the book referred to is social psychology by Myers and twinge ch3, please read instructions and follow the rubric exactly the order will be checked for originality and for following instructions and will be cancelled if it wasn’t up to bar thanks

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020

Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Friendly reminders about SLIDES 1

! Slides are available to you on D2L

! I’m happy to enumerate my slides for you, to make note-taking
easy!

! I don’t allow class members to take pictures of slides during class
– not even sometimes – you’ll recall our syllabus says this

! For audiotaping, there’s a permission form to complete and you
can get that form from a TA or me

! Thank you for contributing to the success of our class

PSY 342 / SOC 342
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY:
SELF, ATTITUDES, SOCIAL INFLUENCE

Myers and Twenge 13/e, chapter 3
Slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020 and/or © McGraw-Hill 2020.

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

PREVIEW

How do we judge our social worlds, consciously
and unconsciously?

How do we perceive our social worlds?

How do we explain our social worlds?

How do our social beliefs matter?

What can we conclude about social beliefs and
judgments?

Perceiving Our Social Worlds
4

Priming: activating particular associations
in memory
• Can influence another thought or even

an action
• Things we don’t even consciously

notice can subtly influence how we
interpret and recall events
• Kulechov effect

• Illustrates the idea that much of our
social information processing is
automatic

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Perceiving our social worlds, cont’d 5

Priming, cont’d:

Embodied cognition: mutual influence of bodily
sensations on cognitive preferences and social
judgments

• Brain systems that process our bodily sensations
communicate with the brain systems responsible
for our social thinking

Perceiving our social worlds 6

Think of 3-4 circumstances in which it
matters whether your early impressions of
a person are accurate.

• What are some circumstances?
• Why use your intuition in these

circumstances? Why not?

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Intuitive judgments: why and why not

Some advocate “intuitive management”—tuning in to our hunches

Our thinking is partly automatic, partly controlled
! Automatic processing: “implicit” thinking – effortless, habitual,

and without awareness; roughly corresponds to “intuition” and
“gut feeling” – also known as System 1

! Controlled processing: “explicit” thinking – deliberate,
reflective, and conscious—also known as System 2

Automatic thinking often involves schemas, emotional
reactions, the effects of expertise, and snap judgments

Intuition has limits

Automatic, intuitive thinking can seem to “make us
smart”; but the unconscious may not be as smart as
once believed
• Error-prone hindsight judgments
• Capacity for illusion—for perceptual misinterpretations,

fantasies, and constructed beliefs

Note that although people create false beliefs, not all
beliefs are false
• To recognize falsification, it helps to know how it is done

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Perceiving Our Social Worlds
9

Belief Perseverance
Persistence of one’s initial conceptions, as when
the basis for one’s belief is discredited but an
explanation of why the belief might be true
survives

Perceiving Our Social Worlds 10

Constructing Memories
Misinformation effect
Incorporating “misinformation” into one’s memory of

the event after witnessing an event and receiving
misleading information about it

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Perceiving Our Social Worlds 11

Reconstructing our past attitudes
Reconstructing our past behavior

Judging Our Social World

12

The Limits of Intuition
Hindsight Bias
Perceptual Misinterpretations

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Judging Our Social World 13

Overconfidence Phenomenon
Tendency to be more confident than correct – to
overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs
Alas, incompetence feeds overconfidence!

Planning fallacy
Stockbroker overconfidence
Political overconfidence

Judging Our Social World 14

Confirmation Bias
Tendency to search for information that confirms
one’s preconceptions

Helps explain why our self-images are so stable
Self-verification

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Judging Our Social World 15

Remedies for Overconfidence
Give prompt feedback to explain why statement is
incorrect
For planning fallacy, ask one to “unpack a task” –
break it down into estimated time requirements for
each part
Get people to think of one good reason why their
judgments might be wrong

Judging Our Social World 16

Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts
Representativeness heuristic

Tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds,
that someone or something belongs to a particular
group if resembling (representing) a typical member

