chap2

Chapter 2

The Person and the Situation

Chapter OutlineThe Enigma of the Ordinary and

Extraordinary Man

The Person

The Situation

The Person and The Situation Interact

Revisiting the Enigma of an Ordinary and Extraordinary Man

Chapter Summary

The PersonMotivation: What Drives Us

Knowledge: Our View of Ourselves and the World

Feelings: Attitudes, Emotions, and MoodsFocus on Method: Assessing

Attitudes, Emotions, and Moods

Outline

Motivation: What Drives Us

Motivation: the driving force that moves people toward their desired outcomes.

Motivation

What goals do you have for today?

What goals do you have forthis semester?

What goals do you have for your career?

What goals do you have for your life?

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS?

Motivation

Gain Status

Get Well-Paying, Highly Respected Job

Earn High Grades

Attend Class

Take Notes

Study for Exams

Attention: the process of consciously focusing on aspects of our environment or ourselves.

Motivation

Automaticity: the ability of a behavior or cognitive process to operate without conscious guidance once it’s put into motion.

Motivation

Participants in one experiment were asked to eat radishes rather than nearby cookies.

Others were asked to eat cookies and ignore the radishes.

The students were then asked to solve puzzles (which, unbeknownst to them, were actually impossible).

Motivation

Willpower:Use it and lose it.

esearch

Participants who had to exercise willpower to resist the cookies had less will-power left over for the difficult puzzles

25:00 20:00

Radish-eaters

(No Cookies Allowed)

Control(Puzzle

Task Only)

Cookie-eaters (No Radishes Allowed)

Persistence on

puzzles (minutes)

Motivation

25:5218:54

esearch

These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that: Using willpower for one task reduces its availability for later tasks.

25:00 20:00

Radish-eaters

(No Cookies Allowed)

Control(Puzzle

Task Only)

Cookie-eaters (No Radishes Allowed)

Persistence on

puzzles (minutes)

Motivation

25:5218:54

esearch

Mental Representation

Beliefs

Explanations

Sensory Memories

Martin Luther King

King pursued hisgoal because he was religious

He was spiritual, wanted to eliminate discrimination

“I have a dream…”

Beliefs

Explanations

Sensory Memories

Exemplar: mental representation of a specific episode, event, or individual.

Schema: A mental representation capturing the general characteristics of a particular class of episodes, events, or individuals.

Self Concept: A mental representation capturing our views and beliefs about ourselves.

Reflected Appraisal Process: The process through which people come to know themselves by observing or imagining how others view them.

Self Perception Process:the process through which people observe their own behavior to infer their own internal characteristics.

Social Comparison: the process through which people come to know themselves by comparing their abilities, attitudes and beliefs with those of others.

Feelings: Attitudes, Emotions, and Moods

Attitudes: favorable or unfavorable feelings towards particular people, objects, events or ideas.

Self-esteem: the specific attitude we have toward ourselves.

Emotions: relatively intense feelings characterized by physiological arousal and complex cognitions (e.g., fear, anger, joy).

Emotions are more intense than attitudes.

Moods: relatively long-lasting feelings that are less focused than emotions, and not directed toward a particular target.

Focus on Method: Assessing Attitudes, Emotions, and Moods

On a 9-point scale –

1=extremely sad

9=extremely happy

How do you feel right now?

Feelings

The self-report methodasks a person directly “how are you feeling?”

Self-report may not work if people have reason to hide their feelings.

Feelings

Self-report bias is reduced by:

• Making responses anonymous

• Leading participants to believe that they are hooked up to a “lie

Feelings

Feelings can also be inferred from behavior (e.g. clenched fists, or frowns)

or from physiological measures (e.g. heart rate, blood pressure)

Researchers search for convergence between self-reports, behaviors, and physiological measures.

Feelings

Evidence for genetic influences:

People from different societies express and experience emotions in surprisingly similar ways:

People in remote regions of the world agree on facial expressions for happiness, fear, anger, and disgust

FeelingsGenetic and Cultural

Foundations

Children born deaf, blind, and brain damaged are unable to learn emotional responses from their social world.

