chapter 1

Question 1

What is social psychology, and how is it different from

other disciplines?

Answer 1

It is 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.

Question 2

Social influence

Answer 2

The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of
other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes,
or behavior

Question 3

Social psychology versus philosophy

Answer 3

– Address many of the same questions

– But social psychology explores them scientifically

Question 4

Social psychology versus common sense

Answer 4

– Common sense = folk wisdom
– Social psychologists predict behavior by forming
hypotheses and testing them scientifically

Question 5

Personality Psychology

Answer 5

Focus on individual differences
Aspects of people’s personalities that make them different from
others
Ignores the powerful role played by social influence

Question 6

Social psychology level of analysis

Answer 6

the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social
situation

Question 7

Sociology Level of analysis

Answer 7

Focus on society at large

Question 8

Goal of social psychology

Answer 8

Identify universal properties of human nature that make
everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of
social class or culture

Question 9

Goal of sociology

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Why does it matter how people explain and interpret

events—and their own and others’ behavior?

Answer 10

to have a better understanding of how people behave and why, so we can create better ways to react to situations as well as predict future ones

Question 11

Fundamental attribution error (FAE)

Answer 11

– The tendency to explain our own and other people’s
behavior entirely in terms of personality traits
– Underestimating the power of social influence

Question 12

what happens when we underestimate the power of social influence

Answer 12

we gain a feeling of false security.
– Increases personal vulnerability to possibly destructive
social influence
– Lulls us into lowering our guard

Question 13

By failing to fully appreciate the power of the

situation, we tend to

Answer 13

– Oversimplify complex situations
– Decrease our understanding of the true causes
– Blame the victim when people are overpowered by
social forces

Question 14

construal

Answer 14

How humans will behave in a given situation is not
determined by the objective conditions of a situation
but rather how they perceive it

Question 15

What exactly do we mean by the social situation?

Answer 15

One strategy
– Identify the objective properties of the situation
– Document the behaviors that follow from these objective properties

Question 16

Behaviorism

Answer 16

A school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior,
one need consider only reinforcing effects of environment

Question 17

about Behaviorism

Answer 17

– Chooses not to deal with cognition, thinking, and
feeling
 Thinks these concepts are too vague
– Behaviorism ignores construals of the situation
 Inadequate for understanding the social world!
– Look at the situation from the viewpoint of the people in
it, to see how they construe the world around them

Question 18

construal

Answer 18

the way people interpret

the social situation

Question 19

Gestalt Psychology

Answer 19

A school of psychology stressing the importance of studying
the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s
minds (the gestalt or “whole”) rather than the objective,
physical attributes of the object

Question 20

Kurt Lewin

Answer 20

– Founding father of modern experimental social psychology
– Applied Gestalt principles to social perception
– Stressed the importance of taking perspective of the people in any social
situation to see how they construe social environment

Question 21

What happens when people’s need to feel good
about themselves conflicts with their need to be
accurate?

Answer 21

they create a bias and inaccurate mind set

Question 22

Construals shaped by two basic human motives

Answer 22

1. The need to be accepted

2. The need to feel good about ourselves

Question 23

People will often distort the world

Answer 23

in order to feel
good about themselves instead of representing
the world accurately

Question 24

Self-Esteem

Answer 24

People’s evaluations of their own self-worth; the extent to which
they view themselves as good, competent, and decent

Question 25

The more unpleasant the procedure the

participants underwent to get into a group

Answer 25

the

better they liked the group

Question 26

Social cognition motive

Answer 26

– Takes into account how people think about the world
 We try to gain accurate understandings so we can make
effective judgments and decisions
 But we typically act on the basis of incompletely and
inaccurately interpreted information

Question 27

The social cognition perspective views people as

Answer 27

“amateur sleuths” doing their best to understand

and predict their social world

Question 28

Social Cognition

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Our expectations

Answer 29

can even change the nature of

the social world

Question 30

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 30

when people act a certain way because they are told they do act that way

Question 31

Why study social influence

Answer 31

1. We are curious.
2. Some social psychologists contribute to the solution
   of social problems.

Question 32

Social psychological theories about human
behavior have been applied to a range of
contemporary problems, including:

Answer 32

– Prejudice
– Energy shortages
– AIDS
– Unhealthy habits
– Violence in schools

Question 33

When recommending interventions

Answer 33

it is
imperative to act on the basis of scientifically
grounded theories

Question 34

In this chapter you read about the fundamental
attribution error (FAE). How might understanding
the FAE help you do a better job predicting the
future behavior of those around you?

Answer 34

this helps us realize that just because you see someone behave a certain does not mean they behave like that on personality alone

Question 35

Defined social psychology in your own words

Answer 35

the study on how exterior attributes affect our behavior

Question 36

Construal of situations

Answer 36

affected by need to feel

good about ourselves and need to be accurate