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Judging Our Social World 17

Heuristics: Mental shortcuts, snap decision
rules

Availability heuristic
Cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in
terms of their availability in memory
The more easily we recall something the more likely it
seems

Availability heuristic 18

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Two heuristics among many 19

Heuristic Definition Example But May Lead to…

Representativeness Snap judgments of
whether someone or
something fits a
category

Deciding that Marie is
a librarian rather
than a trucker
because she better
represents one’s
image of librarians

Discounting other
important information

Availability Quick judgments of
likelihood of events
(how available in
memory)

Estimating teen
violence after school
shootings

Overweighting vivid
instances and thus,
for example, fearing
the wrong things

Judging Our Social World 20

Counterfactual Thinking

Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that
might have happened, but didn’t

Related to our feelings of luck

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Judging Our Social World 21

Illusory Thinking
Our search for order in random events

Illusory correlation:
Perception of a relationship where none exists, or
perception of a stronger relationship than actually
exists

Judging Our Social World 22

Illusory Thinking
Illusion of control
Perception of uncontrollable events as subject to

one’s control or as more controllable than they are
Gambling
Regression toward the average:

Statistical tendency for extreme scores or
extreme behavior to return toward one’s average

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

23

Judging Our Social World

Moods and Judgments
Good and bad moods

trigger memories of
experiences
associated with
those moods

Moods color our
interpretations of
current experiences

A temporary good or bad mood strongly influenced people’s
ratings of their videotaped behavior. Those in a bad mood

detected far fewer positive behaviors.

Explaining Our Social World 24

Attributing Causality: To the Person or the
Situation

Misattribution
Mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source

Attribution theory
Theory of how people explain others’ behavi

or

Dispositional attribution
Situational attribution

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Explaining Our Social World 25

Inferring Traits
We often infer that other people’s actions are

indicative of their intentions and dispositions

Commonsense Attributions (see next slide)
Consistency
Distinctiveness
Consensus

Attribution 26

Kelley’s

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Explaining Our Social World 27

Fundamental Attribution Error
Tendency for observers to underestimate

situational influences and overestimate
dispositional influences upon others’ behavior

Explaining our social world 28

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

Explaining Our Social World 29

Why do we make the attribution error?
We observe others from a different perspective

than we observe ourselves
Example: camera perspective bias

When recalling the past, we are like observers of
someone else

We also find causes where we look for them
And, western cultural bias facilitates it.

30

Expectations of Our Social World

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (Robert Merton)
Belief that leads to its own fulfillment

The movie “My Fair Lady” and the Greek myth Pygmalion & Galatea on which
the movie’s story was based remind us of the power of expectations.

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

31

Teacher Expectations and Student
Performance

The problem of experimenter expectations (demand characteristics) creating
artifactual results in an experiment is an example of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Expectations of Our Social World 32

Getting from Others What We Expect
Behavioral confirmation
Type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people’s

social expectations lead them to behave in ways that
cause others to confirm their expectations

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

33

Prototype of a study of behavioral confirmation

Self-fulfilling prophecy, cont’d.

or

– 34 –

Self-fulfilling prophecy, cont’d.

C

BA

Kerth O’Brien
Portland State University
Winter, 2020
Some slides © Kerth O’Brien 2020, other slides © McGraw-Hill 2020

What Can We Conclude about Social Beliefs and
Judgments?

Our information-processing powers are efficient and adaptive,
but people sometimes form false beliefs
• Trying hard doesn’t eliminate thinking biases
• Our intuition is vulnerable to misjudgment
• If anything, laboratory procedures overestimate our

intuitive powers
• False impressions, interpretations, and beliefs can produce

serious consequences
• Heuristic snap judgments, however, enable efficient

thinking and can aid in our survival

36

There’s a place on D2L discussions where you can post your
responses to chapter objectives. If you post some of your own
responses, I can’t promise but maybe other class members will
respond in kind and post some of theirs. There’s only one way to
find out…

Your own class notes; your written-out responses to chapter
objectives; the slides; and an only-supplementary study guide are
all resources for you.

