BulletPointsummary of Social Psychology by Kassin a.o. - 11th edition

What is social psychology? - Chapter 1

• Social psychology is the scientific study of how individuals think, feel and behave in a social context.
• The social nature of people runs so deep that even very subtle clues about our social connection with others can have a profound effect on our lives. Social psychological research has found that certain factors can interfere with academic performance.  
• The knew-it-all-allong phenomenon often causes people to question how social psychology is different from common sense, or traditional folk wisdom. Common sense may seem to explain many social psychological findings after the fact. The problem is distinguishing common sense facts from common sense myths. Social psychology, unlike common sense, uses the scientific method to put its theories to the test. 
• The field of social psychology is a relatively young one. Recent years have marked a tremendous interest in social psychology and an injection of many new scholars into the field. As social psychology is now in its second century, it is instructive to look back to see how the field today has been shaped by the people and events of its past. 
•  Subfields that have been growing rapidly in recent years include behavioural genetics, evolutionary psychology, social neuroscience and behavioral economic.
• Online communication not only facilitates research but is also itself becoming a provocative topic of study. As people interact with each other through social networking sites, online dating services, and endless apps, there is growing interest in studying how attraction, prejudice, group dynamics, and a host of other social psychological phenomena unfold online versus offline. 
• Aside of the emerging online world, social psychologists are nowadays also using techniques to study the interplay of the brain and discrete thoughts, feelings and behaviours. 
• New developments are emerging in what are considered best practices in conducting and reporting research, making social psychological research more methodologically sound and creating greater accessibility of materials, methods and data. New standards are evolving that require much greater sample sizes and different approaches to statistical analysis.  

How is social psychological research conducted? - Chapter 2

• Theories in social psychology attempt o explain and predict social psychological phenomena. The best theories are precise, explain all relevant information, and generate research that can support or disconfirm them. They should be revised and improved as a result of the research they inspire.
• The goal of basic research is to increase understanding of human behavior; the goal of applied research is to make applications to the world and contribute to the solution of social problems. 
• Researchers often must transform abstract, conceptual variables into specific operational definitions that indicate exactly how the variables are to be manipulated or measured. The construct validity of a study is the extent to which the variables were operationalised well.
• Researchers use self-reports, observations, and technology to measure variables.
• Correlational research examines the association beween variables. Correlation does not indicate causation; the fact that two variables are correlated does not necessarily mean that one causes the other.
• Experiments require control by the experimenter over events in the study and random assignment of participants to conditions. Experiments examine the effects of one or more independent variables on one or more dependent variables. 
• Experimental findings have internal validity to the extent that changes in the dependent variable can be attributed to the independent variables. Research results have external validity to the extent that they can be generalised to other people and other situations.
• Meta-analysis uses statistical techniques to integrate the quantitative results of different studies. 
• Established by the federal government, institutional review boards are responsible for reviewing research proposals to ensure that the welfare of participants is adequately protected.
• Recent controversies in social psychology have led to a variety of suggestions for how the field should better protect itself against intentional or unintentional bias or dishonesty and to improve its research and reporting standards including using larger sample sizes, more emphasis on replication, use of different statistical analyses, sharing of materials and data, and preregistration. 

What does the social self entail? - Chapter 3

• People are especially attentive not information of relevance to the self and are self-conscious.
• Your self-concept represents the sum total of beliefs you have about the kind of person you are, your traits, abilities, motivation, and so on.
• Often, people learn about themselves not by introspection but by observing their own behavior and comparing themselves to other people.
• While most westerners have an independent view of themselves as distinct and autonomous, people in many Asian cultures and elsewhere hold an interdependent view of the self as part of a larger social network.
• All over the world, people have a strong need for high self-esteem and want to see themselves in a positive light.
• When people enter a state of self-awareness, which happens in front of an audience, for example, or looking in a mirror, they become their own worst critics and experience a temporary drop in self-esteem.
• In striving to meet our personal ideas, we often engage in self-regulation, which can be physically taxing.
• Despite our shortcomings and self-critical tendencies, most people think highly of themselves thanks to various adaptive means of self-enhancement.
• Through the processes of self-presentation, people put on a public face that may or may not be consistent with their private self in an effort to get others to see them in a positive light.
• In public, individuals differ in their level of self-monitoring.

