Social Thinking

Social Behavior
Attraction
• Interpersonal Attraction: phenomenon of individuals liking each other
o Affected by several factors: similarity, self-disclosure, reciprocity, and proximity.
o Appearance also plays a role – the more symmetric one’s face is, the more
attractive they are.
o Also attracted to body proportions that approximate the golden ratio (1.618:1)
• Tend to be attracted to people who have similar attitudes, intelligence, education,
height, age, religion, appearance, and socioeconomic status
o Partially due to convenience, easier to spend time with people who enjoy similar
things.
• Attraction can also occur if opposing qualities match. I.e. – opposites attract
o People are drawn to have their values and choices validated by another person
o E.g. – nurturer getting in a relationship with someone who craves nurturing
o Successful relationships like this still have fundamental similarities that make the
relation work.
• Self-Disclosure: sharing one’s fears, thoughts, and goals with another person
o When met with non-judgmental empathy, this behavior deepens attraction and
friendship
o Behavior must be reciprocated, since it can be interpreted as being taken
advantage of if it is only one-sided.
• Reciprocal Liking: people like others better when they believe the other person likes
them.
• Proximity: being physically close to someone increases likelihood of friendships forming.
o Convenience plays a role in this: easier to have conversations and make plans
with people in the same area.
o Mere exposure or familiarity effect: people prefer stimuli that they have been
exposed to more frequently.
▪ So being in proximity with someone makes you want to like them
Aggression
• Behavior that intends to cause harm or increase social dominance
• Can take form of physical actions or verbal/nonverbal communication
• Aggression most often settled by threat and without actual bodily harm
• Aggression offers protection against perceived and real threats
o It could be the deciding factor that allows one to pass on genes.
• Biological components of violent behavior:
o Amygdala: part of the brain that is responsible for associating stimuli with their
corresponding rewards or punishments
▪ Responsible for telling the person whether something is a threat or not.
▪ If activated, aggression is increased
 ▪ Higher-order brain structures (like the prefrontal cortex) have some
control over the amygdala. Tend to tone down emotional reactivity
o Prefrontal Cortex: lower activity is linked to increased aggressive behavior
o Hormonal control: higher levels of testosterone is linked to more aggressive
behavior
▪ May explain why men are generally more aggressive than women.
• Cognitive Neoassociation Model: states that one is more likely to respond to other
aggressively whenever they are feeling negative emotions.
o e.g. – being tired, sick, frustrated, or in pain
• Exposure to violent behavior correlates to an increase in aggressive behavior
o E.g. – Bobo doll experiment
Attachment
• Emotional bond between a caregiver and a child, and its development begins during
infancy.
• Studies have shown that infants and children are most sensitive to this need
o Children during the first six months to two years of life need a consistent
caregiver to develop appropriately.
Secure Attachment
• When a child has a consistent caregiver and is able to go out and explore, knowing that
they have a secure base to return to.
• Child trusts that the caregiver will be there for comfort. Prefer the caregiver over all
others.
• Child will be upset when caregiver departs, and will be comforted by the return of the
caregiver.
• Vital aspect of children’s social development
• Children with the other three types of attachment can deficits in social skills
Avoidant Attachment
• Results when the caregiver has little or no response to a distressed child
• Children will show no preference between a stranger and a caregiver
• Show little or no distress when the caregiver leaves, & little or no relief when the
caregiver returns
Ambivalent Attachment
• Caregiver has an inconsistent response to a child’s distress
• Child is unable to form a secure base since they cannot consistently rely on the
caregiver’s response
• Child is very distressed when separated from caregiver, but shows a mixed response
when the caregiver returns
• Sometimes referred to as anxious ambivalent attachment since the child is always
anxious about the reliability of the caregiver.
Disorganized Attachment
• Show no clear pattern of behavior in response to the caregiver’s absence or presence
• Show a mixture of different behaviors:
 o E.g. – Avoidance or resistance; seeming dazed, frozen or confused; or repetitive
behaviors like rocking.
• Often associated with erratic behavior and social withdrawal by the caregiver.
• Red flag for abuse
Social Support
• The perception or reality that one is cared for by a social network
• Present at all times, but is most pronounced when someone suffers a personal or family
tragedy.
• Emotional Support: listening, affirming, and empathizing with someone’s feelings
• Esteem Support: similar to emotional support, but focuses more on affirming the
qualities and skills of a person.
o Attempt to bolster the confidence of a person by reminding them of their skills
• Material or Tangible Support: any type of financial or material contribution to another
person.
o E.g. – making a meal for a friend or donating money to a person
• Informational Support: providing information that will help someone
o E.g. – doctors providing information to patients to explain their diagnoses,
potential treatment options, and risk/benefits of the treatments options.
