It is often necessary to conceal the true purpose of an experiment.
The actor-observer effect occurs when we overemphasize internal factors and underemphasize situational factors when judging someone else's behavior.
Proximity does NOT play a role in physical attraction.
Regardless of their culture, men and women tend to have similar ideas about physical attractiveness when rating members of the opposite sex.
The halo effect is the tendency for people to become attracted to those who live or work in close proximity.
Men prefer to mate with beautiful young women, whereas women prefer men with resources and social status.
Anna Nichol's decision to marry a much older man who had substantial resources and wealth is consistent with David Buss's claims regarding mating behavior.
In his now classic line length experiment, Solomon Asch found that, as expected, few people conformed to the judgments of others, even when under pressure to conform.
Based on the conclusions of Asch's line length research, one would likely conclude that it would be very unlikely for a jury of 12 people to be unable to reach a verdict if they start out with just one dissenting opinion.
Christina felt terrible about chanting hurtful slurs at the little girl with leg braces. Christina would rather have helped the poor girl up the stairs, but Denise, the leader of the pack of friends told the older girls that if they didn't ridicule the girl, they would no longer be part of her "gang." Christina couldn't bear to be excluded. This is an example of obedience.
Both Asch and Milgram found that the presence of one other person who refused to go along with an order would give participants the courage to defy authority.
In Milgram's controversial but classic study of obedience, nearly two thirds of the participants completed the experiment, following instructions to administer dangerous electrical shocks of up to 450 volts to a "learner."
The foot-in-the-door technique is what sales people use to push products, and the door-in-the-face technique is the defense used by many wary buyers.
In the presence of others, performance suffers on difficult tasks. (
Shelly is involved with a group project, but she knows that Gina is compulsive about completing a task in a timely fashion. Because Gina is in Shelly's group, Shelly knows she won't have to do much. If she complains and procrastinates, Gina will take over and get the project done herself, but as a group member, Shelly will get to share in the credit. Shelly is guilty of social loafing.
Employees tend to justify "cyberloafing" in terms of perceived injustices committed by their supervisors.
Social loafing appears more common in Eastern cultures.
Groups tend to make more moderate decisions than individuals.
Middle-aged adults are more likely to change their attitudes than are 'older' adults.
Cognitive dissonance can be reduced by altering an attitude or behavior, or by creating arguments that explain away the inconsistency.
Adopted children whose biological parent was a criminal are much more likely than those in the general population to commit crimes.
Research evidence overwhelmingly supports a relationship between TV violence and viewer aggression.
Prejudice is a behavior and discrimination is more of an attitude or cognition.
According to social cognition theory, racial stereotypes serve the purpose of summarizing information that one holds about members of other groups in an attempt to improve the efficiency of processing when one thinks about the group or learns something new about the group.