Genes, Evolution, and Behavior

 Natural selection enables evolution

o Organisms have many and varied offspring
o Those offspring compete for survival in their environment
o Certain biological and behavioral variations increase their chances of survival and
reproduction in that environment
o Population characteristics may change
 Traits that increased the odds of surviving long enough to reproduce and nurture descendants
become more abundant
 Evolutionary psychology
o Studies how natural selection predisposes not just physical traits suited to particular
contexts but also psychological traits and social behaviors that enhance the preservation
and spread of one's genes.
o We carry our ancestors adaptive preferences
o We fear what's immediate and gradual harms from historically newer threats such as
smoking or climate change
o Considers nature and nurture in the formation of human society
 The Cultural Animal
o Roy Baumeister
o Culture is a better way of being social
o Culture facilitates our survival and reproduction
o Culture helps us become something much more than the sum of our talents, efforts, and
other individual blessings
 Epigenetics
o Considers how genes are expressed in some environments and not others
 Cultural diversity
o Much of our behavior is socially programmed, not hardwired

 Norms: Expected behavior

o Norms do not restrain or control us
o We hardly sense their existence
o Individual choices
 Western/individualistic countries allow people more latitude in making their own
decisions
o Societies with stronger, enforced norms for behaviors are "tight" cultures and more likely to
have been exposed to threats such as territorial conflict or resource scarcity
o Expressiveness
 Latin American culture - warm, charming, inefficient, and time-wasting
 Northern European culture - efficient, cold, overconcerned with time
o Punctuality
 Latin American culture - late
o Rule-breaking
 Koreans are more likely to avoid co-workers who were vegetarians, a choice against
the norm
 Standing out from the group is undesirable
 Many collectivistic cultures believe that norm-breaking causes disease
o Personal space
  Portable bubble or buffer zone that we like to maintain between ourselves and others
 Cultures near the equator prefer less space and more touching and hugging
 Adults maintain more distance than children
 Men maintain more distance than women
 Cultural similarity
o Universal friendship norms
 Japan - important not to embarrass a friend with public criticism
 Universal norm: respect privacy, make eye contact, don’t divulge confidential things
o Universal trait dimensions
 5 personality dimensions
 All cultures have norms
 Evaluating others as good or bad appears across almost all cultures
o Universal social belief dimensions
 5 universal dimensions of social beliefs
 People varied in cynicism, social complexity, reward for application, spirituality, and
fate control.
 Cynics express lower life satisfaction and favor assertive tactics and right-wing politics
 Those who believe in hard work are inclined to invest themselves in study, planning,
and competing

o Universal status norms

 People talk to people of higher authority with more respect
 First aspect: Forms of address communicate not only social distance but also social
status
 Second aspect: Advances in intimacy are usually suggested by the higher-status person
 It's more acceptable to get favors from intimates and subordinates rather than superiors
o The Incest taboo

Gender and Genes

o Gender
 Characteristics people associate with male and female
 Compared to males, the average female
 has 70 percent more fat, has 40 percent less muscle, is 5 inches shorter, and weighs
40 pounds less;
 is more sensitive to smells and sounds;
  is twice as likely to experience anxiety disorders or depression.
 Compared to females, the average male is
o ∙ slower to enter puberty (by about two years) but quicker to die (by four years,
worldwide);
o ∙ three times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD (attention
deficit/hyperactivity disorder), four times more likely to commit suicide, and five
times more likely to be killed by lightning;
o ∙ more capable of wiggling his ears.

Independence vs. Connectedness

o Play
 And as boys play with boys and girls play with girls, sex differences grow larger.
o Friendship
 Women - are more likely than men to describe themselves in relational terms, welcome help,
experience relationship- linked emotions, and be attuned to others’ relationships
 Men - more often focus on tasks and on connections with large groups, whereas women
focus on personal relationships
o Vocation
 Women
o more interested in jobs dealing with people
o women gravitate to jobs that reduce inequalities
 Men
o jobs dealing with things
o Men gravitate disproportionately to jobs that enhance inequalities
 Men more than women value earnings, promotion, challenge, and power; women more than
men value good hours, personal relationships, and opportunities to help others
o Family relationships
 Women spend about twice as much time caring for children than men
o Smiling
 women are far more likely to describe themselves as hav- ing empathy, or being able to feel
what another feels—to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep
 One explanation for this male–female empathy difference is that women tend to out-
perform men at reading others’ emotions.
 Women are more skilled at expressing emotions nonverbally,
o Social dominance
 From Asia to Africa and Europe to Australia, people rate men as more dominant, driven, and
aggressive.
 In leadership roles, men tend to excel as directive, task-focused leaders; women excel more
often in the “transfor- mational” or “relational” leadership that is favored by more and
more organizations, with inspirational and social skills that build team spirit

