivism vs. individualism

• Collectivistic cultures (emphasize group harmony, interdependence) show greater conformity than individualistic cultures (emphasize independence, uniqueness).
• Bond and Smith (1996) analyzed 133 studies using Asch's line-judging task across 17 countries and found a significant relationship: conformity was greater in collectivistic countries.

📰 Cultural messages in advertising

• Kim and Markus (1999) analyzed magazine ads in the U.S. (individualistic) and Korea (collectivistic):
  • U.S. ads: Emphasized uniqueness ("Choose your own view!", "Individualize").
  • Korean ads: Emphasized conformity ("Seven out of 10 people use this product", "Building a harmonious society").
• This reflects deeper cultural values about the self and social relationships.

🔄 Interaction of person and situation

Conformity, like most other social psychological processes, represents an interaction between the situation and the person.

• Cultural context shapes how people respond to conformity pressures, but individual differences still matter within each culture.

⚡ Psychological reactance

🚫 What is reactance?

Psychological reactance: a strong motivational state that resists social influence, aroused when our ability to choose which behaviors to engage in is eliminated or threatened with elimination.

• When people feel their freedom is being threatened by influence attempts, they may resist or even move in the opposite direction.
• Reactance represents a desire to restore freedom that is being threatened.

🧪 Evidence for reactance

🚽 Graffiti study (Pennebaker & Sanders, 1976)

• Researchers posted signs in campus restrooms:
  • Strong pressure: "Do not write on these walls under any circumstances!"
  • Weak request: "Please don't write on these walls."
• Result: Much less graffiti in the weak-request restroom.
• Why: Strong pressure triggered reactance, making people more likely to write graffiti.

🧒 Everyday examples

• A child told he must eat asparagus may refuse vehemently.
• An adult pressured by a car salesperson may leave the showroom entirely.
• Parents using "reverse psychology" (forbidding something they actually want the child to do) exploit reactance.
• Example from The Fantasticks: Fathers build a fence to separate their children, knowing the restriction will make them fall in love.

⚖️ Reactance in real-world contexts

Context	Finding	Implication
Jury instructions	When judges tell jurors they absolutely must not consider inadmissible information, jurors are more likely to use it (Wolf & Montgomery, 1977)	Strong prohibitions backfire
Warning labels	Labels like "extreme violence—viewer discretion advised" increase interest more than informational labels (Bushman & Stack, 1996)	Warnings can attract rather than deter
Negotiation	Women told they were poor negotiators worked harder and succeeded more (Kray et al., 2004)	Threats to competence can motivate reactance
Clinical therapy	Patients may resist reducing harmful behaviors (smoking, drinking) when loved ones pressure them too hard; one patient enrolled in treatment only after his wife stopped pressuring him (Shoham et al., 2004)	Excessive pressure can prevent behavior change

🔑 When reactance occurs

• People must feel their freedom is being threatened.
• They must also have the ability to resist the persuasion.
• The outcome is that people may not conform at all or may even move away from the influencer's desired outcome.

⚠️ Don't confuse

• Conformity (changing behavior to match others) vs. reactance (resisting or opposing influence when freedom feels threatened).
• Reactance is not simple stubbornness; it's a motivational response to perceived threats to autonomy.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Understanding social influence helps us recognize how pervasively it shapes our daily behavior—from conformity to obedience to leadership—and enables us to make more informed decisions about when to conform, when to resist, and how to ethically influence others.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Why social influence is pervasive: it helps us meet basic goals of self-concern (making accurate decisions) and other-concern (being accepted by others).
• Dual nature of social influence: sometimes it supports societal functioning, but other times it produces harmful or even horrible outcomes.
• Self-awareness application: recognizing social influence helps you understand your own conformity patterns and what motivates your obedience (expert, coercive, or referent power).
• Common confusion: social influence is not just about "being weak"—it ranges from unconscious imitation to deliberate leadership and can serve positive or negative functions.
• Practical use: understanding influence mechanisms improves both how you judge others' behavior (e.g., historical events) and how you lead or persuade ethically.

🎯 Why social influence matters so much

🎯 Meeting basic psychological goals

Social influence helps us meet the basic goals of self-concern and other-concern.

• Self-concern: Conforming helps us make accurate, informed decisions by learning from others.
• Other-concern: Conforming helps us be accepted by those we care about.
• These are not weaknesses but adaptive strategies for navigating social life.

🌐 The wide scope of influence

The excerpt emphasizes that "almost everything we do involves social influence, or perhaps the desire to avoid being too influenced."

• Social influence includes:
  • Unaware imitation of others
  • Leadership
  • Blind obedience to authority
  • And many other phenomena
• Even resistance to influence is itself a response shaped by awareness of social pressure.

⚖️ The dual nature of social influence

✅ When influence supports society

• Social influence is "sometimes an important part of societal functioning."
• It enables coordination, shared norms, and collective action.

⚠️ When influence produces harm

• "At other times social influence creates bad—indeed horrible—outcomes."
• Example from the excerpt: "When you think about the behavior of ordinary Germans during World War II, do you now better understand how much they were influenced by the social situation?"
  • This illustrates that understanding situational influence helps explain behavior without excusing it.
  • Don't confuse: recognizing social influence does not mean people lack responsibility; it means the situation powerfully shapes behavior.

🪞 Applying influence knowledge to yourself

🪞 Self-reflection questions

The excerpt encourages asking:

• Conformity balance: "Do you think you conform too much, or too little?"
• Awareness: "Do you think about when you do or don't conform?"
• Identity: "Are you more of a conformist or an independent thinker—and why do you prefer to be that way?"

These questions help you become conscious of your own influence patterns rather than acting on autopilot.

🔍 Understanding your own obedience

"What motivates you to obey the instructions of your professor?"

The excerpt lists three types of power:

Type of power	What it means (from context)
Expert power	Obedience based on perceived knowledge or competence
Coercive power	Obedience based on fear of punishment or negative consequences
Referent power	Obedience based on identification, respect, or desire for approval

• Recognizing which type drives your behavior helps you understand whether you are motivated by respect, fear, or admiration.

🤝 Using influence knowledge in relationships and leadership

🤝 Judging others more fairly

• Understanding social influence helps you "judge others" with more nuance.
• Example: Historical events (like World War II) become more understandable when you recognize "how much they were influenced by the social situation."
• This does not excuse behavior but provides a fuller explanation.

🧑‍💼 Leading and persuading ethically

"If you are in a leadership position, you now have a better idea about the many influence techniques that are available to you and better understand their [effects]."

• Awareness of influence techniques allows you to:
  • Choose appropriate methods for different situations.
  • Understand the ethical implications of each technique.
  • Develop "more satisfying relations with others" by using influence responsibly.

💡 Making informed decisions

• "You will realize (and hopefully use this knowledge to inform your everyday decisions)" about when to conform and when to resist.
• Being aware of influence processes lets you decide consciously rather than react automatically.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Social influence—the process by which people's beliefs and behaviors change to match those around them—is a pervasive force that shapes everyday decisions, can produce both beneficial and harmful outcomes, and operates through multiple mechanisms including conformity, obedience, and social power.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Two types of conformity: informational social influence (conforming because others have accurate information, leading to real belief change) vs. normative social influence (conforming to be accepted, often without actual belief change).
• Majority vs. minority influence: larger groups usually prevail and produce public compliance, but consistent minorities can create deeper thinking and more creative outcomes.
• Key factors affecting conformity: group size (with diminishing returns), unanimity (any disagreement sharply reduces conformity), and authority (as shown in Milgram's obedience studies).
• Common confusion: private acceptance vs. public compliance—informational influence changes real opinions, while normative influence often only changes outward behavior.
• Individual differences: self-esteem, need for approval, and gender-related concerns (status independence vs. group harmony) all affect conformity levels.

🔄 Two Pathways of Conformity

📚 Informational social influence

The change in opinions or behavior that occurs when we conform to people who we believe have accurate information.

• Why it happens: we assume others know something we don't; we use their behavior as a guide to reality.
• Outcome: usually produces private acceptance—real, internal change in beliefs.
• Example: if everyone in a group chooses the same answer on a difficult question, you may genuinely come to believe that answer is correct.

👥 Normative social influence

Occurs when we express opinions or behave in ways that help us to be accepted or that keep us from being isolated or rejected by those we care about.

• Why it happens: driven by the need to belong and avoid rejection.
• Outcome: frequently produces public compliance—outward behavior change without internal belief change.
• Example: you might agree with a group's opinion out loud to fit in, even though privately you still hold your original view.
• Don't confuse: public compliance looks like conformity on the surface, but the person hasn't actually changed their mind.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Majority and Minority Influence

🏛️ Majority influence

• What it is: when the views or behaviors of a larger number of individuals in the group prevail.
• Classic demonstration: Solomon Asch's line-judging studies showed people conforming to obviously wrong answers when the majority agreed.
• Typical outcome: public compliance is common; people go along to avoid standing out.

🎯 Minority influence

• What it is: when the views of a smaller number of individuals prevail.
• How it works: minorities must express their views consistently and confidently to have impact.
• Example study: Moscovici's color-judgment study demonstrated that a consistent minority could shift majority opinion.
• Why it matters: minorities force group members to think more deeply about a topic, which can produce more creative thinking.
• Less frequent than majority influence, but can lead to deeper cognitive processing.

