Chapter 1 Flashcards
social psychology
the scientific study of the nature and causes of individual behaviour and thoughts in social situations
3 main facets of social psyc
- social perception
- social influence
- social interaction
social perception
which individuals form impressions of others and interpret information about them
social influence
process in which other people affect the thoughts or actions of an individual
social interaction
the relationship between 2 or more individuals and how those relations change our perceptions
social influence results from..
social interactions
basic research methods
‘pure’ research that is driven by curiosity or obtaining scientific knowledge about a phenomenon
applied research methods
involve the application of basic research to solve practical problems in the real world
sociocultural perspective
a perspective that focuses on the relationship between social behaviour and culture
evolutionary perspective
focuses on the biological predispositions and physical that results in human survival
natural selection
the process whereby individuals with certain characteristics are more frequently represented in subsequent generations as a result of being better adapted for their environment
social cognitive perspective
a perspective that builds on behavioural theories and demonstrates that an individual’s cognitive process influences and is influenced by a behavioural association
evolutionary perspective - stealing example
people steal because gaining certain objects even though stealing improves a person’s ability to survive
sociocultural perspective - stealing example
people steal because our culture appreciated objects more than people
social learning perspective - stealing example
a person steals because he learned though example that stealing is an acceptable behaviour
social cognitive perspective - stealing example
a person steals because he simply doesn’t believe it’s wrong
hindsight bias
the tendency to think that one knew that something would occur all along
false consensus effect
a phenomenon that causes individuals to assume that everyone shares the same opinion they do
differential construal
the act of judging circumstances differently
confirmation bias
the tendency to notice information that confirms one’s beliefs and to ignore information that disconfirms one’s beliefs
scientific methods
an approach to thinking that involves using systematic observations, measurements, and experiments to assess information
social facilitation
the enhancement of a well learned performance when another person is present
social loafing
a phenomenon that occurs when individuals make lead effort when attempting to achieve a particular goal as a group than they would if they were attempting to achieve the goal on their own
social inhibition
when engaging in an complex or unlearned task, the presence of others would result in decreased performance
a major milestone in the development of social psych curriculum was
publishing of textbooks
interactionist perspective
combining internal factors (personality psych) and external factors (social psych)
cognitive dissonance
the idea that our attitudes are often at odds with our behaviours
social comparison theory
a theory to explain how people perceive themselves in terms of others
construals
our own personal interpretation of a situation
gestalts psychology
it is more important to study the way an object subjectively appears in one’s mind than the objective characteristics of that object
micro-level sociological theories
Focus on individual people – try to understand how individual people come to understand themselves and the world around them
Symbolic interactionism or interactionist perspective
They see when people are engaged in interactions with each other ex. Symbols (alphabet – sounds – words) or gestures
Primary motivator for our construals
social cognition approach
and Self-esteem approach
Self-esteem approach
♣ the need to feel good
♣ will interoperate things in a way to allow us to motivate our self-esteem
♣ can sometimes lead us to bias and inaccuracies
social cognition approach
the need to be correct
fundamental attribution error
assumption that personality is more than the situation
common sense can be inaccurate because
poor observers
biases distort observation
poor observers
We don’t notice a lot of the stuff that goes on around us because we spend a lot of the time in low-effort-thinking
biases distort observation
We can notice something but our brain might interoperate it in an inaccurate way
