Social Psychology - Daniel W. Barrett

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their environment, whereas the Western paintings place people at the forefront of the painting, generally overshadowing the background. The difference in perspective further exemplifies how East Asians tend to step back and look at the big picture, whereas North Americans hone in on close-ups of particular elements. Hence, we generally find that landscape paintings from the East have higher horizons, in contrast to paintings from the West. Moreover, Westerners tend to view persons and objects as separate from their environments rather than as parts of larger sets of relationships among people or things (Norenzayan, Choi, & Nisbett, 2002). In general, Easterners see the world as much more complex than do Westerners. This broader view taken by Easterners is holistic, in contrast to Westerners’ more analytic approach. The former considers the whole picture or situation, whereas the latter analyzes or breaks it down into its parts.

      These differences even extend to how these two cultural groups solve problems. In one study, participants were asked to evaluate the usefulness of various clues in solving a hypothetical murder mystery (Choi, Dalal, Kim-Prieto, & Park, 2003). Korean participants viewed far more details of the circumstances surrounding the crime as relevant to solving it, whereas Americans quickly eliminated less important details and focused on only a few clues. In other words, the Koreans took into account many more factors than did the Americans.

      In sum, East-West differences extend well beyond language and custom to such phenomena as fundamental reasoning processes (Norenzayan, Smith, Kim, & Nisbett, 2002), susceptibility to cognitive illusions (Segall, Campbell, & Herskovits, 1963), how people explain social behavior (see Chapter 5) (Morris & Peng, 1994), and laypeople’s understanding of biology (Medin, Unsworth, & Hirschfeld, 2007).

      Social Psychology Applied To Health

      Stress And Coping

      You don’t need me to tell you that college can be very stressful, especially if you live away from home for the first time and are juggling work and/or time with a partner and other friends. What are your biggest stressors? Some of the stressors most common among college students relate to time management in a less structured setting, navigating social relationships, isolation/separation from family and friends, and use of drugs and/or alcohol (Baghurst & Kelley, 2014; O’Hara, Armeli, Boynton, & Tennen, 2014; Stoliker & Lafreniere, 2015). Why, do you suppose, do those events or situations cause you to feel stress? Well, some obviously involve change, and changes—even those we embrace enthusiastically—can lead to stress. Clearly, people vary in what we find stressful. Psychologists argue that stress has more to do with how we subjectively construe and respond to life situations than with the “objective” events themselves (Lazarus, 2012; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).

      According to the appraisal model of stress, we engage in two appraisal processes regarding a potential stressor that impact how we emotionally respond to it (see Figure 3.5) (Folkman & Lazarus, 1988; Folkman, Lazarus, Gruen, & DeLongis, 1986; Lazarus, 2006). The primary appraisal process involves interpreting the event or situation as a negative threat, a positive opportunity, or simply irrelevant to us. The secondary appraisal process is an assessment of what the person can do to respond to the event or situation in order to minimize or avoid the harm or maximize the benefit. For instance, how are you likely to think about an upcoming social psychology exam? Do you see it as an opportunity to demonstrate what you have learned or as a threat to your self-esteem and/or grade? After this primary appraisal, you would secondarily consider whether you have the ability to adequately handle this exam. These appraisals will partially determine whether you look forward to or dread the exam.

      There is one more crucial stage in the Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) model: coping. Once you have evaluated the upcoming exam as, say, a threat, you then need to decide what to do about it.

      Emotion-focused coping seeks to manage the emotions associated with the event or situation. For instance, a person may deal with the anxiety by using alcohol or drugs. However, this is a short-term, ill-advised strategy because it fails to deal with the underlying cause of the stress. Instead, problem-focused coping leads a person to develop solutions that are not mere window dressing. For instance, after construing an exam as a threat, you could create a study guide, alter plans to allow for adequate study time, find a tutor, and so forth. Focusing on solving the problem can help deal with its emotional aspects as well as (we hope) appropriately handling the problem. Research has shown that problem-focused coping can lead to better outcomes in many domains of life (Baghurst & Kelley, 2014; J. Strack & Esteves, 2015; Wemm et al., 2013). I encourage you to reflect on your own methods of dealing with stress and whether they are working for you.

      Figure 3.5 Appraisal Model of Stress

      Source: Adapted from Folkman, S., & Lazarus, R. S. (1988). Coping as a mediator of emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 466–475.

      Appraisal Model of Stress: States that people engage in two appraisal processes—primary and secondary—of a potential stressor that impact how they emotionally respond to it

      Think Again!

      1 How are holistic and analytic thinking different?

      2 What did the Chinese student mean when he suggested that Westerners conceptualize the world as a line, but Easterners do so as a circle?

      Final Thoughts: Free Will and Rationality Revisited

      Studying social cognition provides insight into the questions of free will and rationality by demonstrating two important phenomena: the powerful role that nonconscious processes play in the determination of thought, feeling, and behavior, and showing us how seemingly objective, rational processes are affected by motivations, desires, and goals. If one defines free will as the execution of conscious decision-making, then one can’t help but conclude that much human behavior is not the product of free will. Rather, automatic processes—unintentional, occurring without conscious awareness, efficient, and uncontrollable—play a much greater role in social behavior than most people realize, undermining romantic notions of free will. Moreover, when we add in the overwhelming evidence that apparently objective, rational, cognition is often biased and subject to various shortcomings, we begin to build a new model of human nature. This is not a bad thing. These corrections to the naïve understanding do not downgrade the value of human life but instead provide us with the knowledge we need to improve our decision-making and enrich our lives.

      Core Concepts

       We think about people differently than we think about things because people think back, people have special relevance for our goals, thinking about people involves social explanation, and we just think more about people than nonpeople and our brains process people differently from nonpeople. Our mental systems first believe information provided to them in order to understand it; subsequently, that information may be rejected as false.

       People have a dual mind that consists of the C-system or controlled system that is a slow and sequential processor that can engage in abstract thinking and the X-system or automatic system that is a rapid and parallel processor characterized by intuitive thinking.

       The four components of automaticity are the following: it is unintentional, occurs without conscious awareness, is accomplished efficiently, and once begun, cannot be controlled.

       Priming occurs when a concept or other knowledge structure is automatically triggered or activated by an environmental stimulus, thereby becoming more likely to affect subsequent thoughts, feelings, and behaviors; spreading activation is the process by which associated concepts are activated.

       People often rely on heuristics when making judgments (such as availability, representativeness, and anchoring and adjustment heuristics, along with ignoring the base rate).

       Social psychologists seek to create

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