• Network Support: type of social support that gives a person a sense of belonging.
o Can be shown physically (hugging) or through gestures, group activities, and
shared experiences.
• Social support in general offers numerous health benefits:
o Helps reduce psychological distress (like anxiety and depression)
▪ People with low support show higher levels of major mental disorders,
alcohol and drug use, and suicidal thoughts.
o Improves physical health.
▪ People with low social support have higher mortality risk from different
diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.
o People with high social support are less likely to get colds and recover faster
when they do.
Social Behavior and Evolutionary Fitness
Foraging
• Behavior of seeking out and eating food
o Driven by biological, psychological, and social influences
• Biological: Hunger is driven by a complex pathway that involves both neurotransmitters
and hormones
o Controlled by the hypothalamus
▪ Lateral hypothalamus promotes hunger
▪ Ventromedial hypothalamus promotes satiety.
o Certain genes play a role in foraging behaviors
▪ E.g. – some species forage together while forage solitarily
• Cognitive skills like spatial awareness, memory, and decision-making play a role in the
success of foraging.
 o In group foraging, foraging is primarily a learned behavior. The young learn
through observation on how to find and consume food
Mating and Mate Choice
• Mating System: organization of a group’s sexual behavior
o Monogamy: exclusive mating relationship
o Polygamy: male having exclusive relationships with multiple females (polygyny)
or a female having exclusive relationships with multiple males (polyandry)
o Promiscuity: members of one sex mating with any member of the opposite sex,
without exclusivity
• Most animal species maintain one dominant mating system. Humans have mating
behavior that is highly influenced by social and biological factors
o Humans also have formal relationships to correspond with their mate choice
• Mate Choice or Intersexual Selection: selection of a mate based on attraction
• Mate Bias: how choosy members of the species are while choosing a mate.
o Evolutionary mechanism aimed at increasing the fitness of the species
o May carry direct benefits: providing material advantage, protection or emotional
support
o May carry indirect benefits: promoting better survival in the offspring
Mechanisms of Mate Choice
• Phenotypic Benefits: Observable traits that make a potential mate more attractive.
o Traits usually indicate increased production and survival of offspring
• Sensory Bias: development of a trait to match preexisting preference that exists in
population
• Fisherian or Runaway Selection: positive feedback mechanism in which a particular trait
that has no effect, or even a negative effect, on survival becomes more and more
exaggerated over time.
o A trait is deemed sexually desirable and this is more likely to be passed on
o This increases the likelihood that the trait continues to be passed on
o E.g. – Bright plumage (feathers) of a peacock
• Indicator Traits: traits that signify overall good health and well-being of an organism,
thus increasing the trait’s attractiveness to mates.
o Traits may or may not be genetic in origin
o E.g. – female cats are more attracted to males with clean and shiny coats.
• Genetic Compatibility: creation of mate pairs that have complementary genetics when
combined.
o Provides a mechanism for the reduced frequency of recessive genetic disorders
in the population
o Attraction to others who have starkly different genetic makeups reduces the
probability of offspring being homozygotic for a disease carrying allele.
Altruism
• Form of helping behavior in which the person’s intent is to benefit someone else at
some cost to themselves.
 o Can be motivated by selflessness, but can be motivated by egoism or ulterior
motivation like public recognition.
• Empathy: ability to vicariously experience the emotions of another
• Empathy-Altruism hypothesis: individual helps another person when they feel empathy
for the other person, regardless of the personal cost.
o Heavily debated theory for the connection between empathy and altruism.
• More recent theories suggest that an individual will only help another person when the
benefits outweigh the costs for the individual.
Game Theory
• Attempt at explaining decision-making behavior. Was originally used in economics and
mathematics to predict the interaction based on game characteristics like strategy,
winning and losing, rewards and punishments, and profits and costs.
• Game payoff refers to fitness in biology.
• Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS): When adopted by a given population in a specific
environment, natural selection will prevent alternative strategies from arising.
o Strategies are inherited traits that are passed along by the population
o Object of the game is to become more fit than competitors
• Classic example is the Hawk-Dove game which shows that two different strategies can
coexist as evolutionary stable strategies.
• Due to social influences, there can be four possible alternatives to direct competition:
o Altruism: donor provides a benefit to the recipient at a cost to themselves
o Cooperation: both the donor and recipient benefit by cooperating
o Spite: both the donor and recipient are negatively impacted
o Selfishness: donor benefits while the recipient is negatively impacted.
