FINAL EXAM
Please choose 5 out of 6 questions to answer. Carefully read all the questions and provide answers in essay style format. Answers should be around 2 pages long (Times New Roman, 12 pt, double space, APA format). You will submit your test as .doc or .docx file via email before December 17th.
Exam Questions
- There is a stereotype that individuals who are described as religious will be more likely to help than others. However, the research demonstrates that this is not universally true. Describe the findings of the research that we discussed in the class. What variables affect prosocial behavior and why?
- Consider the phrase, “The exception proves the rule.” How does this phrase reflect prejudicial attitudes in the face of evidence contrary to one’s attitude?
Also, how do we construct and maintain prejudice and stereotypes, according to the research. Describe the research and explain what the implications of its findings are.
The Role of Moral Disengagement in the Execution Process Osofsky, Bandura & Zimbardo (2005)
- According to Patricia Devine’s (1989) experimental research on prejudice and information processing, how are prejudiced people like nonprejudiced people? How are they different? Describe her research and elaborate on its implications.
Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5-18.
- Because violence is of concern to social psychologists and the public, a great deal of research has focused on the effects of exposure to televised violence and violent video games on both children and adults. What are the reasons why television violence contributes to aggressive behavior in children and adults? Additionally, what is the influence of violent media on helping behavior? Elaborate. (Adachi, 2011) Bushman, B. J., & Anderson, A. (2009).
Adachi, P. J. C., & Willoughby, T. (2011). The effect of violent video games on aggression: Is it more than just the violence? Aggression and Violent Behavior, 16, 52-62. § DeWall, C. N., Baumeister, R. F., Stillman, T. F., Gailliot, M. T. (2007). Violence restrained: Effects of self-regulation and its depletion on aggression. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 62-76.
Bushman, B. J., & Anderson, A. (2009). Comfortably numb: Desensitizing effects of violent media on helping others. Psychological Science, 20, 273-277.
Aggression is defined as a behavior that is intended to harm another individual (Coie & Dodge, 1998). Anderson and Bushman (2002) developed the General Aggression Model (GAM) in part to account for the effects of violent video games on aggression (see Fig. 1; also Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Anderson & Carnagey, 2004 for a detailed description of the model). The model depicts a cyclical relationship between an individual and the environment, in which person variables such as trait hostility, mood, and attitudes toward aggression, as well as situation variables, such as exposure to real-world or media violence (e.g., violent video games), interact to influence an individual’s present internal state, specifically cognition (aggressive scripts or hostile thoughts), affect (anger and frustration), and arousal (elevated heart rate or blood pressure). Cognition, affect, and arousal are the hypothesized mechanisms that interact to influence an individual’s appraisal of an aggressive (or ambiguous) act, leading to either thoughtful or impulsive action. For example, if someone bumps into another individual, that individual’s internal state will influence whether he or she interprets the person as having hostile intent, or perceives the bump as being accidental. When people’s thoughts and feelings are angry or hostile and they are physiologically aroused (e.g., after exposure to a violent video game), they will be more likely to interpret the person as having hostile intent. In contrast, if their affect is positive or they are thinking about how crowded the room is, they will be more likely to believe the bump was accidental. Once an appraisal has been made, decision-making processes occur (out- comes). Depending on the individual’s internal state and the availability of sufficient cognitive resources, a decision will be made either thoughtfully or impulsively. If he or she interpreted the person as bumping into him or her with hostile intent, he or she may be more likely to aggress than to ignore the bump, especially if this decision was made impulsively (social encounter).
The research findings presented in this literature review appear to offer a clear picture of the short-term relation between violent video games and aggression
According to Anderson and Bushman (2002), violent video games influence aggression through short-term and long-term effects. In the short-term, violent video games function as a situation variable that can increase aggressive cognition, affect, and arousal, in turn leading to increased aggressive behavior. In the long-term, violent video games can influence aggressive behavior by promoting aggressive beliefs and attitudes, and creating aggressive schema, aggressive behavioral scripts and aggressive expectations; which, in turn, may bias an individual’s personality toward aggression. In other words, each violent video game episode may reinforce the notion that aggression is an effective and appropriate way to deal with conflict and anger (Bushman & Anderson, 2002).
For example, Anderson and Dill (2000) conducted an experiment in which they examined the effects of violent video game play on aggressive thoughts and behavior. Participants from an undergraduate sample were randomly assigned to play either a violent or non-violent video game in two laboratory sessions. In the first session, participants completed a measure of aggressive thoughts immediately after playing the video game. The measure was a reading reaction time task in which aggressive words, such as “murder,” were paired with three types of control words (i.e., anxiety, escape, and control). Results indicated that only participants who played the violent video game reacted faster to the aggressive words than the control words. Thus, Anderson and Dill concluded that the violent video game primed aggressive thoughts. Furthermore, consistent with the GAM, priming aggressive knowledge structures is one potential path through which playing violent video games might increase aggressive behavior.
Similarly, playing violent video games led to increased aggression in an experiment that used a repeated measures design. Barlett, Harris, and Baldassaro (2007) took baseline measures of undergrad- uate participants’ physiological arousal, state hostility, and aggression and then exposed them to a violent video game for 15 min. Aggression was measured using story stems in which participants took the point of view of the main character and were asked how they would retaliate after a blatant negative action. After playing the game, physiological arousal, state hostility, and aggression were once again recorded and significant increases from baseline were found in all three measures. Thus, it was concluded that consistent with the GAM, physiological arousal, state hostility and aggression were higher than baseline after playing a violent video game for only 15 min.
