Social Psychology Exam 1

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Social Psychology

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The scientific study of the way in which people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people

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Social Cognition

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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

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Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

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An expectation of one's own or another person's behavior that comes true because of the tendency of the person holding it to act in a way that brings it about

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Spotlight Effect

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People tend to believe that the social spotlight shines more brightly on them than it really does

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Schemas

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Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social work around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember

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Availability Heuristic

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A mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgement on the ease with which they can bring something to mind

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Accessibility

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The extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people's minds and are therefore likely to be used when making judgements about the social world

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Bias Blind Spot

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The tendency to think that other people are more susceptible to attributional biases in their thinking than we are

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Counterfactual Thinking

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Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been

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Dependent Variable

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The variable a researcher measures to see if it is influenced by the independent variable; the researcher hypothesizes that the dependent variable will depend on the level of the independent variable

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Controlled Thinking

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Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful

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Automatic Thinking

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Thinking that is non-conscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless

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Above-Average Effects

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People report that they are above average on many dimensions

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Egocentrism

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Thoughts about self-relevant information are more salient than thoughts about other relevant information

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Fundamental Attribution Error

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The tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people's behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors

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Independent Variable

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The variable a researcher changes or varies to see if it has an effect on some other variable

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Impact Bias

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The tendency to overestimate the intensity and duration of one's emotional reactions to future negative events

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Hindsight Bias

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The tendency for people to exaggerate, after knowing that something occurred, how much they could have predicted it before it occurred

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Construal

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

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Kurt Lewin

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The founding father of modern experimental social psychology. He experienced anti-semitism but Nazi Germany, which shaped his thinking. Lewin applied the Gestalt principles to social perception.

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Dispositional (Internal) Attributions

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A person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person (their attitude, character, personality)

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Situational (External) Attributions

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A person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation; Assumption is that most people would respond the same way in that situation

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Correspondence Bias

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Another name for the fundamental attribution error; Belief that people's behavior matches (corresponds to) their disposition

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Two Step Process of Making Attributions

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Step 1: Make internal attribution

Step 2: Consider other explanations

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Explanations of the Correspondence Bias

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1. Situational factors sometimes unknown (Lack of experience with situation)
2. Situational factors often not salient (And salient factors perceived as cause)

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Causes of self-serving attributions

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Motivational explanations:

1. Maintain or raise self-esteem

• Self-serving attributions most likely when we fail at something we can't change
• If we think we can change, more likely to make dispositional attribution and then work on improving

2. Self-Presentation

• We want others to have good opinions of us
• Self-serving attributions more likely when we care about what others think

Cognitive Explanations:

1. Perceptual Salience

• When thinking about our own behavior, the situation is salient

2. Difference in available information

• We know more about ourselves
• "I never fail an exam!"

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Self-serving attributions

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Success caused by dispositional factors; Failure caused by situational factors

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Social Perception

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To understand others, we observe behavior and infer feelings, traits, motives; Important types of social perception is making casual attributions

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Framing Effects

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The way information is presented (framed) influences how people use the information (medical decisions, gambles, products, goals)

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Upward Counterfactuals

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Imagining how things could have turned out better (more common); Make us feel bad; Help us learn for our future

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Downward Counterfactuals

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Imagining how things could have turned out worse; Make us feel good; Can also help us learn

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Motivational Explanations

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• Tension in social cognition
  
• Self-serving motives
• Idiosyncratic construal
• We intentionally think we are above average to make ourselves feel better

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Cognitive Explanations

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• Tension in social cognition
• Egocentrism
• We think we are above average because of the way we process information
  

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Personality Psychology

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Explain behavior in terms of a person's traits; Explain why a certain person might act similarly across most situations

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Problems with understanding the power of the situation

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• Leads to us oversimplifying complex situations which decreases our understanding of the true causes
  
• Feel we can never engage in the negative behavior shown by others (increases our vulnerability in similar situations)

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Correlational Design

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• Involves the measurement of two or more variables and as assessment of the relationship between those variables
• Advantage: Results allow for predictions to be made
• Disadvantage: Cannot know cause/effect

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Experimental Design

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• Involves the manipulation of a variable and the measurement of another variable
• People must be randomly assigned to the groups
• Advantage: Can draw cause/effect relationships
• Disadvantage: Many variables are difficult or impossible to manipulate

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Idiosyncratic Construal

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Defining a "good teacher" in a way that makes self look good

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Below Average Effects

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People are egocentric and focus on own skill when comparing one's own skill to that of others

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Why study biases and illusions?

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Studying illusions gives us insight into how visual processes work; Studying biases gives insight into how cognitive processes work

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Asymmetric Dominance

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With complex/ambiguous decisions, we look for situations where one option " dominates" another

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Schemas as Memory Guides

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• Memorynot perfect; must fill in gaps.
• Ourmemories are somewhat accurate.
• However,we often “remember” information that was neverthere and have unknowinglyadded.
• Carli, 1999

Participants reada story that ends with a man either proposing toa woman or raping her. In a memory test two weekslater, people misremembered details consistentwith the activated schema

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When does priming work?

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• Behaviormust be ambiguous(open to multiple interpretations)
• Primedschema must be applicable
  

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Persistence of Schemas

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• Schemasinfluence how we interpret information.
• Interpretationremains even if we realize we used the wrong schema.

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Why have schemas?

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• Schemas help us organize andmake sense of the world.
• Particularly importantwhen information can beinterpreted in a number of ways.
• Helpusreduce ambiguity.
• Fill in the gaps inourknowledge or memory.

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Leon Festinger

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One of social psychology's most innovative theorists, known for the cognitive dissonance theory; when two motives pull in opposite directions and we gain our most valuable insights into he workings of the mind

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Correlation does not equal Causation

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A major shortcoming of the correlational method is that it tell us that two variables are related, whereas the goal of the social psychologist is to identify the cause of social behavior. We want to say A caused B, not that A is correlated to B. Correlation does not prove causation.

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Descriptive/Observational Design

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• Measuring 1 variable
  
• Identifies the current state of affairs
• Advantage: Provides insight into the state of the world
• Disadvantage: Doesn't provide anything else