C1

Question 1

Social influence:

Answer 1

effect of word, actions, or mere presence of other people on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior

Question 2

Social psych vs common sense

Answer 2

Common sense = folk wisdom

Social psychologists predict behavior by forming hypotheses and testing them scientifically

Question 3

Norm Triplett experiment (late 1800s)

Answer 3

first social experiment
For generations, social psychology students have read that Norman Triplett did the first social psychology experiment in 1889, when he found that children reeled in a fishing line faster when they were in the presence of another child than when they were alone.
Social facilitation

Question 4

Social facilitation–

Answer 4

actions performed better/enhanced by others’ presence

Question 5

Social psych and experimental design

Answer 5

lends itself to experimental design–bc it’s fairly easy to manipulate presence of others/people behaving in a certain way
But how generalizable is the research–many social psych experiments done on college campuses

Question 6

social psych vs personality psych

Answer 6

Personality psych focuses on individual differences and ignored the role played by social influence

Social psychologists study the powerful role of social
influence on how all of us behave.

Question 7

applying social psych

Answer 7

Social psychology deals with social problems
Social psychological theories about human behavior have been applied to a range of contemp problems including
Prejudice
Energy shortages
AIDS
Unhealthy habits
Violence in schools
Health behaviors (vaccine uptake)

Question 8

Construal:

Answer 8

the way we perceive/interpret things

We are constantly interpreting things. Not always about an objective situation–how humans will behave in a given situation isn’t determined by objective conditions of a situation but rather how they perceive it.

Question 9

goal of social psych

Answer 9

Goal of social psych: identify universal properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence regardless of social class or culture

Question 10

social psych vs sociology

Answer 10

Sociology: focuses on society at large;
social psychology: focuses on individual in context of social situation

Sociologists study the group or institution
Social psychologists study the influence of
those groups and institutions on individual
behavior.

Question 11

Central motives of construals:

Answer 11

Need to be accurate (social cognition motive)–>we behave and think in ways that allow us to be right
Need to feel good about ourselves (self-esteem motive)–>we have tendency to want to feel good about ourselves; hence cognitive dissonance

Question 12

Nacirema article

Answer 12

point is America seems weird from the outside but we’re ethnocentric

Question 13

sociology goal

Answer 13

to identify why a particular society or group within a
society produces behavior (e.g., aggression) in its
members

Question 14

Social Cognition

Answer 14

•How people think about themselves and 
the social world
•How people select, interpret, remember, 
and use social information to make 
judgments and decisions