13a - Social Psychology Flashcards
What is social psychology?
Area of psychology that studies how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.
What are the four topics of social psychology?
- Social cognition
- Social forces
- Social relations
- Social functioning
What is social cognition?
How we think about ourselves and others: attitudes and attributions.
What are social forces?
How the presence of others affects our behaviors: norms, social roles, conformity, and obedience.
What are social relations?
How we behave toward each other in social situations: group dynamics, helping behaviour, aggression, interpersonal attraction.
What is social functioning?
Social neuroscience and the role of the brain.
What are social cognition attitudes?
Relatively stable and enduring evaluations of things and people. They can influence how we think about and act towards others.
What comprises attitudes?
A - affective component, how we feel about something.
B - behavioural component, how we behave toward it
C - cognitive component, what we believe about it
How do external factors develop attitudes?
Some (many) develop early on through socialisation by parents, peers, schools, and media (learning).
What is social desirability factor?
When people act in a way that is socially desirable, but not necessarily how they would normally act.
What’s the bogus pipeline procedure?
It leads people to believe you can tell if they are lying, so they give more truthful responses.
What are implicit attitudes?
Unconscious attitudes people possess may unknowingly guide behavior.
What are stereotypes?
Generalized impressions based on social categories. It may be positive or negative.
What is a prejudice?
Negative stereotypical attitudes toward all members of a group.
What is realistic conflict theory?
The amount of actual conflict between groups determines the amount of prejudice between groups (conflict over resources).
What is social categorisation?
Naturally forming categories to organize thinking about the world (black-white, liberal-conservative).
What is social identitiy?
Personally identifying with a social group and adopting/maintaining the norms and attitudes of that group.
What is social comparison?
Bolstering self-image by perceiving your group as better. Can lead to negative attitudes.
What is attribution theory?
We make attributions: causal explanations of behavior.
What is fundamental attribution error?
- We are more likely to make dispositional than situational attributions when explaining the behavior of others.
- The result is that we are more likely to “blame” a person for the behavior (attribute it to their character).
What is the actor-observer effect?
As the doer of the action (actor) we are more aware of contributing factors for our own behaviour (and therefore make situational attributions).
What is self serving bias?
We tend to make dispositional attributions when evaluating our own success and situational ones when evaluating our failures.
What is a situational attribution?
External factors of a person
What is a dispositional attribution?
Internal factors of a person
Do we make dispositional or situational attributions when looking back on our past behaviour?
Dispositional (acting like we were another person)
Explain the effects of attribution on marriage.
Happy marriages - make situational attributions to explain the negative behaviour of the other.
Miserable marriages - make dispositional ones.
What is the foot in the door phenomenon?
The tendency for people who have agreed to a small request to comply later to a larger one.
