![Image](https://www.worldsupporter.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/tips_suggestions/wereldbol_summaries_joho_single_boek_1_150x190px.png?itok=rEljlfYL)
JoHo kan jouw hulp goed gebruiken! Check hier de diverse studentenbanen die aansluiten bij je studie, je competenties verbeteren, je cv versterken en een bijdrage leveren aan een tolerantere wereld
Social and Organizational Psychology
IBP 2017-2018
Dealing with Adversity and Achieving a Happy Life
Stress: a contributing factor to psychological and physical health problems
Loneliness: when a person has fewer and less satisfying relationships than desired
Discrimination
Improving mental health
Is the legal system fair?
Happiness: often referred to as subjective well-being with four basic components:
Several factors consistently account for a nations’ average happiness levels:
On being happy:
References:
Baron, R., & Branscombe, N. (2016). Social psychology (14th edition) Harlow: Pearson Education Limited
--Chapter 12
Social and Organizational Psychology
IBP 2017-2018
Introduction:
Social psychology: the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behavior, feelings, and thoughts in social situations
Four of the most important values that all fields must adopt to be considered scientific in nature:
Why do social psychologists adopt the scientific method?
Because “common sense” provides an unreliable guide to social behavior and because our personal thought is influenced by many potential sources of bias.
Social Cognition:
Social Cognition: how we think about other people and the social world
Given our limited cognitive capacity, we often experience information overload. To cope with this condition, we use heuristics (simple rules of thumb for making decisions in a quick and relatively effortless manner)
Heuristics:
Schemas: basic components of social cognition. These mental frameworks, formed through experience, help us to organize social information. Once formed, schemas exert powerful effects on what we notice (attention), enter into memory (encoding), and later remember (retrieval).
Controlled vs Automatic processing
Controlled processing: occurs in a systematic, logical, and highly effortful manner
.....read more
Social and Organizational Psychology
IBP 2017-2018
Social perception
Social perception: the process through which we seek to know other people
Nonverbal communication: an unspoken language of facial expressions, eye contact, body movements, and touching
Attribution: efforts to understand why people have acted as they have
Jones and Davis’s theory of correspondent inference: we attempt to infer others’ traits from observing certain aspects of their behavior
Kelley’s covariation theory: we are interested in whether others’ behavior stems from internal or external causes
Other dimensions of causal attribution:
Action identification: The interpretation we place on an act in terms of differing degrees of abstraction
Correspondence bias: the tendency to explain others’ actions as stemming from their dispositions (internal), even in the presence of clear situational causes (external)
Actor–observer effect: the tendency to attribute our own behavior to external causes but that of others to internal
.....read moreIBP 2017-2018
The self
Often, others are better at predicting our behavior than us, because we know all our intentions and motives, they only see the outcome
How we present ourselves:
Self-knowledge
Personal-versus-social identity continuum
Self-definitions
Future possible selves
Self-control
Self-esteem
Social comparison
Social and Organizational Psychology
IBP 2017-2018
Attitudes: evaluations that can color our experience of virtually any aspect of the world
Explicit: Consciously accessible and easy to report
Implicit: Not consciously accessible or controllable
Social learning: many of our views are acquired by interacting with others, or simply observing their behavior
Social networks: sets of individuals with whom we interact on a regular basis
Social comparison: our tendency to compare ourselves with others to determine whether our view of social reality is or is not correct
Link between attitudes and behavior:
Persuasion: efforts to change attitudes through the use of message
Maintaining current attitudes
Cognitive dissonance: an unpleasant state that occurs when we notice discrepancies between our attitudes and our behavior
Social and Organizational Psychology
IBP 2017-2018
Causes and Cures of Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Discriminatory treatment can be:
People are risk averse with potential losses having greater psychological impact than potential gains
Gender stereotypes: beliefs about the different attributes that males and females possess
Tokenism: acceptance of only a few members of a particular group
Scales
Stereotypes are resistant to change, but they are revised as the relations between the groups are altered
Prejudice: an attitude (usually negative) toward members of a social group
Social identity theory: prejudice is derived from our tendency to divide the world into “us” and “them” and to view our own group more favorably than various outgroups
