Chapter 1 Introduction to Social Psychology

Question 1

What is the task of psychologists?

Answer 1

to try to understand and predict human behavior

Question 2

Why do psychologists try to study predict human behavior?

Answer 2

Because there are known patterns for behavior and there are many theories, experiments and studies that explain how, why and the causes

Question 3

Social psychology

Answer 3

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 4

What social phenomenon is at the Heart of social psychology?

Answer 4

Social phenomena of influenced → we are all influenced by other people

Question 5

What are examples do direct attempts of perusaiton to change people’s behavior?

Answer 5

advertisements and peer rpessure from friends

Question 6

What does social influence extend beyond?

Answer 6

Includes thoughts, feelings and our overt acts

Social influence takes on many forms → we can even be influenced when not in the presence of people

Question 7

Social and cultrual contexts in social psycholgists?

Answer 7

Social psychologists are interested in studying how and why our thoughts, feelings and behaviors are shaped by entire social environment

Question 8

But what exactly do we mean by social situation?

Answer 8

How people are influenced by their interpretation or construal of their social environment

Question 9

Construal?

Answer 9

the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world, which is more important than to understand the objective properties of the social world itself (Lewin, 1943)

Question 10

How is Social psychology an experimental-based science?

Answer 10

Testing hypotheses and applying or coming up with psychological theories and models to explain behavior
(research methods)

Question 11

How is conducting systematic experiment in social psych challenging?

Answer 11

We are attempting to predict the behavior of highly sophisticated organisms in a variety of complex situations that we may or may not have control over
Our goal is to find objective answers to a wide array of important questions

like are you measuring what you intend to measure

Question 12

Naive Realism

Answer 12

is a form of construal: the conviction that all of us have that we perceive things “as they really are” and that we assume that other reasonable people see things the same way that we do

Question 13

Ross
If your own proposal isn’t going to be ___to you when it comes from the other side, what chance is there than the other side’s prospial is going to be ___when it comes from the ___

Answer 13

attactive to you
to be attractive
when it comes form other side

Question 14

Is social pscyhology common sense?

Answer 14

nope many folk widome that has to say about factors are actually not supproted by evidence

Question 15

What do the leaders of cults show that makes them powerful?

Answer 15

The highly charismatic leaders have a lot of influence which gives them power to control people into doing bad things

Question 16

Hypotheses in social psych

Answer 16

Educated guesses about specific situations under which one condition the other would occur → the null hypothesis

Question 17

What is the task fo social psychologist?

Answer 17

The task of social psychologist is to design well controlled experiments that are sophisticated enough to tease out the situations that would result in one or another outcome

Question 18

Effect of udnerstanding?

Answer 18

Effect of understanding: allows us to make accurate predictions once we know the key aspects of the prevailing situation

Question 19

Social Psychology Compared with Sociology simialrities

Answer 19

Both are concerned with the influence of social and societal factors on human behavior

Question 20

Differnces between Social Psychology and Sociology

Answer 20

Level of analysis → social psy is on study of individuals with emphasis on psychological processes in the context of a social situation

Sociology is more concerned with broad societal factors that influence vent sin society → social class, social structure, social institutions

Question 21

Social Psychology Compared with personality Psychology

Answer 21

Personality psychologists focus their attention on individual differences -> the aspects of people’s personalities that make them different from other people

Personality: explains behavior in emrs of personality factors → they were conformists types are weak willed or maybe even too psychotic

Social psyche: looks at the critical part of the story such that leaders are powerful due to social influence

Question 22

If we want a deeper more thorough explanation of tragic events, we need to understand what kinds of ___and ___the ___leaders of these cults possess

Answer 22

power and influence the charismatic leaders of these cults possess

Question 23

Fundametna attribution error

Answer 23

The tendency to explain people’s behavior in terms of personality traits and underestimate the power of the situation

Question 24

What happens when we underestimate the power of social influence?

Answer 24

We experience feeling of false security
ailing to appreciate fully the power of the situation, we oversimplify complex situations → decreases your understanding of the causes of a great deal of human behavior

Question 25

Liberman, Samuels and Ross (2004) The Name of the Game: Predictive power of reputations versus situational levels in determining Prisoner’s Dilemma Game Moves
conclusion?

Answer 25

This meant the the name of the game conveyed strong social norms about what kind of behavior was appropriate in this situation

Question 26

Behaviorism:

Answer 26

school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider resigning properties of environment

Question 27

___and ___in environment influence an organism’s behavior

Answer 27

Rewards and punishments

Question 28

What is the limitation of the rewards and punishment model (B.F Skinner)

Answer 28

Human social behavior cannot be fully understood by confining our observations to physical properties of a situation

Question 29

What does the concept construal get its roots/origins form?

Answer 29

From an approach called Gestalt psychology - a school 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

Question 30

When we break down an object into its simple parts what goes Gesltalt psych say about its perception?

Answer 30

Gestalt psych says it is impossible to understand the way in which an object is perceived by studying the building blocks of perception →The whole is different from the sum of its parts

Question 31

Where was the origin of Gestalt psych/approach? Who were the major players and their reason for this field?

Answer 31

Formulated in Germany during the first part of the 20th century → WOrld War 2
Kurt Koffka, Wolfganf Kohler, and Max Wertheimer
Kurt Lewin was foudning father of modern exiremtna social psychology → expeirnced anti-semitism → moved to US and helped shaped the field fo social spcyholgoy after the effects of the Holocaust

Question 32

As theories, Lewin apple id Gestalt principles beyond perception of objects to social perception - how people perceive other people and their motives, intentions and behaviors. What did this lead to?

Answer 32

It lead to the realization that it was important to take the perspective of the person any social situation to see how he or she countries (perceive, itnerpet, disotry) social envn
Began to focus on the importance of considering subjective situations (how they are constructed by people)

Question 33

If it is true that subjective, and not objective, situations influence people, we need to understand how people arrive at their subjective assumptions/impressions. What two motives are these?

Answer 33

Found two motives: the need to feel good about themselves and the need to be accurate

Question 34

The Self Esteem Approach is for ___

Answer 34

The Need to Feel Good About Ourselves

Question 35

Self esteem

Answer 35

people’s evaluations of their own self worth-that is the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent and decent
Need to maintain favorable image of themselves

Question 36

Why do people justify past behavior?

Answer 36

to make themselves feel ebtter (sewfl esteem)

Question 37

What does justifying past behavior lead to?

Answer 37

decreases the probability that an individual will learn for experience in his next relationship

Question 38

Suffering and Self Justification. Why?

Answer 38

the more unpleasant the procedure the participants underwent to get into a group, the more they liked the group
Why epopel stay ind rug gangs, mafia, example

Question 39

The Social Cognition Approach is for ___

Answer 39

The Need to Be Accurate

Question 40

Social cognition

Answer 40

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

Question 41

what do social cognition psychologists attempt to understand?

Answer 41

They attempt to explain social behavior from the perspective of the physical cog begin witht ehs assumption that people try to view the world as accurately as possible

Question 42

our ___about social world get in way of course accurate perception of it

Answer 42

our expectations

Question 43

What did Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968) do with the Self Fullinging Prophecy

Answer 43

The validity of intelligence tests may not be valid but rather teacher just recreated high scoring kids differently from low scoring kids

Their experiment showed that leading the teacher to believe ro text these students to do well caused an improvement in their performance