Closing.

5/17/2007

Today

• Quiz

• Mike’s questionnaire

• Social Psychology

Quiz

1. What is a “halo” effect?

2. What is cognitive dissonance?

3. If you do poorly on this quiz what is your neighbor likely to attribute it to?

4. What are you likely to attribute it to?

5. What am I likely to attribute this to?

Mike’s questions.

Social Psychology

• Read the book.

• Choices.

Choices

A B C

Groceries

Toilets

Navigating

“Identical” choices

• …Are predictable.

• …What does it mean to ‘choose freely’?

• …But what about stuff that ‘matters’?

How to get what you want.

(Or, “how you can be manipulated”)

• Foot-in-the-door

• Lowball

• Door-in-the-face

Mating

• Mating matters.

• How do we pick who we date?

From an image search for “toilet”…“The world’s sexiest paper”

Mating

• Familiarity– Photos– Dorms

• Attraction– (see familiarity)– Interpretation of arousal (not that kind of

arousal)

• Stuff that we think doesn’t matter systematically alters our choices.

Altruism, Malevolence

• When do you help others?

Seminary students

• Going to give a sermon on The Good Samaritan

• Stumble across someone in a stairwell, coughing, groaning, appearing to be in pain.

• Some students are late, others are not.

• 63% vs 10%

Milgram

• Who shocks?

• Why do they shock?

Prison experiment

• The power of arbitrary situational roles.

• In-group biases (Robber’s Cave)

• Etc.

Recap

• Situational factors can (partially) determine our arbitrary choices.

• Situational factors we think (hope?) are of no influence alter our choices.

• This is true of trivial and life-long choices alike.

What do we think of choices?

• Attribution:– Internal vs External

• ‘Correspondence bias’ or ‘Fundamental Attribution Error’– Judging people?

• Self-serving bias– Judging ourselves?– (Relates to depression how?)

What did we learn?

Other fun stuff

• Cognitive Dissonance

• Thin Slices

• Expectations

Cognitive Dissonance

• Cults

• Experiments

• Try it at home! (maybe not)

Leon Festinger.

Thin slices

Expectations

• Self-fulfilling prophecies