Exam 1: Chapters 1-3 Flashcards
What is social psychology?
Objective and reliable descriptions, explanations of human behavior, the way in which individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context
What does social psychology rely heavily on?
Objective and reliable descriptions (it’s a science), and stats and psych methods
What is the cultural perspective of social psychology?
Set of beliefs, customs, habits, and languages shared by people living in a particular time or place
What is the definition of the sociocultural perspective?
A person’s prejudices, preferences, and political persuasions that are affected by factors that work at the group level
What are some factors of the sociocultural perspective?
Nationality, social class, and current historical trends
Why is psychology an interdisciplinary bridge?
Scientists from other areas of study look into human behavior, varied disciplines influence social behavior
What are social norms?
Rules about socially appropriate behavior
What is the evolutionary perspective?
human social behaviors are rooted in physical and psychological predispositions that helped our ancestors to survive and reproduce
What is natural selection?
Animals pass on characteristics to their offspring to help them survive and in turn produce stronger offspring
What are adaptations?
Characteristic that helps an animal to survive better in their environment
What is the social learning perspective?
Past learning experiences are determinants of social behaviors
What compare/contrasts with the sociocultural perspective?
social learning
What does social learning really argue?
We have learning systems that we use to learn and then influence our behaviors
What is an example of social learning?
Classical and operant conditioning
What is the social cognitive perspective?
Subjective evaluation of social events, how the individual thinks and feels in that given moment
What are the benefits of combining perspectives?
Helps to form a fuller picture
What drives the social cognitive perspective?
What we pay attention to in a social situation, how we interpret it, and how we connect the current situation to related experiences in memory
What drives the social learning perspective?
Rewards and punishments, observing how people are rewarded and punished for their social behaviors
What is the social principle of establishing social ties?
the need to connect and be supported by others
What is social behavior?
Goal oriented
What is the principle of understanding ourselves and others?
By understanding ourselves and our relationships with others we are able to manage our lives more easily
What are the principles of social behavior?
Establishing social ties, understanding ourselves and others, gain and maintain status, defend ourselves and those we value, and attracting and retaining mates
What is the principle of gaining and maintaining status?
Winning and losing are matters of profound importance, the struggles for status and places in society
What is the principle of defending ourselves and those we value?
People are extremely motivated to defend themselves when their reputations, resources, or families are threatened
What is the principle of attracting and retaining mates?
The goal of reproduction underlies all the social goals
What is the person?
features or characteristics that individuals carry into social situations
What is the situation?
The events or circumstances outside the person, can range from fleeting events in the immediate social context to long lasted influences
What are person-situation interactions?
Because there is a lot of different things going on different social situations can trigger different goals, your goal may depend on what you are paying attention to in a given situation
What are descriptive methods?
Procedure for measuring or recording behaviors, thoughts, and feelings in their natural state (including naturalistic observations, case studies, archival studies, surveys, and psychological tests)
What are naturalistic observations?
Going somewhere and observing natural observations without influence from researchers
What are case studies?
Trying to study one particular person and learning something from that person
What are archives?
Historical resources that we can use to answer a particular research question
What are surveys?
Surveying the population on some kind of topic
What are psychological tests?
Testing to see if someone has a specific illness or disorder
What is manipulating variables?
Independent variable subject to the changes of an experiment to analyze its effect on a dependent variable
What are potential limitations?
High variability of the data, apparent from the considerable scatter of the data points above and below the fitted curve
What is field experimentation?
That uses some controlled elements of traditional lab experiments, but takes place in natural, real-world settings
Why do social psychologists combine different methods?
weaknesses and strengths
What is correlation?
A statistical measure that expresses the extent to which two variables are linearly related
What is positive correlation?
Relationship between two variables that tend to move in the same direction
What is negative correlation?
Relationship between two variables in which one variable increases as the other decreases
What is no causal relationship?
the relationship that is evident between the two variables is not completely the result of one variable directly affecting the other
What are ethical risks in social psychological research?
informed consent, debrief, protection of participants, deception, confidentiality, and withdrawal from an investigation
What are ethical safeguards in psychological research?
an institutional review board that must approve the study before it can begin
Psychologists explain that men are more likely to be aggressive because….
It is the societal perspective and group membership (men) are typically more aggressive
What is MOST difficult to study using naturalistic observation?
determining the exact cause of a subjects behavior
In which technique do people report their beliefs, feelings, or behaviors to the researcher?
Survey
What are goals?
A desired outcome, something one wishes to achieve or accomplish
What are motives?
A high-level goal fundamental to social survival
What is conscious goal pursuit?
