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64 Cards in this Set
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- Back
- 3rd side (hint)
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What is social psychology?
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Attempts to understand and explain how individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.
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Describe how social psychology is more than just common sense.
What method do psychologists use to test social psychological theories? |
Not everything is as it seems.
ex. opposites attract (most people assume it's true but it's not) Correlational, experimental, archival, survey research... |
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What are the two cultural belief systems describing how we relate to our group? Briefly describe them.
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COLLECTIVISM: priority of group needs over individual needs, a preference for tightly knit social relationships, and a willingness to submit to the influence of one's group (ex. Japan)
INDIVIDUALISM: priority of individual needs over group needs, a preference for loosely knit social relationships, and a desire to be relatively autonomous of others' influence (ex. US) |
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SOCIAL NEUROSCIENCE
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY INTERACTIONISM |
SOCIAL NEUROSCIENCE: study of relationship between neural processes of brain and social processes.
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY: approach to psychology based on principle of natural selection. INTERACTIONISM: emphasizes the combined effects of both the person and the situation on human behavior. |
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DUAL-PROCESSING THEORIES
IMPLICIT COGNITION EXPLICIT COGNITION |
DUAL-PROCESSING THEORIES: thinking and behavior is determined by two different ways of understanding and responding to social stimuli: automatic (involuntary) vs. deliberate (voluntary).
IMPLICIT COGNITION: automatic, unconscious judgments or decisions outside of our awareness. EXPLICIT COGNITION: deliberate judgments or decisions of which we are consciously aware. |
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Describe the goals of both applied and basic research.
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BASIC: deals with theoretical issues; goal is to increase knowledge about social behavior just for knowledge's sake.
APPLIED: concern with increasing understanding of and solutions to real-world problems by using what we know from social psych research. |
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What are the sequential steps associated with conducting research?
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1) Selecting a topic and reviewing past research
2) Developing a theory and a hypothesis 3) Selecting a scientific method & obtaining approval 4) Collecting the data 5) Analyzing the data 6) Reporting the results |
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Compare and contrast experimental and correlational research.
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EXPERIMENTAL
- IV = variables manipulated/controlled by experimenter. - DV = measured variable. - Control extraneous variables. - Hold differences constant through random assignment. - Can determine causality! CORRELATIONAL - Main goal is to determine if association exists between 2 variables. - You MEASURE variables rather than manipulating them. - Cannot determine causality. - Third-variable problem. |
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What’s the difference between a lab and a field study?
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LAB STUDY: researcher creates situations and carefully controls.
FIELD STUDY: researcher studies individuals in natural setting. |
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What’s the difference between an operational and a theoretical definition?
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OPERATIONAL: concrete way to define the independent and dependent variables.
(the way you specifically define it in your experiment) THEORETICAL: meaning of a term in abstract or conceptual terms. (dictionary definition) |
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What’s the difference between random assignment and random selection?
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RANDOM ASSIGNMENT: doing this allows us to assume that groups are the same in all aspects. It equalizes the groups but does NOT eliminate differences.
RANDOM SELECTION: act of randomly choosing participants for a study. |
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Tell me about internal and external validity.
(See study sheet for more.) |
INTERNAL VALIDITY: extent to which cause-and-effect conclusions can validly be made in a study.
(when questions being asked are reflective of what experimenter is actually getting at) EXTERNAL VALIDITY: extent to which a study's findings can be generalized to people beyond those in the specific study. |
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What is a confound?
(See study sheet for more.) |
CONFOUND: manipulating more than one thing - variable that you are not testing that may seriously affect your results.
(ex. in the "effect of music on anxiety" study, the confound would be the fact that control group was allowed to place heads on table and rest. Instead of studying just the effects of types of music, he is inadvertently including the effects of rest or no rest.) |
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What are some ways in which researchers protect their participants?
What are some examples of unethical studies? (purpose of deception, confederates, and IRBs.) |
INFORMED CONSENT: info telling participants what study consists and potential harm.
DEBRIEFING: gives participant full info about nature of study and research question being investigated. (ex. Nazi and army stress experiments, etc.) DECEPTION: lying/leaving out info about what study is really investigating - used to get people to behave naturally. CONFEDERATES: people who are informed of true nature of study and work for experimenters. IRB: Institutional Review Board - evaluate whether research is ethical. |
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OBSERVER BIAS
SOCIAL DESIRABILITY BIAS META-ANALYSIS |
OBSERVER BIAS: occurs when preconceived ideas held by researcher affect nature of observations made.
