Chapter 12: Social Psychology Flashcards
What is social facilitation?
-phenomenon where the presence of others influences an individual’s performance
For tasks that are easy or well-learned does the presence of others make them perform better or worse?
-the arousal caused by others can lead to better performance
For tasks that are difficult or not well-learned does the presence of others make them perform better or worse?
-worse
What is Yerkes-Dodson law? What does the graph look like? (2)
-it suggests that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal and that there is an optimal point but only up to a certain point.
-a hill
What is social reality? What is an example? (2)
-phenomenon that is constructed through social instructions where people selectively encode what is happening in terms of what they expect to see and want to see
Example: fans of a football team “saw” the other team commit twice as many penalties as their own team.
What is confirmation bias?
-our tendency to pay attention to information that confirms our existing beliefs and ignore information that is contradictory
What is attribution theory? What are the two ways to explain causality? (2)
-Theory that explores how people explain their own actions and the actions of others
-particularly regarding whether they attribute behavior to internal dispositions (such as personality traits) or external situations (such as environmental factors).
What is the fundamental attribution error?
-people have the tendency to overestimate dispositional (internal) factors and underestimate situational (external) factors when searching for the cause of other people’s behavior
What is the actor-observer bias?
-people often used situational attributions to explain their own behaviour and disposition attributions to explain the behaviour of other people
What explains the actor-observer bias?
-perspective of what we know about ourselves vs. what we know about their life (information availability)
-Perceptual Focus: When observing others, the person’s behaviour is the most salient aspect, leading to dispositional attributions.
People with a pessimistic explanatory style tend to explain the negative events of their lives in terms of what qualities of themselves?
-internal, stable and global
What is the relationship between pessimism and health?
-pessimism is a risk factor for poor health and reduced immunocompetence
What does a self-serving bias lead people to do when they have successes and failures? How is this different from people with depression?
-take credit for successes while denying or explaining away responsibility for their failures
-people with depression tend are the opposite
What are self-fulfilling prophecies?
-predictions made about the future that modify your interactions to produce what you predicted
Give an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy that a party will be boring. Discuss the expectation, behavioural response and fulfilling the prophecy. (3)
Expectation: the party will be boring
Behavioural response: not getting involved in any activities and being ignored by others.
Fulfilling the prophecies: the party is not enjoyable
What is a behavioural confirmation?
-when someone’s expectations about another person actually influence the second person to behave in ways that confirm the original expectations
What is prejudice?
-negative feelings about a someone because of the group they belong to
Is prejudice the same as a stereotype? Why or why not?
-no because a stereotype can be positive
What is discrimination?
-unjustified treatment of people as a result of prejudice
What two steps is prejudice formed in? (2)
Social categorization: process where people organize themselves and others into groups
In group bias: showing preference for an in group over an out group
What is in-group bias? Did people display this even when group membership is randomly created? (2)
-an evaluation of one’s own group as better than others
-yes
What is in-group variability?
-belief that members of one’s own group are more diverse
What is out-group homogeneity? What is it the origin of? (2)
-belief that outsiders are all alike
-stereotype
What are stereotypes?
-generalizations about a group where the same characteristics are assigned to all members of that group
What is strengthened by behavioural confirmation?
-stereotype
What strategiey worked when the researcher tried to reverse prejudice in the summer camp boys?
Contact hypothesis: cooperative action on shared goals
What was the Milgram experiment?
-tested obedience to authority via electric shocks
What is the Stanford prison experiment?
-studied the situational attribution of behavior
What is the Asch effect? (Cards)
-looked at conformity of someone within a group
What is Sherif’s experiment on Norm crystalization? (light)
-demonstrating conformity with information
What qualities are children from middle-class homes encouraged to value?
-curiosity, independence and to question traditional values
What qualities are children from economically disadvantaged families taught to value?
-to conform and obey authorities
How does Milgram’s experiment support the situational attribution of behaviour?
-it demonstrates that ordinary individuals can engage in harmful actions when placed in specific situational contexts with strong social and authoritative pressures.
What two situations favoured obedience in Milgram’s follow up experiments?
-when a peer administers shock and the participant is a bystander
What situational conditions for Milgram’s follow up experiments have about the same rate of obedience?
-two authorities, one as victim, women as participants
What is a take home message from Milgrim’s experiments?
-most participants dissented verbally, but inflicted harm behaviourally
What accounts for the abusive behaviours of the guards in the Stanford prison?
-deindividuation
What is deindividuation characterized by?
-reduced individuality, reduced self-awareness and reduced attention to personal standards
What is the informational influence on conformity? What is an example? (2)
-people’s tendency to obtain information from others so as to act in a correct way in a given situation
-if you don’t know which fork to use at dinner you look around at other people to figure it out
What is norm crystalization?
-the process through which social norms become established and stable within a group.
What is the difference between what Asch and Sherif demonstrated int erms of influence on conformity?
-Asch demonstrated normative influence
-Sherif demonstrated informational influence
What is the social brain hypothesis?
-the zie of a primate species’ standard social group is related to the volume of that species’ neocortex
What two conditions make people especially likely to organize themselves into groups? (2)
-reciprocity
-transitivity (people generally share their friends’ opinions of other people)
What is social identity theory?
-people both identify with certain groups and value those groups (feel pride at their membership)
What is normative influence?
-when people go along with the crowd to fit in
What is informational influence?
-occurs when there is uncertainty about what is correct so people look to other people for cues about how to respond