Process of consciously focusing on aspects of our environment ourselves
What is automaticity?
The ability of a behavior or cognitive process to operate without conscious guidance once it is put into motion
What is motivation?
What drives us
What is thought suppression?
We sometimes try to reach difficult goals by suppressing thoughts incompatible with those goals
What is knowledge?
Our view of the world
What is schema?
Stereotypes of what they should be
What is an exemplar?
Idea of a person, place, or thing
What is sensory memory?
Stored for a few seconds. Comes in through sight, smell, touch, hearing, vision
What is priming and chronic accessibility?
When one variable facilitates the manifestation of something else
What is priming?
the process of activating knowledge or goals, of making them ready for use
What is self-concept?
A mental representation capturing our views and beliefs about ourselves
What is self-esteem?
Our attitude towards ourselves
What is self-regulation?
Process which people select, monitor, and adjust their strategies in an attempt to reach their goals
What is self-presentation?
The process through which we try to control the impressions people form of us
What is the mere presence of others?
the presence of others creates situations that affect how we think, feel, and behave
What are affordances?
an opportunity or threat provided by a situation
What are descriptive norms?
A norm that defines what is commonly done in a situation
What is pluralistic ignorance?
People in a group misperceive the beliefs of others because everyone acts inconsistently with their beliefs
What are injunctive norms?
Norm that describes what is commonly approved or disapproved in an situation
What is a full cycle approach?
Conducting organizational behavior research
What is the process of a full cycle approach?
observation of naturally occurring phenomena and proceeds by traveling back and forth between observation and manipulation-based research settings, establishing the power, generality, and conceptual underpinnings of the phenomenon along the way
What are scripted situations?
What you expect to happen when you are going into a situation
What are strong vs. weak situations?
Demand certain behaviors, allow for a variety of behaviors
What is individualistic culture?
Where people put their own personal goals, needs, etc. above the goals, needs, etc. of the whole group, emphasizes personal goal pursuit and autonomy
What is a collectivistic culture?
Prioritizes the group over the individual, emphasizes maintaining relationships and social harmony
What is the bridging theory?
That social psychology underuses its neighbors and ties into other areas
Why do people change the situations?
Every person has the ability to do this
What is the person-situation fit?
Exent to which a person and situation are compatible
Why do people choose their situation?
We choose situations based on the things that they provide
Why do different situations prime different parts of the person?
Make more ready relevant knowledge
How do different people respond differently to the same situation?
Attunements, different meanings, person-situation fit
What is one assumption of natural selection?
organisms reproduce themselves, that this process results in variations, and that some of the variations survive better than others.
What is a script?
the set of behaviors and expectations they know will be part of the event
What is the anchoring and adjustment heuristic?
Mental shortcut through which people begin with a rough estimation as a starting point and then adjust this estimate to take into account unique characteristics of the present situation
What are the four core processes of social cognition?
Attention, interpretation, judgement, memory
What is attention?
selecting from the information that is available
What is interpretation?
giving the information we are receiving meaning
What is judgment?
using information from impressions taken to give meaning and make decisions
What is memory?
storing and recalling information for later use
What are the goals of social cognition?
Flexibility, think well of self, and accuracy
What are arousal and circadian rhythms?
Cognitive shortcuts and distraction
What is the circadian cycle?
the cycles that tell the body when to sleep, wake, and eat—the biological and psychological processes that oscillate in predictable patterns each day
What is the need for structure?
Motivation to simplify
What are dispositional inferences?
When you make inferences about a person based on a characteristic that they may possess, to conserve mental energy
What is correspondence bias?
Tendency for observers to overestimate the causal influence of personality factors on behavior and to underestimate the causal role of situational influences
What is fundamental attribution error?
the tendency people have to overemphasize personal characteristics and ignore situational factors in judging others’ behavior
What are heuristics?
mental shortcuts that allow people to solve problems and make judgments quickly and efficiently
What are complex situations and time pressure?
we are more likely to rely on cognitive shortcuts when we are in complex situations or under time pressure
What are cognitive strategies for enhancing and protecting the self?
Social comparison, self-serving attributions, exaggerating strengths, diminishing weaknesses, believing in control
What is social comparison?
People drive opinions and behaviors by comparing themselves to others to improve their self-image or deplete it
What are self-serving attributions?
tendency to take credit and blame failings on someone else
What are exaggerating strengths & diminishing weakness?
by manipulating the relative importance of different traits and abilities we can boost our self-image
What is believing in control?
believing that we have control over certain situations and events in our lives
What is the correspondent inference theory?