SOCIAL DESIRABILITY BIAS: type of response bias in surveys in which people respond to a question by trying to portray themselves in a favorable light rather than by telling the truth. META-ANALYSIS: use of statistical techniques to summarize results from similar studies on a specific topic to estimate the reliability and overall size of the effect. |
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OBSERVATIONAL RESEARCH
NATURALISTIC RESEARCH ARCHIVAL RESEARCH |
OBSERVATIONAL: scientific method involving systematic qualitative and/or quantitative descriptions of behavior.
NATURALISTIC: form of observational method that investigates behavior in its natural environment. ARCHIVAL: descriptive scientific method in which already-existing records are examined. |
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What is the self-concept and where does information about the self come from?
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SELF-CONCEPT: the sum total of a person's thoughts and feelings that defines the self as an object.
Info about the self comes from how society views you and from feedback from friends and family. |
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How does a self-concept develop?
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Through SELF-AWARENESS.
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What is self-awareness?
When do humans develop self-awareness? |
SELF-AWARENESS: psychological state in which you take yourself as an object of attention.
Develops at around 18 months of age. |
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Describe the difference between public and private self-awareness.
Explain how it can be either a state (temporary) or trait (long-term). |
PUBLIC SELF-AWARENESS: temporary state of being aware of public self-aspects (ex. physical appearance, etc.) Result is a greater adherence to social standards of behavior.
PRIVATE SELF-AWARENESS: temporary state of being aware of hidden, private aspects of the self (ex. personal beliefs, moods, etc.) Result is a greater adherence to personal standards of behavior. SA can be a state, like when we are giving a class presentation in front of 300 people, or it can be a trait, like a person who is incredibly self-conscious all the time. |
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What is self-consciousness?
What are public and private self-consciousness? Examples? |
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS: habitual tendency to engage in self-awareness.
PUBLIC: tendency to be aware of publicly displayed self-aspects (ex. embarrassment that your butt is too big.) PRIVATE: tendency to be aware of private aspects of the self (ex. feeling depressed all the time.) |
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What is self-regulation?
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SELF-REGULATION: ways in which people control and direct their own actions.
(ex. the ability of a child to sit in room for 15 minutes staring at teddy graham crackers and not eating them until parent came back.) |
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What are self-schemas?
What do they do? |
SELF-SCHEMAS: beliefs that people have about themselves. Consist of traits and characteristics that are part of your definition of yourself.
Help you organize, retrieve, interpret, and use info about yourself in a particular area of your life. |
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Describe the self-evaluation maintenance theory.
What are the two processes that maintain self-esteem according to this theory? |
SELF-EVALUATION MAINTENANCE THEORY: predicts under what conditions people are likely to react to the success of others with either pride or jealousy.
(ex. harder-word test) Two processes that maintain self-esteem: 1) SOCIAL REFLECTION: self-esteem is reinforced by identifying ourselves with accomplishments of others. 2) SOCIAL COMPARISON: evaluation of our accomplishments by comparing them with others. |
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What is self-esteem?
Differentiate between implicit and explicit self-esteem. |
SELF-ESTEEM: a person's evaluation of his or her self-concept.
IMPLICIT: person's unintentional and perhaps unconscious evaluation of their self-concept (ex. Name Letter Task.) EXPLICIT: person's conscious and deliberate evaluation of their self-concept |
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When do people engage in social reflection and when do they engage in social comparison?
Basking in Reflected Glory vs. Cutting Off Reflected Failure |
It depends on task relevance to your own self-concept and your certainty about your abilities in a given domain.
SOCIAL REFLECTION: embrace success of a friend when their accomplishment has little relevance to you (ex. friend does well on an exam in a class that you're not it.) SOCIAL COMPARISON: Envy success of friend when their accomplishment has personal relevance to your self-concept (ex. study together for exam that he does well on and you do not.) BASKING IN REFLECTED GLORY: embracing success of another (ex. "we won" when Pats win) CUTTING OFF REFLECTED FAILURE: distancing self from those who failed (ex. "they lost" when Pats lose) |
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How is the information we store about ourselves organized and retrieved in our memory?
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We use SELF SCHEMAS (which contain how you think of yourself in a particular field; tends to be in areas that are important to the self.)
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What are self-discrepancies?
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SELF-DISCREPANCIES: discrepancies between our self-concept and how we would ideally like to be or believe others think we should be.
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Are ideas about the self the same across cultures?
What are the differences between an independent and interdependent self? |
Very different across cultures, especially individualist vs. collectivist cultures.