Modern racism: more subtle form of discrimination
Bona fide
.....read moreSocial and Organizational Psychology
IBP 2017-2018
Liking, loving, and other close relationships
Interpersonal attraction: refers to the evaluations we make of other people, our attitudes towards them
Proximity: nearness to each other
Physical attractiveness
Similarity
Love
The attachment styles in childhood (secure, fearful-avoidant, preoccupied, and dismissing) influence the nature of other relationships
Affiliation: the motivation to interact with other people in a cooperative way
References:
Baron, R., & Branscombe, N. (2016). Social psychology (14th edition) Harlow: Pearson Education Limited
--Chapter 7
Social and Organizational Psychology
IBP 2017-2018
Social influence
Social influence: efforts by one or more people to change the behavior, attitudes, or feelings of one or more others
Forms of influence:
Conformity: efforts to change others’ behavior through norms about how to behave in a given situation
Compliance: efforts to change others’ behavior through direct requests
Obedience: following direct orders or commands from others
Unintentional social influence: influence that occurs when other people change our behavior without intending to do so
Social and Organizational Psychology
IBP 2017-2018
Prosocial behavior: Helping others
Empathy: the capacity to be able to experience others’ emotional states, feel sympathetic toward them, and take their perspective
Motives for prosocial behavior:
Helping between strangers
When are we likely to help?
When are we not likely to help?
An important factor determining how recipients react to help is the motivation underlying such behavior:
Crowdfunding: allows individuals to make financial contributions to entrepreneurs, to help them start new companies
Men and women
Social and Organizational Psychology
IBP 2017-2018
Aggression
Aggression is the intentional infliction of harm on others
Theories:
Frustration is a strong elicitor of aggression only under certain limited conditions. In contrast, provocation from others is a powerful elicitor of aggression
Exposure to media violence and playing violent video games increases aggression
Men appear to be more likely than women to engage in physical aggression, but the two genders do not differ significantly in terms of verbal aggression
When does aggression increase?
Bullying: repeated aggression against individuals who are unable to defend themselves against such treatment
Ways to reduce aggression:
References:
Baron, R., & Branscombe, N. (2016). Social psychology (14th edition) Harlow: Pearson Education Limited
--Chapter 9
Social and Organizational Psychology
IBP 2017-2018
Groups and Individuals – The consequences of belonging
Groups: collections of people who perceive themselves as forming a cohesive unit to some degree
Basic aspects of groups involve:
The benefits of being part of a group
When do individuals withdraw from a group?
Intergroup sensitivity effect: Ingroup critics are tolerated more than outgroup critics because they are seen as having the ingroup’s interests at heart
Audience and performance:
Social loafing: reduced output by each group member especially on additive tasks where member contributions are combined
Influence of crowds
Social and Organizational Psychology
IBP 2017-2018
Dealing with Adversity and Achieving a Happy Life
Stress: a contributing factor to psychological and physical health problems
Loneliness: when a person has fewer and less satisfying relationships than desired
Discrimination
Improving mental health
Is the legal system fair?
Happiness: often referred to as subjective well-being with four basic components:
Several factors consistently account for a nations’ average happiness levels:
On being happy:
References:
Baron, R., & Branscombe, N. (2016). Social psychology (14th edition)
.....read moreThis is a research report of an experiment where 222 undergraduates were screened for high happiness. The upper 10% of consistently very happy people were compared with average people and very unhappy people. This study has tried to find out what some factor might be that influence high happiness: social relationships, personality and psychopathology, and variables that have been related to subjective well-being in correlational studies. It also examined whether there was a variable that was sufficient for happiness and a variable that was necessary for happiness (sufficient: everyone with the variable is happy, necessary: every happy person has the variable).
On a scale from 5 to 35, the very happy group scored about 30 on life satisfaction. The very happy people had virtually never thought about suicide, could recall many more good events in their lives than bad ones, and had many more positive than negative emotions on a daily basis. The very unhappy people were dissatisfied with life and had equal amounts of positive and negative affect on a daily basis. They reported this about themselves, but their friends and family also rated them dissatisfied. The average group was in the middle of these two groups.