People determine whether a behavior corresponds to someones internal disposition by asking whether the behavior was intended, the behaviors consequences were considered, the behavior was freely chosen, and the behavior occurred despite countervailing forces
What is mood?
pervasive and sustained feeling tone that is endured internally and which impacts nearly all aspects of a person’s behavior in the external worl
What is the need for cognition?
ndividual’s tendency and enjoyment in seeking, evaluating, and integrating multiple relevant sources of information toward making sense of their surroundings
What are unexpected events?
Something that you did not expect to happen in a given situation
What is social interdependence?
Outcomes depend on others
What is accuracy motivation requiring cognitive resources?
Necessary attentional resources
What is a subgoal?
represent the purpose of a set of steps
What are the differences between collectivistic and individualistic cultures in terms of positive-self-
regard?
Individualists perceive themselves as stable entities, autonomous from other people and their environment, while collectivists view themselves as dynamic entities, continually defined by their social context and relationships.
How are emotions and attitudes different?
Emotions are short and intense feelings that arise in response to events, objects or individuals. Attitudes are the results of individuals’ evaluations which explain why people respond to certain events, ideas or individuals differently.
What is self-serving bias? Think of an example.
when we attribute positive events and successes to our own character or actions, but blame negative results to external factors
What is external validity? Think of an example.
the extent to which you can generalize the findings of a study to other situations, people, settings and measures
What is a theory?
an idea or set of ideas that is intended to explain facts or events
What are demand characteristics?
extraneous variables that can affect the outcomes of the study
What is attributional logic?
explain how people determine the causes of behaviors
What is the discounting principle?
If there is a good explanation for an effect, people will disregard other possible factors as irrelevant
What is the false consensus effect?
tendency to overestimate the extent to which others agree with us
What is a strong situation?
an experimental condition offering unambiguous stimuli predicting or. constituting hedonically strong events that uniformly guide response sets across individuals.
What are the 4 major perspectives in social psychology and what do each argue?
Attention, judgment, interpretation, memory
What is the self-fulfilling prophecy?
process through which an originally false expectation leads to its own confirmation
Why is randomization important in research?
Eliminates selection biases, balances groups, controls some confounds, forms the basis for different tests
What is the perception of control? Why is it important in social psychology?
Belief in one’s ability to exert control over the environment and to produce desired results is essential for an individual’s well being
Our views and beliefs about ourselves make up our?
Self-concept
A strong situation is one which…
Has very obvious injunctive norms
The extent to which a person and a situation are compatible is known as…
Person-situation fit
The driving force that moves people toward their desired outcome is known as…
Motivation
Which of the following is true regarding motivation?
Motivation is the energy that drives social behavior
all of the following are core processes of social cognition except
Expectancy confirmation
After failing a test for the first time, Marla compares herself to her little brother, who failed four tests in one semester. Marla feels better about herself after making this comparison. This is an example of….
Downward social comparison
What is the person-situation fit?
Extent to which a person and a situation are compatible
What is downward social comparison?
The process of comparing ourselves with those that are well off
What is upward social comparison?
Comparing ourselves to someone who is better off
What is the representativeness heuristic?
People use to classify something as belonging to a certain category that is typically the same for that category
What is the covariation model?
People determine the cause of someones behavior by assessing whether other people act in similar ways
what is the combination of consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency that motivates people to make a situational attribution?
People typically make a situational attribution when all three (consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency) are high.
What are the pros of naturalistic observation?
Taps into real world behaviors, doesn’t rely on people to report their own experiences
What are the cons of naturalistic observation?
Research may interfere with ongoing behavior, some interesting behaviors are rare, researcher may selectively attend to certain events and ignore others
What are the pros of case studies?
Provides a source of hypotheses, allows study of rare behaviors
What are the cons of case studies?
Observer bias, difficult to generalize findings, impossible to reconstruct events
What are the pros of archives?
easy access to large amounts or prerecorded data
What are the cons of archives?
Many interesting behaviors are never recorded
What are the pros of surveys?
Allows study of difficult to observe behaviors, thoughts, and feelings
What are the cons of surveys?
People who respond might not be representative, participants may be biased or give untruthful repsonses
What are the pros of psychological tests?
Allows measurement of characteristics not always easily observable
what are the cons of psychological tests?
May be unreliable, may be reliable but not valid
What are the pros of laboratory experiments?
Allows cause-effect conclusions, allows control of confounds
What are the cons of lab experiments?
Mat not represent how events naturally unfold, responses may not be natural cause they are being knowledgeably observed
What are the pros of field experiments?
Cause effect, natural responses
What are the cons of field experiments?
Manipulations may not be natural, less control of confounds than in lab experiments