⚙️ Factors That Strengthen or Weaken Conformity

📊 Group size and social impact

• Social impact: the increase in conformity produced by adding new members to the majority group.
• Diminishing returns: the effect is greater for initial majority members than for later members.
• In other words, going from 1 to 2 people has more impact than going from 10 to 11.

🔓 Unanimity

• Powerful effect: conformity decreases sharply when there is any disagreement among the group trying to create influence.
• Why unanimity matters:
  • Being the only person who is different is potentially embarrassing.
  • We want to be liked by others, so we naturally want to avoid being the sole dissenter.
• Even one ally who breaks unanimity can dramatically reduce conformity pressure.

👔 Authority and obedience

• Milgram's study: demonstrated the power of authority to create obedience.
  • When an authority figure accepted responsibility for participants' actions, 65% administered what they thought was a severe and dangerous shock to another person.
• What reduced obedience:
  • Lower status of the experimenter.
  • Limited ability to express authority (e.g., communicating by telephone from another room instead of being physically present).
• Milgram's studies also confirmed the role of unanimity in producing conformity.

💪 Social Power and Leadership

🔑 Five types of social power

Social power: the ability of one individual to create behavioral or belief changes in another person.

Power Type	Description	Likely Outcome
Reward	Ability to provide benefits	Varies between compliance and acceptance
Coercive	Ability to punish	Typically public compliance
Legitimate	Authority from position/role	Varies by context
Referent	Influence from being liked/admired	Often private acceptance
Expert	Influence from perceived knowledge	Often private acceptance

• These five types vary in whether they are more likely to create private acceptance or public compliance.

👑 Leadership approaches

• Personality-focused: intelligence and sociability are associated with good leaders.
• Leadership styles: charismatic and transformational leaders have been studied as distinct types.
• Contingency model of leadership effectiveness: examines the conditions under which different types of leaders are most likely to be effective.
• Leadership involves using many types of power to influence others.

🧑 Individual Differences in Conformity

🪞 Self-esteem and need for approval

• Lower self-esteem: people with lower self-esteem are more likely to conform than those with higher self-esteem.
• Dependence and approval-seeking: people who are dependent on others and have a strong need for approval are also more conforming.

⚖️ Gender differences

• Men (on average):
  • More concerned about appearing to have high status by acting independently.
  • More likely to resist changing their beliefs in public.
• Women (on average):
  • More concerned with connecting to others and maintaining group harmony.
  • (The excerpt cuts off here, but implies different conformity patterns related to these concerns.)

Don't confuse: these are average tendencies, not absolute rules; the excerpt emphasizes motivational differences (status vs. harmony) rather than claiming one gender conforms more overall.

🎓 Practical Applications

🔍 Self-awareness

• Understanding social influence helps you recognize when you conform or obey, and when you influence others.
• Reflection questions the excerpt raises:
  • Do you conform too much or too little?
  • Are you more of a conformist or an independent thinker—and why?
  • What motivates you to obey authority figures (expert, coercive, or referent power)?

🌍 Understanding others

• Social influence helps explain behavior in extreme situations.
• Example: understanding how ordinary Germans during World War II were influenced by the social situation.
• Recognizing the power of the situation can lead to more nuanced judgments of others' behavior.

🤝 Improving relationships and leadership

• If you are in a leadership position, understanding influence techniques and their likely outcomes helps you lead more effectively.
• Awareness of social influence can help you develop more satisfying relations with others.
• Recognizing when social influence creates good outcomes (helping us make informed decisions, gaining acceptance) vs. bad outcomes (blind obedience, harmful conformity).

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Physical attractiveness, similarity, proximity, and positive affect are the primary forces that drive initial attraction between people, with physical appearance playing an especially powerful role in early encounters despite also triggering broader assumptions about personality and character.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Physical attractiveness dominates early encounters: In initial meetings, physical appearance is the strongest predictor of liking, outweighing intelligence and other traits.
• Similarity breeds connection: People are drawn to others who share their demographics, values, beliefs, and interests because similarity makes relationships easier and validates self-concepts.
• Proximity and mere exposure matter: Simply being around someone repeatedly increases liking, even without meaningful interaction.
• Common confusion—beauty stereotypes vs. reality: The "what is beautiful is good" stereotype leads people to assume attractive individuals have better personalities, but these differences are much smaller than the stereotypes suggest.
• Arousal polarizes attraction: Physiological arousal from any source intensifies feelings toward others, making attractive people seem more attractive and unattractive people less so.

💎 Physical attractiveness effects

💎 Why appearance matters so much

The excerpt describes a field study where college students were randomly paired at a dance. After spending time together, the only factor that predicted liking was physical attractiveness—not intelligence or other characteristics.

• Physical attractiveness influences us from infancy: even one-year-olds prefer looking at faces adults consider attractive.
• Attractive people receive tangible benefits: better grades, more job offers, lighter court sentences, more romantic options, and potentially longer lives.
• Example: An employer reviewing two equally qualified candidates may unconsciously favor the more attractive one.

🎭 The "what is beautiful is good" stereotype

The "what is beautiful is good" stereotype: the belief that external attractiveness signifies positive internal qualities.

• Attractive people are perceived as more sociable, altruistic, intelligent, and mentally healthy than less attractive people.
• These assumptions activate quickly and spontaneously when viewing attractive faces.
• Online dating shows the same pattern: more attractive profile photos correlate with more positive text evaluations.
• Reality check: While some evidence suggests attractive people may be slightly more sociable and popular, the actual personality differences are far smaller than the stereotypes. The stereotype is much stronger than reality.

🧬 Universal features of attractiveness

🧬 Youthful features

• Large, round, widely spaced eyes; small nose and chin; prominent cheekbones; large forehead.
• Baby-faced individuals are seen as warmer and more honest but less competent.
• The preference for youth is stronger when judging women than men.
• Example: The excerpt notes that Leonardo DiCaprio may be popular partly due to his youthful-looking face.

🔄 Symmetry

• More symmetrical faces are rated as more attractive across cultures.
• Symmetry may signal health and good genes, making someone a better reproductive partner.
• Symmetrical faces also seem more familiar and less threatening.
• Body symmetry matters too: women prefer more symmetrical men as partners.

📊 Averageness

• Contrary to intuition, average faces (composites of many faces) are rated as more attractive than unique ones.
• The more faces averaged together in a composite, the more attractive the result.
• Average faces may be preferred because they are more familiar and thus feel safer.

🌱 Other universal markers

• Healthy skin, good teeth, smiling expressions, and good grooming all increase attractiveness.
• These features likely signal health from an evolutionary perspective.

🌍 Cultural variation in attractiveness

While youth, symmetry, and averageness are universal, some preferences vary:

Aspect	Cultural variation
Body type	Modern Western cultures prefer thinness and athletic builds; this preference has strengthened over 50 years
Weight	In cultures where food is scarce, heavier bodies are more attractive
Specific features	Collectivistic cultures associate attractiveness with traits related to concern for others; individualistic cultures link it to independence-related traits

Don't confuse: Universal preferences (youth, symmetry) with culturally specific ones (thinness, specific body types).

⚤ Gender differences in attraction priorities

Both men and women value physical attractiveness and personality traits like kindness, humor, and intelligence. However:

Men prioritize more:

• Physical attractiveness and youth in partners
• Fertility cues: low waist-to-hip ratio in women (large hips, small waist)
• Willingness to have casual sex with lower standards for partners

Women prioritize more:

• Social status and material resources in partners
• Somewhat older partners (men of all ages prefer women in their 20s; women are more flexible)
• Selectivity in choosing partners

Evidence from personal ads:

• Men's ads seeking women emphasize desired physical appearance
• Women's ads seeking men emphasize desired status and resources
• Women respond more to ads mentioning high income and education; men respond less to this information
• These patterns appear across cultures and even in same-sex personal ads

Evolutionary interpretation: Women invest more time in childbearing and rearing, so they may be predisposed to be more selective and prioritize partners who can provide resources. Men, with lower biological investment, may prioritize fertility signals.

Social explanation: Women's lower average status worldwide may drive them to seek status through partners. In cultures where women have more education, wealth, and reproductive control, the gender difference in status preference is smaller.

🔍 Why physical attractiveness is so influential

🔍 Attractiveness as reward

• Being around attractive people is enjoyable and makes us feel good about ourselves
• Attractiveness implies high status
• Positive features of attractive people "rub off" through associational learning

🔮 Self-fulfilling prophecies

• Because people expect attractive individuals to be friendly and warm, they treat them more positively
• This positive treatment may lead attractive people to actually develop these characteristics
• However, the stereotype remains much stronger than the reality

🤝 Similarity and liking

🤝 What similarity means

Similarity: sharing external demographic characteristics (age, education, race, religion, intelligence, socioeconomic status) and internal ones (values, beliefs, interests).

