Social Psychology Concept Matrix

Donna Conahan

Dr. Marina Stakic

PSY110008VA016-1134-001

May 3, 2013 Social Psychology Concept | Definition | Application to SocietyProvide Example | Application to Criminal JusticeProvide Example | Application to the IndividualProvide Example | Survey Research | Survey research begins with a set of well-defined structured statements and/or questions that have been given to a select group of people allowing for the mathematical measurement of personal beliefs, attitudes, values and/or behavioral tendencies. | An example of a survey that would be applicable to society would be the issues and effects of marital separation that brings about disruption in the household and negatively affects the children as well as the spouses ability to cope and adjust which ultimately prevents reconciliation thereby leads to divorce. | An example of a survey that applies to criminal justice would be a survey that addresses how to change the public’s opinions and attitudes toward the criminal justices system. This survey would include the common criminal acts in their community, how they are currently being handled, what would like to see in the way of changing their community, what their expectations are of the local police, the changes they would like to see with how the police and criminal justice system handle these perpetrators. | Due to today’s economic hard times, I think a great survey could be how this nation’s economy has brought about change in the average American household and how individual’s are making adjustments to their economic behavior. When dealing with the household, and assuming there are children present, what is the family’s current income, do both parents work, how are the children being cared for if both parents work, and what type of changes are being made to support the family? When it comes to the individual, I think it is safe to ask similar questions but bases on a one-person household. For instance, do they work, what do they do for a living if they work, what is their level of income, what is their current debt to income ratio, what type of monetary changes have they made to survive in this tight economy, do they have any money in savings, and are they pursuing a higher level of education? | Self-Esteem | Self-esteem is defined as one’s personal evaluation of her or his self-concept. This concept is all encompassing of how we internally gauge our ability to gain a particular type of group inclusion. The goal is to be accepted into a social group so survival alone is not necessary. | Essentially one’s self-esteem begins when we are very young. It contributes to how our lives take shape. When a higher level of self-esteem is present, people have a tendency to have respect for one’s self, better choices are made, it contributes to personal grounding and can lead to a great job and social acceptance. When you are positive, social response is positive. The individual becomes accepted based on how you present yourself. When self-esteem and confidence are present, the rest just naturally follows. | When an individual is suffering from low self-esteem there is the potential for them to engage in criminal behavior, sexual offenses being one of them. Several available theories suggest those who participate or engage in sexual offending behavior suffer from self-esteem issues and cognitive distortions. These two factors alone have been associated with sexual offending behavior. Essentially the distorted thoughts is what drives them to perform these acts and they cannot be reversed unless the offender does not address these problematic thoughts that are linked to these two key areas. (Hunter & Pervan, 2007). | Self-esteem is linked to one’s personal concept of one’s self. This means that we either have a positive or negative self-esteem. The positive demonstrates we have respect for our self-concept. This plays an important role in that it drives us to have positive thoughts, it helps us make better decisions, it coerces our behavior and morality, and it allows other people to see and respond positively. When a negative self-esteem is present, it has quite the opposite affect. The feeling of not being worthy most likely leads to some type of negative impact. Unhappiness is accompanied by conflicting self-enhancement and self-verification. When the perspective is negative, the individual is more than likely to beat themselves up continually over something may be so inconsequential but they fail to see that. | Self-Handicapping | Self-handicapping is a personal presentation strategy that can be used to manipulate any outcome whether in a positive or a negative light. An obstacle is usually created and implemented into their individual performance that will either promote success or give them a reason to fail. | An example for applying the self-handicapped concept to society in a negative manner would be that of those homeless individuals or social outcasts that use drugs and intoxicants. These individuals use drugs that give them a way to disengage from life and social demands even though they know they have to withhold to improve their lives. It provides them an excuse for failing to meet society’s expectations. | An example for criminal justice is when a suspect of a crime has been apprehended by the police and brought in for an interview. During the interview process the suspect is able to answer the questions in such a manipulative manner that they are able to convince the police that they have the wrong person. They are able to come up with a fabricated story that appears to be so realistic that the police make the decision to release them because their story appears to have merit. While, interesting enough, they are able to point the finger at someone else even though in the end they really were to true perpetrator. So, they have essentially manipulated the outcome that successfully gave them their freedom. | When a couple reaches a stagnant relationship, the intimacy becomes non-existent. When one partner wishes to have continued relations with the other and the other one has disengaged and not interested, the one who is not interested may begin drinking on a regular evening basis. Because his drinking becomes unattractive and frustrating to his mate, the expectations of his or her partner is no longer the focus. The focus has now turned on the drinking instead of the intimacy of the relationship. This becomes the crutch for the disinterested partner because he is not being bothered about the intimacy in the relationship, only the drinking. This is the excuse for the self-handicapping. | Hindsight Bias | Hindsight bias is a mental tool utilized in order to obtain the desire to make sense of an outcome. When an event has taken place, this bias becomes a person’s tendency to indulge in the after-the-fact overestimate using one’s ability to have foreseen the outcome. | A good application to society would be the previous Presidential election back in 2012. The big debate was who would win the presidency. Would it be Romney or Obama? There were many predictions but who would be right. In fact in the beginning everyone was saying it was going to be Romney and then it became a close race. The next thing we know the polls were showing that Obama has taken the lead. Because it was a close race people were saying that Romney was going to win because of his stance on the economy and how to keep the military strong while saying the Obama was making defense cuts that would jeopardize our position in the country. Then suddenly Obama took the lead. The democrats were saying they were going to win and the republications were saying they were going to win. Then the last debate, Obama was said to have taken the win. When the election was over and Obama won, several republications stated they know Obama was going to win. This is when the media confronted those individuals and they suddenly remembered that earlier they said Romney was going to win. | Maybe in a civil matter a judge and/or or jury says that the owner of the restaurant was negligent because she should have realized that during the snowstorm, the front steps of her establishment would become slippery due to the amount of snow and ice. Because she did not to take the precautionary measures to treat the steps, her customer fell and broke his arm. While she did not realize