INDEPENDENT SELF: way of conceiving the self in terms of unique, personal attributes and as a being that is separate and autonomous from the group (ex. individualist cultures) INTERDEPENDENT SELF: way of conceiving the self in terms of social roles and as a being that is embedded in and dependent on the group (ex. collectivist cultures) |
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What is strategic self-presentation?
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STRATEGIC SELF-PRESENTATION: process of constructing and presenting the self in order to shape other people's impressions and achieve ulterior goals.
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What is self-handicapping? Provide an example.
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SELF-HANDICAPPING: self-presentation strategy in which person creates obstacles to his or her own performance either to provide an excuse for failure or to enhance success.
(ex. Bob is worried about his physics exam. Instead of studying the night before, he goes out to a party, greatly decreasing his likelihood of doing well. This serves as form of self-defeat, as well as attempt to protect his self-esteem.) |
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What is self-monitoring?
Give an example of a situation in which one might self-monitor. |
SELF-MONITORING: tendency to use cues from other people's self-presentations in controlling one's own self-presentations.
(ex. Having dinner with your boyfriend's parents, you may act in a way more parallel with their behavior than your own.) |
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Define self-enhancement and self-verification.
What is the difference? Provide examples of each. |
SELF-ENHANCEMENT: process of seeking out and interpreting situations as to attain a positive view of one's self (ex. people are likely to over-emphasize favorable evaluations of themselves, while minimizing or forgetting critical assessments of themselves.)
SELF-VERIFICATION: process of seeking out and interpreting situations as to confirm one's self-concept (ex. people with negative self-views may gravitate toward partners who mistreat them, undermine their feelings of self-worth, or even abuse them.) |
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What is impression formation?
What are the three different types of information used in impression formation? INTEGRATIVE vs. DYNAMIC |
IMPRESSION FORMATION: process by which we integrate different types of information about another person into an overall judgment.
1) Non-verbal behavior 2) Traits 3) Attributions INTEGRATIVE: integrate information from all over into a general impression. DYNAMIC: we adjust our impressions as we get more information. |
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What is decoding?
How good are we at decoding and controlling nonverbal communications? |
DECODING: the ability to interpret the message conveyed by others' emotional reactions.
Good at decoding facial expressions (ex. smile, frown, etc.) and controlling facial expressions (ex. not laughing at a funeral.) |
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What is non-verbal leakage?
What is the polygraph? |
NON-VERBAL LEAKAGE: consciously inhibiting emotional expression in some channels of communication will lead to expression in other nonverbal channels (ex. when trying to pretend your mom's cooking is good, you unintentionally make a face after eating it.)
POLYGRAPH: lie detector test; responds to changes in physiological arousal (but doesn't actually determine if someone is lying.) |
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Who was the first person to study how we form impressions of others using traits?
What did he find/believe? What is the Gestalt Perspective? |
- ASCH was the first person to study impression formation.
- Believed that impressions are made into an integrative narrative; one trait modifies the meaning of another. - Personality impressions are strongly influenced by the context in which information is presented. (ex. Bush is viewed much more favorably in the context of Hitler and Bin Laden than in the context of Gandhi and Mother Theresa.) GESTALT PERSPECTIVE: "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" (i.e. one trait modifies the meaning of another.) |
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Describe the two basic principles of person perception.
What is the evidence for each of these? (That is, describe the studies we did in class.) |
1) PRIMACY EFFECT: information that is received early will have more influence on our perceptions of a person than information that is received later.
(ex. two lists of traits describing someone: one lists good qualities before bad and the other lists bad before good. Even though both lists had same words, good to bad list generated more positive impressions.) 2) TRAIT CENTRALITY: some traits have more impact on our impressions than others. (ex. two identical lists of traits describing someone except that one list has the trait "warm" and the other "cold." Person described as "warm" gets more positive traits ascribed to them whereas person described as "cold" gets more negative traits.) |
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What is implicit personality theory?
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IMPLICIT PERSONALITY THEORY: assumptions that people make about which personality traits go together.
(ex. when we believe that a happy person is also friendly, or that quiet people are shy.) |
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Describe the halo effect and list two or more traits that one might associate with another person because of the halo effect.
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HALO EFFECT: people assume that a person who possesses a positive trait also possesses other positive traits.
(ex. when shown picture of an attractive person, most people ascribe them positive traits like happy and successful.) |
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What is the change-of-meaning effect?
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CHANGE-OF-MEANING EFFECT: trait takes on different meaning in the context of other traits.
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What is attribution theory concerned with?