Research findings on similarity:

• People who shared attitudes in the first week of living together became friends; those with different attitudes did not
• Taller people like other tall people; happy people like other happy people
• People enjoy being with others who share their birthday and sense of humor

💡 Why similarity creates attraction

💡 Similarity makes things easier

• Shared preferences simplify decision-making (e.g., choosing movies, activities)
• Dissimilarity in important areas creates complications: differing views on sex, marriage, or child-rearing make relationships harder
• Example: If one partner wants marriage and the other doesn't, this fundamental dissimilarity creates ongoing tension

💡 Similarity is reinforcing

• When someone similar to us reacts the same way to events, it validates our own reactions
• Shared reactions make us feel good about ourselves and our opinions
• Example: If you like a movie and your friend (who shares your values) also likes it, you feel validated in your judgment
• Sharing values with others helps validate the worthiness of our self-concepts

💡 Similarity signals reciprocal liking

• Finding similarities makes us feel the other person will like us back
• This expectation of reciprocal liking increases our own liking

⚖️ Status similarity and social exchange

• People want high-status friends and partners (healthy, attractive, wealthy, fun, friendly)
• But social exchange principles limit this: people can only attract partners with similar status
• Attractiveness is a resource that attracts other resources
• Example: Attractive people are more able to date other attractive people
• When partners seem mismatched in attractiveness, we often assume the less attractive partner offers other (perhaps less visible) forms of status

🔄 Reciprocity in liking

• We prefer people who like us about as much as we like them
• Relationships are unstable when one person likes the other much more (imbalanced/inequitable)
• Example: When someone continually pursues another who isn't interested, the suitor feels hurt and the pursued person feels guilty and angry
• Practical lesson: Acting positively toward others expresses liking and respect, and they will likely return the compliment (unless it's too blatant and seems ingratiating)

❌ What doesn't work: complementarity

• Complementarity (being different from the other) does not generally increase liking
• While we may sometimes prefer people with different interests or skills, for personality traits similarity matters most
• Don't confuse: Complementarity (opposites attract) with similarity (the actual driver of attraction)

📍 Proximity and mere exposure

📍 Proximity as a prerequisite

The excerpt makes a crucial point: You'll never marry someone you never meet.

• Out of 7 billion people, you'll only meet a tiny fraction before marrying
• You're likely to marry someone similar to you because most people you meet share your cultural background
• Your future partner probably lives in the same city, attends the same school, takes similar classes, works a similar job

Proximity liking: the principle that people tend to become better acquainted with and more fond of each other when the social situation brings them into repeated contact.

Evidence:

• Students who sit next to each other in class are more likely to become friends, even with assigned seating
• In a housing complex study, people became friends with those living near them
• People living near mailboxes and stairways (more social contact) made more friends than those at corridor ends

🔁 The mere exposure effect

Mere exposure effect: the tendency to prefer stimuli (including people) that we have seen frequently.

Classic study: Female confederates attended a large lecture class 0, 5, 10, or 15 times during a semester. At the end:

• Attendance frequency didn't affect recognition
• But it strongly affected liking: more attendance = more liking
• This occurred without any interaction between the confederates and students

Additional evidence:

• Infants smile more at photographs of people they've seen before
• People prefer mirror images of their own faces (which they see more often), while friends prefer the normal view
• The effect occurs across many situations and may have evolutionary roots: unfamiliar things trigger protective fear, but familiar things feel safer

Cultural dimension: Familiar people may be seen as ingroup members rather than outgroup, increasing liking. People from one's own race are liked partly because they seem more familiar.

⏰ Limits of mere exposure

• Mere exposure only applies when moving from completely unfamiliar to somewhat familiar
• It works in early stages of attraction
• With too much exposure, things become boring (too familiar)
• Example: New songs you initially dislike may become favorites with repeated listening, but eventually become tiresome with overexposure
• Optimal familiarity: neither too strange nor too well known

😊 Affect and attraction

😊 Mood effects on liking

The relationship between mood and liking is straightforward:

• Good moods → like people more
• Bad moods → like people less
• Affective states provide information about the social context

Why this happens:

• Positive affect signals it's safe and desirable to approach others
• Negative affect indicates danger and suggests avoidance

Research evidence: Studies put participants in good moods by having them find a coin, hear soothing music, or receive cookies. Those in good moods expressed more liking for other things and people.

Practical lesson: To get someone to like you, put them in a good mood—bring flowers, look your best, or tell a funny joke.

⚡ Arousal and polarization

The relationship between arousal and liking is more complex than mood effects.

Key study: Male students ran in place for either 15 seconds (low arousal) or 120 seconds (high arousal), then viewed videos of attractive or unattractive women. Results:

• Arousal didn't increase or decrease liking directly
• Interaction effect: Aroused men liked the attractive woman MORE and the unattractive woman LESS than less-aroused men
• Arousal polarized judgments

Bridge study: An attractive woman interviewed men on either a high, wobbly suspension bridge or a low, solid bridge. Over half the men interviewed on the high bridge called her later, versus significantly fewer from the low bridge or those interviewed by male interviewers. Interpretation: Men misattributed arousal from the bridge as attraction to the interviewer.

⚡ How arousal polarizes attraction

Arousal polarizes liking: when we are aroused, everything seems more extreme.

• The function of arousal in emotion is to increase response strength
• Love with arousal (sexual or otherwise) is stronger than love with lower arousal
• Anger, dislike, and disgust are also stronger with high arousal

Sources of arousal:

• Sometimes directly from the partner (very attractive or very unattractive people are more arousing than average)
• Sometimes from other sources: exercise, heights, roller coasters, scary movies

Passionate love: emotionally intense love based on passion—the kind experienced when first getting to know a romantic partner, involving strong feelings accompanied by increased arousal and sexual attraction.

Practical application: If you like someone and they seem to like you back, creating extra arousal (scary movie, tall building, workout together) can increase their liking—BUT only if they're already positively inclined. If not, arousal could make things worse.

Don't confuse: The source of arousal (which can be misattributed) with the target of attraction (the person being evaluated).

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Long-term romantic relationships are sustained by evolving from passion-based attraction to companionate love built on intimacy, commitment, and interdependence, with success depending on attachment styles, equity, and partners' ability to meet each other's needs.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What changes over time: Initial passionate love typically shifts toward companionate love (based on friendship, respect, and mutual care) as relationships mature.
• Closeness and self-disclosure: Successful relationships involve increasing intimacy through reciprocal self-disclosure and partners thinking of themselves as "we" rather than separate individuals.
• Communal vs. exchange relationships: Partners can relate through communal patterns (giving without scorekeeping) or exchange patterns (tracking contributions); happier couples tend toward communal relating.
• Common confusion: Attachment styles formed in childhood (secure, anxious/ambivalent, avoidant) predict adult relationship patterns, but they can shift with new experiences and are not always consistent across all relationships.
• What predicts success: Maintaining similarity in values, positive affect, effective communication, perceived equity, and sexual compatibility all contribute to relationship longevity.

💑 Evolution of love over time

💑 From passion to companionship

• Initial relationships often feature high passionate love (intense desire, wanting to be together constantly).
• Over time, cognition becomes relatively more important than emotion.
• Long-term relationships shift toward companionate love:

  Love that is based on friendship, mutual attraction, common interests, mutual respect, and concern for each other's welfare.

• This doesn't mean love weakens—it may have a different underlying structure.
• Example: The case study couple (Frank and Anita Milford) maintained their 80-year marriage through shared activities and daily rituals like kissing and cuddling before bed.

💑 What remains important

• Physical attractiveness still matters but becomes relatively less important than initially.
• Similarity remains essential—relationships are more satisfactory when partners maintain similar interests and share values over time.
• Proximity continues to matter—long-distance separation strains relationships.
• Partners who still feel passion report being more satisfied and find their partners more attractive.

🤝 Closeness and intimacy dynamics

🤝 What closeness means

Closeness in relationships is marked by reciprocal self-disclosure—the tendency to communicate frequently, without fear of reprisal, and in an accepting and empathetic manner.

• When partners feel close, they experience caring, warmth, acceptance, and social support.
• Partners in intimate relationships think of the couple as "we" rather than two separate individuals.
• Closeness allows partners to maintain positive feelings while also expressing negative feelings and making accurate (sometimes less positive) judgments.

🤝 Measuring closeness

• Researchers use a simple visual measure showing overlapping circles representing self and other.
• More overlap = closer relationship.
• This measure predicts relationship satisfaction and longevity better than reported positive feelings alone.
• The key is cognitive representations of self and other merging together.

🤝 Building intimacy through disclosure

• Experimental research shows that sharing intimate thoughts increases closeness.
• Example: Students paired with strangers who answered intimate questions (e.g., "When did you last cry in front of another person?") felt significantly closer than those who only made small talk.
• Don't confuse: Intimacy requires vulnerability and acceptance, not just time spent together.

⚖️ Relationship patterns and equity

⚖️ Communal relationships

Close relationships in which partners suspend their need for equity and exchange, giving support to the partner in order to meet his or her needs, and without consideration of the costs to themselves.

• Partners become highly attuned to each other's needs.
• The other person's desires and goals become as important as one's own.
• Happier couples are less likely to "keep score" of contributions.
• Being reminded of external benefits a partner provides can actually decrease feelings of love.

⚖️ Exchange relationships

Relationships in which each of the partners keeps track of his or her contributions to the partnership.

• Partners monitor what they give and receive.
• If one partner feels they contribute more over time, the relationship suffers.
• The over-contributing partner feels taken advantage of; the under-contributing partner may feel guilty.

⚖️ Equity and social comparison

• Marriages are happiest when both members perceive they contribute relatively equally.
• It matters not just our own equity ratio but how it compares to what same-sex others receive in relationships around us.
• Downward social comparison (perceiving ourselves as better off than similar others) increases satisfaction.
• Individual differences: People high in exchange orientation care more about equity; those low in exchange orientation show no link between equity and satisfaction and are generally more satisfied.

🔗 Interdependence and commitment

🔗 What interdependence involves

• As relationships become more complex (shared household, children, elderly parents), partners increasingly rely on each other.
• Partners turn to each other for:
  • Social support
  • Help coordinating activities
  • Remembering dates and appointments
  • Accomplishing tasks
• Interdependence: Relying to a great degree on each other to meet goals.

