Psyc 1210 Test 1

Front 1

What is social cognition?

Back 1

The way we think about other people and the world around us

Front 2

How does Gestalt psychology relate to our perception of other people?

Back 2

gestalt psychology says that we see things as wholes, not parts - we fill in the gaps. When we perceive people, we often create a mental representation of a person as a whole using only the few bits of information that we have about them.

Front 3

Attributions

Back 3

The tendency to try to explain a person's behaviour based on the situation (situational) or their personal characteristics (dispositional); claims about the cause of a person's behaviour.

Front 4

Dispositional attribution

Back 4

stable, inner characteristics produce the behaviour (they behave this way all the time). we often make these kinds of attributions initially.

Front 5

Situational

Back 5

environment produces the behaviour

Front 6

what factors do we take into account when we make attributions?

Back 6

Consistency across time, consensus across people (do other people behave this way?), and distinctiveness across situations (do they behave this way in all situations?)

Front 7

Low consistency

Back 7

Attribution made: extraneous factors, e.g. chance

Front 8

High consistency with high consensus and/or high distinctiveness

Back 8

Situational

Front 9

High consistency with low consensus and/or low distinctiveness

Back 9

Dispositional

Front 10

High consistency with low consensus and high distinctiveness

Back 10

Dispositional-situational combination

Front 11

What are some biases in person perception?

Back 11

Primacy effect, surface characteristics, stereotypes, ingroup-outgroup bias, blaming victim/just-world bias, fundamental attribution error, actor-observer discrepancy

Front 12

Primacy effect

Back 12

The tendency for info received early-on to carry more weight than information received later in one's final assessment of a person

Front 13

Surface characteristics

Back 13

judging someone based on characteristics - e.g. they are baby-faced so they must be innocent

Front 14

stereotypes

Back 14

summary impression of a group of people (all members are seen as sharing common traits) - a mental short-cut for quick processing

Front 15

How can stereotypes distort reality?

Back 15

1. Exaggerate difference between groups

2. Produce selective perception (only see evidence that "fits")

3. Underestimate differences between group members

Front 16

Ingroup-outgroup bias

Back 16

Us vs. them mentality. We see our ingroup as being heterogenous, but the outgroup as being all the same. We also explain behaviour of our own group members more favourably (group-serving bias)

Front 17

Ethnocentrism

Back 17

the belief that one's own culture is superior to all others

Front 18

Blaming victim/just-world bias

Back 18

Believing that the world is fundamentally fair, so if something happens to someone, we convince ourselves that they must have done something wrong. We don't want to believe that a good person could have something bad happen to them, so we blame the victim.

Front 19

Fundamental attribution error

Back 19

We tend to attribute other people's behaviour too much to their inner characteristics (dispositional attributions) and not enough to the situation. This error is less common in India and China.

Front 20

Actor-observer discrepancy

Back 20

the person doing the action attributes it to their situation, while the person watching attributes it to the actor's internal characteristics

Front 21

What are the causes for the actor-observer discrepancy?

Back 21

1. Knowledge across situations theory: we know how our own behaviour varies from situation to situation, but not how other people's does

2. visual-orientation theory: the actor focuses on their surroundings, while the observer focuses on the actor, so they make different attributions

3. self-serving bias: tendency to attribute successes to inner characteristics and failures to external circumstances

Front 22

attitudes

Back 22

beliefs/opinions with an evaluative component which affect our decisions and actions. Some are explicit (conscious and measurable) and some are implicit (unconscious but still influence our behaviour)

Front 23

Familiarity effect

Back 23

we tend to feel more positive to people and things

Front 24

Validity effect

Back 24

We tend to believe something is true if it has been repeated many times

Front 25

When and how do attitudes guide our behaviour?

Back 25

1. attitudes must be retrieved from our memory to affect behaviour

2. people may perceive barriers to behaving according to their attitudes

3. attitudes may conflict with each other

Front 26

Festinger study

Back 26

Participants did a boring task for an hour, and then were given either $1 or $20 to tell the next participant that the task had been fun. The people who were paid $1 later reported that they had not found the task boring, because they had convinced themselves it was fun in order to reduce their cognitive dissonance

Front 27

Cognitive dissonance

Back 27

Uncomfortable state that results from doing something that conflicts with our attitudes or beliefs (attitude and behaviour match)

Front 28

What are the social influences on behaviour?

Back 28

Social forces: real and imagined demands, requests, expectations, and examples of other people that influence our behaviour.

Social impact: any detectable effect (in feelings, behaviour, cognition, etc.) that occur in a person as a result of social forces

Front 29

what is Latane's model?

Back 29

Social impact theory: the source is the person who exerts a social force; the target is the person who experiences the impact of a social force. The total impact of a social force on a person increases as the strength, immediacy, and number of sources increases. The total impact of a social force on any one target decreases as the number of targets increases.