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ATTRIBUTION THEORY: people use information to make inferences about the causes of behavior or events. Concerned with perceived causes, not the actual causes.
(ex. you go to a restaurant and the waitress is mean to you. Is she a mean person or is she just having a bad day?) |
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Why are people motivated to make attributions?
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- People have a desire to make sense of things.
- People want to form a coherent view of the world. - People want to have some control over their environment (and feel as though it's predictable.) (ex. if we go to a restaurant and get sick the next day, we might assume that we got food poisoning even though the flu is going around.) |
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What are the three dimensions of causal experience?
Provide examples of each and be able to identify different types of causal attributions. |
1) LOCUS OF CAUSALITY: internal factors (person attribution) vs. external factors (situation attribution.)
(ex. if someone gets rich, an internal cause would be that they're a hard worker and an external cause would be that they won the lottery.) 2) STABILITY OF CAUSE: stable causes are permanent and long-lasting vs. unstable causes are temporary and fluctuating. (ex. internal and stable/unstable = Sally insulted me because she's rude vs. because she's sick; external and stable/unstable = Sally insulted me because I'm rude vs. because weather made her job hard.) 3) CONTROLLABILITY: is the outcome controllable? (ex. controllable obesity: don't eat well or exercise vs. uncontrollable obesity: thyroid condition.) |
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What does the Locus of Control personality scale measure?
Why is this important? |
Measures if you're the type of person who is guided by internal vs. external factors.
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What is a social stigma?
How do perceptions of controllability relate to social stigmas? |
SOCIAL STIGMA: any identified condition or feature that makes an individual subject to social rejection.
Depending on our attributions for different conditions, we will have different attitudes toward stigmatized individuals. (ex. "blame the victim" tendency: if someone is raped, people might say, "well, if she hadn't been dressed like a slut it wouldn't have happened.") |
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FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR
ACTOR-OBSERVER BIAS SELF-SERVING BIAS Why do these occur? |
FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR
- Tendency to make internal attributions over external attributions in explaining behavior of others. - Occurs because of perceptual salience (we perceive others as more relevant than environment), culture (dispositional vs. situational), and language (not as many words to describe situations as there are to describe traits.) ACTOR-OBSERVER BIAS - Tendency for people to attribute their own behavior to external causes and behavior of others to internal factors (ex. John failed test because he's stupid vs. I failed because test was too hard.) - Occurs because of differences in perspective. SELF-SERVING BIAS - Tendency to assign an internal cause for our positive outcomes and an external cause for our negative outcomes (ex. I passed test because I'm smart vs. failed because it was too hard.) - We do this to preserve self-esteem. |
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What is social cognition?
What is the main influence on how we evaluate our social world? |
SOCIAL COGNITION: study of how individuals interpret, analyze, remember and use information about people and social events (aka. how you form impressions of others.)
Main influence is what we have learned through past experience. Info that we've acquired in the past helps us to understand and interpret the present. |
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Dual-process models of social cognition typically involve effortful and effortless thinking. Explain what these 2 cognitive strategies are and give examples of when we might use one over the other.
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EFFORTFUL THINKING: no action is taken until its potential consequences are properly weighed and evaluated - used when you're consciously trying to act a certain way (ex. trying to seem confident in a job interview.)
EFFORTLESS THINKING: guided more by your emotions, habits, or biological impulses (ex. when you're hanging out with friends.) |
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What is thought suppression?
How does it work? |
THOUGHT SUPPRESSION: attempt to prevent certain thoughts from entering consciousness.
Involves 2 processes: 1) Monitor the potential for unwanted thoughts to come into consciousness. 2) Distracting attention away from thoughts you wish to avoid. |
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Where do schemas come from and what do they do?
Think about a particular group and describe your schema for them (e.g., athletes, nerds, etc.). Be able to identify all the different things that schemas do for us. Hint: think about all of the activities we did in class to illustrate these concepts. |
SCHEMAS are sets of rules or features that represent what we know about categories of objects or events in general (i.e. knowledge structures.)
- Built up by experience. - Tell us what to expect and what not to expect. What do they do for us? - Help us organize info - Influence what we can remember - Help us fill in details/make inferences - Influence what info we attend to - Help us interpret ambiguous info - Can influence how we behave |
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What are some different types of schemas?
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SCRIPTS: general representation of common event (ex. trip to McDonalds)
TRAITS: general personality dispositions that help us to organize info about the behaviors of others - allows you to predict future behaviors (ex. Sam stole $ from his mom = dishonest.) STEREOTYPES: general social categories that we use to categorize people and then infer their attributes. |
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What is schema accessibility?