the possibility of the fall until afterwards, she should have thought of it earlier. | The application to an individual would be when a college student worked hard on a paper and submitted it for a grade. The student gets an “A” and runs to tell their best friend out of pure excitement and mentions that she knew she was going to get an “A” because she covered all the criteria in the grading rubric. This is when the friend quickly reminds her how she specifically stated, after she submitted it, that she was very worried about the content of her paper and feared she was going to get at least a “C” on this paper. This is an example of a hindsight bias. | External Attribution | External attribution, or situation attribution, is considered to be the “explanation that locates the cause as being external to the person under scrutiny, such as the actions of others, the nature of the situation or luck” (Franzoi, 2009, p. 127). In essence, this is what is perceived to be the cause. | An example of external attribution that applies to society would be job loss. This external course of events affects not only the family unit but society as a whole. This loss contributes to the unemployment rate as well as negatively affecting the economy. When a person looses their job they now have to change their entire way of life. This means not only worry about how they are going to pay their bills and face the possibility of losing their home. Obviously a person cannot control their job situation if a company closes down due to the economy nor can they control the situation if their company looses a contract and has no other work in their designated field. | When applied to criminal justice, I reverted back to the courtroom. When a prosecutor is presenting their case to the judge, the case is dependent upon evidence that has been retrieved and marked into evidence by the police. It is this evidence being used by the prosecutor to obtain a conviction. When the case goes to trial, the prosecutor introduces the evidence to support their statement at the moment. Unfortunately, suddenly the evidence is considered inadmissible by the judge and can no longer be used to obtain the conviction. So, because the evidence is no longer allowed the case is lost. The decision by the judge to exclude the evidence caused the loss of the case. So, the reason was external to the person being placed under scrutiny to win the case. | A great example for external attribution would be something that transpires in the workplace. Alice goes to work and is assigned a project with another co-worker Jane, and the deadline is a week away. Alice works on her part of the project and has completed her work. Alice immediately goes to Jane to retrieve her part of the project and finds out that her work has not been completed. Because of this problem, the project does not meet deadline because Jane did not do her job. The missed deadline was external to Alice because it was Jane’s inability to do her job that caused the missed deadline. | Cognitive Dissonance | Cognitive dissonance is related to the adjustment or modification of our logical thinking and behavior in order to maintain a sense of cognitive consistency. This adjustment can bring on a feeling of uneasiness that occurs when we do something that is not consistent with our beliefs. | A cognitive dissonance application to society is our voting behavior with regards to local, congressional and presidential elections. When we go through the entire electoral process we hear from candidates and typically chose the one candidate affiliated with our choice in parties, democratic or republication. However during the process of trying to remain loyal to our personal choice, the issues that sometimes leak out public relative to our party choice can toy with our personal beliefs and make us uncomfortable. This is when we begin to make excuses for our choice in the person for candidacy. For some reason we need to remain loyal even when we know that something relating to our candidate leaves us uncomfortable because the issues goes completely against our grain. We know we should change for the good of our nation but instead we stick to our party affiliation even when our own beliefs tells us to do the opposite | In a criminal sense, I will use the example of a police officer and his interaction with his fellow officers when they respond to a domestic violence call. They address the situation together but one of the other officers allows the perpetrator to elevate his level of anger and he begins to hit him uncontrollably. Eventually the other officer steps in to stop the abusive behavior by the officer and gets control of the situation. When the supervisors are called in, the officer that was able to restore civility is questioned. In an effort to preserve his reputation among his fellow officers, he decides to adjust the truth (tell a lie) to protect the officer. Essentially he lies to the supervisor to protect the brotherhood of the shield as well as his partner, but at the same time know what he is doing is wrong. | The cognitive dissonance example, as it applies to the individual involves smoking. I will use my sister as the example. She is a smoker. While she know smoking is bad for her health, and because she has other health issues, she does it anyway when deep down inside she beats herself up for it because she knows it is bad for her and she experiences conflict mentally because of it. She knows it is bad for her and she now sits with a state of uneasiness about it because she does believe it bad for her. Still, she feels she needs it to contend with stress and worries if she quits smoking she will gain weight. | Media Persuasion | Persuasion is defined as the process used to consciously make an attempt to change the attitudes of others by transmitting some type of message. | Applying media persuasion to society is easy. The biggest example I can think of is the amount of media advertisements we see on television and on the radio on a daily basis. These advertisements are a marketing attempt or ploy to persuade and convince society that the once company has a product or service better than another manufacturer or business. By advertising the differences between competitors, like Dish or DirectTV for example, these chose to discredit one another by stating the they provide more services than the other and it costs less. Really? By announcing and promoting these differences they work to alter the decisions and attitudes of customers based on what they offer. Are they really all true? | This is a simple example that surrounds the media’s ability consciously modify the publics attitudes toward crime and the criminal justice system. Honestly speaking public knowledge of crime and justice is learned from the media and no other vehicle. What the media decides to relay to the public, either by television, radio news or the newspaper, drives the public to make decisions. Some of these decisions are based only on what has been relayed by media coverage. Sometimes the information may be altered just to change the public’s opinion. Sometimes this changes “the public’s perception of victims, criminals, deviants, and law enforcement officials” and is due in part to the media’s portrayal of crime and the criminal justice system. | I will use the same scenario as I did in the application to society but I will use myself as the individual example. I was one of those persuaded to change satellite carriers based on the advertisements I was seeing on the television and hearing on the radio. I was a DirectTV customer and Dish was promoting more channels in my area at a better price. So, I made a few phone calls and what I was hearing changed my mind about Dish and I decided to change to Dish based on the information. Well, come to find out after a few months my rate went up and the channels that originally came with my package were no longer available. So, as you can see I was persuaded to change based on the customer service, accessibility, the number of channels and the cost. The only one that proved to be consistently great was customer service. And, when I called to change back to DirectTV the competition started all over again. Now, every six months or so, when the introductory price and channels expire I go through the same process again just to get the best for my money. |