Front 30

Asch study

Back 30

People were asked to compare a line to three other lines and say which one matched. The participant was in a group of other "participants" who were actually part of the research team. If all the fake participants chose an incorrect answer, the participant usually would too.

Front 31

Milgram study

Back 31

Participants were told that they were teachers and had to shock a learner if they got the answer wrong. People started small but gradually went to higher voltages. Many more people than expected went up to the highest voltage, obeying the researcher even when they felt uncomfortable. Proved that it can be a fundamental attribution error to assume that people do horrible things because they are bad people.

Front 32

Stanford prison study

Back 32

students were assigned roles as guards or prisoners. The students took on their roles so seriously that they began to do things that they would not normally have done. The study had to be called off after 6 days.

Front 33

Beach study

Back 33

Studied the positive effects of social setting on behaviour. A girl left her radio on the beach and someone pretended to steal it. When she did not ask anyone to watch the radio, it was stolen without anyone protesting. But when she did ask someone to watch it, they did not let it get stolen.

Front 34

Langor study

Back 34

participants' eyesight improved when they were dressed as pilots and in a realistic flight simulator, but not if they wore their normal clothes and the simulator was not that realistic

Front 35

what is the multiplicative function of the Latane model?

Back 35

The total impact of a social force on a person increases as immediacy, strength, and number of sources increases

Front 36

what is the division function of the Latane model?

Back 36

The total impact of a social force is divided among the targets, so impact on any one target decreases as the number of targets increases

Front 37

Entrappment

Back 37

When you take a small step in a direction, you will likely continue in that direction and end up doing things you would not have done at first. By the time you feel you are doing something wrong, you won't quit because then you would have to admit you were wrong all along

Front 38

Zajonc's theory of social facilitation and social inhibition

Back 38

the effect of another person's presence/example on one's behaviour - improves dominant responses (well-learned, simple, or instinctive) and inhibits non-dominant responses (new, complex, or unnatural)

Front 39

Examples of Zajonc's theory

Back 39

Social loafing and unresponsive-bystander phenomenon

Front 40

Social loafing

Back 40

individual effort may decrease when working in groups

Front 41

Unresponsive bystander phenomenon

Back 41

as the number of bystanders increases, the likelihood of getting help/aid decreases. May be because of deindividuation, diffusion of responsibility, and evaluation of your own ability/skill

Front 42

Deindividuation

Back 42

A state of decreased personal responsibility, brought about by decreased accountability and attention being shifted away from self

Front 43

Diffusion of responsibility

Back 43

Assuming someone else in the group will take action

Front 44

What is involved in thinking?

Back 44

Concepts, propositions, mental images, cognitive schemas

Front 45

what is thought?

Back 45

mental manipulation of internal representations of objects, activities, and situations

Front 46

Concepts

Back 46

mental category that groups subjects that have common properties

Front 47

prototypes

Back 47

an especially representative example of a concept

Front 48

propositions

Back 48

relationships between concepts

Front 49

schema

Back 49

integrated mental network

Front 50

what is non-conscious thought?

Back 50

intuition, insight, implicit learning

Front 51

IDEAL problem solver

Back 51

I = Identify the problem, D = Define the problem, E = Explore a variety of problem-solving strategies, A = Act on the problem strategy, L = Look back/evaluate

Front 52

functional fixedness

Back 52

a tendency to see objects and their functions in a certain fixed, typical way

Front 53

Algorithms

Back 53

step-by-step rules or procedures which guarantee a solution eventually if systematically applied

Front 54

Heuristics

Back 54

mental short-cuts; often quite effective and economical in terms of time, but don't always guarantee a solution

Front 55

Normitive psychology

Back 55

studying how we should make decisions

Front 56

Descriptive psychology

Back 56

studying how we actually make decisions

Front 57

Availability heuristic

Back 57

thinking of examples and basing our decisions on what comes to mind first; base decisions of frequency or probability on the ease with which examples come to mind

Front 58

Anchoring effect

Back 58

when people decide something based on the initial estimate - e.g. if someone is asked if the Mississippi is longer or shorter than 500 miles, they are likely to estimate closer to 500 miles than if they had been asked if it was longer or shorter than 5000 miles.

Front 59

Framing

Back 59

The ways in which the options are structured and described influence our decisions

Front 60

Risk aversion

Back 60

People prefer less risky choices, but if they have to choose between a sure loss and a gamble, they will choose the gamble.

Front 61

Representativeness

Back 61

comparing the object/event with our idea of the average or prototypical member of the class

Front 62

Illusory correlations

Back 62

perceived correlations between things/events that aren't actually related

Front 63

Confirmation bias

Back 63

making decisions based only on evidence that confirms what we already believe

Front 64

Hindsight bias

Back 64

you are more sure of a decision after you make it

Front 65

what happens as a result of people trying to avoid dissonance?

Back 65

Avoid dissonant info, firm up your attitude to be consistent with an action, and changing attitudes to justify actions