Chapter 1 Textbook Flashcards
Define social psychology
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.
3 ways we are affected by others
1) by their actions
2) by their characteristics (personality)
3) mere presence.
people are infleunced by their ____ of their social environment
CONSTRUAL: perception of social world.
Naive realism. Example
the conviction that all people have that we perceive things as they REALLY are. Not true. We interpret situations depending on who we get the suggestion info from.
ex/ israeli citizens approve a random peace agreement if told it was proposed by the israeli government. but they reject the exact same agreement if told it was proposed by the palistinian government. We are biased. Negotiations run aground because of naive realism on both sides
social psychologists attempt to answer philosophical questions with empirical evidence in a ___ ___
scientific manner
what is folk wisdom? Problem with it?
Folk Wisdom: common sense to describe social phenomena.
problem : the advice and reason is often contradictory. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and out of sight out of mind addresses the same issue.
How does social psych differ compared to sociology and personality psych?
the level of analysis between the 2 differ.
social psych focuses on the general INDIVIDUAL in the social situation, and sociology focuses on factors that influence the entire society.
personality psych focuses individual properties that make each person distinct.
goal of social psychology
identify UNIVERSAL PROPERTIES of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence.
Fundamental attribution error:
tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior stems from PERSONALITY TRAITS, and to underestimate the role of the situational factors
____ psychology stresses the importance of studying the SUBJECTIVE way in which an object appears in people’s minds, rather than objective physical attributes.
GESTALT psychology. the whole object may be different than the sum of its parts.
2 main motives that underlie our thoughts and behaviors
1) the self esteem approach
2) the social cognition approach
outline the self esteem motive behind our behavior
people have a strong need to maintain a reasonably high self esteem. People often try to distory the world to fel good about themseves, which is a lense that affects our interpretation.
- we often try to JUSTIFY past behavior, and thus DECREASES the probability that the individual will learn from past behavior
outline the social cognition approach. What sort of confound does our social cognition cause?
people have a need to be accurate. We often make mistakes in an effort to understand and predict because we almost never have all the facts. Sometimes our EXPECTATIONS about the social world get in the way of our accurate perception of it.
- causes the self fulfilling prophecy: our expectations affect the outcome.
what is social cognition
how people think about themselves and the social world. How people select, interpret, remember, and use social information
When tryin to determine interventions for social problems, it is imperative to act on the basis of scientific theories about human perception, contrual, and behavior. Explain a time where certain tactics that cater to human curiosity can help some situations, but not others
ads demonstrating the cancerous affects of cigarettes that take up 75% of the box actually reduces smoking, but putting STD/HIV related images DID NOT decrease the amount of UNPROTECTED SEX