How do we perceive persons? - Chapter 4

• People often make snap judgments about other people based on superficial cues, such as physical appearance and nonverbal demeanor.
• Although we often form accurate impressions based on other people's behavior, research shows that we are not accurate at knowing when someone else is telling the truth of lying.
• Although we often form first impressions of others quickly, sometimes we are more analytical; observing behavior and making personal or situational attributions for it according to the logic of attribution theory.
• At least in Western cultures, however, people commit the fundamental attribution error when observing others, overestimating the role of a person's dispositions and underestimating the impact of the situation they are in.
• In forming impressions of other people, three sets of traits loom as particularly important: how competent the person is, how warm, and how moral.
• Although we tend to form impressions of others by mentally averaging their various traits, a number of biases come into play. For example, some traits are more central to the overall impressions we form than others.
• Once we form an impression of someone, we become slow to change that impression when faced with new information that is non supportive or even contradictory.
• Once we form an impression, we engage in confirmation biases, tending to seek new information in ways that are likely to confirm what we already believe.
• Beginning with classic research the effects of teacher expectations on student performance, research also shows that our perceptions of others can influence our behavior, and in turn, their behavior, resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Research promotes two radically different views of social perception. At times we are quick and instinctive social perceivers, and at times we are careful and analytic; at times we are accurate, and at times we are biased and in error.

How do stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination play a role in day to day social life? - Chapter 5

• Prejudice and discrimination operate not only on an individual level, in which anyone can be both a perpetrator and a target, but also on institutional and cultural levels, which involve practice that promote the domination of one group over another.
• Many stories in the news, as well as data from numerous studies provide compelling evidence that racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice and discrimination persist but also that progress has been made.
• Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination today often operate without conscious intent or awareness on the part of perceivers but with significant consequences.
• Ambivalent sexism reflects both hostile sexism, characterised by negative and resentful feelings toward women, and benevolent sexism, characterised by affectionate, chivalrous, but potentially patronising feelings toward women.
• There are some striking sex differences in occupational choices, wages and the treatment that individuals experience in the workplace.
• Stereotype threat can impair the performance and affect the identity of members of stereotyped or devalued groups. Slight changes in a setting can reduce stereotype threat and its negative effects significantly.
• People tend to exaggerate the differences between in-groups and outgrips, treat in-group members more favourably and see outgrip members as more homogeneous and often in dehumanising ways.
• We learn information relevant to stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination without even realising it by absorbing what we see around us in our culture, groups and families.
• A fundamental effect of stereotyping is that it influences people's perceptions and interpretations of the behaviours of group members, causing them to perceive confirmation of their stereotype-based expectancies. 
• Among the factors that have been found o be successful to reduce stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination are having intergroup contact, perceiving connections and a shared identity with people from other groups, adopting a multicultural rather than color-blind perspective, and being intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated to reduce prejudiced responses.

What are attitudes and how do they influence our social behavior? - Chapter 6

• An attitude is an evaluative-positive or negative reaction to a person, place, issue, or object. 
• Researchers typically measure attitudes through self report, as in public opinion surveys, or by covert measures of a person's behavior, most notably by using the Implicit Association Test (IAT).
• Research shows that individuals may be genetically pre disposed to hold certain attitudes but that our attitudes are also shaped by personal experiences, observations. and associations.  
• The most common approach to changing attitudes as seen in marketing, politics, advertising, and religion is through the presentation of a persuasive communication.
• There are two pathways by which people are persuaded by a communication.
• Research shows that people are more likely to change their attitudes in response to a speaker who is likeable. and credible, by arguments that are well developed. and not too extreme, when motivated by fear, or when relaxed by positive emotions.
• To be effective, persuasive messages should present arguments that appeal to the individual and cultural context.
• According to cognitive dissonance theory, people often: come to change their attitudes in order to justify their own actions.
• For more than 50 years, social psychologists have debated how and why cognitive dissonance leads people to change their attitudes.
• It now appears that people all over the world will try to reduce dissonance when it arises.