Aggression
o By aggression, psychologists mean behavior intended to hurt. Throughout the world, hunt- ing,
fighting, and warring are primarily male activities
o When people are provoked, the gender gap shrinks
o And within less assaultive forms of aggression—for instance, slapping a family member,
throwing something, or verbally attacking someone—women are no less aggressive than men,
and may even be more aggressive

Sexuality
o Forty-seven percent of lesbians in the United States are in committed relationships, double the
rate for gay men
 o the cultures everywhere attribute greater value to female than male sexuality, as indicated in
gender asymmetries in prostitution and courtship, where men generally offer money, gifts,
praise, or commitment in implicit

Gender and mating preferences

o Thus, say evolutionary psychologists, females invest their reproductive opportuni- ties carefully,
by looking for signs of resources and commitment.
o Why do women and men differ? Because their culture socializes their behavior!
 What predicts conformity?
o Group size
 3 to 5 peopl will elicit much more conformity than just 1 or 2
 Increasing the number of people beyond 5 yields deminishing returns
o Unanimity
 People will usually voice their own convictions if just one person has also
differed from the majority
 Several experiments reveal that someone who punctures a group’s unanimity
deflates its social power
 Conformity experiments teach the practical lesson that it is easier to stand up for
some- thing if you can find someone else to stand up with you
o Cohesion
 A minority opinion from someone outside the groups we identify with—from
someone at another college or of a different religion—sways us less than the same
minority opinion from someone within our group
 The more cohesive a group is, the more power it gains over its members.
 cohesiveness - A “we feeling”; the extent to which members of a group are bound
together, such as by attraction to one another.
 In experiments, too, group members who feel attracted to the group are more
responsive to its influence
o Status
 Higher status people tend to have more impact
 Chinese consumers who felt more powerful were less likely to conform by
choosing popular products and came up with advertising slogans more focused on
uniqueness
o Public response
 In experiments, people conform more when they must respond in front of others
rather than writing their answers privately.
 When college instructors ask controversial questions, students express more
diverse opinions when answering anonymously, with clickers, than when raising
hands
o Prior commitment
 After having made a public com- mitment, they stick to it

 Why conform?
o Normative influence - to be accepted and avoid rejection
 Going along with the crowd
 Stay in people's good graces
 Obtain their approval
 Leads to compliance
 Sways us without our awareness
 Concern for social image
o Informational influence - to obtain important information
 Ex. People look up when other people are looking up
 Leads people to privately accept others' infleucne
 Example - reviews in TripAdvisor
 Desire to be correct
o Sometimes, the high price of deviation compels people to support what they do not
believe in or to at least suppress their disagreement
o Participants who were ostracized by others were more likely to obey an experimenter' s
command to go outside in freezing weather to take 39 photgraphs
o Conformity to other's opinions lasted no more than three days
 Who conforms?
o Personality
 High in agreeableness and conscientiousnes
 People high in openness to experience, which is related to creativity and socially
progressive thinking are less likely to conform
 Novelty seekers - less likely to conform
o Culture
 Conformity is high in collectivist cultures
 Japan, China, Taiwan
 Individualistic
 United States, Germany, South Africa, Australia
 t working-class people tend to prefer similarity to others, whereas middle-class
people more strongly preferred to see themselves as unique.
o Social roles
 Social roles allow some freedom of interpretation to those who act them out, but
some aspects of any role must be performed
 Student must show up for exams, maintain minimum grade point average
o Role reversal
 Role playing
 Intentionally playing a new role and conforming to its xpectations
 People change themselves to empathize with people whose roles differe from
their own
 Do we ever want to be different?
o Reactance - motive to protect or restore one's sense of freedom
 When blatant social pressure threatens their sense of freedom
o Asserting uniqueness
 Ubuntu, explained Desmond Tutu (1999), conveys the idea that “my humanity is
caught up by, is inextricably bound up in, yours.” Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,
says a Zulu maxim: “A person is a person through other persons.”
Persuasion
 Enables us to promote health or sell addiction
The Central Route
 Focusing on arguments
 If those arguments are strong and compelling, persuasion is likely.
The Peripheral Route
 focusing on cues that trigger automatic acceptance without much thinking
 Use heuristics or incidental cues to make snap judgments .
Two routes to persuasion
 Central - Explicit and reflective
 Peripheral - Implicit and automatic -
 data processing models of human's mind