🔗 Development of interdependence

• Takes a long time to develop ability to understand the other's needs.
• Requires forming positive patterns where each person's needs are adequately met.
• Social representation of a significant other becomes rich, complex, and detailed.
• Much energy invested in creating the relationship makes breaking up increasingly costly.

🔗 Commitment defined

The feelings and actions that keep partners working together to maintain the relationship.

More committed partners:

• See their mates as more attractive than others
• Are less able to imagine themselves with another partner
• Express less interest in other potential mates
• Are less aggressive toward each other
• Are less likely to break up

🔗 Sunk costs bias

When we choose to stay in situations largely because we feel we have put too much effort in to be able to leave them behind.

• People may stay in relationships even when costs are high because:
  • Costs of having no relationship seem higher
  • Recognition of time and effort already invested
• Partners evaluate both current relationship outcomes AND alternatives (other relationships or being alone).

🔺 Sternberg's triangular model of love

🔺 Three components

An approach that suggests there are different types of love, each made up of different combinations of cognitive and affective variables, specified in terms of passion, intimacy, and commitment.

Component	Description
Passion	Intense desire, physical attraction
Intimacy	Closeness, caring, warmth
Commitment	Decision to maintain the relationship

🔺 Types of love

• Consummate love: All three components (experienced only in the very best relationships)
• Liking: Intimacy only (good friends)
• Companionate love: Intimacy + commitment (long-term friends)
• Infatuation: Passion only (initial dating)
• Romantic love: Passion + intimacy but not commitment (dating couples)
• Other combinations create different love types

🔺 Changes over time

• Research shows components shift as relationships progress:
  • Passion and intimacy negatively related to relationship length (decrease over time)
  • Commitment positively correlated with duration (increases over time)
  • Engaged couples report highest intimacy and passion scores

🔺 Gender and cultural differences

• Men (contrary to stereotypes):
  • Tend to believe true love lasts forever
  • Report falling in love more quickly than women
• Collectivistic cultures:
  • Put less emphasis on romantic love than individualistic countries
  • Place more emphasis on companionate aspects
  • Relatively less emphasis on passion

🧷 Attachment styles in adult relationships

🧷 What attachment style means

Individual differences in how people relate to others in close relationships.

• Attachment styles are displayed with parents, friends, and romantic partners.
• Learned in childhood and remain largely stable into adulthood.
• A significant correlation exists between infant and adult (17+ years) attachment behaviors.

🧷 Three main childhood styles

Style	Childhood pattern	Adult relationship pattern
Secure	Perceive parents as safe, available, responsive; relate easily	Positive feelings about self and others; can form stable, healthy relationships
Anxious/ambivalent	Overly dependent; continually seek more affection than parents can give	Want to be liked but lack self-esteem; primarily other-concerned
Avoidant	Unable to relate to parents; distant, fearful, cold	Feel good about self but have poor relations with others; self-concerned

A fourth style, disorganized attachment (blend of insecure styles), links to avoidant-fearful attachment in adulthood.

🧷 Self-concern and other-concern framework

	Other-concern goals met	Other-concern goals not met
Self-concern goals met	Secure (healthy self and other feelings)	Avoidant (healthy self but fears connection)
Self-concern goals not met	Anxious/ambivalent (desires connection but anxious about self)	Fearful (poor relationships and poor self-concept)

🧷 Impact on adult relationships

Secure attachment leads to:

• Longer relationships
• Less jealousy
• Better ability to form close relationships

Insecure attachment (anxious/avoidant) leads to:

• Less warmth with partners
• More anger
• Difficulty expressing feelings
• Worry about partner's love and commitment
• More negative interpretation of partner's behaviors
• More perceived conflict (anxious partners)
• Trouble creating relationships in the first place (avoidant/fearful)
• Difficulty understanding others' emotions
• Less interest in learning about partner's thoughts and feelings

🧷 Variability and change

Don't confuse attachment as completely fixed:

• Cross-cultural diversity: Attachment style distribution varies by ethnicity, religion, individualism-collectivism, and acculturation (e.g., anxious attachment higher in East Asia, Middle East, Eastern Europe).
• Relationship-specific: Overall attachment style may not predict attachment in specific relationships (with mother, brother, partner can differ).
• Age-related trends: Younger adults higher in anxious attachment; middle-aged adults higher in avoidant attachment.
• Experience-driven change: Anxious individuals who find trusting, nurturing relationships may shift toward secure style over time.
• Therapeutic implications: Couples therapy can help develop more secure attachments; therapists can help clients develop secure styles through trusting, supportive relationships.

💻 Internet relationships

💻 Positive outcomes

Despite concerns about isolation, research shows Internet use relates to positive outcomes:

• People using Internet more frequently report:
  • Spending more time with family and friends
  • Better psychological health
• Internet helps maintain long-distance relationships
• Allows people to stay connected with distant friends and family

💻 Quality of online relationships

• Many people form close relationships with those originally met online
• Over half of participants in news/user groups developed real-life relationships with online contacts
• Almost a quarter married, became engaged to, or lived with someone first met online
• Laboratory studies show people who met first online reported liking each other more than those who met face-to-face first (even when same partner)

💻 Why Internet relationships succeed

• Increased self-disclosure: Relative anonymity allows people to share more readily
• Reduced physical attractiveness focus: Relationships may form more on similarity in values and beliefs
• Shared interests: Easier to find others with common interests and values
• Purpose-driven: Many Internet activities explicitly aim to make new friends
• Better expression: People report being better able to express emotions and experiences online

💻 Strengthening offline relationships

• Going "Facebook official" (FBO) with relationship status:
  • Often preceded by offline discussions between partners
  • After going FBO, couples report more perceived relationship commitment and stability
• Overall evidence: Internet interaction helps maintain close ties and form rewarding relationships, rather than being isolating

✅ Making relationships last

✅ Key strategies from research

Be prepared for squabbles:

• Every relationship has conflict (normal and not always bad)
• Working through minor conflicts improves social skills and strengthens relationships

Don't be negative:

• Negative cognitions and emotions extremely harmful to relationships
• Prevent spiral of negative thinking and behaviors
• Do whatever possible to think positively

Be fair in evaluations:

• People tend to inflate their own positive behaviors and see partner's negative behaviors as worse
• Give partner benefit of the doubt
• Remember you are not perfect either

Do things that please your partner:

• Social exchange principles: being nice leads to reciprocal niceness

Have fun:

• Positive moods and avoiding boredom help relationships last longer

✅ Additional success factors

• Maintain similarity: Continue sharing activities, interests, values, and beliefs over time
• Display positive affect: Happy couples are in positive moods around each other, laugh together, express approval rather than criticism
• Idealize partner: View partner in positive or even "idealized" sense rather than overly realistic/negative way
• Share and self-disclose: Express thoughts, needs, and desires so partners can become aware and attempt to meet them
• Sexual compatibility: Important predictor of success; partners must agree on attitudes about sex outside relationship (infidelity linked to increased divorce risk)

✅ Jealousy considerations

• Jealousy is a powerful, evolutionarily selected emotion to maintain relationships
• Gender differences:
  • Men more jealous overall
  • Men more concerned about sexual infidelities (evolutionary factors related to kin selection—ensuring they raise their own children)
  • Women relatively more concerned about emotional infidelities (focus on maintaining intact relationship; flirting suggests lack of commitment)

✅ Benefits of successful relationships

• Happily married people are happier overall
• Better psychological and physical health
• Longer life (at least for men)
• Lower divorce rates in some educated segments of society

💔 When relationships end

💔 Pain of breakup

• Separations cause substantial pain, especially after long relationships characterized by interdependence and commitment
• Pain partly due to loneliness from loss of social support
• Takes time to recover and develop new social connections
• Lonely people:
  • Sleep more poorly
  • Take longer to recover from stress
  • Show poorer health overall

💔 Effects of rejection

Pain magnified when people feel rejected by the other:

• Makes people sad and angry
• More likely to break social norms
• More focused on self-concern
• Lowered ability to self-regulate
• More likely to act on impulses
• BUT also more motivated by other-concern: particularly likely to try making new friends to compensate for rejection

Those who rejected others may feel guilty.

💔 Recovery

• Breaking up is painful, but people do recover
• People usually move on to find new relationships
• Research shows people adjust to loss of partner, even after long relationships
• Many experience increased psychological difficulties, at least short-term

Don't confuse: While breakups are difficult, especially after interdependent relationships, recovery is possible and people can form new successful relationships.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Close relationships can be understood through the fundamental principles of social psychology—affect, behavior, and cognition—and they serve both self-concern and other-concern goals by connecting us to others.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Why relationships matter: Close relationships are essential for survival, successful reproduction, social support, mental and physical health, and meaningful lives.
• How to maintain existing relationships: Think about commitment, costs and benefits, equity between partners, and whether the relationship is communal or exchange-based.
• How to build new relationships: Apply principles like actual and assumed similarity, reciprocal disclosure, and proximity to increase liking and attraction.
• Common confusion: Relationships may seem purely emotional, but they follow social psychology's ABCs (affect, behavior, cognition) and balance self-concern with other-concern.
• Core insight: Close relationships are a way to feel good about ourselves by connecting with others, not just about the other person.