The biggest difference between the very happy group and the average and very unhappy group, was in their fulsome and satisfying interpersonal lives. The very happy people spent the least time alone and the most time socializing and valued their relationships the highest. Good social relationships might be a necessary condition for high happiness.
The very happy people also scored the lowest on psychopathology tests, virtually never in the clinical range. Almost half of the very unhappy group scored in the clinical range.
Also good to note, was that the verry happy people never reported their mood to be "ecstatic", but they did score their mood with a 7, 8 or 9 most of the time.
Broader samples and longitudinal methods are needed to make strong conclusions from these results. These findings do suggest that very happy people have rich and satisfying social relationships and spend little time alone. But it is not yet clear what the causal relationship is here: perhaps happy people have better relationships because of their happiness, or happiness and good relationships are both caused by a third variable. What is clear is that social relationships might be a necessary but are not a sufficient condition for high happiness. Very happy people also experience unpleasant emotions and rarely feel euphoria or ecstacy. They are rather medium to moderatly happy most of the time.
Social and Organizational Psychology
IBP 2017-2018
Dealing with Adversity and Achieving a Happy Life
Stress: a contributing factor to psychological and physical health problems
Loneliness: when a person has fewer and less satisfying relationships than desired
Discrimination
Improving mental health
Is the legal system fair?
Happiness: often referred to as subjective well-being with four basic components:
Several factors consistently account for a nations’ average happiness levels:
On being happy:
References:
Baron, R., & Branscombe, N. (2016). Social psychology (14th edition)
.....read moreThe hedonic treadmill model is a model that supposes that good and bad events can only temporarily affect happiness. According to this model, everyone always adapts back to hedonic neutrality. This leads to the conclusion that it is pointless to try and increase happiness. The poorest diseased beggar with no social connections could be just as happy as the healthy billionaire with a lot of close and supportive relationships. But is this really true? This article will make five important revisions to the hedonic treadmill model:
In 1971, Brickman and Campbell came up with the hedonic treadmill. According to them, processes similar to sensory adaptation occur when people experience emotional reactions to life events. Just like we get used to sensory input and are quickly not aware anymore of smells or sounds, we adapt to emotions as well. Myers added to this theory that every desirable experience is transitory. According to the original treadmill theory of Brickman and Campbell, people briefly react to good and bad events, but in a short time they return to neutrality. The theory is based on the automatic habituation model in which psychological systems react to deviations from one's current adaptation level. Automatic habituation processes are adaptive because they allow constant stimuli to fade into the background.
In 1978, Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman offered initial empirical support for the treadmill model. Brickman had for example studied lottery winners and found that they were not happier than nonwinners. It was also found that people with paraplegia, an impairment in the motor and sensory function of the lower body, were not less happy than people who could walk. The idea of hedonic adaptation was appealing in psychology because it offered an explanation for the observation that people appear to be relatively stable in happiness despite changes in fortune. The theory was widely accepted in psychology. Evidence frequently supported the idea. There soon came longitudinal studies that tracked changes in happiness over time. These studies provided more direct evidence that adaptation can occur. For instance, Silver found that people with spinal cord injuries had strong negative emotions after their crippling accident, but that these negative emotions had already faded after two months.
The first revision that can be made, is that set points might not always be neutral. The original treadmill theory suggested that people return to a neutral set point after an emotionally significant event. Research now shows that this part of the theory is wrong. Most
.....read moreJa
Two of the most widely held goals by which people measure and motivate themselves are happiness and a meaningful life. In this article, the relationship between these two goals is discussed. More specifically, although there certainly is (much) overlap between these two, the focus here is on the differences.