 What are the elements of persuasion

o The communicator
 Social psychologists have found that who is say- ing something does affect how an
audience receives it.
 People are more willing to agree with state- ments made by leaders in the political party
they identify with
 Credibility -perceived expertise and trustworthiness
 If a credible person’s message is persuasive, its impact may fade as its source is
forgotten or dissociated from the message.
 the impact of a noncredible person may correspondingly increase over time if
people remember the message better than the reason for discounting it
 Sleeper effect - delayed persuasion, after people forget the source or its connection
with the message
 Perceived expertise
 Celebrity communicators are more persuasive when they are perceived as
expert users of the product—when they are not, these appeals are very
ineffective
 Speaking style
 Speak confidently and fluently
 Perceived trustworthiness
 Higher when we trust a person
 We're more willing to believe that negatvie comments are honest than
positive comments
 Trustworthiness is also higher when the audience believes the communicator
is not trying to persuade them
 Humor can distract from distrust.

ii. Attractiveness and liking

 Our liking may open us up to the communicator’s arguments (central route
persuasion), or it may trigger positive asso-
ciations when we see the product later (peripheral route persuasion)
 Physical attractiveness
 Having qualities that appeal to an audience
 An appealing communicator (often someone similar to the audience) is most
persuasive on matters of subjective preference
o Message content
 It matters not only who says something but also what that person says
 Reason vs. emotion
  The answer: It depends on the audience. Well-educated or analytical people are
respon- sive to rational appeals
 central route to persuasion; they are more responsive to reasoned arguments.
Uninterested audiences more often travel the peripheral route;
 It also matters how people’s attitudes were formed. When people’s initial attitudes
are formed primarily through the peripheral route, they are more persuaded by
later peripheral, emotional appeals; when their initial attitudes are formed
primarily through the central route, they are more persuaded by later information-
based, central route arguments
 The effect of good feelings
 Good feelings often enhance persuasion, partly by enhancing positive thinking and
partly by linking good feelings with the mes- sage
 Unhappy people ruminate before reacting so they are less easily swayed by weak
arguments
 The effect of arousing fear
 Experiments show that, often, the more frightened and vulnerable people feel, the
more they respond
 However, there are exceptions: People who read apocalyptic warnings about global
warming reacted defensively by denying the existence of global warming. The
researchers concluded that the apocalyptic message went too far in challenging
participants’ beliefs that the world is stable, orderly, and just
 Playing on fear works best if a message leads people not only to fear the severity
and likelihood of a threatened event but also to perceive a solution and feel capable
of implement- ing it
 ) theorized that fear appeals can be ineffective because they do not present a
solution; in contrast, an element of disgust inspires an immediate solution of
rejection and revulsion.
 Message context
 fear-then-relief
 Foot in the door phenomenon
 lowball technique. After the customer agrees to buy a new car because of its
bargain price and begins completing the sales forms, the salesperson removes the
price advantage by charging for options or by checking with a boss who disallows
the deal because “we’d be losing money.”
 Door in the face technique - OK, if you won’t do that, would you do just this much?”
 One-sided vs. two-sided appeals
 Acknowledging the opposing arguments might confuse the audience and weaken
the case. On the other hand, a message might seem fairer and be more disarming if it
recognizes the opposition’s arguments.
 Primacy vs. recency
 primacy effect: Infor- mation presented early is most persuasive. First impressions
are important.
 Forgetting creates the recency effect (1) when enough time separates the two
messages and (2) when the audience commits itself soon after the second message.
When the two messages are back-to-back, followed by a time gap, the primacy effect
usually occurs (Figure 4). This is especially so when the first message stimulates
thinking
 When two persuasive messages are back-to-back and the audience then responds at some
later time, the first message has the advantage (primacy effect). When the two messages are
separated in time and the audience responds soon after the second message, the second
message has the advantage (recency effect).
 Channel of communication
 The way the message is delivered—whether face-to- face, in writing, on film, or in some other
way.
 Active experience or passive reception?
  believableliescandisplacehardtruths.Repeatedclicheś
cancovercomplexrealities
 Mere repetition of a statement also serves to increase its fluency—the ease
with which it spills off our tongue—which increases believability
 Personal vs. Media influence
 Media influence: the two-step flow
 two-step flow of communication: from media to opinion leaders to everyone else.
 opinion leaders and trendsetters—“the influentials”—that marketers and politicians
seek to woo
 Comparing media
o Audience
 Age
 A life cycle explanation: Attitudes change (for example, become more conserva- tive)
as people grow older.
 A generational explanation: Attitudes do not change; older people largely hold onto
the attitudes they adopted when they were young. Because these attitudes are
different from those being adopted by young people today, a generation gap
develops.
 Young adulthood is also the time when people are more susceptible to joining
cults—entities also influenced by several other elements of persua- sion
 What are they thinking?
 This simple theory—that what we think in response to a message is crucial, especially
if we are motivated and able to think about it—has generated many predictions,
most of which have been confirmed
 How can persuasion be resisted
o Developing counterarguments
 attitude inoculation? He found that there was: When participants were “immunized” by
writing an essay refuting a mild attack on a belief, they were better able to resist a more
powerful attack later
Group
 two or more people who interact and who influence one another.
 To affiliate
 To achieve
 To gain a social identity

