Social Psychology

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evolution

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the process by which living organism develop and diversify through time; driven by natural selection

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natural selection

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The process by which characteristics that help animals survive and reproduce are passed on to their offspring

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Individuals vs. genes (natural selection)

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Natural selection is a competition among "selfish genes" not what is good for the individual, group, or species. Inclusive fitness and reproductive success.

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adaptations

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A characteristic that is well designed to help an animal survive and reproduce in a particular environment

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byproducts/spandrels

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Phenotypic characteristic caused by evolutionary development of another; Not a direct product of adaptive selection. Ex) navel, chine

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adaptive problems

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Recurred over the course of the species' history; Solution to the problem affects reproduction either directly or indirectly

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Five Organizing Principles

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1. The brain is a physical system (computer) that has circuits designed to generate behavior appropriate for circumstances.

2. Our neural circuits were designed by natural selection to solve problems ancestors faces during evolutionary history

3. Blind to complex neural circuitry of the brain "Instinct Blindness"

4. Different neural circuits are specialized for solving different adaptive problems.

5. Our modern skulls house a stone age mind

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Common Misunderstandings of Evolutionary Theory

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1. Human behavior is genetically determined

2.If it's evolutionary we can't change it

3. The Naturalistic Fallacy

4. Require impossible computational ability of organisms

5. Current mechanisms are optimally designed

6. Implies a motivation to maximize gene production

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Functional Specialization

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The brain contains specialized programs for specific functions. Brain cannot be "domain-general"

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Garcia Effect

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Some things are easier to learn than others. Rats responded better to light/shock and food/nausea.

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Equipotentiality

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Part of the Standard Social Science Model which assumes in the brain the ability to learn any association between any stimulus/response set.

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Domain Specificity

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Certain kinds of content are processed more easily by animals

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Evolutionary Psychology

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The Mind/Brain as an evolved organ

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Levels of Explanation

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Ultimate (why did a feature come about) vs. Proximate (nature of the design feature). Adaptive Problems (Ultimate) vs. cognitive Programs and Neurophysiology (proximate)

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Instinct Blindness

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View by William James that we are blind to our instincts because they work so well.

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Naturalistic Observation

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Observing behavior as it unfolds in its natural setting.

Advantages: Behaviors are spontanteous, no self-reporting

Disadvantages: Observer bias, no causality, researcher interference

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Case Studies

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Involve intensive examination of a single person or group.

Advantages: Rich source of hypotheses, in-depth date collection

Disadvantages: observer bias, false generalization

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Archives

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Public records as source of social behavior

advantages: large sources of date

disadvantages: no causality, missing key elements

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Surveys

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asking people questions about their attitudes and behaviors

advantages: study of difficult to observe behavior

disadvantages: social desirability bias, no causality

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Psychological Tests

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attempts to asses an individuals abilities or behaviors

advantages: allow measurement of characteristics that are not always easily observable

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Correlation

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Kind of research methodology, Degree of statistical association between two variables.

Pearson Product-Moment Correlation: designed to asses degree of associations.

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Scatterplot

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One variable on x and one on y axis. Meant to measure linear relationshps.

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Reverse Causality

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The possibility of effects preceding the cause.

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3rd Variable Problem

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The possibility of an unknown variable being the true link.

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Experimental Methods

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Experiments that allow a researcher to manipulate sources of influence to look at causality.

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Laboratory Experiments

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Direct manipulation of independent variables and direct observation of their effects on dependent variables. Disadvantage: Artificial situation

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Field Experiments

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manipulation of independent variables using unknowing participants in natural settings

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Independent Variable

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Variable manipulated by the experimenter

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Dependent Variable

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Variable measure by the experimenter

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Representative Sample

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A study sample that has the same characteristics as the larger population the researcher would like to describe.

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Reliablilty

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Consistency of test results

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Validity (internal and external)

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How well the test measures what it's supposed to. Internal Validity is the extent to which an experiment allows attributions of causality. External validity is the extent to which an experiment results can be generalized

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Confound

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Another unintended variable changes along with the independent variable

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Social Desirability

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The tendency for people to say or act according to what they believe is appropriate or acceptable.

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Theory of Mind

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Ability to attribute mental states; To understand behavior in terms of goals and desires

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Heider and Simmel

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Created an animation designed to test interpersonal perception and the attribution process.

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Physical Stance

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Concerned with laws of physics and the behavior of neuorons,electrons, andchemicals; inanimate

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Intentional Stance

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Concerned with the mental world, making inferences about a person's beliefs and desires, folk psychology; animate

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Design Stance

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Concern with purpose, function, and design; abstract

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Social Intelligence

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the ability to process information about the behavior of others and to react adaptively to their behavior.

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Intentionality Detector (ID)

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Interprets motion stimuli in terms of goals and desires, approach and avoidance, activated by animation. Heider and Simmel

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Eye Direction Detector (EDD)

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Only works through vision; Detects presence of eyes, detects direction of eye gaze, infers that another organism sees what it is looking at.

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Shared Attention Mechanism (SAM)

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Ability to know that you and another individual are attending to the same thing; triadic relationships; gaze monitoring, pointing, relies on vision and EDD

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Theory of Mind Mechanism (TOMM)

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Being aware that there are mental states which people have about something, and that other people have minds with different contents to our own.

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Autism (Theory of Mind Context)

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Mindblindeness; SAM is impaired not EDD.

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False Belief Task

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Tests the ability of others to believe that other's have false beliefs towards reality.