💡 Why close relationships are fundamental

🧬 Survival and reproduction

• The excerpt states that close relationships are "the most important part of human experience" for survival.
• Without them, we could not successfully reproduce.
• This is not just about romance; it's about the biological and social necessity of connection.

🏥 Mental and physical health

• Social support from people who care about us makes our lives more meaningful.
• Without close relationships, we would be less mentally and physically healthy.
• Example: A person with strong social ties has better health outcomes than someone isolated, according to the excerpt's framing.

🔧 Applying social psychology to existing relationships

🔧 Key factors to consider

The excerpt suggests thinking about several dimensions of your current relationship:

Factor	What to ask yourself
Commitment	How committed are you to the relationship?
Costs and benefits	What do you receive from the relationship? What does it cost you?
Equity	Is there balance between you and your partner?
Communal vs exchange	Is the relationship based on mutual care (communal) or tit-for-tat exchange?

🤝 Staying together as "one interrelated pair"

• The excerpt asks: "What can you do to help ensure that you and your partner remain together as one interrelated pair?"
• This framing emphasizes the interdependence of partners, not just two separate individuals.
• Don't confuse: A healthy relationship isn't just about individual satisfaction; it's about maintaining the connection between both people.

🌱 Building new relationships

🌱 Core principles for attraction

If you are not currently in a relationship, the excerpt highlights specific mechanisms:

• Actual and assumed similarity: People are attracted to those who are similar to them (or whom they believe are similar).
• Reciprocal disclosure: Sharing personal information and having it reciprocated increases liking.
• Proximity: Physical or psychological closeness plays an important role in attraction.

🎯 Practical application

• Example: If you want someone to like you, find common ground (similarity), share about yourself and encourage them to share (reciprocal disclosure), and increase opportunities for interaction (proximity).
• These are not manipulative tricks; they are natural social processes that the excerpt frames as "basic principles of social psychology."

🧠 The ABCs framework for relationships

🧠 Affect, Behavior, and Cognition

The excerpt states that "even close relationships can be considered in terms of the basic principles of social psychology, the ABCs of affect, behavior, and cognition."

• Affect: Emotions and feelings in the relationship.
• Behavior: Actions partners take toward each other.
• Cognition: Thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions about the relationship and partner.

All three interact to shape relationship outcomes.

⚖️ Self-concern and other-concern

• Relationships involve balancing goals:
  • Self-concern: What we gain for ourselves (feeling good, support, benefits).
  • Other-concern: Caring for and supporting the partner.
• The excerpt emphasizes that close relationships are "one of the ways that we can feel good about ourselves by connecting with others."
• Don't confuse: This is not selfish; connecting with others serves both self and other simultaneously.

🔄 Communal vs exchange relationships

🔄 Two types of relationships

The excerpt asks whether your relationship is communal or exchange-based:

Type	Characteristics
Communal	Based on mutual care and responsiveness to each other's needs; not keeping score
Exchange	Based on reciprocity and fairness; tracking costs and benefits more explicitly

🤔 Why it matters

• Understanding which type your relationship is can help you think about what behaviors are appropriate.
• Example: In a communal relationship, doing something for your partner without expecting immediate return is normal; in an exchange relationship, there may be more explicit reciprocity.
• The excerpt suggests reflecting on this distinction to better understand and maintain your relationship.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Close relationships—shaped by physical attraction, similarity, proximity, emotional arousal, and interdependence—are essential to human survival, happiness, and health, and evolve from passion-based attraction to intimacy-based commitment over time.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Why close relationships matter: they enable reproduction, provide social support, and improve mental and physical health.
• What drives initial attraction: physical attractiveness (youth, symmetry, averageness), similarity in values/beliefs/status, proximity (mere exposure), and reciprocal liking.
• How arousal and mood shape liking: positive mood increases liking; arousal polarizes feelings; passion (intense arousal-based love) characterizes early relationships.
• How relationships evolve: passionate love (arousal + sexual attraction) transitions to companionate love (intimacy + commitment) as cognition replaces passion over time.
• Common confusion: communal vs exchange relationships—communal partners meet each other's needs without explicit scorekeeping; exchange relationships track costs and benefits.

💞 What close relationships are and why they matter

💞 Definition and scope

Close relationships: relationships characterized by loving, caring, commitment, and intimacy, such as those between adult friends, dating partners, lovers, and married couples.

• The excerpt emphasizes these are not casual acquaintanceships but bonds involving deep emotional investment.
• They are framed as "the most important part of human experience" for survival.

🌱 Benefits of close relationships

• Reproduction: necessary for successful reproduction.
• Social support: others who care for us make life more meaningful.
• Mental and physical health: we experience higher self-efficacy, self-esteem, and positive mood when friends and partners respond supportively and care for our needs and welfare.
• Example: believing a partner is attentive to your welfare → higher self-esteem and positive mood.

🧲 What creates initial attraction

🧲 Interpersonal attraction defined

Interpersonal attraction: the experience of liking or loving someone.

• The excerpt treats "liking" and "loving" as points on a continuum of attraction.
• Initial encounters are strongly influenced by physical attractiveness.

👁️ Physical attractiveness and universal preferences

• What we find attractive (on average):
  • Younger people over older people.
  • More symmetrical faces over less symmetrical faces.
  • More average faces over less average faces.
• Universal vs cultural: preferences for youth, symmetry, and averageness appear universal, but some differences in perceived attractiveness are due to social and cultural factors.

⚖️ Gender differences in attraction priorities

Gender	What they prioritize	Possible explanation
Men	Physical attractiveness of women is more important	May have evolutionary origins
Women	Social status of men is relatively more important	May have evolutionary origins

• Both genders value physical attractiveness overall, but the excerpt notes a difference in relative importance.

✨ The "what is beautiful is good" stereotype

The what is beautiful is good stereotype: the tendency to perceive attractive people as having positive characteristics, such as sociability and competence.

• This is a cognitive bias: we assume attractive people possess other desirable traits.
• Don't confuse: this is a perception bias, not a claim that attractive people actually are more sociable or competent.

🤝 Similarity, reciprocal liking, and proximity

• Similarity: relationships are more likely to develop and be maintained when partners share values and beliefs; social exchange and equity principles predict general similarity in status.
• Reciprocal liking: we prefer people who seem to like us about as much as we like them.
• Mere exposure: simply being around another person increases liking.

  Mere exposure: the tendency to prefer stimuli (including, but not limited to, people) that we have seen more frequently.

  • Example: seeing someone regularly in a class or workplace → increased liking over time.

🔥 How emotion and arousal shape attraction

😊 Mood effects on liking

• We like people more when we are in a good mood.
• We like them less when we are in a bad mood.
• The excerpt frames this as a general principle: current emotional state colors our evaluations of others.

⚡ Arousal and passion

• Arousal polarizes liking: arousal intensifies whatever feelings we already have toward someone.
• Passion defined:

  Passion: the strong feelings that we experience toward another person that are accompanied by increases in arousal.

• Passionate love:

  Passionate love: the emotionally intense love that is based on arousal and sexual attraction.

• Example: meeting someone attractive while experiencing physiological arousal (e.g., excitement, nervousness) → stronger feelings of attraction.

🕰️ How relationships evolve over time

🕰️ From passion to companionate love

• Early stage: passionate love dominates—high arousal, sexual attraction, intense emotion.
• Over time: cognition becomes relatively more important than passion.
• Later stage: close relationships are more likely to be based on companionate love than passionate love.

  Companionate love: (implied) love based on intimacy and commitment rather than arousal and passion.

• Don't confuse: passionate love is not "better" or "worse"; the excerpt describes a natural progression as partners stay together.

🤗 Intimacy and self-disclosure

• What happens as relationships progress: partners come to know each other more fully and care about each other to a greater degree—they become closer.
• Intimacy markers:

  Intimacy: marked in large part by reciprocal self-disclosure—that is, the tendency to communicate frequently and openly.

• Example: sharing personal thoughts, fears, and experiences with a partner → deeper intimacy.

🔗 Interdependence and communal relationships

• Interdependence: partners in close relationships increasingly turn to each other for social support and other needs; they are highly interdependent and rely on effective social exchange.
• Communal relationship:

  Communal relationship: when partners are attentive to the needs of the other person, and when they help the other meet his or her needs without explicitly keeping track of what they are giving or expecting to get in return.

• Contrast with exchange relationships: the excerpt implies exchange relationships involve tracking costs and benefits (e.g., "I did this for you, so you owe me").
• Example: a partner helps the other through a difficult time without expecting immediate repayment → communal relationship.

💍 Commitment and the triangular model of love

• When commitment develops: in relationships where positive rapport is developed and maintained over time, partners become naturally happy and committed.
• Triangular model of love:

  The triangular model of love: proposes that there are different types of love, each made up of different combinations of the basic components of passion, intimacy, and commitment.

• The excerpt does not detail all types, but the model suggests love varies depending on which components are present.

🧸 Attachment styles and relationship quality

🧸 Secure vs insecure attachment

• Origins: children develop either a secure or insecure attachment style with their caregivers.
• Stability: individual differences in these styles remain somewhat stable into adulthood.
• Impact on relationships: people with secure attachment styles may make better partners.

🌍 Variability and change in attachment

• Cultural and age diversity: attachment styles show some diversity across different cultural and age groups.
• Potential for change: attachment styles can shift somewhat, even during adulthood; people currently showing insecure attachment can move toward being more securely attached in their relationships.
• Don't confuse: attachment styles are not fixed for life; they are somewhat stable but not immutable.

