CHPT 13: Social Psychology Flashcards
1
Q
What is social psychology?
A
- study of how people influence others’ behaviour, beliefs, and attitudes
- we tend to think others are vulnerable to social influence…but not ourselves
2
Q
Humans are predisposed to forming intimate interpersonal networks of a particular size. How many people do we network with?
A
- 150 people or so
3
Q
What is the need-to-belong theory?
A
- humans have a biologically based need for interpersonal connections
- it literally hurts us to be isolated or rejected
4
Q
Are social influence processes adaptive?
A
- yes, under most circumstances
5
Q
What are some cons to social influence?
A
- they can turn maladaptive when they are blind or unquestioning
6
Q
What is the social comparison theory?
A
- we seek to evaluate our abilities and beliefs by comparing them with those of others
- upward (superiors) and downward (inferiors) social comparison
- both can boost our self-concept
7
Q
What is upward (superiors) social comparison?
A
- comparing yourself to a person of authority, or someone who knows more or has more experience
8
Q
What is downward (inferiors) social comparison?
A
- comparing yourself to a person lesser than you, or someone who knows less or has less experience
9
Q
What is social contagion?
A
- the spread of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors from person to person and among larger groups as affected by shared information and mimicry.
10
Q
What is mass hysteria?
A
- mass hysteria is a contagious outbreak of irrational behaviour that spreads
- ex.) UFO outbreaks, urban legends
11
Q
What are attributions?
A
- assigning causes to behaviour
- internal or external influence
12
Q
What is the fundamental attribution error?
A
- when we look at others’ behaviour
- overestimate impact of dispositional influences
- underestimate impact of situational influences
- associated with cultural factors
13
Q
Who is the least likely to consider the fundamental attribution error?
A
- Japanese and Chinese are less likely to commit this error
- look at broader picture of the situation
- prone to seeing others’ behaviour as a combination of dispositional and situational influences
14
Q
What is conformity?
A
- the tendency to alter our behaviour as a result of group pressure
15
Q
What were Solomans Asch’s experiments?
A
- 1950s
- comparison of a standard line to three lines of different length, with one matching the length of the standard size.
- only 25% of people will stick to their belief
16
Q
What is unanimity?
A
- agreement by all people involved; consensus.
- increases conformity when multiple agree
- lower conformity if only one other person differed from the majority
- only up to five or six confederates
17
Q
Which cultures are most like to conform?
A
- asian cultures more likely to conform
18
Q
What is a factor that makes you more likely to conform?
A
- having low self-esteem
19
Q
What is deindividuation?
A
- the tendency to engage in atypical behaviour when stripped of your usual identity
- become more vulnerable to social influence
- wearing masks and concealing identity leads to deindividuation (purge)
20
Q
What was the Stanford Prison Study? (Zimbardo)
A
- recruited normal young men for a two week “psychological study of prison life”
- dehumanization of prisoners and prison guards make it likely that they’d lose themselves in the social roles to which superiors assigned them
21
Q
What is an example of deindividuation in the real world?
A
- Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib
- individual differences in personality play a key role in conformity
22
Q
What is groupthink?
A
- an emphasis on group unanimity at the expense of critical thinking
- lose the capacity to evaluate issues objectively
- common knowledge is more often discussed opposed to unique knowledge
- certain symptoms make it more likely to occur
23
Q
What are some symptoms of groupthink?
A
- conformity pressure
- illusion of the group’s invulnerability
- self-censorship
- illusion of the group’s unanimity
- an unquestioned belief in the group’s moral correctness
- stereotyping of the out-group
- mindguards (stifle disagreement)
24
Q
How can group think be prevented?
A
- appointing a ‘devils advocate’
- encouraging dissent
- independent expert evaluate decisions
- holding individual follow up meetings
25
What is a cult?
- groups that exhibit intense and unquestioning devotion to a single cause
26
How do cults promote groupthink in four major ways?
- have a persuasive leader who fosters loyalty
- disconnect members from the outside world
- discourage questioning of assumptions
- gradually indoctrinate members
27
What are some cult myths?
- cult members are emotionally disturbed (most are normal, but leaders are often seriously mentally ill)
- cult members are brainwashed and tuned into unthinking zombies
28
What is the inoculation effect?
- approach to convincing people to change their minds about something by first introducing reasons why the perspective might be correct and then debunking those reasons
29
What is obedience?
- adherence to instructions from those of higher authority
- essential in our everyday life (laws)
- can produce trouble when people stop asking why they're behaving as others want them to
30
How is the Stanley Milgram experiment a source of destructive obedience?
- designed experiment to test the influence of obedience and authority on normal people
- following orders blindly
- became a landmark study
31
What is the Milgram Paradigm?
- voluntary subjects were taken to a lab and introduced to a fellow “volunteer” and the researcher
- “teachers” (subjects) were supposed to shock the “learners” (confederates) when they did not successfully repeat words
- with each failure, the shock level increased
32
What key themes emerged from the follow ups of the Milgram experiment?
- the greater physical distance between teacher and experimenter, the less obedience
- the greater the physical distance between teacher and learner, the more the obedience
- 62% displayed complete compliance
33
What are some predictors of disobedience?
