College 1

Question 1

social reality consists of

Answer 1

1. situation (what is going on?)
2. person (who processes information?)
3. cognitive processes (How does thinking and feeling work?)

Question 2

2 pilars of social cognition research

Answer 2

1. phenomenology
2. cognitive psychology

Question 3

phenomenology

Answer 3

systematic description of how people say they experience themselves, their social environment and themselves in their social environments

Question 4

cognitive psychology

Answer 4

studying how basic human cognitions (memory, attention, perception, etc) are organized and different ways to use them

Question 5

radical behaviorism

Answer 5

A form of behaviorism that attempts to understand all human behavior, including private events such as thoughts and feelings, in terms of controlling variables in the history of the person and the species.

Question 6

operant conditioning

Answer 6

a method of learning that uses rewards and punishment to modify behavior.

Question 7

behaviourism

Answer 7

focuses on the idea that all behaviors are learned through interaction with the environment.

Question 8

introspection

Answer 8

Reflecting on a situation and how you feel about it. Talking with a mental health professional while exploring your mental and emotional states.

Question 9

cognitive dissonance

Answer 9

postulates that an underlying psychological tension is created when an individual’s behavior is inconsistent with his or her thoughts and beliefs.
3 components:
the inner conflict, the discomfort caused by the inner conflict, and the attempt to resolve the discomfort

Question 10

homo economicus

Answer 10

a hypothetical person who behaves in exact accordance with their rational self-interest.
“using rational assessments, Homo economicus attempts to maximize utility as a consumer and economic profit as a producer”
- rational
- logical (free from cognitive processing errors)
- objective (free from emotions)
- maximizing utility

Question 11

normative social influence

Answer 11

using others as a reference for what should be done

Question 12

informational social influence

Answer 12

using others as a source for information

Question 13

distortion of perception (or reality)

Answer 13

thinking the wrong answer is actually correct

Question 14

social cognition

Answer 14

is the study of how humans make sense of and construct their social realities

Question 15

Asch conformity experiment / Asch paradigm

Answer 15

The experiment concluded that people conform for two main reasons: they want to fit in with the group (normative influence) and because they believe the group is more informed than they are (informational influence)

Question 16

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) cognitive dissonance experiment

Answer 16

The participants experienced dissonance between the conflicting cognitions of telling someone that a particular task is interesting when the truth is, they found it rather uninteresting and boring.