 Social facilitation: how are we affected by the presence of others?

o The mere presence of others
o Norman Triplett
 Psychologist interested in bicycle racing noticed that cyclists' times were faster when they
raced together than when each one raced alone against the clock
o Social facilitation
 The presence of others of their speicies, ants excavate more sand, chicken eat more grain,
sexually active rat pairs mate more often
 

 If social arousal facilitates dominant responses, it should boost performance on easy tasks
and hurt performance on difficult tasks.
 arousal facilitates dominant responses
 Home advantage
 Officiating bias
 Travel fatigue
 Familiarity with the home context
 Crowd noise disruption
 Why are we aroused in the presence of others
o Evaluation apprehension
 Observers make us apprehensive because we wonder how they are evaluating us
o Driven by distraction
 They theorized that when we wonder how co-actors are doing or how an audience is
reacting, we become distracted.
o Mere presence
 mere presence of others produces some arousal even without evaluation apprehension or
arousing distraction
 At the human level, most runners are energized when running with someone else, even
one who neither competes nor evaluates.
 Social loafing: do individuals exert less effort in a group?
o Social loafing: the tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their efforts toward a
common goal than when they are individually accountable
o Noise produced by six people shouting or clapping "as loud as you can" was less than three times
that produced by one person alone
o In the group condition, people were tempted to free-ride on the group effort
o Decreased evaluation appreheansion
o Social loafing in everyday life

 Deindividuation: when do people lose their sense of self in groups?

o Loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension; occurs in group situations that foster
responsivenes to group norms, good or bad
o When arousal and diffused responsibility combine, and normal inhibitions diminish, the results
may be startling.
o Group size
o Anonymity
o Diminished self-awarenes
 Group experiences that diminish self-consciousness tend to disconnect behavior from
attitudes.
 self-awareness A self-conscious state in which attention focuses on oneself. It makes people more
sensitive to their own attitudes and dispositions.
 Self-awareness is the opposite of deindividuation.
  The principle: People who are self-conscious, or who are temporarily made so, exhibit
greater consistency between their words outside a situation and their deeds in it.
o Group polarization
 Illustrates the process of inquiry
 Risky shift
o This “risky shift phenomenon” set off a wave of group risk-taking studies. These revealed that
risky shift occurs not only when a group decides by consensus; after a brief discussion,
individuals, too, will alter their decisions
 Do groups intensify opinions?
o group polarization Group-produced enhancement of members’ preexisting tendencies; a strengthening
of the members’ average tendency, not a split within the group.
o In everyday life, people associate mostly with others whose attitudes are similar to their own.
o Another real-life parallel to the laboratory phenomenon is what education researchers have
called the “accentuation” effect: Over time, initial differences among groups of college students
become accentuated.
o Neighborhoods can become echo chambers, with opinions ricochet- ing off kindred-spirited
friends.
o Gang is more dangerous than the sum of its parts
o Explaining Group Polarization

 Normative influence
o social comparison, we humans want to evaluate our opinions and abilities by comparing our
views with others’. We are most persuaded by people in our “reference groups”—groups we
identify with
o Pluralistic ignorance: they don't realize how strongly others support the socially preferred
tendency
 Groupthink
o Tendemcy of decision-makin groups to suppress dissent in th e intererest of group harmony
o Symptoms of groupthink
 Self-censorship - to avoid uncomfortable disagreements, members withheld or discounted
their misgivings
 Unquestioned belief in the group's morality
 Close-mindedness
 Rationalization
 Stereotyped view of the opponent
 Groupthinkers consider their enemies too evil to negotiate with or too weak and
unintelligent to defend themselves against the planned initiative
 Conformity pressure
 Illusion of unanimity
 Mindguards

o Directive leadership is indeed associated with poorer decisions, because subordi- nates
sometimes feel too weak or insecure to speak up
o Yet friendships need not breed groupthink (Esser, 1998; Mullen et al., 1994). In a secure, highly
cohesive group (say, a family), committed members will often care enough to voice disagreement
o Preventing groupthink
  Be impartial
 Encourage critical evaluation
 Occasionally subdivide the group
 Welcome critiques
 Consider second-chance meeting
 Group problem solving
o To enhance group brainstorming you must
 Combine group and solitary brainstorming
 Have group members interact by writing
 Incorporate electronic brainstorming
 The Influence of minority: how do individuals influence the group?
o Consistency
o Self-confidence
o Defections from the majority
o Is leadership minority influence
leadership
The process by which certain group members motivate and guide the group.
task leadership
Leadership that organizes work, sets standards, and focuses on goals.
social leadership—at building teamwork, mediating conflicts, and being supportive.
transformational leadership—motivates others to iden- tify with and commit themselves to the
group’s mission.