Exam 4 FINAL Flashcards
What is social psychology?
The study of how our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are influenced by the presence of others.
What is Hindsight Bias?
The belief that we “knew all along,” invoked after we know the facts.
What is a theory?
Integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events.
What is a hypothesis?
A testable proposition that describes a relationship that may exist between events.
What are the six big ideas of psychology?
- We construct our social reality.
- Social intuition is powerful but perilous.
- Social influences shape our behavior.
- Inner attitudes affect our behavior.
- Social behavior is biologically rooted.
- Social psychology principles are applicable in everyday life.
What is the Spotlight Effect?
The belief that others are paying more attention to our behavior than they are.
What is the Illusion of Transparency?
The illusion that our contained emotions can be leaked and read by others.
What is Self Concept?
The overall set of beliefs that people have about their personal attributes.
What is unrealistic optimism?
The self-serving bias that most of us are inclined to optimism.
What is the False Consensus Effect?
The tendency to overestimate the commonality of one’s opinions and unsuccessful behavior.
What is the False Uniqueness Effect?
The tendency to underestimate the commonality of one’s abilities and successful behaviors.
Humans begin to form a sense of self around __ and __ months old.
18; 24
What is the Independent View of the Self?
The view of ourselves that is defined by our own internal thoughts, feelings, and actions.
What is the Interdependent View of the Self?
The view of ourselves that as defined by our relationships with other people.
What is Self-Esteem?
The overall evaluation (positive or negative) that we have of ourselves.
What is a Self-Serving Bias?
The tendency to perceive oneself favorably.
When do attitudes predict behavior?
When the attitude is potent/specific to the behavior, OR when the other influences on what we say/do are minimal.
What is the self-presentation theory?
The theory that we want to stay consistent.
What is the cognitive dissonance theory?
The theory that tension arises when someone is aware of two inconsistent cognitions.
What is the self-perception theory?
The theory that when we don’t know about something, we learn through our own behaviors.
What is a role?
The set of norms that defines how people in a given social setting should behave.
What is automatic thinking?
Thinking with no conscious deliberation of thoughts, perceptions, assumptions.
What is controlled thinking?
Thinking that is effortful and deliberate.
What is priming?
The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept.
What is overconfidence?
The tendency to be more confident than correct.
What are schemas?
Mental structures that organize our knowledge of the social world.
What are heuristics?
Thinking strategies that enable quick, efficient judgments.
What is a representativeness heuristic?
A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case.
What is an availability heuristic?
A mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind.
What is counterfactual thinking?
Mentally changing some aspect of the past in imagining what might have been.
What is illusory correlation?
Perception of a relationship where none exists, or the perception of it being stronger than it actually is.
When in a _________ mood, everything is worse. When in a ______ mood, everything is better.
depressed; good
What is belief perserverance?
Persistence of one’s initial conceptions.
What is the misinformation effect?
A person’s memory of events is affected by information they receive after the fact.
What is the attribution theory?
The theory that people explain others behavior by attributing it to internal dispositions or external situations.
What is a fundamental attribution error?
The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others’ behaviors.
What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
A case whereby people have an explanation about what another person is like and treat them accordingly.
What is evolutionary psychology?
The study of evolution of cognition and behavior using principles based on natural selection.
What are the criticisms of evolutionary psychology?
- It is mostly theory.
- Can only explain what has already happened with plausible explanations.
- It is not inherently falsifiable.
What is natural selection?
The evolutionary process by which heritable traits that best enable organisms to survive and reproduce.
What is gender?
Characteristics, whether biological or socially influenced, that we associate with males, females, or others.
What is sex?
Biological categories of male or female.
What are gender roles?
Sets of behavioral expectations for men and women.
What is culture?
The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
What are social norms?
Standards for accepted and expected behavior.
______ think about and initiate sex more often.
Men
__________ are more inspired by emotional passion.
Women
___ seek out quantity in mating, whereas _________ seek out quality.
Men; women
What are the Big Five Social Beliefs?
Cynicism, social complexity, reward for application, spirituality, fate control.
What is conformity?
A change in behavior or belief as the result of real or imagined group pressure.
What are the three varieties of conformity?
Acceptance, compliance, and obedience.
What is compliance conformity?
Publicly acting in accord with a request while privately disagreeing.
Ex: saying you like your friend’s spouse even though you don’t.
What is acceptance conformity?
Both acting and believing in accord with social pressure.
