Social Psychology Test 1

Front 1

What is social influence?

Back 1

The affects that the words, actions or mere present of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes or bhevr.

Front 2

Lisa two means by which other people can influence another person's behavior.

Back 2

persuasion. Thinking of what other would find best for us.

Front 3

define social psychology

Back 3

the scientific study of the way in which social influence affects us.

Front 4

term construal

Back 4

the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world.

Front 5

Why do social psychologists study construals rather than simply the objective environment of people?

Back 5

the way people interrupt things may be different from how the environment meant for it to be interpreted.

Front 6

what is naive realism?

Back 6

the idea that we all perceive things "as they really are"

Front 7

list one problem with relying entirely on sources such as journalists, instant experts and social critics.

Back 7

explanations from those sources are often oversimplified. This casues us to not learn from previous experiences. They often disagree with each other and there is no way to determine who is correct.

Front 8

how does social psychology different from philosophy?

Back 8

Social psychologists address many of the same questions that philosophers address but attempt to answer them scientifically.

Front 9

how does social psychology different from personality psychology?

Back 9

personality psychologists focus on the individual differences where social psychologists take into consideration the social influence that plays a part in everyones behavior.

Front 10

what is meant by the term individual differences?

Back 10

the aspect of peoples personalities that make them different from others.

Front 11

How does social psychology differ form sociology?

Back 11

social psychology focuses on the individual in the context of a social situation while sociology looks towards society at large.

Front 12

define the term fundamental attribution error.

Back 12

the tendency to explain our own and other peoples behavior entirely in terms of personality traits, underestimating the power of social influence.

Front 13

What are the consequences of making the fundamental attribution error and underestimating the power of social influence?

Back 13

gain a feeling of false security, makes us feel like we could never engage in the horrible behaviors others engage in. Oversimplify complex situations which decreases our understanding of the true causes.

Front 14

What two basic motives underlie construals?

Back 14

The need to be accepted and the need to feel good about ourselves.

Front 15

Define self esteem.

Back 15

People's evaluations of their own self-worth; the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent and decent.

Front 16

What assumptions under lie the approach of self esteem?

Back 16

Most people have a strong need to maintain reasonably high self-esteem to see themselves as good competent and decent. Given the choice between distorting the world in order to feel good about themselves and representing the world accurately, people often take the first option.

Front 17

Define the term social cognition.

Back 17

How people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically how people select, interpret, remember and use social information to make judgments and decisions.

Front 18

what assumptions underlie the approach of social cognition.

Back 18

the need to be accurate: individuals are viewed as trying to gain accurate understandings so they can make effective judgments and decisions that range from which cereal to eat to whom to marry. Individuals typically act on basis of incompletely and inacucurately interpreted information.

Front 19

What factors other than the need to feel good about ourselves and the need to be accurate influence our thoughts and behaviors?

Back 19

Biological drives
Desire for rewards
Need for control.

Front 20

List types of social problems that have been studied by social psychologists.

Back 20

Prejudice, energy shortages, AIDS, unhealthy habits, violence in schools.

Front 21

Why do the results of social psychology sometimes seem obvious?

Back 21

Social psychology concerns with topics with which we are all intimately familiar - social behavior and social influence.

Front 22

Define Hindsight bias.

Back 22

Tendency for people to exaggerate how much they could have predicted an outcome after knowing that it occurred.

Front 23

Where do researchers get ideas for hypotheses?

Back 23

from previous theories and research.

Front 24

What three methods do psychologists use to test hypotheses?

Back 24

Observational, Correlational, Experimental Methods

Front 25

What is the goal of the correlational method?

Back 25

to determine the relationship between two measured variables.

Front 26

What is inter-judge reliability and why is it important?

Back 26

The level of agreement between two or more people who independently observe and code a set of data. This helps to know how accurate the observer is.

Front 27

List three limitations of observational research?

Back 27

-Certains Kinds of behaviro are difficult to observe because they occur only rarely or only in private.
- With archival analysis, the original writers may not have included all the information researchers would later need.
-Social psychologists want to predict and explain behavior.

Front 28

Goal of observational method

Back 28

To describe what a particular group of people or type of behavior is like.

Front 29

Postive Correlation

Back 29

Increases in the value of one variable are associated with increases in the value of the other variable. Can also be said about the decreases in both variables.

Front 30

Negative Correlation

Back 30

Increases in the value of one variable are associated with decreases in the value of the other.