Chapter 13

Question 1

What are the three levels of psychological analysis?

Answer 1

Lower (biological), middle (personal/interpersonal) and higher (social/cultural)

Question 2

Describe social psychology

Answer 2

The science of social psychology investigates the ways other people affect our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours
(social norms + roles, attraction, social influence, social cognition, crowds)

Question 3

What part of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs does social psychology study?

Answer 3

Love and belonging: friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection

Question 4

What are social norms?

Answer 4

rules that regulate social life, including explicit laws and implicit conventions

Question 5

Describe conversational distance

Answer 5

how close to one another people typically stand when talking

Question 6

Describe social roles

Answer 6

social positions that are governed by a set of norms for proper behaviour; the various parts people play as members of a social group

Question 7

Describe sexual/romantic scripts

Answer 7

sets of implicit rules that specify proper sexual/dating behaviour for a person in a given situation

Question 8

What is the mere-exposure effect, aka “girl/boy nextdoor effect”?

Answer 8

tendency to like a person more if we have been exposed to them repeatedly

Question 9

Describe what “birds of feather” in terms of attraction

Hint: social and personal characteristics

Answer 9

Homophily is the tendency to have contact with people who are similar.
Matching phenomenon tendency for people to choose partners who match them– similar attitudes, intelligence, attractiveness

Question 10

True or false? Physical attractiveness is important across all relationship types and sexual orientations.

Answer 10

True

Question 11

what is the interpersonal marketplace, in terms of attraction

Answer 11

Womens worth is historically based more on physical attractiveness and men’s worth is based more on sucess

Question 12

Describe reinforcement theory

Answer 12

Simply stated: we like people who confer rewards on us. Interacting with similar others is emotionally rewarding, physically attractive partners is socially rewarding, and high earning partners are socially and materially rewarding.

Question 13

Describe sexual strategies theory of sociobiology (Evolution theory)

Answer 13

Mating is about reproduction: health and fertility versus resources for rearing offspring

Question 14

Describe likability (in regards to attraction)

Answer 14

A person’s likability may make them seem more physically attractive than they are to others who do not know them

Question 15

Describe the process of persuasion

Answer 15

the process of influencing attitudes or behaviours through communication and without duress

Question 16

What are persuasive advertisements?

Answer 16

designed to elicit the desired action, usually purchasing a product

Question 17

Describe the scarcity effect.

Answer 17

people place a higher value on an object that is scarce and a lower value on one that is abundant

Question 18

What is the reciprocity effect?

Answer 18

if someone does something for you, you’re more likely to want to do something for them.

Question 19

Describe what social proof means.

Answer 19

Also known as an informational social influence; consumers will adapt their behaviour according to what other people are doing

Question 20

What are six factors related to conformity?

Answer 20

culture, sex, role of consensus, public vs private performance (who is watching), age, and number of confederates (the amount of people who are in on the experiment)

Question 21

What are the main reasons people conform?

Answer 21

fear of social rejection, aversion to difference, reliance in group judgement

Question 22

What is the definition of obedience?

Answer 22

following orders or requests from people percieved to be in a position of authority

Question 23

What was Milgram’s Classic Obedience Study?

Answer 23

Investigated the power of social roles and norm of obedience to authority. Shock level experiment

Question 24

What is social cognition?

Answer 24

How we think about the social world and perceive others

Question 25

What is the different between explicit and implicit attitudes?

Answer 25

We are aware of explicit, unaware of implicit

Question 26

True or false? Our attitudes cannot be altered by new experiences.

Answer 26

False

Question 27

Describe the validity effect

Answer 27

tendency to believe something is true or valid simply because it has been repeated many times

Question 28

Describe the familiarity effect

Answer 28

(aka mere exposure effect); the tendency for people to feel more positive toward a person, item, product, or other stimuli as they become familiar with it

Question 29

What is attribution theory?

Answer 29

we are motivated to explain our own and other people’s behaviour by attributing causes/motives to these acts

Question 30

What is fundamental attribution error?

Answer 30

the tendency, in explaining other peoples behaviour, to overestimate personality factors and underestimate the influence of the situation

Question 31

What is diffusion of responsibility, in regards to crowd psychology?

Answer 31

group process in which responsibility for an outcome is diffused, or spread, among many people, reducing each individual’s personal sense of accountability

Question 32

Describe bystander apathy.

Answer 32

In crowds, when someone is in trouble, individuals often fail to take action or call for help because they assume someone else will do so

Question 33

Describe deindividuation

Answer 33

a social psychological phenomenon where individuals lose awareness of their own individuality and seem to become governed by the mood and actions of large crowds

Question 34

What are four reasons people obey/adhere to social roles and situational norms?

Answer 34

the threat of punishment, the hope of rewards perceived legitimacy of authority figures, entrapment

Question 35

What are the five factors of coercive persuasion?

Answer 35

Entrapment, problems explained by simple attributions, repetition of ideology and continuous exposure to symbols, promise of salvation, and controlled access to disconfirming information