References
Adachi, K., Do, K., Henst, J., Kawasaki, Y., Manktelow, K., Mercier, H. & Yama, H. (2010). A cross-cultural study of hindsight bias and conditional probabilistic reasoning. Thinking & Reasoning. 16 (4), 346-371.
Dowler, K. (2003). We live in an environment dense with influence attempts. A large portion of the population makes a living simply getting others to comply with their requests. Conservative estimates suggest that a person will receive up to 400 persuasive appeals from marketers alone in the course of a single day. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture. Retrieved from: http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol10is2/dowler.pdf.
Franzoi, S.L. (2009). PSY 110: 2009 custom edition (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Custom Printing.
Hunter, M. & Pervan, S. (2007). Cognitive Distortions and Social Self-Esteem in Sexual Offenders. Applied Psychology in Criminal Justice. Retrieved from: http://www.apcj.org/documents/3_1_cognitivedistortions.pdf.

Matrix Terms -- Key to Pages from Textbook

Franzoi, S. L. (2009). PSY 110: Social psychology: 2009 custom edition (5th ed.). New York:
McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing.

Term | Textbook Pages | Survey Research | 43-44 | Self-Esteem | 85-93 | Self-Handicapping | 81-85 | Hindsight Bias | 112-113 and 116 | External Attribution | 127 | Cognitive Dissonance | 162-168 | Media Persuasion | 174-178 |