Social Psych Exam 1

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dispositions

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Internal factors, such as beliefs, personality traits or abilities that guide a person's behaviors (whether real or imagined)

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independent cultures (individualistic)

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Cultures in which people tend to think of themselves as distinct social entities, tied to each other by voluntary bonds of affection and organizational memberships but essentially separate from other people and having attributes that exist in the absence of any connection to others

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interdependent cultures (collectivistic)

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Cultures in which people tend to define themselves as part of a collective, inextricably tied to others in their group and placing less importance on individual freedom or personal control over their lives.

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Social Psychology

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the scientific study of the feelings, thoughts and behaviors of individuals in social situations

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schemas

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stored representations of numerous repetitions of highly similar stimuli and situations that tell us how to interpret situations and how to behave in them

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hindsight bias

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people's tendency to be overconfident about whether they could have predicted a given outcome

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hypothesis

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a prediction about what will happen under particular circumstances

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observational research

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observing some phenomena at close range

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survey

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One of the most common types of study in social psychology - involves simply asking people questions

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random sample

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taken at random from the population (e.g., giving every member of the population an equal chance to be in the sample)

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correlational research

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research that does not involve random assignment to different situations, or conditions, and that psychologists conduct just to see whether there is a relationship between the variables

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reverse causation

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when variable 1 is assumed to cause variable 2, yet the oppostite direction of causation may be the case

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third variable

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when variable 1 does not cause variable 2 and variable 2 does not cause variable 1, but rather some other variable exerts a causal influence on both

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experimental research

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in social psychology, research that randomly assigns people to different conditions, or situations, and that enables researchers to make strong inferences about how these different conditions affect peoples behavior

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independent variable

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the variable that is manipulated; it is hypothesized to be the cause of a particular outcome

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dependent variable

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the variable that is measured (as opposed to manipulated); it is hypothesized to be affected by manipulation of the independent variable

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random assignment

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assigning participants in experimental research to different groups randomly, such that they are as likely to be assigned to one condition as to another

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external validity

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an experimental setup that closely resembles real-life situations so that results can safely be generalized to such situations

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internal validity

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confidence that only the manipulated variable could have produced the results

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reliability

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the degree to which the particular way that researchers measure a given variable is likely to yield consistent results

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measurement validity

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the correlation between some measure and some outcome that the measure is supposed to predict

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basic science

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science concerned with trying to understand some phenomenon in its own right, with a view toward using that understanding to build valid theories about the nature of some aspect of the world

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applied science

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science concerned with solving some real-world problem of importance

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self-handicapping

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people's tendency to engage in self-defeating behavior in order to have a ready excuse should they perform poorly or fail

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self complexity

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the tendency to define the self in terms of multiple domains that are relatively distinct from one another in content

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contingencies of self-worth

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an account of self-esteem that maintains that self-esteem is contingent on successes and failures in domains on which a person has based his or her self-worth

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sociometer hypothesis

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maintains that self-esteem is an internal, subjective index or marker of the extent to which a person is included or looked on favorable by others

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self-evaluation maintenance model (SEM)

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maintains that people are motivated to view themselves in a favorable light and that they do so through 2 processes: reflection and social comparison

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self regulation

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processes that people use to initiate, alter, and control their behavior in the pursuit of goals, including the ability to resist short-term awards that thwart the attainment of long-term goals

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self-discrepancy theory

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behavior is motivated by standards reflecting ideal and ought selves. Falling short of these standards produces specific emotions - dejection related emotions for actual-ideal descrepancies, and agitation-related emotions for actual-ought discrepancies

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actual self

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the self people believe they are

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ideal self

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the self that embodies people's wishes and aspirations as held by themselves and by other people for them

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ought self

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the self that is concerned with the duties, obligations, and external demands people feel they are compelled to honor

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ego depletion

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a state, produced by acts of self-control, in which people lack the energy or resources to engage in further acts of self-control

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working self-concept

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subset of self-knowledge that is brought to mind in a particular context

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social comparison theory

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people compare themselves to other people in order to obtain an accurate assessment of their own opinions, abilities, and internal states

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primacy effect

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disproportionate influence on judgement by information presented first in a body of evidence

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recency effect

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disproportionate influence on judgment by information presented last in a body of evidence

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construal level theory

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outlines the relationship between psychological distance and the concreteness versus abstraction of thought. Psychologically distant actions and events are thought about in abstract terms; actions and events that are close at hand are thought about in concrete terms

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confirmation bias

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the tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that would support it

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priming

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to momentarily activate a concept and hence make it accessible (also used as a noun - a stimulus presented to activate a concept)

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subliminal

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below the threshold of conscious awareness

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self-fulfilling prophecy

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the tendency for people to act in ways that bring about the very thing that they expect to happen

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heuristics

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intuitive mental operations that allow us to make a variety of judgements quickly and efficiently

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availability heuristic

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process whereby judgements of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind

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representativeness heuristic

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process whereby judgments of likelihood are based on assessments of similarity between individuals and group prototypes or between cause and effect

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base rate information

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information about the relative frequency of event or of members of different categories in the population

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planning fallacy

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tendency for people to be unrealistically optimistic about how quickly they can complete a project