Nevertheless, they show many normal emotional reactions like smiling, laughter, anger, and surprise.

Foundations

Behavior genetic studies indicate a heritable component to emotions and moods expressed by related individuals.

Foundations

Evidence for cultural influences:

People in different cultures learn different rules about expressing emotions.

Example: Utku Eskimos rarely express anger; Awlad’Ali Bedouins quickly express their anger.

Foundations

Classical conditioning:Involuntary process through which feelings become associated with new objects or events.

Foundations

Instrumental learning:The process through which people learn new voluntary responses by being rewarded or punished.

Foundations

Observational learning:The process through which people learn by watching others get rewarded or punished.

Foundations

Gently hold a pen between your teeth, making sure it doesn’t touch your lips.

FeelingsProximate Contributors to

Feelings

Now grip the end of the pen firmly with your lips, making sure it doesn’t dip downward.

Feelings

In an experiment by researchers Fritz Strack, Leonard Martin and Sabine Stepper, students read cartoons while holding the pen with either their teeth or their lips.

Feelings

Compared to control participants who held the pen in their hands, those who held the pen in their teeth rated cartoons as funnier.

Feelings

Those who held the pen in their lips rated the cartoons as less funny.

Holding the pen between your teeth contracts the facial muscles into something like a smile.

Feelings

Holding the pen firmly between the lips creates an expression similar to an angry grimace.

Feelings

Our feelings are influenced strongly be how we appraise our situations.

Feelings

Who is happier following Olympic performances –Silver medalists or bronze medalists?

Feelings

esearch

Researchers analyzed films from 1992 Olympics, and found that athletes who won Bronze medals were happier than those who won Silver.

Feelings

esearch

Silver medalists talked about how close they had come to a Gold.

Feelings

Counterfactual thinking -Process of imagining alternative versions of actual events.

Bronze medalists imagined winning no medal at all.

esearch

The SituationPersons as Situations: Mere

Presence, Affordances, and Descriptive Norms

Focus on Social Dysfunction: Descriptive Norms, Pluralistic Ignorance, and Binge Drinking on Campus

Rules: Injunctive Norms and Scripted Situations

Strong Versus Weak Situations

Culture

Outline

Persons as Situations: Mere Presence, Affordances, and

Descriptive Norms

Small schools are “undermanned”--they need all their students. Because of this, students participate in more activities and feel more challenged.

Large schools are “overmanned”--they don’t need all their students. Thus, students are less needed and more likely to be socially isolated

Persons as

Situations

Imagine you are at the company picnic and you spot your new boss sitting by himself.

This could be a good chance to advance your career.

Affordance

Persons as

Situations

Affordance -Opportunity or threat provided by a situation.

Descriptive norm -Information about what people commonly do in a situation.

Example: Many students wear jeans to classes.

Persons as

Situations

Persons as

Situations

Imagine you are in your social psychology class, and don’t understand a concept the professor just explained.

You look around and no one else seems confused.

Not wanting to look like the only one who doesn’t understand, you don’t raise your hand.

What if everyone else is doing the

Pluralistic Ignorance

Persons as

Situations

Pluralistic Ignorance -The phenomenon in which people in a group misperceive the beliefs of others because everyone in the group is acting inconsistently with their beliefs.

Focus on Social Dysfunction: Descriptive Norms, Pluralistic Ignorance, and Binge Drinking

on Campus

• Over 40 percent of students binge drink at least twice a month.

• Males are more likely to drink than females (51% vs. 40%)

• Princeton researchers found pluralistic ignorance plays a role in student drinking (Prentice & Miller,

Focus on Social Dysfunction: Descriptive Norms, Pluralistic Ignorance, and Binge Drinking

on Campus

• Yet they guessed other students were not as uncomfortable

• Over time, men shift their opinions to be more consistent with their misperceptions of others.

• Many students were uncomfortable with drinking on campus

Injunctive norm -Rules that define what is typically approved and disapproved of in a situation.

Scripted Situation -A situation in which certain events are expected to occur in a particular order.