🧠 Applying social psychology to relationships

🧠 The ABCs framework

• The excerpt frames close relationships in terms of the basic principles of social psychology:
  • Affect: mood, arousal, passion.
  • Behavior: self-disclosure, social support, helping.
  • Cognition: similarity, equity, commitment.
• Self-concern and other-concern: close relationships are one way we feel good about ourselves by connecting with others.

🛠️ Practical takeaways

• If you are in a relationship: think about commitment, benefits and costs, equity, and whether your relationship is communal or exchange-based; consider what you can do to remain together as one interrelated pair.
• If you are seeking a relationship: focus on actual and assumed similarity, reciprocal disclosure, and proximity to increase liking and be seen as an appropriate partner.
• Example: spending more time near someone you're interested in (proximity) and sharing personal information (reciprocal disclosure) → increased attraction.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Helping behavior arises from both evolutionary adaptations (kinship, reciprocity) and learned social norms, but is constrained by the tension between self-concern and other-concern.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Definition of altruism: behavior designed to increase another person's welfare, especially actions that provide no direct reward to the helper.
• Evolutionary basis: we help kin and similar others to enhance genetic survival; reciprocal altruism extends helping to strangers with the expectation of future return.
• Costs and rewards shape helping: we help more when rewards are high and costs are low (time, danger, effort).
• Social norms guide helping: the reciprocity norm (return favors) and social responsibility norm (help without expecting payback) teach us when and how to help.
• Common confusion: true altruism vs. self-interested helping—many seemingly altruistic acts may be motivated by self-concern (status, guilt avoidance, future reciprocity) rather than pure other-concern.

🧬 Evolutionary roots of helping

🧬 Kinship and genetic survival

Altruism refers to any behavior that is designed to increase another person's welfare, and particularly those actions that do not seem to provide a direct reward to the person who performs them.

• Evolutionary psychologists argue that altruism benefits the group and enhances reproductive success by helping the species survive.
• Key mechanism: survival of genes matters more than survival of the individual.
• We are particularly helpful to relatives because helping them increases the chance our shared genes will be passed on.

Evidence from research:

• People report being more willing to help close relatives (siblings, parents, children) in life-threatening situations than distant relatives (nieces, nephews, uncles).
• People are more likely to donate kidneys to relatives than to strangers.
• Even children say they are more likely to help siblings than friends.

Relationship	Percentage of shared genes
Identical twins	100%
Parents, children, siblings, fraternal twins	50%
Half-siblings, grandparents, grandchildren	25%
Cousins, great-grandchildren	12.5%
Unrelated persons (friends, spouses, step-siblings)	0%

🤝 Similarity as a helping cue

• We help friends more than strangers, ingroup members more than outgroup members, and even strangers who are similar to us.
• Why similarity matters: it may serve as a marker (though imperfect) that people share genes with us.
• The sense of "oneness" or perceived similarity between helper and recipient motivates much helping behavior.

🔄 Reciprocal altruism

Reciprocal altruism is the idea that if we help other people now, they will return the favor should we need their help in the future.

• This principle allows us to help even total strangers, based on the assumption that helping is useful because others may help us later.
• Over evolutionary time, those who engage in reciprocal altruism reproduce more successfully than those who do not.
• Cross-species evidence: birds emit alarm calls, dolphins support injured companions, baboons guard the troop, bats share food, and even cellular slime molds sacrifice some cells to help others survive.

Example: A bat that has fed successfully will regurgitate food for a less fortunate companion, demonstrating reciprocal altruism in non-human species.

💰 Rewards, costs, and social learning

💰 How rewards increase helping

• Social learning principles: people help more when they receive rewards for doing so.
• Parents praise children who share and reprimand those who act selfishly.
• We are more likely to help attractive people of the other sex—probably because it is rewarding.
• Status as a reward: helping signals high personal qualities and increases social status; people who help publicly are judged as having higher status.
• Health benefits: helpers are happier and even live longer than those who help less.

⏱️ How costs decrease helping

The Darley and Batson (1973) seminary study demonstrates cost effects:

• Seminary students prepared either a talk on the Good Samaritan parable or on jobs they liked.
• They were told they had plenty of time, were on time, or were running late to give the speech.
• On the way, they passed a person in distress (a confederate).

Results:

• Topic of speech (Good Samaritan vs. jobs) did not significantly affect helping.
• Time pressure did matter: 63% helped when they had plenty of time, 45% when on time, only 10% when late.
• Interpretation: when helping is more costly (time pressure), we are less likely to do it, even when primed with altruistic concepts.

Don't confuse: thinking about helping (preparing a Good Samaritan talk) does not guarantee helping behavior when costs are high.

📺 Modeling and observational learning

• We learn to help by watching others help.
• 73% of TV shows contain altruism, with about three altruistic acts per hour; children's shows have particularly high rates.
• Viewing helpful behavior on TV increases helping more than viewing violence increases aggression.
• Negative modeling: playing violent video games decreases helping behavior.

📜 Social norms for helping

📜 The reciprocity norm

The reciprocity norm is a social norm reminding us that we should follow the principles of reciprocal altruism—if someone helps us, then we should help that person in the future, and we should help people now with the expectation that they will help us later if we need it.

• Found in everyday sayings: "Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."
• Found in religious teachings: the golden rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") appears in 21 different religions.
• This norm forms the basis of human cooperation and is found in every culture.
• People generally do help others who have helped them.

🌍 The social responsibility norm

The social responsibility norm tells us that we should try to help others who need assistance, even without any expectation of future paybacks.

• Involves a sense of duty and obligation.
• We are expected to respond to others by giving help to those in need.
• Many religious teachings are based on this norm: we should help others whenever we can, as good human beings.
• Key difference from reciprocity norm: no expectation of return; more purely altruistic.

⚖️ The self-concern vs. other-concern conflict

⚖️ Moral hypocrisy in the laboratory

Batson's coin-flip study reveals the tension between wanting to be fair and acting selfishly:

Setup:

• Students assigned themselves or another student to either a positive task (interesting, $30 prize) or neutral task (boring, no prize).
• They could decide however they wanted; the other student would never know.
• A coin was provided: one side said "SELF to POSITIVE," the other "OTHER to POSITIVE."

What students said they should do:

• 31 of 40 said flipping the coin was most morally right.
• 5 said assigning the other person to the positive task was most right.
• 4 said there was no morally right way.

What students actually did:

• 12 didn't flip the coin at all; 10 of these 12 assigned themselves to the positive task.
• 28 flipped the coin, but only 4 assigned the other person to the positive task (chance would predict 14).
• Interpretation: students wanted to appear fair by flipping the coin, but most accepted results favoring themselves and rejected results favoring the other person.

⚖️ The trade-off

• Helping involves a classic conflict between self-concern and other-concern.
• We know helping is the right thing to do, but self-interest often prevents us from acting on it.
• People may act selfishly while trying to appear moral to themselves and others.
• Short-term self-interest may lead us to take advantage of others' help without returning the favor.

Example: A student might flip a coin to decide fairly but then ignore the result if it doesn't favor them, demonstrating moral hypocrisy—appearing moral without actually being so.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Our helping behavior is largely driven by how others make us feel and how we anticipate feeling after helping or not helping, with both positive moods and negative emotions like guilt and empathy increasing the likelihood that we will help.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Positive moods increase helping: even trivial mood boosters (finding a coin, pleasant scents, being mimicked) make people more likely to help.
• Negative emotions can also drive helping: guilt, sadness, and fear can motivate helping as a way to relieve those uncomfortable feelings.
• Two types of emotional responses to others' distress: personal distress (negative feelings that may lead to avoidance) versus empathy (feeling what the other feels, leading to genuine helping).
• Common confusion: empathy vs. personal distress—empathy involves connecting with the other's experience and helps regardless of escape options; personal distress is self-focused discomfort that may only prompt helping when escape is difficult.
• The egoistic-altruistic debate: even empathy-driven helping may have self-serving elements (feeling good about ourselves), but the outcome—actual help—matters regardless of motive purity.

😊 How positive moods drive helping

😊 The power of good moods

Positive moods increase many types of helping behavior, including contributing to charity, donating blood, and helping coworkers.

• People help more when in a good mood—we intuitively know this (asking parents for the car when they're happy).
• Even trivial mood boosters work: finding a coin in a phone booth, listening to comedy, someone smiling at you, or smelling pleasant perfume.
• Example: Students who were subtly mimicked by an experimenter (copying their behaviors outside their awareness) were more likely to help by picking up dropped pens and donating to charity—likely because similarity creates positive feelings.

🤔 Why good moods increase helping

Three main reasons the excerpt identifies:

1. Safety signal: A positive mood indicates the environment is not dangerous, so we can safely help.
2. Liking others more: We like people more when in good moods, leading to more helping.
3. Mood maintenance: Helping makes us feel good about ourselves, maintaining our positive mood.

Important caveat: People in good moods are particularly likely to help when the helping seems likely to maintain their positive mood—but if they think helping will spoil their good mood, even happy people may refuse to help.

😔 How negative emotions drive helping

😰 Guilt as a helping motivator

Guilt: We feel guilt when we think that we (or others we feel close to) may have caused harm to another person.

• Guilt increases our desire to create positive relationships and repair harm.
• Because we hate feeling guilty, we go out of our way to reduce guilt—and helping is one way to do this.
• Example: In Regan's study, students who believed they had broken another person's camera (inducing guilt) were more likely to help a second, unrelated person than students who weren't feeling guilty.
• The function of guilt: it reminds us we need to work to repair transgressions in our relationships.

