Chapter 12 - Social Psychology Flashcards
What is Social Psychology?
How people and situations affect our behaviours
Fundamental Attribution Error
We are more likely to make dispositional than situational attributions when explaining the behavior of others; we are more likely to “blame” a person for the behavior
Attribution Theory
Fritz Heider (1958) considered how people explain the behaviour of others
Dispositional attributions
Internal factors of a person
Situational attributions
external factors of a person
Actor-Observer bias
Explaining other people’s behaviours because of dispositions, but our own to situations
Actor-observer effect
as the doer of the action, we are more aware of contributing factors for our own behaviour; as observers of others’ behaviour, we are less aware of contributing factors and so assume dispositional influences
Self-serving bias
we tend to make dispositional attributions when evaluating our success
Just World Hypothesis
people get what they deserve
Social Role
set of norms ascribed to a person’s social position, setting, or group
Norms
social rules about how members of a society are expected to act; some are explicit (openly stated); some are implicit (not openly stated)
Descriptive social norms
agreed on expectations about what group members do
Injunctive social norms
agreed on expectations about what group members ought to do
Philip Zimbardo (1971)
Stanford Prison Experiment; examined that power of roles in shaping behaviour
Attitudes
evaluations of things and others; remain relatively stable; influenced by internal and external factors
ABC Model of Attitude
Affective: how we feel, Behavioural: how we behave, Cognitive: what we believe
Mere though effect
merely thinking of something inflates its importance and therefor strengthens our attitude toward it
Attitude specificity
the more specific an attitude, the more likely it is to effect behaviour
Attitude strength
stronger attitudes predict behaviour more accurately than weak or vague attitudes
Social desirability factor
people may not want to disclose how they really feel (the ugly truth)
Bogus pipeline procedure
leads people to believe you can tell if they’re lying, more truthful responses
Implicit attitudes
unconscious attitudes people possess and which may unknowingly guide behaviour
Implicit attitudes test (IAT)
measures response reaction time; faster=endorsing attitude, slower=opposition of an attitude
Cognitive dissonance theory
we experience discomfort (dissonance) when two of our thoughts (cognitions) and inconsistent
