Chapter 13 -- Social Psychology Flashcards
What are attributions?
how people interpret the causes of events and behaviors
What is social cognition?
The area of social psychology that explores how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information.
What is an attribution and attribution theory?
Attribution: explanations for the causes of behaviour
Attribution theory: people are motivated to discover the underlying causes of behaviour as part of their effort to make sense of the behaviour.
What is the bystander effect?
The tendency of an individual who observes an emergency to help less when other people are present than when the observer is alone.
What is an internal vs. external cause in attribution theory?
INTERNAL CAUSE: causes inside and specific to the person (traits + abilities).
“he failed the test because he’s lazy”
EXTERNAL CAUSE: causes outside a person (social pressures, weather, luck). “he failed because the test was too hard”
What are stable and unstable causes in attribution theory?
STABLE/UNSTABLE CAUSES: whether the behaviour is enduring or temporary influences attributions.
EXAMPLE: “Are they quiet because they’re always sad, or are they quiet because they felt ignored in the group?”
What are controllable and uncontrollable causes in attribution theory?
CONTROLLABLE CAUSE: people have (perceived) power over some causes (the taste of food)
UNCONTROLLABLE CAUSE: people are not perceived to have power over some causes (rain)
What is a fundamental attribution error?
An observers’ overestimation of the importance of internal traits and underestimation of the importance of external situations when they seek explanations of an actor’s behaviour.
What is the false consensus effect?
A person’s overestimation of the degree to which everybody else thinks or acts the way the person does.
What is a defensive attribution?
Attributions that protect you from the world (fear, low self-esteem, depression, giving up). They are “positive delusions” that make us feel good.
Example: A young girl gets sexually assaulted and people place fault on her (“she shouldn’t have invited him in”). We do this and think these horrible thoughts because we don’t want to believe these things can happen to us out of our control… “this won’t happen to me because I won’t invite strangers in…”
What is self-serving bias?
The tendency to take credit for one’s successes and to deny responsibility for one’s failures.
- If you do well on a test, you think “I’m smart.” If you fail, you think “the test was too hard”
We have to inflate our personal values that are determined intrinsically. A distorted sense of self for better or for worse.
- Recall the example of 200 couples getting married are asked what the percentage chance that they’d get divorced is
What is a stereotype threat?
An individual’s fast-acting, self-fulfilling fear of being judged based on a negative stereotype about their group.
EXAMPLE: Women tint their windows to reduce being spotted and perceived as a poor driver.
What is Cognitive Dissonance Theory?
An individual’s psychological discomfort (dissonance) caused by two inconsistent thoughts.
- We do things that we know are not good for us. And this inconsistency gives us anxiety
- We change our attitudes to reduce the dissonance (EX: Deny cognition; a smoker saying “I don’t smoke that much”)
What is effort justification?
- creating a rationale for the amount of work we put into getting something by increasing the value associated with things difficult to attain.
- explains strong group loyalty emerging after enduring difficult experiences to be able to join a group.
Why Do Behaviors Change Attitudes?
Self-Presentation (Impression Management)
When you inflate your self importance to appear “better” publicly.
Self-Justification (Cognitive Dissonance)
You don’t want people to see that you’re full of shit.
Self-Perception
It needs to be extreme and obvious or else you’re not getting the medal.
What are the various elements of persuasion?
- The communicator (source)
- The medium (something used to get the message across)
- The target
- The message
What is the elaboration likelihood model?
Theory identifying two ways to persuade: a central route and a peripheral route.
CENTRAL ROUTE: engaging the audience with logic
PERIPHERAL ROUTE: engaging the audience via emotions
What are two successful persuasion techniques?
foot-in-door technique: making a smaller request before a larger one.
door-in-the-face technique: making the biggest pitch first then making a smaller demand to give customers a sense of obligation.
What are the 3 types of social influence?
CONFORMITY: A change in a person’s behaviour to coincide more closely with a group standard.
COMPLIANCE: responses to direct, explicit social pressure.
OBEDIENCE: When there is a change in behaviour in response to a COMMAND from an authoritative figure.
What are the 2 psychological factors identified as contributing to conformity?
Informational social influence: the influence other people have on us because we want to be right.
Normative social influence: the influence others have on us because we want to be liked.
What is deindividualization?
The reduction in personal identity and erosion of the sense of personal responsibility when one is part of a group.
EXAMPLE: People in the KKK committed violence together because they were unidentifiable as a group.
What is social contagion?
Imitative behaviour involving the spread of actions, emotions, and ideas.
What is social facilitation and social loafing?
Social facilitation is an improvement in an individual’s performance because of the presence of others, while social loafing is someone’s tendency to exert less effort in a group because of reduced accountability for individual effort.
What are the aspects of group decision making?
GROUPTHINK: Impaired group decision making that occurs when making the right decision is less important than maintaining group harmony
RISKY SHIFT: The tendency for a group decision to be riskier than the average decision made by the individual group members.
GROUP POLARIZATION EFFECT: The solidification and further strengthening of an individual’s position as a consequence of a group discussion or interaction
What is the mere exposure affect and how does it relate to proximity in social attraction?
The phenomenon that the more individuals encounter someone or something, the more probable it is that they will start liking the person or thing even if they do not realize they have seen it before.
Relates to proximity – you are more likely to become attracted to someone you pass every day than someone you rarely see.
What is social exchange theory?
The view of social relationships as involving an exchange of rewards between people.
What does the investment model tell us about relationships?
Commitment, investment, and the availability of attractive alternative partners predict satisfaction and stability in relationships
What is individualism vs collectivism?
Individualism says your success is on the basis of you, what you do, and who you are Collectivism says your success depends on others
These two work interchangeably.
Collectivist culture is good because elders are treated with reverence and respect because they hold valued wisdom.
Individualist culture is good because it holds the belief that any person has the possibility of achieving the greatest state despite their background.
What is hazing?
Imposing hard and humiliating, tasks as part of a program of rigorous physical training to join a membership.
- Sex discussion group
- Sororities/military train
Why do we form groups according to Schutz’s “Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation” theory?
To fulfill three fundamental psychological needs:
INCLUSION (a sense of belonging)
CONTROL (the need for influence and power)
AFFECTIONS (the desire for intimacy and closeness);
List 2 factors that can increase the likelihood of resistance to authority in situations where one believes the authority figure is wrong.
When someone has knowledge, expertise, or experience in the area
when there is social support or others agreeing to resist as well
In the Aronson and Mills (1959) sex group study discussed in class, how did the researchers get women to come back to the group?
Subjects in the experimental condition were given an embarrassing initiation into the group, thus making them more likely to feel that the group was interesting and useful in order to justify the effort the subjects made via hazing to get into the group.
List and explain the three components of Sternberg’s Love Triangle.
1) Passion – fast developing physiological reaction of desire and lust for another
2) Intimacy – steadily developing physical and emotional closeness with another
3) Commitment – gradually developing cognitive agreement to be committed partners, including fidelity and resource sharing