Study early and often, and find yourself ready for the midterm!

Midterm comes soon.

O’Brien revised 1/18/20 with new parts in blue
Psy 342 / Soc 342 – Winter, 2020

Guidance for your two mini-papers:
What difference does social psychology make?

Follow this guidance to write two mini-papers for our course. Each mini-paper counts for
10% (up to 20 points) of your course grade, so that’s 20% of the course grade
altogether.

You’ll use each paper to explore a specific social psychological concept. Each paper will
be 900 to 1000 words, single spaced, with one inch margins. Papers will be graded
using a  framework:
+ is like an A (this translates to 20 points in our 200-point system)
 is like a B (16 points)
- is like a C (12 points),
and so on. I’d like to assign as many  and + grades as possible, and if you plan
ahead, follow this guidance, and so on I believe you can do fine work on both your mini-
papers.

In each paper you will show that you know how a given concept in social psychology is
defined, describe how it relates to other social psych ideas, give an example how it
applies in real life, and describe what impact this knowledge makes.

In addition to your name and the usual info at the top of the document, your paper will
include:

(Section 1) Use this caption:
Concept: _____________ [fill in the blank with the name of the concept]

 Name an established concept or theory from our social psychology text and/or
from classroom lecture. Don’t use Wikipedia, etc., for your concept – use our
class text and/or lecture notes. You may use any chapter of the text even if we’re
not covering that chapter this quarter.

 Provide the definition of the concept or theory. Use quote marks and provide
the page number for the definition by adding an in-text citation like this: (Myers &
Twenge, 13/e, page xx). If you use another recent edition of the book, that’s fine,
just cite it appropriately (11/e or 12/e). It’s also okay to copy a definition directly
from your lecture notes, but I still expect you to use quote marks and tell the date
of your notes in which you wrote the definition.

(Section 2) Use this caption:
Related ideas: __________[fill in the blank by naming the 2-3 related ideas]

 Using your own words, connect this concept to 2-3 related ideas from our social
psychology textbook. You’ll probably need 5-6 sentences to do this. Use more
sentences if necessary to meet your 900-1000 word target for the paper overall.

 Make it easy for us to tell what the related concepts are. Besides naming them in
the caption for the section you might underline them in the paragraphs.

2

(Section 3) Use this caption:
Factual example.
In your own words, describe a factual situation in your own life, in which you saw this
concept or theory at work. You might be recalling something that happened before you
knew the concepts, and you only realize the concept applies in retrospect – that’s okay.
Even though I probably have no way to check, I’m counting on you to tell a true story.
You’ll probably need a few paragraphs for this section.

(Section 4) Use this caption:
What difference does knowledge make?
This section is the hardest part. Reflect on your story to tell what difference it makes to
be knowledgeable about the concept you’ve chosen. You might tell how you act
differently, how you think differently, how you understand yourself or other people
differently, how you have a different attitude than before, how exactly you plan to act or
think or feel differently in the future, and/or, how your emotions are different because of
your knowledge of this concept.

For example, let’s say you write a paper on the door-in-the-face technique. What follows
is not the whole 1000 words but an outline of what the paper might say.

Section 1 would include:
• Concept: Door-in-the-face technique (remember, these captions are required)
• Door-in-the-face is “a strategy for gaining a concession. After someone first turns

down a large request (the door-in-the-face), the same requester counteroffers with
a more reasonable request”

• (remember to add the page number) (p. 185, Myers and Twenge, 13th edition).
• If you like, you can elaborate saying more in your own words about what the

concept is.

Section 2 could say:
• the required caption
Related ideas: Compliance, Persuasion, Foot-in-the-door, Concessions
• This comes under the general concept of compliance, which is a social influence

process.
• Door-in-the-face is only one of several persuasion methods covered by the text.
• It contrasts with the foot-in-the-door technique which starts with a small request and

proceeds to the larger one (describe foot-in-the-door in your own words).
• The success of door-in-the-face could be explained by perceptual contrast

(describe that idea in your own words), reciprocal concessions (describe that idea
in your own words), or even by social desirability (self presentation; describe that
idea in your own words).