Happiness generally refers to a state of subjective well-being. Happiness be may narrowly or broadly focused: one can be happy to have found a lost key, but one can also be happy that the war has ended. Happiness is conceptualized and measured by researcher in at least two different manners. The first one concerns affect balance, which suggests that happiness is an aggregate of how one feels at different moment. Happiness is then defined as having more pleasant than unpleasant emotional states. The second one concerns life satisfaction, which goes beyond momentary feelings. It refers to an integrative, evaluative assessment of one's entire life. Generally, assessing both of these provides a useful index of subjective well-being.
Meaningfulness is considered to concern both a cognitive and emotional assessment of whether one's life has purpose and value.
The authors suggest that the simpler form of happiness (affect balance instead of life satisfaction), at least, is rooted in nature. Every living creature has biological needs, such as wanting to survive and reproduce. Basic motivations make one to pursue and enjoy those needs. Affect balance then depends to a certain degree on whether these basic needs are being satisfied.
While happiness is natural, meaningfulness may depend on culture. In every culture language is being used as a means to use and communicate meanings. Meaningfulness, thus, makes use of culturally transmitted symbols (via language) as a means to evaluate one's life in relation to purposes, values, and other meanings that are also frequently learned from the culture. Thus, meaning is more associated with one's culture than happiness is. An important feature of meaning is that it is not limited to immediately present stimuli (as happiness is). Instead, meaningfulness refers to thoughts about past, future, and spatially
.....read moreBoehm, J. K., & Lyubomirsky, S. (in press). The promise of sustainable happiness. In S. J. Lopez (Ed.), Handbook of positive psychology (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press
The article suggests that, despite several barriers withholding people to increase their well-being, less happy people can successfully strive to be happier by learning a variety of effortful strategies and practicing these with determination and commitment. They use the sustainable happiness model (by Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and Schkade, 2005) as theoretical framework. According to the model, three factors contribute to an individual’s happiness level:
The set point
Life circumstances
Intentional activities/effortful acts that are episodic and naturally variable
The journey to happiness has always and still is of great interest, there is empirical evidence that it even leads to positive life outcomes such as a higher income and stronger relationships. The question, however, is whether people can actually attain a level of sustainable happiness.
To answer this question, we first we look at what happy and unhappy people are like:
The first thing that comes to mind is the difference between their ‘objective’ circumstances that could cause a difference in their level of happiness. Some examples include: marital status, age, sex, culture, income etc. It is shown, however, that these factors do not explain the variation in people’s level of well-being.
The article proposes that happiness and unhappiness is due to the subjective experience and construal of the world by people. They interpret their environment differently, leading the authors to explore an individual thoughts, behaviors and motivations. Happier people see the world in a more positive, and thus happiness-promoting, way. Research suggests that happy people are this way because of multiple adaptive strategies:
Research that involved having happy and unhappy people reflect on similar hypothetical situations / actual life events, revealed that happy people view these events as more pleasant, while unhappy people view these same events as unfavourable..
Findings suggest that people that are happy are less sensitive to feedback about another person or his or her performance (favourable and unfavourable feedback). When performing ‘better’ on a task, all participants became more confident about their skills; however when the other was better, happy people were unaffected while unhappy people were, negatively. Unhappy people seem to feel positive emotions when a peer has done worse than them, even if they both got negative feedback. When they got positive feedback but performed at a lower level than a peer, they felt negative emotions. This was the case in both individual and group settings.
When happy people make life-altering decisions, they tend to be satisfied with their possible options, and only express negative emotions when their sense of self is threatened. Conversely, unhappy people were generally unhappy withthe options offered to them. Happy and unhappy people also differ in how they make decisions in the face of many options. Research suggests that happy individuals are relatively more
.....read moreJoHo can really use your help! Check out the various student jobs here that match your studies, improve your competencies, strengthen your CV and contribute to a more tolerant world
JoHo kan jouw hulp goed gebruiken! Check hier de diverse studentenbanen die aansluiten bij je studie, je competenties verbeteren, je cv versterken en een bijdrage leveren aan een tolerantere wereld
There are several ways to navigate the large amount of summaries, study notes en practice exams on JoHo WorldSupporter.
Do you want to share your summaries with JoHo WorldSupporter and its visitors?
Field of study
Add new contribution