Exam 1 Flashcards
Meaning Maintenance Model
When expectations are unexpectedly violated, an individual feels discomfort. This discomfort is automatically alleviated in one of three ways:
- Assimilation
- Accommodation
- Affirmation
Charles Darwin
Father of the theory of evolution. Discussed how emotions were evolutionary traits.
Wilhelm Wundt
Considered the father of psychology. He wrote a large volume that was essentially a social/cultural psychology textbook.
Norman Triplett
Responsible for the first ever published social psychology study, which showed how cyclists benefitted from social facilitation by achieving better times when cycling as a group.
John Dewey
One of the first to view psychology as a combination of innate and learned factors (nature vs nurture).
Kurt Lewin
Considered the father of modern social psychology. Saw behaviour as being determined by a combination of internal traits and external (situational) factors.
Hindsight bias
A tendency to believe we could have accurately predicted and explained events, after they have occurred.
Explain why words are poor at describing faces.
Faces are best remembered by looking at them as a whole (holistic thinking) whereas verbal descriptions focus on individual details (analytic thinking).
Does it take longer to recover from mild distress or severe distress?
Explain your answer.
It takes longer to recover from mild distress. This is because when we experience severe distress, we make full use of our coping mechanisms, while we generally try to simply “shake off” mild distress.
This effect is known as the region-beta paradox.
Observational Method
The observation and systematic recording of behaviours.
Correlational Method
The systematic measurement of two variables so as to determine their relationship.
Cannot show causation.
Experimental Method
The systematic manipulation of an IV to determine its effect on the DV.
Name the 5 traits of a good theory.
- Organizes observations
- Explains observations
- Provides direction for research, generates hypotheses
- Generates questions
- Has practical value
Social Cognition
The ways in which we think about and make sense of the social world.
Name and describe the two types of schemata.
Scripts: schemas of how certain events are expected to unfold
Stereotypes: schemas of groups based on attributes such as race, gender, etc.
Describe the two general types of thought in dual-process models.
Unconscious thought: fast, effortless, automatic
Conscious thought: slow, controlled, effortful
What is meant by the accessibility of a schema, and what is priming?
A schema’s accessibility is the degree to which it is at the forefront of your mind.
Priming is an experience/stimulus that increases the accessibility of a schema.
Heuristics
Automatic mental shortcuts that increase the speed of decision making, but can sometimes cause mistakes.
Representative heuristic
Classifying any given thing based on how well it fits a typical case in that category.
Availability heuristic
Judging the probability of a thing based on how easily it comes to mind.
Anchoring and adjustment heuristic
The use of some initial anchor as a grounding point from which one reaches an estimate; this estimate is typically skewed toward the initial anchor.
Counterfactual thinking
Thinking about the past in some different way than what actually occurred.
Social Perception
The ways in which we form impressions of others, infer things about them, and make sense of them.
Kelley’s covariation model
We rely on 3 sources of information when making attributions about someone:
- Consensus: degree to which the individual’s behaviour is the same as other people in the same situation
- Distinctiveness: degree to which the individual acts differently across situations
- Consistency: degree to which the individual acts the same way in the same situation