Script For a Getting a Date

1. Two people notice each other.

2. They get caught staring, and smile.

3. Find out about one another from friends.

4. They attempt to “accidentally” come across one another again.

5. They get a friend to introduce them.

6. They begin a conversation.

7. One requests the other’s phone number.

Strong Versus Weak Situations

Strong situations demand people act in particular ways.Examples: Funeral, job interview.

Weak situations allow people to behave in many different ways.Examples: Nightclub, picnic.

Culture

Culture - the beliefs, customs, habits, and language shared by people living in a particular time and place

Culture

Individualist Culture -A culture that socializes its members to think of themselves as individuals, and to give priority to their own personal goals.

Culture

Collectivist Culture -A culture that socializes its members to think of themselves as members of a larger group, and to place the group’s concerns before their own.

CultureWhere would you rank the following five countries on individualism?

• Canada

• South Korea

• United States

• Japan

• Mexico

–> # 4

–> # 44

–> # 1

–> # 22

–> # 32 (Hofstede, 1983)

The Person and the Situation Interact

Different Persons Respond Differently to the Same SituationFocus on Application: Person

Situation Fit in the Workplace

Situations Choose the PersonPersons Choose Their SituationsDifferent Situations Prime

Different Parts of the PersonPersons Change The SituationSituations Change the Person

Outline

Different Persons Respond

Differently to the Same

Situation

Different people are attuned to different parts of a situation, and the same situation means different things to different people.

SituationImagine you’ve agreed to

participate in an experiment studying the psychology of sports performance.

esearch

The study involves a golf-like putting task.

How do you think you’d do?

SituationTwo groups of students

were asked to perform this exact putting task.

esearch

The first group was told the task measured “natural athletic ability.”

SituationTwo groups of students

were asked to perform this exact putting task.

esearch

The second group was told the task measured “sports intelligence.”

esearch

White participants performed worse than usual when told the test measured “natural ability.”

Natural Ability Sports Intelligence

Average number of strokes.(higher number

indicates worse

performance)

Motivation27.8

esearch

Black participants performed worse than usual when told the test measured “sports intelligence.”

indicates worse

performance)

Motivation27.8

esearch

Both groups appeared to do worse when they had to worry about re-enforcing pre-existing stereotypes.

indicates worse

performance)

Motivation27.8

Stone et al. (1999)

esearch

These findings illustrate how different people respond differently in the same situations.

indicates worse

performance)

Motivation27.8

Situation(continued)

Person Situation Fit

The extent to which a person and a situation are compatible.

Focus on Application: Person

When employees’ personal characteristics –interests, goals, abilities, traits– fit with the demands and opportunities of their occupations, employees are happier and more likely to stay at their jobs.

Focus on Application: Person

Other research illustrates the value of having the person fit not just the job but the organization’s culture.

Situations Choose the Person

Example: Athletic teams have slots for only so many players, so not everyone gets the experience of playing on the team.

Persons Choose Their Situations

We choose situations based that provide opportunities that fit with our personal characteristics.

Example: If you are an introvert, a quiet evening at home might be more appealing than a crowded rock concert.

Different Situations Prime

Different Parts of the Person

Inside each one of us, there are different motives, memories, and feelings.

Each of these is likely to be triggered by some situations more than others.

Different Situations Prime

Different Parts of the Person

Example: After watching a slapstick comedy that primes memories of innocent accidents, an ambiguous collision with a stranger may draw one reaction:

(“Oops. How clumsy of me!”)

But a blow-em-up action thriller may trigger your inner Rambo:

(“Hey! How dare you bump into me!”)

Persons Change The Situation

Sometimes people change situations to better achieve their goals.

(a teacher will set up her class so that her students get along)

Other times people change situations inadvertently.

(depressed college students may depress their roommates)

(Joiner & Metalsky, 1996) (Strack & Coyne, 1983)

Situations Change the Person

You may be a different person after spending time in a situation.

Example: Two similar high school students may be very different after one spends four years in the military while the other is in a liberal arts college.

Situations Change the Person

SocializationThe process through which a culture teaches its members about its beliefs, customs, habits, and language.

chap2

moods attitudes

moods moods

world feelings

view of ourselvesand

outlinethe person motivation

lasting feelings

motivation attention

motivation automaticity

Education

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