Inclusive Fitness
• Measure of an organism’s success in the population.
o Based on the number of offspring, success in supporting offspring, and the ability
of offspring to then support others.
• This measure is based on not only the number of viable offspring, but the benefits of
certain behaviors on the population at large.
o E.g. – A family of close relatives will share many of the same genes. Thus altruism
within a family unit will promote the reproduction and survival of individuals
with similar genomes.
o E.g. – protecting the young by a large group. By sacrificing themselves to protect
the young, an organism can ensure the passing of genes to future generations.
• As a whole, inclusive fitness promotes the idea that altruistic behavior can improve the
fitness and success of a species as a whole.

Social Perception and Behavior

Social Perception or Social Cognition
• Provides the tools to make judgments and impressions regarding other people
Components of Social Perception
• Perceiver: influenced by experience, motives and emotional state
o Past experiences can affect our attitudes toward current and future experiences
and can also lead to particular expectations of events.
o Motives influence what information is deemed important
o Emotional state influences how an event is interpreted
• Target: the person about which the perception is made
o Knowledge of target can affect perception
▪ i.e. – could potentially perceive target based on past experiences
• Situation: given social context can determine what information is available to the
perceiver.
Impression Bias
• A model of social perception that focuses on our selection of cues to form
interpretations of others.
• When a perceiver comes into contact with an unfamiliar target, they take in all cues
from the target and the environment through an unfiltered lens.
o As target is familiarized, the cues taken in are used to categorize the target.
▪ E.g. – friend vs enemy; caring vs standoffish
o Additional time spent with the target will lead the perceiver to confirm their
initial categorization.
o After this confirmation period has passed, the perception of additional cues
becomes selective in order to paint a picture of the target that is consistent with
the perceptions that the perceiver has already made.
• Theory Supports the primacy effect: idea that first impressions are often more
important than subsequent impressions
o Recency Effect: opposite of the primacy effect. Most recent information about
an individual is the most important in forming one’s impressions
• Reliance on Central Traits: Individuals tend to organize the perception of others based
on the traits and personal characteristics of the target that are most relevant to the
perceiver.
• Implicit Personality Theory: states that there are sets of assumptions people make about
how different types of people, their traits, and their behaviors are related.
o Basis behind how categories are formed during impression formation.
o Stereotyping: making assumptions about people based on the category in which
they are placed.
Halo Effect
• Cognitive bias in which judgments about a specific aspect of an individual can be
affected by one’s overall impression of the individual.
o I.e. – tendency to allow a general impression of a person to influence other,
more specific evaluations of that same person.
• Individuals who are perceived as attractive are more likely to be perceived as
trustworthy and friendly.
Just-World Hypothesis
• Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.
• Closely related to the concept of karma: a universal restoring force
• Strong belief in this promotes the idea of “blaming the victim”
Self-Serving Bias or Self-Serving Attributional Bias
• Bias refers to the fact that individuals will view their own success based on internal
factors, and their failures based on external factors.
o I.e. – all good things that happen are based on one’s good traits and behaviors,
and all bad thing are based on situational factors beyond one’s control.
o Used to protect self-esteem
• Related to both motivational processes and cognitive processes
o Self-Enhancement: type of motivational process that focuses on the need to
maintain self-worth
▪ Done through internal attribution of successes and external attribution of
failures
o Locus of control is an example of a cognitive process.
• Emotion also affects this bias since it affects self-esteem
o Individuals with high self-esteem are more likely to protect their own image and
are thus more likely to exhibit self-serving bias.
▪ Since individuals with higher self-esteem feel an increased need to
protect their own self-identity.
• Relationships also affect this bias:
o Individuals in close relationships are less likely to blame the other person,
instead a joint attribution will be made.
Attribution Theory
• Focuses on the tendency for individuals to infer on the causes of other people’s
behaviors.
Dispositional and Situational Causes
• Causes for attribution can be divided into two categories: dispositional and situational
• Dispositional (internal): attributions that relate to the person whose behavior is being
considered. Includes their beliefs, attitudes and personality characteristics
• Situational (External): attributions that relate to features of the surrounding.
o E.g. – Threats, money, social norms, and peer pressure.
o Consider the characteristics of the social context rather than the characteristics
of the individual as the primary cause
Cues
• Consistency Cues: the consistent behavior of a person over time
o The more regular the behavior, the more it is associated with the motives of the
person.