What are two different types of accessibility and how do they differ? What is priming? |
SCHEMA ACCESSIBILITY: likelihood that a schema will be used in processing new info.
1) SITUATIONAL CUES (ex. how would you categorize an Asian woman? Asian, if she's using chopsticks, or female, if she's putting on make-up.) 2) PERSONAL CHRONIC CONSTRUCTS: readily accessible schemas that are frequently activated. PRIMING: making a schema temporarily accessible. |
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When are schemas most likely to be used?
When are they less likely to be used? |
MOST LIKELY:
- Time pressure - Schema is provided - Complex judgment is required - Person has "power" over another individual LEAST LIKELY: - No schema available - You are accountable (pressure of responsibility) - You are told to avoid using schema |
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HEURISTICS are time-saving mental shortcuts that reduce complex judgments to simple rules of thumb.
Describe the 3 different types of heuristics and give examples of each. |
REPRESENTATIVE HEURISTIC: judging someone based on how representative they are of a typical or average member of a category (ex. Bob is good with numbers and keeping track of details, meticulous, practical, reads sci fi. People would assume he's an engineering major rather than a psych major.)
ANCHORING AND ADJUSTMENT HEURISTIC: tendency to be biased toward initial info that you received when making your judgments (ex. inherit old painting and you're trying to judge how much it's worth. You see a similar one in a store for $400 that's in a little better condition than yours. You will probably start with that price and then adjust downwards slightly.) AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC: making judgments based on how easily you can think of info that is relevant to the judgment (ex. people assume that more people in the US die from breast cancer than diabetes because breast cancer is often highlighted in the media and we hear about it more.) |
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What is the “I knew it all along phenomenon?”
Why does it occur? |
HINDSIGHT BIAS: people's tendency to overestimate their ability to have foreseen an outcome.
Fueled by our desire to make sense of things. |
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What is counterfactual thinking and why do we engage in this type of thinking?
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COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING: tendency to imagine alternative outcomes of events and evaluate the actual outcome relative to the imagined alternatives.
Likely to follow negative and unexpected events in order to make sense of how it could have been prevented. (ex. someone who wins silver medal might think, "shit! I was so close to getting gold!" whereas someone who wins bronze might think, "yes! I was so close to not getting a medal at all!") |
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FALSE CONSENSUS EFFECT
FALSE UNIQUENESS EFFECT CONFIRMATION BIAS SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES JUST-WORLD BELIEFS |
FALSE CONSENSUS EFFECT: tendency to exaggerate how common you own opinions and characteristics are to general population.
FALSE UNIQUENESS EFFECT: tendency to underestimate how common one's own desirable traits and abilities are in the general population. CONFIRMATION BIAS: tendency to seek info that supports our beliefs while ignoring info that doesn't. SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES: someone's expectations about a person/group leads person/group to fulfill expectations. JUST-WORLD BELIEFS: belief that the world is a fair and equitable place where people get what they deserve. |
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What is often the problem with media-reported studies?
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- Confuse correlation with causality
- Oversimplify results - Sensationalize results - Positive studies much more likely to be reported than negative. |
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COVARIATION PRINCIPLE
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For something to be the cause of a particular behavior, it must be present when behavior occurs and absent when it doesn't occur.
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DISCOUNTING PRINCIPLE
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When a particular event has several possible causal explanations, we are less likely to attribute the effect to any particular cause.
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DIAGNOSTICITY
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The extent to which observations of behavior tells us something about the person's underlying disposition (personally.)
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CORRESPONDENT INFERENCE THEORY
What does the extent to which these attributions are made depend on? |
An inference that a person's action corresponds to a stable personality characteristic (an internal, stable attribution.)
Depends on: 1) SOCIAL DESIRABILITY OF BEHAVIOR (the more behavior is counter to prevailing societal norms, the more indicative it is of person's true nature.) 2) ACTOR'S DEGREE OF CHOICE IN PERFORMING BEHAVIOR (freely chosen actions are more indicative of person's true characteristics than when they are coerced.) 3) WHETHER ACTION PRODUCES UNIQUE, UNCOMMON EFFECTS (can infer the strength of underlying intentions by looking for unique consequences.) |
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What is a base-rate and the base-rate fallacy?
How do these relate to the representative heuristic? |
BASE-RATE: frequency with which something occurs in the population.
BASE-RATE FALLACY: failure to consider the base-rates and over-use info about a person in order to judge them (this results in the representative heuristic.) |
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