Chapter 1 - Introduction

Question 1

What phenomenon is considered the heart of social psychology?

Answer 1

Social influence.

Question 2

What is social psychology?

Answer 2

The scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours are influenced by the real of imagined presence of other people.

Question 3

Define: construal

Answer 3

The way in which people perceive, comprehend and interpret the social world.

Question 4

Why might a jury not vote to convict an offender even though enough powerful evidence against the offender has been presented?

Answer 4

The verdict is dependent on the construal processes of each individual jury member, resulting in more than one possible outcome.

Question 5

What is naïve realism?

Answer 5

A special construal in which the subject believes they actually perceive things objectively.

Question 6

Social psychology experiments are difficult because…

Answer 6

We are attempting to predict the behaviour of highly sophisticated organisms in complex situations.

Question 7

Why should you not merely ask someone why they behaved in (or felt) a particular way?

Answer 7

People usually aren’t aware of the origins of their own responses (ie. they don’t know why).

Question 8

What is “folk wisdom”?

Answer 8

Common sense; commentary on social situations usually from writers.

Question 9

People tend not to learn from previous incidents because the well-known “folk wisdom” is frequently wrong or oversimplified (T/F).

Answer 9

True.

Question 10

The social psychologist performs experiments to…

Answer 10

Test hypotheses about the nature of the social world.

Question 11

What is the main difference between social psychology and sociology?

Answer 11

The level of analysis.

Question 12

What is the level of analysis for a social psychologist?

Answer 12

“For a social psychologist, the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social situation”.

Question 13

What is the MAIN goal of social psychology?

Answer 13

“To identify universal properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of social class or culture”.

Question 14

(Fill in the blank)

Personality psychologists generally focus their attention on individual differences, which are ___________

Answer 14

The aspects of people’s personalities that make them different from other people.

Question 15

When trying to account for a person’s behaviour in a complex situation, the overwhelming majority of people will jump to the conclusion that the behaviour was caused by the personality of the individual involved rather than the influence of the situation. (T/F)

Answer 15

True.

Question 16

Define: fundamental attribution error

Answer 16

The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behaviour stems from internal, dispositional factors (eg. personality traits), thereby underestimating the power of social influence/situational factors.

Question 17

What is a major consequence of fundamental attribution error regarding victims in a given scenario?

Answer 17

We may blame the victims as being responsible for their plight; that their personality traits somehow caused the incident.

Question 18

“When we underestimate the power of social influence, we experience a feeling of ________”

Answer 18

False security.

Question 19

Liberman, Samuels, and Ross (2004) conducted an experiment at Stanford University to examine the effect a social situation could have on students’ game-playing strategy. What was the experimental design?

Answer 19

RAs were asked if given students had competitive or cooperative personalities. These students were invited to play a game. Half of the participants were told the game was called “Wall Street Game” while the other half were told it was called “Community Game.” The percentage of people playing cooperatively was measured.

Question 20

Liberman, Samuels, and Ross (2004) conducted an experiment at Stanford University to examine the effect a social situation could have on students’ game-playing strategy. What did the results show?

Answer 20

Regardless of the students’ labels as “competitive” or “cooperative”, only about one-third of people played cooperatively in the “Wall Street Game”, while about two-thirds of people played cooperatively in the “Community Game”.

Question 21

What does the experiment conducted by Liberman, Samuels, and Ross (2004) suggest about how a social situation can influence behaviour?

Answer 21

Seemingly minor aspects of a social situation such as the title of a game can have powerful effects on people’s behaviour, overwhelming the differences in their personalities.

Question 22

What is Gestalt psychology?

Answer 22

A school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds, rather than the objective physical attributes of the object. (“the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”)

Question 23

Who is generally considered to be the founding father of modern experimental social psychology? He was the first scientist to realize ________.

Answer 23

Kurt Lewin; the importance of taking the perspective of the people in any social situation to see how they construe this social environment.

Question 24

What two motives underlying the thoughts and behaviours of humans are thought to be the most important?

Answer 24

The need to be accurate (social cognition approach) and the need to feel good about ourselves (self-esteem approach).

Question 25

Briefly describe the Chuck Cadman affair.

Answer 25

In 2005, the Liberal party needed Cadman’s (an independent MP) vote on a budget amendment to stay in power, while the Conservatives needed his vote to force an election. Cadman was critically ill with cancer, so the Conservatives offered his wife a $1 million life insurance policy two days before the crucial vote. Harper denied this and sued the Liberal party for their claims.

Question 26

Define: self-esteem

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Given the choice between adopting a worldview that makes the observer feel good about themselves, or adopting a worldview that is accurate, which view will the observer most likely choose?

Answer 27

The one that makes them feel good about themselves.

Question 28

Human beings are motivated to maintain a positive picture of themselves, in part by ___________, and that under certain specific conditions, this leads them to __________.

Answer 28

Justifying their past behaviour; do things that might seem surprising or paradoxical.

Question 29

Define: social cognition

Answer 29

How people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information.

Question 30

A teacher being told that a few of the students in their class took a test that suggested they would do extremely well, and then received high marks at the end of the year is an example of what? (think Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968))

Answer 30

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Question 31

Define: natural selection

Answer 31

The process by which heritable traits that promote survival in a particular environment are passed along to future generations, because organisms with that trait are more likely to reproduce.

Question 32

What is evolutionary psychology?

Answer 32

The attempt to explain social behaviour in terms of genetic factors that evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection.

Question 33

Many social psychologists have another reason for studying the causes of social behaviour: to contribute to the solution of social problems. (T/F)

Answer 33

True.

Question 34

Canada’s incredibly frightening and graphic warning labels on cigarette packages has been proven to be less effective than packaging in the US or UK which is less frightening. (T/F)

Answer 34

False; it has been more effective.

Question 35

In the case of AIDS education, appeals to fear do not produce the desired effect of getting people to practise safer sex. People simply assume their partners will not have AIDS if they don’t seem like they “sleep around.” Where does this denial stem from?

Answer 35

Denial stems from the desire to maintain self-esteem. If people convince themselves that their sexual partners can’t possibly have AIDS, they can continue to have unprotected sex while still perceiving themselves as rational.

Question 36

Pronin, Gilovich and Ross (2004) had given proposals created by Israeli negotiators to the Israeli people and told them they were written by the Palestinians. They ultimately showed that the Israelis liked the Palestinian proposals attributed to Israelis more than the Israeli proposals attributed to Palestinians. (T/F)

Answer 36

True