Ex: exercising because you believe it is healthy, whether or not you’ve done the research.
What is obedience conformity?
Acting in high accord with a direct order or command.
Ex: dress code
What is mass hysteria?
Suggestibility to problems that spreads throughout a large group of people.
What are factors that breed obedience?
- Victim’s emotional distance.
- Closeness/credibility of the authority.
- Institutional authority.
- Liberating effects of group influence.
Central Route Persuasion occurs when:
interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.
Peripheral Route Persuasion occurs when:
people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker’s attractiveness.
_____________________ Persuasion requires the arguments to be strong and compelling.
Central Route
What is the Sleeper Effect?
Delayed impact of a message that occurs when an initially discounted message becomes effective, as we remember the message but forget the reason for discounting it.
What is a group?
Two or more people who interact with and influence one another and perceive themselves as an “us.”
What are social roles?
Shared expectations in a group about how particular people are supposed to behave in that group.
What is social faciliatation?
Strengthening of dominant responses whether correct or incorrect in the presence of others.
What is evaluation apprehension?
Concern for how others are evaluating us.
What is social loafing?
When people exert less effort because they will not be held individually accountable.
What is deindividuation?
The loosening of normal constraints on behavior when people cannot be differentiated, leading to an increase in impulsive and deviant acts.
What factors lead to deindividuation?
Group size, low self-awareness, anonymity, arousing/distracting activities,
What is leadership?
The process by which certain group members motivate and guide the group.
What are the three leadership styles?
Task leaders, Social leaders, and Transformational leaders.
What are task leaders?
Leaders who organize work, set standards, and focus on clear, short-term goals and reward people who meet them.
What are social leaders?
Leaders who build teamwork, mediate conflict, and offer support.
What are transformational leaders?
Leaders who inspire followers to focus on common, long-term goals.
What is groupthinking?
A kind of thinking in which maintaining group cohesiveness and solidarity is more important than considering the facts in a realistic manner.
What is groupthink caused by?
Cohesive group, isolation of the group from the dissenting viewpoints, directive leader.
What is group cohesiveness?
Qualities of a group that bind members together and promote liking between members.
What are the 8 symptoms of groupthink?
- Illusion of invulnerability.
- Unquestioned belief in the group’s morality.
- Rationalization.
- Stereotypes view of opponent.
- Conformity pressure.
- Self-censorship.
- Illusion of unanimity.
- Mindguards.
What is normative influence?
Conformity based on a person’s desire to fulfill others’ expectations, often to gain acceptance.
What is informational influence?
Conformity occurring when people accept evidence about reality provided by other people.
What was Sherif’s method?
Assessing suggestibility regarding seeming movement of light.
What was Asch’s method?
Agreement with others’ obviously wrong perceptual judgments.
What was Milgram’s method?
Complying with commands to shock another.
What 8 factors predict conformity?
- Difficulty of the task
- Group size
- Group unanimity
- Cohesiveness
- Public
- No prior commitment
- Status of the other group members
- Crisis
What is persuasion?
When a message changes our beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors.
What is the need for cognition?
The motivation to think and analyze.
How do we resist persuasion?
By strengthening personal commitment.
What is prejudice?
A negative attitude towards people in a distinguishable group based solely on their membership to that group.
What is discrimination?
Unjustifiable harmful action towards members of a group solely because of their membership to that group.
What is a stereotype?
A generalization made about a group of people.
What is instrumental aggression?
Aggression with a goal other than causing pain.
What is aggression?
Intentional behavior aimed at causing harm or psychological pain to another person.
What is hostile aggression?
Aggression stemming from feelings of anger that aims to inflict pain or injury.
What is moral aggression?
Aggressing in retribution for perceived moral violations.
What is the frustration-aggression theory?
The idea that frustration increases the probability of an aggressive response.
What is the weapons effect?
An increase in aggression at the mere sight/presence of a weapon.
What is the catharsis hypothesis?
Conventional wisdom suggests doing something aggressive to reduce feelings of aggression.
What is the need to belong?
A motivation to bond with others in relationships that provide ongoing, positive interactions.
What is self-disclosure?
Revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others.
What is disclosure reciprocity?
The tendency for one’s intimacy of self-disclosure to match that of their partner.
What are the two types of love?
Passionate and Companionate.
What is passionate love?
An intense longing we feel for a person, accompanied by physiological arousal.
What is companionate love?
The intimacy and affection we feel when we care deeply for a person and our lives are deeply intertwined.