(Usually there are no quotations needed for this section of the paper — this section is in
your own words.)

3

Section 3 could say:
• The required caption
Factual example
• Two weeks ago, our teenage daughter asked to borrow keys to the van to drive

herself to the Saturday soccer practice. When her father and I refused, she followed
up with a request that we drive her to the practice.

• We said okay, but soon we realized we’d fallen for door-in-the-face–in fact our
daughter already knows that we expect her to take the bus to her soccer practices.

Section 4 could say:

 The required caption
What difference does knowledge make?

Last week our daughter made the same request and instead of car keys she got a
Tri-Met bus pass. Our Saturdays are already very busy, and knowledge of social
psychology is saving us from having to drive our daughter to practices.

Additionally, because of our knowledge of door-in-the-face, we understand that
sometimes the best solution to a problem isn’t a solution midway between the two
extremes. Sometimes the extremes are even more extreme in order to manipulate
how we see the situation, and we understand that now.

Notice how knowledge of social psychology makes a difference in the writer’s life, even
if it’s only a difference in the writer’s understanding.

Even though your own paper will be written out with captions and regular prose, the
above outline gives you the idea.

Next, here’s how to format your papers. For each paper, at the top of the first page type:

 Your name
 Your D2L email address in case I have follow-up questions… Your D2L

email address is the same as your @pdx.edu address without the
@pdx.edu at the end

 The date
 Social Psychology, Kerth O’Brien
 And then either say “Okay to quote me” or “Don’t quote me.” It doesn’t

affect your grade but it lets me know whether it’s OK to read part of your
paper aloud in class someday. Either way is okay.

Save your files in one of these formats only:
(Word)
x (Word)

If you’re using Microsoft Word on a Windows machine, your file will save in or
x already. Otherwise you may need this paragraph. How do you convert your files
to or x? Get a head start with a bit of advance planning:

 You can come to campus where you may use Word on a Windows machine at

4

almost any campus lab.

 Or, you might go into the software you prefer to use and search its help menu for help.

 Or, you might conduct an online web search using a search phrase like “how to
convert files to x”. This is how one student I know found a site called
zamzar.com (there may be other, better sites).

 Beyond the above possibilities, your go-to resource is the PSU Help Desk during
their ordinary weekday hours. Approach them either at 503-725-HELP or in the
basement of Smith Memorial Student Union and ask, “How do I convert my
document from some other word processing software into an MS Word file ending in
or x for Windows?” You could bring the same assignment guidance that
you’re reading now and show it to Help Desk staff.

Your file must be in or x format before you upload it to D2L Assignments.

Name your files with your last name as part of the filename. Example:
YourLastName_Paper1
Notice how there’s a “1” at the end of the filename? Please end one filename with 1 and
the other with 2 so we can tell them apart.

Some helpful hints:

 When you’re using Microsoft Word the status bar at the bottom of the screen
tells you the number of words at a glance, and/or, you could go to the ribbon at
top and select review and then word count. Again your paper needs to be 900-
1000 words.

 If you find yourself not quite there at 900 words, you may find it helpful to
elaborate in your own words about the related concepts.

 Check our course D2L discussions for updates and FAQs. See me in office
hours or post questions on D2L if you get stuck. TAs Sheila and Tim are also
available by appointment.

 Before uploading your papers, double-check your work against this guidance.

Late papers:

Upload your two files to D2L Assignments by or before class time on the due date (see
syllabus schedule). Late papers will be graded down (e.g., from + to  after class time
on the first day, then  to – after class time on the second day). I’d rather not have to
grade any papers down for lateness, so I hope you’ll take advantage of this guidance for
an early start.

I hope this detailed guidance offers you confidence how to proceed. The course TAs
and I look forward to learning about your experiences with concepts of social
psychology!

Kerth

https://www.pdx.edu/oit/computer-labs