When do people conform, comply or obey and why? - Chapter 7

• Sometimes people are influenced by others without awareness; as when we mimic each other's nonverbal behaviors and gestures without realising it.
• Sherif's classic study showed that sometimes we conform to other people's judgments and behaviors because we are uncertain of what is correct and use others for informational guidance.
• Asch's classic study showed that sometimes we conform to other people's judgments and behaviors even when they are clearly incorrect, because we do not want to deviate and risk rejection.
• Conformity is increased by the size of a unanimous majority, up to a point, though the presence of a single dissenting ally empowers people to resist the pressure to conform. 
• By staking out a consistent and unwavering position, dissenting individuals inside a group can exert minority influence and enhance the quality of a group's decision making process.
• Just as cultures differ in terms of their social norms, they differ in adherence to those norms: People from collectivist cultures tend to conform more than do people from individualistic cultures.
• At times, people are likely to comply with direct requests; for example, when taken by surprise, when the request sounds reasonable, and when they feel indebted to the requestor.
• Over the years, social psychologists have studied two-step request approaches that lead people to gain compliance; for example, by using the foot-in-the=door techniques and door-in-the-face technique.
• In Milgram's classic, controversial and profound research, 65% of subjects fully obeyed an experimenter's command to administer increasingly painful electric shocks to a confederate. Even today, Milgram's experiments continue to generate controversy and inform important aspects of human nature and the question of how to minimise destructive acts of obedience in real-life settings.

How does social influence have an effect on group processes? - Chapter 8

• People join a group for a variety of reasons, not only to perform tasks that can't be accomplished alone but also to enhance self-esteem, social identity, and a greater sense of purpose: Indeed, attraction to group seems to be an evolved psychological mechanism.
• When members' roles are clear, assigned appropriately, and don't come in conflict with other roles and when members atudnerstand the group's norms, greater satisfaction and group performance eresult.
• Cohesiveness is related to group performance, but the causal direction of this relationship could go either way; moreover, cultures differ in what is most important for group cohesiveness.
• When individual contributions are identifiable, the presence of others enhances performance on easy tasks but impairs performance on difficult tasks. When group members pool their efforts together, individuals often exert less effort and engage in social loafing.
• Contrary to popular belief, group brainstorming typically is less effective than the same number of individuals brainstorming alone. Fortunately, researchers have identified a number of techniques, such as electronic brainstorming, that can greatly improve group brainstorming.
• Group decisions can be harmed by group polarisation, in which opinions become more extreme in the direction that most members were initially favouring, and groupthink, in which members seek concurrence rather than a thorough and candid analysis of all the information and alternative courses of action.
• Information may not be communicated adequately because of problems in the group's communication network and by the tendency for groups to pay more attention to information that is already known by all or most group members than to important information that is known by only one or a few group members.
• Setting specific and ambitious goals and plans and doing so with one or more partners improves performance more than vague "do your best" goals.
• In a social dilemma, personal benefit conflicts with the overall good, and groups tend to be more competitive than individuals in dealing with these dilemmas.
• Many negotiations have the potential to result in integrative agreements in which outcomes exceed a 50-50 split, but negotiations often fail to achieve such outcomes. Communication, trust, and an understanding of the other party's perspective and cultural norms and values are key ingredients of successful negotiation. 

How do attraction and close relationships form? - Chapter 9

• The need to belong is a fundamental human motive, a pervasive drive to form and maintain lasting relationships.
• Although people differ in the strength of the affiliation needs, people who are painfully shy may suffer from loneliness, which is an unhealthy state.
• Beaty being a social asset, attractive people are more popular, socially skilled, and sexually experienced, but they are not happier or higher in self-esteem.
• Although beauty is partly in the eye of the beholder and influenced by culture and context, certain types of faces are considered attractive across cultures and to infants as well as adults. Faces that are symmetrical from left to right are considered beautiful.
• During the process of getting acquainted, people tend to like others who are similar in their backgrounds, attitudes, interests, values and levels of physical attractiveness.
• Evolutionary psychologists have found that whereas men seek out women who are young and attractive, attributes that single health and fertility, women seek men who are older and have financial security or attributes predictive of future success.
• As predicted by the equity theory, people seek not only maximise benefits and minimise losses in their relationships, but also to ensure that the ratio of benefits to costs are equivalent for both partners.
• It is important to distinguish passionate love, and intense, emotional, often erotic state, and companionate love, which is less intense but deeper and more enduring.
• Both biological and developmental theories explain the origins of a homosexual orientation, which exclusively characterises 3% to 4% of men and 2% of women. The incidence of homosexual behaviors is however higher.
• Longitudinal studies of couples indicate that while there is an average decline in satisfaction over time, until relationships stabilise, marital satisfaction is influenced by many extraneous factors, such as children, economics, and patterns of conflict and communication. 