• Consensus Cues: extent to which a person’s behavior differs from others
o A dispositional attribution is more likely to be formed about a person’s behavior
if that person deviates from socially accepted behavior
 • Distinctiveness Cues: extent to which a person engages in similar behavior across a
series of scenarios.
o Situational attribution more likely explains a person’s behavior if that person
behavior varies in different situations.
• Correspondent Inference Theory: focuses on the intentionality of others’ behavior.
o When an individual performs a behavior that helps or hurts us: behavior is
explained through dispositional attribution
Fundamental Attribution Error
• Posits that we are generally biased towards making dispositional attributions rather
than situational attributions, especially in negative contexts.
Attribute Substitution
• When individuals must make judgements that are complex, but instead a simpler
solution is substituted or a heuristic is applied.
Cultural Attribution
• Type of culture an individual is a part of plays a role in the type of attributions that the
individual makes.
• Individualistic cultures (like American and European cultures) tend to put high value on
personal goals and independence.
o Tend to make more fundamental attribution errors than collectivist cultures.
o More likely to attribute behavior to dispositional factors
• Collectivist Cultures (like Asian and African societies) place high value on conformity and
interdependence
o More likely to attribute behavior to situational factors.

Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Stereotypes
• Negative connotation but are fundamentally necessary for everyday life.
• Psychological purpose is to make sense of a complex world by categorizing and
systematizing information to better identify items, predict their behavior, and react.
o Stereotypes are useful in defining categories and determining what does or does
not fit into that category.
• Negative connotation comes from when stereotypes are used to develop prejudices
towards and others and to discriminate.
• In sociology, stereotypes occur when attitudes and impressions are based on limited
and superficial information about a person or a group.
o Contents of stereotypes are the attributes that people believe define and
characterize a group
• Stereotype Content Model: Attempts to classify stereotypes with respect to a
hypothetical in-group using two dimensions: warmth and competence
o Warm Groups: Groups that are not in direct competition with the in-group for
resources
o Competent groups: those that have high status within society.
 o Can have four possible combinations of warmth and competence

Self-fulfilling Prophecy
• The expectations of a stereotype can create conditions that lead to the confirmation of
those expectations.
Stereotype Threat
• People being concerned or anxious about confirming a negative stereotype
• Can cause reduced performance, encourage self-handicapping strategies, and lower
one’s personal investment in an activity.
o E.g. – White men in sports, women driving, and homosexual couples providing
childcare.
• Awareness of these stereotypes, may cause the stereotyped individuals to perform
worse or avoid performance altogether.
Prejudice
• An irrational positive or negative attitude toward a person, group, or thing, prior to an
actual experience with the entity.
• Can form as a result of dissimilarities among groups, races, ethnicities, or environments.
• May be kept internally or run throughout a large community
o Propaganda: A common way in which large organizations attempt to create
prejudices in others
▪ Posters often invoke fear and exaggerated negative depictions of the
target group
Power, Prestige, and Class
Many social factors affect prejudice:
• Power: ability of people or groups to achieve their goals and their ability to control
resources
• Prestige: level of respect shown to a person by others
• Class: socioeconomic status
• Social inequalities can result in the grouping of haves and have-nots which may aid in
the development of social prejudices between haves and have-nots
Ethnocentrism
• Practice of making judgements about other cultures based on the values and beliefs of
one’s own culture. Can range from displays of ethnic pride to violent supremacy groups.
In-Group and Out-Group
• In-group: social group in which a person feels a sense of belonging or identifies as a
member
• Out-Group: social group with which the individual does not identify
• Often, negative feelings towards the out group are not based on a sense of dislike
towards their different characteristics, but instead the feelings can be attributed to
favoritism for the in-group’s characteristics.
Cultural Relativism
• Perception of another culture as different from one’s own, but with a recognition that
the cultural values, mores, and rules of a culture fit into that culture itself.
• I.e. – although there are differences between my culture and yours, my culture is not
perceived as having rules that are superior to your culture. They are simply just different
Discrimination
• Occurs when prejudicial attitudes cause individuals of a particular group to be treated
differently from others
• Discrimination is a behavior while prejudice is an attitude. Both are usually negative.
• Prejudice does not always result in discrimination
• Unequal distribution of power, prestige and class influences discrimination like it does
prejudice.
Individual vs Institutional Discrimination
• Individual Discrimination: one person discriminating against a particular person or group
o Considered to be conscious and obvious
o Can be eliminated by removing the person who is displaying the discrimination
• Institutional Discrimination: discrimination against a particular person or group by an
entire institution.
o Discrimination is built into the structure of society: much subtler and harder to
eliminate.
o Perpetuated by maintenance of “status quo”