What is ethnocentricism?
What is ethnocentricism?
What is social identity?
Part of our identity that stems from our membership in groups.
What is the out-group homogeneity effect?
In-group members perceive out-group members as being more similar than they really are.
What is subtyping?
Exceptions to the “rule.”
Ex: being smart for a woman.
What is subgrouping?
Coming up with a stereotype for a subset of a population.
Ex: he’s a middle-class black person.
What is a stereotype threat?
The apprehension experienced by members of a group that their behavior might confirm a cultural stereotype.
What are implicit biases?
Biases hidden from oneself.
What in in-group bias?
The tendency to favor members of one’s own group and give them special preference over people who belong to other groups.
What did Bandura say about aggression?
People learn social behavior through observation and imitation of others and by being rewarded and punished.
What is absolute deprevation?
The absence of the minimal resources to afford basic necessities for life.
What is relative deprevation?
The experience of being deprived of something you feel you are entitled to.
What is displacement?
The redirection of aggression to a target other than the source of the frustration.
Who is especially vulnerable to displacement?
Outgroup targets.
What is frustration?
the perception that you are being prevented from attaining a goal.
What is the social dominance orientation?
A personality trait measuring an individual’s support for social hierarchy.
What is ostracism?
Acts of excluding or ignoring.
What is the matching phenomenon?
We seek others with similar degree of physical attractiveness.
What is complementarity?
The tendency in a relationship for each to complete what is missing in the other.
What is functional distance?
Proximity/geographical nearness.
What is the Mere Exposure Effect?
The finding that the more exposure we have to a stimulus, the more apt we are to like it.
What is similarity?
The match between our interests, attitudes, values, background, or personality and those of the other person.
What is complementarity?
When people complete each other.
What are the 3 elements of Sternberg’s love triangle?
Intimacy, passion, and commitment.
What are the three attachment styles?
Anxious, avoidant, and secure.
What is self-disclosure?
Revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others.
What is disclosure reciprocity?
The tendency for one person’s intimacy of self-disclosure to match that of a conversational partner.
Individualistic cultures have _______ divorce than communal cultures.
more
What is altruism?
A motive to increase another’s welfare without conscious regard for one’s self-interest.
What is prosocial behavior?
Any act performed with the goal of benefiting another person.
What does the Social Exchange Theory say?
What we do stems from desire to maximize rewards and minimize costs.
What is the reciprocity norm?
Without an opportunity to return help in kind, many people do not want to accept help.
What is the social responsibility norm?
People should help those who need help, without regard to future exchanges.
What are the PROS of empathy-induced helping?
- Produces sensitive helping
- Inhibits aggression
- Increases cooperation
- Improves attitude toward stigmatized groups
What are the CONS of empathy-induced helping?
- Can be harmful
- Can’t address all needs
- Burns out
- Feed favoritism, injustice, and indifference
What is the Bystander Effect?
The greater the number of bystanders who witness an emergency, the less likely any one of them is to help the victim.
What are the five steps in Latane and Darley’s decision tree?
- Captures the attention of the individual.
- Individual evaluates the emergency.
- Decides on responsibility.
- Belief of competence.
- Decides whether or not to help.
What factors help predict helping?
Individual personalities, gender, culture, and religion.
Whereas _____ are more likely to perform chivalrous and heroic acts, ________ are more likely to be helpful in long-term relationships that involve greater commitment.
Men; women
What are the requirements to categorize a moral foundation?
- Being Common in Third-party Normative Judgements
- Automatic affective evaluations
- Being culturally widespread (not necessarily universal)
- Evidence of innate preparedness
- Robust pre-existing evolutionary model
What is the moral foundation theory?
The idea that several innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of ethics.
What is the moral reasoning theory?
The process by which individuals try to determine the difference between what is right and wrong.
What are the three categories of moral development?
Pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional.
What are the six stages of development?
- Obedience and punishment driven.
- Self-interest driven.
- Social approval and effects on relationships
- Morality is dictated by laws, in order for society to function
- Social contract driven
- Universal ethical principles
What is the moral identity theory?
The idea morality is not based on reasoning or emotions, but based on value-driven identity.
What are the two types of moral emotions?
Self-conscious and other-focused.
What are the types of SELF-CONSCIOUS moral emotions?
Shame, embarrassment, and guilt.
What are the types of OTHER-FOCUSED moral emotions?
Contempt, anger, and disgust.