Why and when do we help other people? - Chapter 10

• Among the factors that helped promote the evolution of altruism and empathy are kin selection, in which individuals protect heir own genes by helping close relatives, reciprocal altruism, in which those who give also receive, and the survival advantages of intragroup cooperation and caring for offspring.
• Helping others often makes the helper feel good, can relieve negative feelings such as guilt, and can improve mental and physical health. Long-term or high-risk helping, however, can be costly to the health and well-being of the helper.
• According to the empathy-altruism hypothesis, taking the perspective of a person perceived to be in need creates the other-oriented emotion of empathic concern, which in turn produces the altruistic motive to reduce the other's distress.
• Self-interested goals for longer-term acts of helping, such as volunteering, can promote a commitment to helping behavior to the extent that such goals are met.
• The bystander effect, through which the presence of others inhibits helping, can occur because of obstacles on any of the five steps on the path to helping. Diffusion of responsibility may be an especially important factor underlying this effect.
• A good mood often increases helpfulness: a bad mood may increase or decrease helpfulness, depending on the context.
• Both prosocial role models and social influence have been found to increase helping.
• Individual differences that predict helping behaviors include agreeableness, humility, advanced moral reasoning, and, especially empathy.
• Attractive individuals and members of one's in-groups are more likely to receive help than are those who are less attractive or are members of an outgroup.
• Cultural differences have been found in how much individuals differentiate between helping members of their in-groups versus outgroups and in whether and how they are likely to seek other's help.

What are the causes of aggression? - Chapter 11

• Males tend to be more physically aggressive than females, but females tend to be at least as, and perhaps somewhat more indirectly or relationally aggressive compared to males.
• Individuals tend to more aggressive if they are low in agreeableness and empathy and high on the Dark Triad traits of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism. 
• Impairments in several areas of the brian, especially to regions associated with executive functioning, are associated with aggressiveness, as is the combination of high testosterone and low cortisol.
• Corporal punishment of children is associated with long-term increases in their aggressive behavior.
• Social learning theory emphasises that we learn form the example of others as well as from direct experience with rewards and punishments: Aggressive models teach not only specific beavhiros but also more general attitudes and ideas about aggression and aggressive scripts that guide behavior.
• Cultures of honour promote status-protecting aggression among men in several parts of the world.
• A wide variety of aversive experiences and stimuli can create negative feelings and increase aggression, including frustration, heat, pain and social rejection.
• Self-Control failure is behind most acts of aggression and violence. Poor executive functioning, angry rumination, high arousal, and low glucose are among the factors that can impair self-control. 
• A large number of studies using a variety of different methods, have shown a significant positive relationship between exposure to media violence and real-world aggressive cognitions and behaviors. However, a number of scholars and studies have challenged the validity of this association, and so research must continue to examine this issue and help achieve clarity.
• Comprehensive programs that operate on multiple levels tend to be most effective in reducing aggression and preventing bullying in schools.

How does social psychology relate to the law? - Chapter 12

• For what it illustrates about flaws in humans evidence in the trial process, the conviction and ultimate acquittal of Amanda Knox in Italy illustrate some of the ways in which social psychology is relevant to the legal system. 
• Eyewitness errors are a common contributor to wrongful convictions. They are caused by limitations in perception and memory that arise when people are stressed distracted, misled by extraneous information, and try to recognise members of a race other than their own.
• Through research, social psychologists have found ways to minimise eyewitness error in lineups. Examples of this is by making sure that the suspect does not stand out, that witnesses be told that the actual offender may not be in the lineup, and that police who administer the lineup are blind as to who the suspect is. 
• Although police often identify suspects during an interview designed to determine if the person is lying, research shows that, like everyone else, their judgments of truth and deception are not accurate.
• Police use various methods of interrogation to get suspects to confess, but many wrongful conviction cases and laboratory research have shown that innocent people can be induced by certain tactics into false confessions to crime they did not commit.
• Although jury selection is supported to ensure that juries be representative and impartial lawyers can strike a certain number of prospective jurors based on personal theories and stereotypes, or advice form hired consultants who conduct "scientific jury selection" research.
• Juries are conscientious in their decision making, but research shows that they can be influenced by pretrial publicity, inadmissible testimony, and their own personal conceptions of justice, often in disregard of the judge's instructions. 
• In jury deliberations, members of a voting majority convince others to join in a 12-perosn unanimous verdict through informational and social influences, though in some states, six person juries or nonunanimougs verdicts are permitted.
• In the Stanford prison study, researchers built a simulated prison and recruited young men to act as guards as prisoners. Illustrating the power of situational roles, they found that some guards were abusive, prisoners became passive, and the study had to be terminated. 
• Our sense of justice is not just about winning and losing but about the fairness of procedures. Hence, people of all cultures prefer models of justice that offer them a voice in the proceedings and an impartial decision maker.

