Basic Principals Flashcards
Fill-in-the-Blank:
All humans have a predisposition towards ____.
Bias
More specificially, various cognitive biases that impact our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
Define:
Social Psychology
The scientific study of the effects of social cognitive processes on the way individuals perceive, influence, and relate to others.
How all our ‘balck-boxes’ communicate and connect with one another through controlling these weird meat-suits we call bodies!
What is one way we can overcome cognitive biases and ‘common-sense knowledge’ in order to better understand the world around us?
Employing scientific methods to gather evidence supporting quality theories and hypotheses.
Define:
Hindsight Bias
The tendency to inflate or distort memories of our previous perceptions after a certain outcome has occurred.
It can be summarised in the phrase “I knew it all along!”.
You and your friend attend a football match. Afterwards, your friend claims they ‘knew the winning team would come out on top all along’.
What kind of cognitive bias does this represent?
Hindsight Bias
Describe:
The self-correcting error of predicting behaviour.
The tendency to change one’s later behaviour to match previous predictions made.
Some participants were asked whether they predicited they were likely to help out at a rubbish clean up for one weekend before later being asked to do just that, whilst other participants were simply asked to help out with the rubbish clean-up without previously predicting their behaviour.
Those who said ‘yes’ in the prediciton group were significantly more likely to agree to volunteer.
What kind of cognitive bias does this represent?
The self-correcting error of predicting behaviour.
Note that in the scenario, it is socially desirable to say you will help charitable organisations, and so this increased the likelihood of people predicting ‘yes’ even if under normal circumstances they would not.
Compare & Contrast:
Social vs. Cognitive processes.
- Social processes occur outside the individual (i.e. relations to others).
- Cognitive processes occur within the individual.
What does each component in the model below represent?
The model shows how behaviour (B) is a function of a person (P) and their environment (E).
This was created by Kurt Lewin, and reminds us that peoples’ behaviour are both a product of them as individuals and their surrounding contexts.
Fill-in-the-Blank:
In social psychology, ____ are the most important stimuli.
People
We simultaneously change them as they change us through interactions.
Indentify:
The TWO fundamental axioms outlined in social psychology.
- People construct their own realities.
- Social influences are pervasive.
And, because people construct their own realities, social reality is also subjective.
Realities are contrcuted by both cognitive and social processes.
Social influences can occur with or without the physical presence of others.
Define:
Hostile Media Effect
The tendency for peoples’ beliefs prior to viewing certain media influencing their interpretation of media presented.
This is specifically in a negative (hostile) way.
Some definitions narrow this down further so that it is partisan disagreement in interpretation of ‘neutral news/media coverage’.
How is the relationship between OUR perceptions + behaviours and OTHERS best described?
A cyclical relationship with reciprocal influence.
Our perceptions inform our behaviours, which informs how others perceive us and therefore respond behaviourally.
Define:
The Halo Effect
The tendency to infer more positive traits of those we like or find attractive.
It can work in the opposite direction too though, and so more broadly can be thought of the tendency of an impression in one area/aspect influencing others.
List:
The THREE basic motivational principles.
(According to social psychology).
- People strive for mastery.
- People seek connectedness.
- People value ‘me & mine’.