🧼 The "Macbeth effect"

The "Macbeth effect": the observation that people tend to want to cleanse themselves when they perceive that they have violated their own ethical standards.

• People want to "wash away their sins" when they've violated ethical standards.
• Fascinating finding: If people are given the opportunity to actually wash their hands (or even watch someone else wash their hands), this reduces both the guilt they experience and the amount of prosocial behavior they subsequently engage in.
• Don't confuse: Physical cleansing literally reduces the psychological guilt and the motivation to help—the amount of guilt is an important determinant of helping behavior.

😢 Other negative emotions

• Sadness, anger, and fear can also increase helping—again, to make ourselves feel better.
• Example: People who were induced to think about their own death (e.g., interviewed in front of a funeral home) became more altruistic.
• The common thread: if helping can reduce negative feelings we're experiencing, we may help to get rid of those bad feelings.

🆚 Personal distress versus empathy

😖 Personal distress

Personal distress: the negative emotions that we may experience when we view another person's suffering.

• When viewing someone in need (e.g., a seriously injured, bleeding car accident victim), we may feel sickened or disgusted.
• These uncomfortable feelings are self-focused—we feel bad because of what we're witnessing.
• Result: We may simply leave the scene rather than stopping, to avoid the discomfort.

💙 Empathy

Empathy: an affective response in which a person understands, and even feels, another person's distress and experiences events the way the other person does.

• We vicariously experience the pain and needs of the other person.
• Empathy is other-focused—we feel what they feel.
• Empathy appears to be biological, an integral part of human nature designed to help us help.
• It allows us to quickly and automatically perceive and understand others' emotional states and regulate our behavior cooperatively.
• Empathy may create other emotions: sympathy, compassion, tenderness.
• Result: We're more likely to help because we want to comfort the victim.

🔬 Batson's research: When each type leads to helping

Study design: Students watched someone (Elaine or Charlie) receiving mild electric shocks in what they thought was a live situation.

Two conditions:

• Easy-escape: Could leave after watching 2 of 10 shock trials.
• Difficult-escape: Had to watch all 10 trials.

Measuring emotions: Questionnaire determined whether participants felt:

• Personal distress (alarmed, grieved, upset, worried, disturbed, distressed, troubled, perturbed)
• Empathy (sympathetic, moved, compassionate, warm, softhearted, tender)

Key findings:

Condition	Empathy	Personal Distress
Easy-escape	Helped	Did NOT help
Difficult-escape	Helped less	Helped MORE

Interpretation:

• Empathy: Involves real concern for the other person that can't be reduced by leaving—so empathetic people help regardless of escape options.
• Personal distress: Self-focused discomfort—people help mainly to avoid the negative emotion they'd experience if forced to keep watching (difficult-escape condition).

Don't confuse: Empathy leads to consistent helping (truly other-focused); personal distress leads to helping only when it serves to reduce one's own discomfort (self-focused).

🤷 The altruism debate

🎭 Is empathy-driven helping truly altruistic?

The excerpt acknowledges it's difficult to be certain:

• Evidence for altruism: We do help to make those we help feel better.
• Evidence for self-interest: We also help to feel good about ourselves.
• Even when feeling empathy, we may help partly because we know we'll feel sad or guilty if we don't.

The distinction between an egoistic, self-concerned motive and an altruistic, other-concerned motive is not always completely clear; we help for both reasons.

🤔 Does the motive matter?

The excerpt's pragmatic conclusion:

• We cannot completely rule out that people help largely for selfish reasons.
• But: If we give money to the needy because we'll feel bad if we don't, or because we want them to feel good, we've made the contribution either way.
• The outcome—actual help provided—is what ultimately matters, regardless of whether the underlying motive is purely altruistic or partially self-serving.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

The presence of other people during an emergency often reduces the likelihood that any individual will help, because social factors interfere with noticing, interpreting, and taking responsibility for the situation.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• The bystander effect: Having more people present during an emergency can actually decrease the chance that anyone will help, contrary to common expectations.
• Four-stage decision model: Latané and Darley identified that helping requires noticing the event, interpreting it as an emergency, taking personal responsibility, and knowing how to implement action.
• Pluralistic ignorance vs. diffusion of responsibility: Don't confuse these two mechanisms—pluralistic ignorance is when everyone looks to others for interpretation and mistakenly assumes others understand the situation, while diffusion of responsibility is when people assume others will take action so they don't need to.
• Urban vs. rural differences: People in smaller towns are more likely to help than those in large cities, partly because city dwellers are overloaded by stimuli and less likely to notice emergencies.
• Empirical support: Over 105 studies with more than 7,500 participants confirm that people help more when fewer others are present, especially when the situation is ambiguous.

🔍 The paradox of bystanders

🔍 The Kitty Genovese case

• In 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered in New York City while reportedly many people heard her cries for help but did not intervene.
• Initial (often inaccurate) reports claimed 38 people witnessed the attack without helping, shocking the nation.
• This case prompted researchers Bibb Latané and John Darley to investigate why the presence of others might actually reduce helping behavior.
• The key insight: emergencies are unusual, people often don't know what to do, and the social situation plays a critical role in whether anyone helps.

🏙️ Why fewer people help in groups

• Contrary to intuition, having many people around during an emergency can be the opposite of helpful.
• The excerpt emphasizes that this is not about human nature being uncaring or selfish—it's about specific social psychological processes that occur in group situations.
• Example: A person collapses on a crowded street vs. a quiet street—help may come faster when fewer people are present.

🪜 Latané and Darley's four-stage model

👁️ Stage 1: Noticing the emergency

The first requirement for helping is that people must notice the emergency.

Why noticing is harder in groups:

• Urban environments are noisy, crowded, and overstimulating—people living in large cities experience sensory overload.
• When other people are around, we unconsciously rely on them to notice things, diverting our attention from the environment.
• Studies show people in smaller, less dense rural towns are more likely to help than those in large, crowded cities.

The smoke-filled room experiment:

• Participants completed questionnaires either alone or in groups of three.
• White smoke was released into the room through a vent.
• People working alone noticed the smoke in about 5 seconds; in groups, the first person took over 20 seconds to notice.
• 75% of solo participants reported the smoke within 4 minutes, but only 12% of three-person groups did so.
• In fact, in only 3 of 8 three-person groups did anyone report the smoke at all, even after it filled the room.

🤔 Stage 2: Interpreting the situation

Why interpretation is difficult:

• Events are frequently ambiguous—we must interpret them to understand their meaning.
• We often don't see the whole event unfolding, making it hard to get a complete picture.
• Because emergencies are rare, we tend to assume events are benign rather than dangerous.
• Example: Is someone stumbling outside a nightclub drunk, or going into a diabetic coma? Without full context, it's hard to tell.

Pluralistic ignorance:

Pluralistic ignorance occurs when people think that others in their environment have information that they do not have and when they base their judgments on what they think the others are thinking.

• When unsure, we look to others for information (informational social influence).
• The problem: everyone is doing the same thing—looking to others who are equally confused.
• Each person mistakenly assumes the others know something they don't.
• Result: Nobody acts because everyone thinks the situation must be fine since no one else is acting.

Example in the classroom:

• An instructor finishes a complicated explanation and asks, "Are there any questions?"
• All students are confused, but when they look around and see no hands raised, each assumes everyone else understands.
• This is pluralistic ignorance—everyone is confused but assumes others aren't.
• Don't confuse this with simply being shy; it's specifically about misreading others' understanding.

🙋 Stage 3: Taking personal responsibility

Diffusion of responsibility:

Diffusion of responsibility occurs when we assume that others will take action and therefore we do not take action ourselves.

• When others are present, it's easy to assume they will do something, so we don't need to act.
• The irony: people are more likely to help when they are alone than when others are around.

The epileptic seizure experiment:

• Participants communicated via intercom with what they believed were 1, 2, or 5 other people in separate rooms.
• One person (actually a confederate) had a seizure and called for help over the intercom.
• Results showed clear diffusion of responsibility:

Group size	Percentage who helped	Average time to help (seconds)
2 (participant and victim)	85%	52
3 (participant, victim, and 1 other)	62%	93
6 (participant, victim, and 4 others)	31%	166

Online confession study:

• In 1998, a man confessed to murder in an Internet self-help group with about 200 members.
• Despite the clear confession, only 3 of 200 members reported it to authorities.
• Follow-up research in chat rooms found that help was provided more quickly (37 seconds) when a specific person was asked by name, compared to asking the group generally (51 seconds).
• The more people logged on, the longer it took to get a response.

Imagined groups:

• Even imagining being in a group (vs. with just one friend) reduced helping behavior.
• Participants who imagined dining with 10 friends volunteered less time to help with another task than those who imagined dining with just one friend.
• This shows diffusion of responsibility can occur even when others are only imagined, not physically present.

🛠️ Stage 4: Implementing action

Knowing how to help:

• Even after noticing, interpreting, and taking responsibility, people must know how to help.
• Many people lack training in emergency response and don't know what to do.
• People with professional training are more likely to help because they know how to act.

Practical solution:

• Most people today have cell phones and can call for help.
• You may not know exactly what to do, but you can contact someone who does.
• Example: A phone call made in time might have saved Kitty Genovese's life.