How does social psychology relate to business? - Chapter 13

• Classic studies from the 1920s and 1930s revealed the Hawthorne effect. The Hawthorne effect is the finding that workers singled out for special attention, knowing they are bineg observed, increase their productivity.
• Traditional job interviews often give rise to poor selection decisions because interviewers are tainted by preinterview expectations and applicants present themselves in less-than-candid ways.
• To improve personnel selection, employers use standardised tests, structured interviews, assessment centers, and even cybervetting. Cybervetting is the practice of using the Internet to get information about applicants they they did not choose to share.
• Affirmative action, immigration and globalisation of business have combined to increase diversity in the workplace. Diversity in the workplace can increase team performance by increasing the range of perspectives brought to bear on a problem.
• Although employee performance can sometimes be evaluated by objective measures, subjectivity poses a common problem: as when a supervisor's ratings are biased by expectations and other personal tendencies and when self-ratings are inflated by self-serving motives.
• Research supports different approaches to leadership, including the classic trait approach. According to the classic trait approach, certain personal characteristics make great leaders.
• In contingency models, different types of leadership are needed to suit situational demands. Transactional leaders derive influence by the use of reward. Transformational leaders motivate and inspire followers to work for a common cause.
• Despite gains made in recent years, working women and minorities are still, for various societal reasons, underrepresented in positions of leadership.
• In addition to being influenced by economic rewards, motivation in the workplace is also influenced by social factors: as when workers become more productive when they feel overcompensated and less productive when they feel undercompensated.
• The effect of reward on behavior depends on how it is presented. When presented as a bribe to engage in a task, intrinsic motivation in the rewarded activity is reduced. When presented as a bonus for quality performance, intrinsic motivation is enhanced. 
• Research on economic decision making shows that people often become entrapped by their initial commitments, leading them to stick to a failing course of action and throw good money after bad. 

How does social psychology relate to health and well-being? - Chapter 14

• Stress is an unpleasant state that arises when people feel as if the demands of a situation exceed their ability to cope with it.

• There are many causes of stress, or in other words, stressors. These include natural disasters and catastrophes, such as war, major negative life events, and everyday hassles or 'microstressors'.

• Although the body responds to the stress of acute emergencies, this stress response will reach a period of exhaustion and cause the body to break down because it is not built for chronic, long-term situations.
• Research shows that stress increases the risk of coronary heart disease and suppresses immune cell activity, so people under stress are more likely to catch a cold when exposed to a virus, and perhaps other illnesses as well.
• Some people are more resilient than others in the face of stress. In particular, it is adaptive for people to believe they have control over their own fate and to have a generally optimistic outlook on the future.
• There are three ways in general to cope with stress: problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping and pro-active coping. 
• Although stress is universal, the way we cope is influenced by culture. For example, people from individualist cultures tend to lean on friends for social support, and, not wanting to strain discretionary relationships, those form collectivist cultures are more likely to turn to family, religion and private emotional outlets.
• Most people report being relatively happy, but there are individual and cross-national differences in happiness, or subjective well-being, the key ingredients being social relationships, employment and health.
• On the question of whether money buys happiness, research is mixed, showing that while more affluent nations have, on average, happier citizens than do poorer nations, the correlations between income and happiness within populations and over time are modest.
• Recognising the malleability of happiness, researchers and nations have begun to focus on how to increase happiness levels and have found, for example, that people become happier when they pend money on experiences rather than material objects and when they spend money on others rather than on themselves.