- people who were more morally advanced were less likely to comply
- those with high levels of authoritarianism were more likely to comply
34
What is prosocial behaviour?
- behaviour intended to help others
35
What affects what type of social behaviour we display?
- situational factors
36
What is antisocial behaviour?
- behaviour by a person which causes, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to persons
37
What is bystander nonintervention?
- when people see someone in need but fail to help them
38
What is an example of bystander nonintervention?
- Kitty Genovese’s murder
39
What is pluralistic ignorance?
- error of assuming that no one in a group perceives things as we do
40
What is diffusion of responsibility?
- reduction in feelings of personal responsibility in the presence of others
41
Are people more likely to help when in a group or alone?
- alone
42
What is social loafing?
- phenomenon whereby individuals become less productive in groups
- due partly to diffusion of responsibility and influenced by cultural factors
43
What is a way to get past social loafing?
- one antidote is to ensure that each person in the group is identifiable
- having a very specific task
44
What is altruism?
- helping other for unselfish reasons
45
What impacts the likely hood of us helping somebody?
- situational influences can impact helping such as when you can’t escape the situation
- characteristics of the victim
- enlightenment effect from exposure to research
- empathy
46
What is aggression?
- behaviour that is intended to harm others, either verbally or physically
47
What are some aspects that can influence aggression?
- interpersonal provocation
- frustration
- media influences
- aggressive cues
- arousal level
- alcohol and other drugs (disinhibits the prefrontal cortex)
- temperature
48
What is the enlightenment effect?
- learning about psychological research can change real-world behaviour for the better
49
What are some personality aspects that can impact aggression?
- certain personality traits influence aggression (impulsivity and neuroticism)
50
How do males generally engage in aggression compared to females?
- males engage in more physical aggression, females in more relational aggression
51
What is an attitude?
- a belief that included an emotional component
| - moderate correlation with actual behaviours
52
How does culture impact aggression?
- collectivist cultures have lower aggression rates
53
what is relational aggression?
- form of indirect aggression, prevalent in girls, involving spreading of rumours, gossiping, and nonverbal putdowns for the purpose of social manipulation
54
What are some origins of attitudes?
- recognition heuristic
- personality traits
- political views
- religiosity
55
What is cognitive dissonance?
- unpleasant mental experience of tension resulting from two conflicting thoughts or beliefs
- we are motivated to reduce or eliminate this feeling
56
What is Festinger and Carlsmith’s “Measures of Performance” study?
- people who got less money for the task they performed reported it as more enjoyable than those who were paid more
57
What is the cognitive dissonance theory?
- we can reduce the conflict between two cognitions in multiple ways: by changing the first cognition, changing the second cognition, or introducing a third cognition that resolved the conflict
58
What is the self-perception theory?
- proposes that we acquire our attitudes by observing our behaviours
59
What is the impression management theory?
- proposes that that we don’t change our attitudes, but report that we have for consistency
60
What are some routes to persuasion?
- dual processes model says that there are two pathways to persuading others
- central route focuses on informational content
- peripheral route focuses on more surface aspects of the argument
61
What is the foot-in-the-door technique?
- persuasive technique involving making a small request before making a bigger one
62
What is the door-in-the-face technique?
- persuasive technique involving making an unreasonable large request before making the small request we're hoping to have granted
63
What is the low-ball technique?
- persuasive technique in which the seller of a product starts by quoting a low sales price, and then mentions all the "add-on" cost once the customer has agreed to purchase the product
64
How can characteristics of the messenger persuade people?
- attractive or famous persons
- highly credible people
- if messenger is similar to receiver
- implicit egotism effect
65
What is prejudice?
- drawing negative conclusions about a person, group of people, or situation prior to evaluating the evidence
66
What is a stereotype?
- a belief, positive or negative, about the characteristics of members of a group that is applied generally to most members of the group
- some may be accurate, but others are due to illusory correlations and the confirmation bias
- can result in ultimate attribution error
67
What is discrimination?
- negative behaviour towards members of out-groups
68
What is out-group homogeneity?
- tendency to view all individuals outside our group as highly similar
69
What is the ultimate attribution error?
- assumption that behaviours among individual members of a group are due to their internal dispositions
70
What is adaptive conservatism?
- evolutionary principle that creates a predisposition towards distrusting anything or anyone unfamiliar or different
71
What is in-group bias?
- tendency to favour individuals within out group over those form outside our group
72
What are the roots of prejudice?
- scapegoat hypothesis – arises from a need to blame other groups for our misfortunes
- just-world hypothesis – behaviours are shaped by a deep-seated assumption that the world is fair, and all things happen for a reason
- conformity – going along with others’ opinions
73
What is explicit prejudice?
- unfounded negative belief of which we're aware regarding the characteristics of an out-group
74
What is implicit prejudice?
- unfounded negative belief of which we're unaware regarding the characteristics of an out-group
75
What is a jigsaw classroom?
- educational approach to designed to minimize prejudice by requiring all children to make independent contributions to a shared project
76
What is the robbers cave study?
- cooperating to achieve an overarching goal, or towards a shared higher purpose
