Chapter 13 Flashcards
Is the study of how people think about, influence, and relate to other people.
Social Psychology
We look at how such things as ____________, __________, and __________ relate to people and their behavior in social contexts.
Perception
Cognition
Emotion
Refers to how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information.
Social cognition
Refers to the processes by which we use social stimuli to form impressions of others.
Person Perception
This is not the same as ________ (is the study of human societies, organizations, and institutions).
Sociology
The _____ is one important cue that influences perception and impressions of others.
Face
Examined the ways that perceptions of faces influence political elections.
Todorov and his colleagues
Researchers asked people to rate the competence of individuals from photographs of their faces. Respondents’ ratings acculturately predicted the outcome for about ___ of the elections.
70%
Has been recognized as a powerful social cue.
Physical attractiveness
Found that even infants as young as 3 to 6 months of age showed a preference for looking at attractive faces versus unattractive faces, as rated by adults.
Judith Langlois and her colleagues
Are generally assumed to have a variety of other positive characteristics, including being better adjusted, socially skilled, friendly, likeable, extroverted, and likely to achieve superior job performance.
Attractive individuals
These positive expectations for physically attractive individuals have been referred to as “___________ __ ______” ________.
“Beautiful is good” stereotype
Is a generalization about a group that does not consider any variations from one individual to another.
Stereotype
Is a belief about a group that we tend to apply to the entire group.
Stereotype
One way that stereotypes can influence individuals is through what is called _____-_________ __________.
Self fulfilling prophecy
Expectations cause individuals to act in ways that serve to make the expectations come true.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Recent research has added another fascinating contributor to what makes a face attractive: __________.
Attention
The more we attend to a face, the more attractive it becomes, as compared to faces that have not captured our ________.
Attention
When we first meet someone, typically the new acquaintance quickly makes an impression. Can have lasting effects.
First Impressions
The process by which we come to understand the causes of others’ behavior and form an impression of them as individuals is called _________.
Attribution
Sees people as motivated to discover the underlying causes of behavior as part of their effort to make sense of behavior.
Attribution theory
Attributions vary along 3 dimensions. What are they?
- Internal/external causes
- Stable/unstable causes
- Controllable/uncontrollable causes
Internal attributions include all causes inside and specific to the person, such as his or her traits and abilities.External attributions include all causes outside the person, such as social pressure, aspects of the social situation, money, the weather, and luck.
Internal/ external causes
Is the cause of behavior relatively enduring and permanent, or is it temporary?
Stable/unstable causes
Do we perceive people as having power over some causes but not others?
Controllable/uncontrollable causes
In attribution theory, the person who produces the behavior (to be explained) is called the ______.
Actor
The person who offers a casual explanation of the actor’s behavior is called the __________.
Observer
Actors often explain their own behavior in terms of __________ _____.
External causes
In contrast, observers frequently explain the actor’s behavior in terms of ________ ________.
Internal causes
In committing the ______________ __________ _______, observers overestimate the importance of internal traits and underestimate the importance of external situations when they seek explanations of an actor’s behavior.
Fundamental attribution error
Are cognitive shortcuts that allow us to make decisions rapidly.
Heuristics
Are helpful tools for navigating the complex social landscape, although they can lead to mistakes.
Heuristics
Can be considered a type of heuristic in that they allow us to make quick judgements using very little information.
Stereotypes
A common heuristic is the _____ __________ _______.
False consensus effect
Is the overestimation of the degree to which everybody else thinks or acts the way we do. Not that the fundamental attribution error and this are both related to the special significance of our own thoughts and circumstances.
False consensus effect
Both of these effects reflect the vast amount of information we have about ourselves relative to the more limited information we have about other people, and they suggest the special place of the self in social information processing.
Fundamental attribution error and False consensus effect
Is the study of how people think about, influence, and relate to other people.
Social psychology
The _____ obviously plays a major role in social information processing.
Self
The ____ is different from other social objects because we know a great deal more about ourselves than we do about others. The _____ is special because we have direct access to private experiences and more so because we value ourselves.
Self
Self
One variable is ___-______, the degree to which we have positive or negative feelings about ourselves.
Self-esteem
Individuals with high self-esteem often possess a variety of _________ _________-rosy views of themselves that are not necessarily rooted in reality.
Positive illusions
Have shown that many of us think of ourselves as above average on a number of valued characteristics, including how trustworthy and attractive we are.
Sedikides and his colleagues
The very definition of _______ indicates that not all of us can be above average.
Average
According to _______ _______ and her colleagues, having positive illusions about self is often related to heightened well-being.
Shelly Taylor
Refers to the tendency to take credit for our successes and to deny responsibility for our failures. Successes tend to be explained internally while failures are explained by external causes.