Field studies have also supported the relation between violent video games and aggression (see Anderson et al., 2007). For example, Gentile, Lynch, Linder, and Walsh (2004) conducted a correlational study with 8th- and 9th-grade students (mean age = 14 years) and found that adolescents who played more violent video games reported being more hostile, getting into arguments with teachers more frequently, and being involved in more physical fights than adolescents who played less violent video games. Consistent with the GAM, it was found that hostility partially mediated the relation between violent video game play and involvement in physical fights, and fully mediated the relation between violent video game play and reported arguments with teachers.
Exposure to violence
Exposure to violent filmed images, violent video games, cartoons, animation.
If you watch an actor engage in violent behavior – rewarded for the violent behavior (or not punished) – more likely to engage in violent behavior (=vicarious conditioning)
When you are watching fiction (we usually have our guard down, you let your guard down; let yourself more relaxed; not opposing it mentally -> comes in more directly) the fact that it is fiction, does not help you at all.
Condition A: Expose you to video with lots of explicit violent scenes.
Condition B: Expose you to video with lots of explicit violent scenes removed.
People equally like the conditions.
Condition A: Expose you to non-fiction news clip with lots of explicit violent scenes- hooked up to physiological indicators: how cold/warm your hands are, – physiological reactivity will be low. Grown accustomed to the violence – and your body is not responding as you would normally.
Condition B: Expose you to non-fiction news clip with lots of explicit violent scenes.
Physiological reactivity will be increasing, high.
Habituation: you become habituated to violence, no longer react to violence as you would ordinarily. (trained or gaining the Symptom profile of sociopaths)
- In general, what is an attitude? Provide an example of an attitude toward some person or thing, and identify the affective, cognitive, and behavioral components of that attitude. Describe when people are more likely to use the central route to persuasion, and when they are more likely to use the peripheral route. When people are using the central route, what will make an appeal more persuasive? When they are using the peripheral route, what will make an appeal more persuasive? Petty, R.E., & Cacioppo, J.T. (1984).
An attitude is “a relatively enduring organization of beliefs, feelings, and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols” (Hogg & Vaughan 2005, p.150) and “a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor”. (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993, p.1) Attitude structure can be described in terms of three components: affective component, behavioral component, and cognitive component. Eating dog meat has been a controversy that has been long debated in Korea and an individuals’ attitude may differ depending on the kind of emotions, and beliefs or thoughts that are associated with the behavior of eating dog meat. Proponents of the eating dog meat would feel happy to eat dog meat, and would think that by eating dog meat, since it is one of the energizing food, one would think that he/she would become healthy and would consider there is nothing immoral or morally wrong to eat dog meat. They would claim that eating dog meat is as equally the same as eating any other kind of meat. Thus, if anyone claims eating dog meat to be immoral, they would claim to be equally wrong to eat any other type of meat such as pork, beef, lamb, etc. However, opponents of eating dog meat would think that it is not right and morally wrong to eat dog meat and would feel disgusted or even feel anger towards those proponents of dog meat eating behavior, just for the sake of seeing others eat dog meat. Thus, would not engage in such behavior or avoid eating dog meat.
According to the central/peripheral analysis of attitude change, people follow the central route to persuasion when their motivation and ability to think about the issue-relevant arguments presented are relatively high, but follow the peripheral route when either motivation or ability to scrutinize the message arguments is relatively low. Furthermore, if people have the ability to think about a message (i.e., the message is not too complex, few distractions are present, etc.), one important motivational moderator of the route to persuasion is the personal relevance of the advocacy. As an issue increases in personal relevance or consequences, it becomes more important and adaptive to form a reasoned and veridical opinion, and people become more motivated to devote the cognitive effort required to evaluate the issue-relevant arguments that are presented. Thus, when a message is high in personal relevance, the quality of the issue-relevant arguments in the message is an important determinant of persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1979b). When personal relevance is low, however, people are less motivated to engage in the considerable cognitive work necessary to evaluate the issue-relevant arguments and they rely more on peripheral cues to evaluate the advocacy. Thus, when a message is low in relevance, variables such as the expertise or the likableness of the message source have a greater impact on attitude change than the nature of the arguments provided (Chaiken, 1980; Petty et al., 1981; Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann, 1983). Also, when two peripheral cues compete, the more salient cue has more impact. The central/peripheral analysis suggest that manipulating the number of arguments in a message can induce persuasion via either the central or the peripheral route. Specifically, increasing the number of arguments in a message might enhance persuasion by invoking a simple decision rule, “the more the better,” when the personal relevance of a message is low, because people are unmotivated to exert the cognitive effort necessary to evaluate the merits of the arguments (peripheral route). However, increasing the number of arguments in a message might enhance persuasion by affecting issue-relevant thinking when the personal relevance of a message is high, because when the advocacy has personal consequences, it is adaptive to exert the effort necessary to evaluate the true merits of the proposal (central route).
- What have studies demonstrated about people’s willingness to obey someone in a position of authority? Describe those studies and comment on their research findings. Burger, J. (2009) Stanley Milgram Study
Burger, J. (2009). Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist, 64, 1-11.
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