📊 Research evidence and applications

📊 Meta-analytic findings

• Fischer and colleagues (2011) analyzed over 105 studies with more than 7,500 participants.
• Main finding: People helped significantly more when fewer others were present.
• Important qualifier: The effect was smaller when the need for help was clear and dangerous (requiring little interpretation).
• Exception: In some situations where bystanders could provide needed physical assistance, having others around actually increased helping.

📊 Beyond emergencies

• Although the model was initially developed for emergency situations requiring immediate assistance, it has been successfully applied to many other contexts:
  • Preventing someone from driving drunk
  • Deciding whether to donate a kidney to a relative
  • Various other helping situations

Don't confuse:

• The model is not limited to dramatic emergencies; the same social psychological processes apply to everyday helping decisions.

💡 Practical implications

💡 If you need help in public

Based on the research, if you find yourself needing help in a public situation:

• Address a specific person rather than calling out to a crowd generally.
• This overcomes diffusion of responsibility by making one person feel personally responsible.
• Example: Instead of shouting "Someone call 911!" say "You in the red jacket, please call 911!"

💡 Understanding the mechanisms

The excerpt emphasizes understanding these processes helps explain behavior that might otherwise seem callous:

• People aren't necessarily uncaring when they don't help in groups.
• Specific social psychological mechanisms interfere with the helping process.
• Awareness of these mechanisms can help us overcome them.

Stage	Mechanism	What goes wrong	How to overcome it
Noticing	Sensory overload, reliance on others	Miss the emergency entirely	Stay alert even when others are present
Interpreting	Pluralistic ignorance	Assume others know it's not serious	Trust your own judgment; act if unsure
Responsibility	Diffusion of responsibility	Assume others will act	Take personal responsibility regardless
Action	Lack of knowledge	Don't know what to do	Use available tools (e.g., phone) to get help

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Helping behavior is shaped not only by situational factors but also by individual personality traits, gender roles, cultural norms, attributions about deservingness, and the psychological reactions of help recipients—all of which can be leveraged to increase prosocial behavior.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Altruistic personality: Some people consistently help more across situations due to traits like empathy, social responsibility, and moral reasoning.
• Gender differences are context-dependent: Men help more in physically demanding or heroic situations; women help more in long-term caregiving and relational contexts.
• Deservingness matters: We help more when we believe people's problems are beyond their control and less when we think they caused their own difficulties.
• Common confusion—receiving help: Help can threaten recipients' self-esteem if it implies dependency; autonomy-oriented help (guidance) is better received than dependency-oriented help (taking over).
• Cultural variation: Collectivistic cultures emphasize helping as obligation; individualistic cultures require self-interest justification and expect people to help only causes that affect them personally.

👤 Individual differences in helping

🧩 The altruistic personality

Altruistic or prosocial personality: A stable tendency to help others across many different situations.

• Not everyone helps equally—personality does matter, though social context usually has stronger effects.
• People with altruistic personalities show higher empathy, sympathy, and belief in social responsibility.
• They help more people, in more areas (volunteering, organ donation, coworker assistance), and respond faster.
• Why it works: These individuals have strong other-concern—they genuinely like relating to and helping others.
• Stability over time: Children who were most helpful in preschool remained most helpful into adulthood, suggesting a genuine trait.
• Biological component: Identical twins are more similar in empathy and helping than fraternal twins, indicating partial heritability.

🚹🚺 Gender and helping

• No overall difference: Surveys show men and women volunteer at similar rates (around 46–48%).
• Person-by-situation interaction: Gender differences emerge depending on the type of help needed.

Type of help	Who helps more	Example from excerpt
Physical strength, heroic acts	Men	Firefighters and police after World Trade Center attack (mostly men)
Long-term nurturance, caregiving	Women	Tending wounded, donating blood, community volunteering, family care
Dangerous situations (non-physical)	Equal	Women donate kidneys at same rate as men

• Why the difference: Gender roles shape what kinds of helping feel appropriate and what skills people develop.
• Don't confuse: "Women help less" vs. "Women help differently"—women's helping is often less visible (family care, emotional support) but equally important for social connection and quality of life.

🧠 Cognitive factors: Who deserves help?

🎯 Attributions about need and responsibility

• Perceived need matters: People help more for necessities (milk) than luxuries (cookie dough).
• Deservingness judgments: We evaluate whether people "brought it on themselves."

Example: A student asks to borrow notes.

• "I attend every class and try hard but can't take good notes" → more likely to help (external cause).
• "I skip class and don't bother taking notes" → less likely to help (internal cause, low effort).

🏥 AIDS study example

• People felt more empathy and willingness to help when AIDS was contracted through blood transfusion (uncontrollable) than through unprotected sex or drug use (perceived as controllable).
• Natural disasters: We readily help hurricane victims because they clearly didn't cause the problem.

🗳️ Political ideology and helping

Just world beliefs: The belief that people get what they deserve in life.

• Liberals: Attribute poverty/need to external factors (unjust systems, inequality) → favor social programs and government help.
• Conservatives: Make more internal attributions (lack of effort/ability) → less support for welfare programs, believing people are responsible for their own outcomes.
• This reflects different views about whether help is a moral obligation or whether people should solve their own problems.

😟 The recipient's perspective

💔 Negative effects of receiving help

• Receiving help can threaten self-esteem and create status disparity (helper = high status, recipient = dependent).
• Potential negative emotions: Embarrassment, worry about appearing incompetent or dependent.
• People sometimes prefer hardship over seeking help to avoid these feelings.
• Men especially: Boys and men ask for help less often, possibly because it signals low status or inability to handle their own affairs.

🔄 Two types of help

Type	Definition	Recipient reaction
Dependency-oriented help	Helper takes control and solves the problem, leaving little for recipient to do	Rejected, resented; implies recipient is incapable of self-care
Autonomy-oriented help	Partial, temporary guidance; provides tools/information so recipient can help themselves	Better accepted; preserves recipient's independence and self-view as capable

Example: Affirmative action or disability-based hiring can lower self-esteem if recipients believe they were hired due to presumed need rather than qualifications.

Practical implication: When helping, frame it to maintain the other person's independence and remind them they can help themselves.

🌍 Cultural dimensions of helping

🌏 Collectivism vs individualism

• India (collectivistic): Children and adults believe helping is an absolute obligation, even to non-friends.
• United States (individualistic): Helping is more selective; people help friends but feel less obligated to help strangers.
• Bone marrow donation: Indian students saw it as morally required; U.S. students saw it as a personal choice.

💼 Workplace helping study

• U.S. software engineers: Helped others mainly if they expected reciprocity (exchange-focused).
• Indian software engineers: Helped anyone who needed it, viewing helping as skill development (not just exchange).
• Interpretation: Different cultures frame helping differently relative to self-interest.

🎯 Norm of self-interest in Western cultures

Norm of self-interest: In individualistic cultures, people are expected to be involved only in causes that affect them personally.

Study example: Participants read about funding cuts for a gender-specific disease.

• Both men and women thought funding should be maintained regardless of which gender was affected.
• But: Men felt uncomfortable protesting cuts to women's disease funding; women felt uncomfortable protesting cuts to men's disease funding.
• Why: It's seen as inappropriate to advocate for causes that don't benefit you personally.

🕯️ The "exchange fiction"

• People are more comfortable helping when they can pretend they're acting in self-interest.
• Candle study: Students donated more to a needy charity when offered a small candle in return (even though they didn't really want the candle).
• Real-world examples: Bake sales, car washes, magazine subscriptions for charity—all allow donors to frame giving as a purchase (self-interest) rather than pure altruism.

📈 Strategies to increase helping

🎁 Leverage self-concern

AIDS volunteer study: Researchers asked why people volunteered (see five categories: values, understanding, personal development, community concern, esteem enhancement).

• Key finding: Volunteers who cited self-related reasons (understanding, personal development, esteem) were more likely to continue volunteering long-term.
• Those with weak social networks used volunteering to build connections.
• Those who faced negative reactions from friends/family (stigma, embarrassment) were less likely to continue.

Practical strategies:

• Increase rewards of helping: enhance mood, offer incentives, provide praise.
• Labeling effect: Children told they are "kind and helpful" donate more; adults described as "generous and charitable" donate more weeks later (self-perception takes over).
• Good Samaritan laws: Legal penalties for not helping increase helping by adding self-interest (avoiding fines/jail).
• Institutional rewards: Schools and workplaces that reward volunteering increase participation.

💙 Leverage other-concern

• We help people we like, feel similar to, and experience positive emotions toward.
• Build connections: Encourage interaction with diverse people; instill community values and norms of sharing in children.
• Make victims personal and salient: People respond emotionally to individual suffering but feel numb to statistics.

Example: Sport Club Recife campaign made organ donation personal by framing it as becoming an "immortal fan"—waiting list dropped to zero in one year.

Quote from excerpt: "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic" (Joseph Stalin).

🚨 Counteract emergency barriers

• Remember pluralistic ignorance (others don't necessarily know more than you) and diffusion of responsibility (don't assume others will help).
• Make emergencies clear: Yell "This is an emergency! Please call the police!"
• Assign responsibility: Point to a specific person: "You in the red shirt, call 911 now!"
• Follow Latané and Darley's model: ensure the event is noticed, clearly interpreted as an emergency, and responsibility is assigned.

🎯 Frame helping appropriately

• Emphasize how helping benefits the helper (skill development, social connections, personal growth).
• Use autonomy-oriented help that preserves recipients' independence.
• Make helping consistent with cultural norms (e.g., in individualistic cultures, show how helping serves self-interest).