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Attribution

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Ways of explaining behavior in others

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Actor-Observer Bias

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People attribute the cause of their own behavior to institutional factor but attribute the cause of other people' behavior to dispositional characteristics.

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Fundamental Attribution Error

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Tendency for observers to overestimate the importance of personality and dispositions on behavior while underestimating the importance of the situation.

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Jones and Harris 1967

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Subjects shown essays written by members of debate team. Dispositional inferences on whether or not the essay had been written freely or was directed

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Nisbett et al. 1973

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Individuals assigned themselves less personality traits that to others

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Culture

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The beliefs, customs, habits, and languages shared by the people living in a particular time and place

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Debriefing

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A discussion of procedures hypotheses, and participant reaction at the completion of the study

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Demand Characteristic

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Cue that makes participants aware of how the experimenter expects them to behave

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Descriptive Method

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Procedure for measuring or recording behaviors, thoughts, and feelings, in their natural state

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Generalizability

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The extent to which the findings of a particular research study extend to to other similar circumstances or cases

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Hypothesis

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A researcher's prediction about what he or she will find.

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Person

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Features or characteristics that individuals carry into social situation

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Situation

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Environmental events or circumstances outside the person

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Social Cognitive Perspective

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A theoretical viewpoint that focuses on the mental processes involved in paying attention to, interpreting, and remembering social experiences

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Social Learning Perspective

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A theoretical viewpoint that focuses on past learning experiences as determinants of a person's social behaviors

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Social Norm

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A rule or expectation for appropriate social behavior

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Social Psychology

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Scientific study of how people’sthoughts, feelings, andbehaviors are influenced by thereal or imagined presence ofothers

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Sociocultural Psychology

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The theoretical viewpoint that searches for the causes of social behavior in influences from larger social groups

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Theory

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Scientific explanation that connects and organizes existing observations and suggests fruitful paths for future research

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Anchoring and adjustment heuristic

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A mental shortcut through which people begin with a rough estimation as a starting point and then adjust this estimate to take into account unique characteristics of the present situation.

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Attribution Theories

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Theories designed to explain how people determine the causes of behavior

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Augmenting Principle

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The judgmental rule that states that if an event occurs despite the presence of strong opposing forces, we should give more weight to those possible causes that lead toward the event

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Availability Heuristic

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A mental shortcut people use to estimate the likelihood of an event by the ease with which instances of that event come to mind

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Cognitive Heuristic

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A mental shortcut used to make a judgment

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Correspondent Inference Thoery

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The theory that proposes that people determine whether a behavior corresponds to an actor's internal disposition by asking whether 1) the behavior was intended, 2) the behavior's consequences were foreseeable, 3) the behavior was freely chosen, and 4) the behavior occurred despite countervailing forces.

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Covariation Model

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The theory that proposes that people determine the causes of an actor's behavior by assessing whether other people act in similar ways (consensus), the actor behaves similarly in similar situations (distinctiveness), and the actor behaves similarly across time in the same situation (consistency).

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Discounting Principle

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The judgmental rule that states that as the number of possible causes for an event increases, our confidence that any particular cause is the true one should decrease.

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Dis-positional Inference

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The judgment that a person's behavior has been caused by an aspect of that person's personality

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Downward Social Comparison

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The process of comparing ourselves with those who are worse off.

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False Consensus Effect

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The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others agree with us.

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Representativeness Heuristic

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A mental shortcut people use to classify something as belonging to a certain category the extent that it is similar to a typical case from the category.

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Self-fulfilling Prophecy

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When an initially inaccurate expectation leads to actions that cause the expectation to come true.

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Self-serving Bias

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The tendency to take personal credit for our successes and to blame external factors for our failures

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Social Cognition

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The process of thinking about and making sens of oneself and others

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Upward Social Comparison

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The process of comparing oneself to those who are better off.

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Attitude

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A favorable or unfavorable evaluation of a particular thing

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Balance Theory

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Heider's theory that people prefer harmony and consistency in their views of the world

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Central Route to Persuasion

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The way people are persuaded when they focus on factors other than the quality of the arguments in a message, such as the number of arguments

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Cognitive Dissonance

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The unpleasant state of psychological arousal resulting from an inconsistency within one's important attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors.

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Cognitive Response Model

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A theory that locates the most direct cause of persuasion

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Consistency Principle

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The principle that people will change their attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and actions to make them consistent with each other.

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Counterattitudinal action

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A behavior that is inconsistent with an existing attitude

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Dual Process Model of Persuasion

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A model that accounts for the two basic ways that attitude change occurs

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Elaboration Likelihood Model

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A model of persuasive communication that holds that there are two routes to attitude change-central and peripheral

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Impression Motivation

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The motivation to achieve approval by making a good impression on others

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Inoculation Procedure

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A technique for increasing individual's resistance to a strong argument by first giving them weaker versions of it.

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Need for Cogntion

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The tendency to enjoy and engage in deliberative thought

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Nonreactive Measurement

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Measurement that does not change a subject's responses while recording them.

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Peripheral Route to Persuasion

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The way people are persuaded outside of an argument's quality

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Persuasion

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Change in attitude and belief upon receiving a message

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Postdecisional Dissonance

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The conflict one feels about a decision that could possible wrong.

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Theory of Planned Behavior

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A theory stating that the best predictor of a behavior is one's behavioral intention, which is influenced by one's attitude toward the specific behavior, the subjective norms regarding the behavior, and one's perceived control over the behavior.