Self-serving bias
Studied how another aspect of the self might relate to important outcomes.
Fredrickson and Roberts
Refers to the tendency to see oneself primarily as an object in others’ eyes.
Self-objectification
Is an individual’s fast-acting, self fulfilling fear of being judged based on a negative stereotype about his or her group.
Stereotype Threat
A person who experiences ___________ _______ is well aware of stereotypical expectations for him or her as a member of the group.
Stereotype Threat
Comparing ourselves to other people is one way we come to understand our own behavior.
Social Comparison
Refers to the process by which individuals evaluate their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and abilities in relation to other people.
Social Comparison
Helps us to evaluate ourselves, tells us what our distinctive characteristics are, and aids us in building an identity.
Social Comparison
According to Leon Festinger’s theory of social comparison, _______ social comparisons-comparing ourselves to those who are better off than we are-can foster feelings of envy and inadequacy; while ________ social comparisons-comparing ourselves with others who are less fortunate- can make us feel better about our own lives.
Upward
Downward
Another focus of social psychology is in the study of _________.
Attitudes
Are our feelings, opinions, and beliefs about people, objects, and ideas.
Attitudes
If you are very passionate about recycling, you are less likely to pitch that soda can in the trash than someone who has only a weak attitude.
When the person’s attitudes are strong
A person who has been asked to gave a speech about the benefits for not smoking is more likely to not smoke than an individual with the same attitude about smoking but has not put the idea into words or defined it in public.
When the person shows a strong awareness of his or her attitudes and when the person rehearses and practices them
People are more likely to act on attitudes when the issue at stake is something that will affect them personally.
When the person has vested interest
Involves trying to change someone’s attitude and many times behavior as well.
Persuasion
The characteristics of the communicator are important. Characteristics that influence credibility include trustworthiness, expertise, power, attractiveness, likability, and similarity.
The communicator
Another important element in persuasion is the vehicle (i.e. technology) used to get the message across
The medium
Two characteristics of the audience are age and strength of attitude that may determine its effectiveness.
The target (audience)
Some messages involve logical arguments and others may involve exciting emotions.
The message
The elaboration likelihood model describes two ways to persuade. What are they?
- Central route
- Peripheral route
Persuasion focuses on engaging someone through a thoughtful, sound, logical argument.
Central route
Persuasion uses non-message factors such as the source’s credibility and attractiveness or emotional appeals.
Peripheral route
Social psychologists have studied a variety of ways in which social psychological principles influence whether a salesperson make that sale.
Successful persuasion
This strategy involves making a smaller request at the beginning (3 month trial subscription), saving the biggest demand for last (how about a full year?)
Foot-in-door technique
Strategy involves making the biggest pitch at the beginning, which the customer probably will reject, and then making a smaller “concessionary’ demand.
Door-in-the-face technique
Relies on the fact that the customer feels a sense of reciprocity and obligation: because you let him off the hook with that big request, maybe he should be nice and take the smaller offer.
Door-in-the-face technique
Predict prosocial behavior
Psychological factors
Is another factor in altruism
Empathy
Is a person’s feeling of oneness with the emotional state of another. The key to truly altruistic behavior for Daniel Batson, is the extent to which we are able to put ourselves in another person’s shoes.
Empathy
Agreeableness is the personality trait most strongly associated with prosocial behaviors. Agreeableness is related to greater volume in the posterior cingulate cortex, a brain area associated with understanding other people’s beliefs and with empathy.
Personality
Can play role in selfless behavior. For example, research strongly concludes that happy people are more likely to help others than unhappy people.
Mood
Several psychological factors appear to be involved in ________. They include personality characteristics, frustrating circumstances, and cognitive and learning factors.
Aggression
Low levels of agreeableness are associated with more aggressive behavior. A constellation of traits-including low agreeableness, low conscientiousness, and high levels of neuroticism-are associated with aggression.
Personality
A meta-analysis showed that individuals who are high on hostility and irritability are more likely to behave aggressively, whether provoked or not.
Personality
The frustration-aggression hypothesis states that frustration always leads to aggression. Psychologists recognized that, besides frustration, there are a broad range of aversive experiences that can cause aggression.
Frustrating and Aversive Circumstances
Aggressive behavior often starts with aggressive thoughts. Leonard Berkowitz has shown that the mere presence of a weapon (a gun) may prime hostile thoughts and produce aggression.
Cognitive Determinants
Social cognitive theorists believe that individuals learn aggression through reinforcement and observational learning. The classic experiment by Albert Bandura using a bobo doll demonstrates that aggression can be repeated if observed in someone else.
Observational Learning
