Final Exam Flashcards
What Does Attribution Theory Focus On
How people interpret the causes of events, such as external pressures or internal traits.
Define Social Cognition
A movement in social psychology that began in the 1970s that focused on thoughts about people and about social relationships.
What Do People Spend Most Of Their Time Thinking About
Other people, implying that humans evolved to rely on each other for information and help.
What Is (does research suggest) Thinking For
Arguing and trying to convince others.
To communicate with others and influence them.
Define Cognitive Miser
A term used to describe people’s reluctance to do much extra thinking.
Define Stroop Test
A standard measure of effortful control over responses, requiring participants to identify the colour of a word (which may name a different colour).
Define Stroop Effect
In the Stroop test, the finding that people have difficulty overriding the automatic tendency to read the word rather than name the ink colour.
Define Knowledge Structures
Organized packets of information that are stored in memory.
Formed when a set of related concepts are frequently brought to mind or activated.
Automatic thinking relies on knowledge structures.
Define Schemas
Knowledge structures that represent substantial information about a concept, its attributes, and its relationships to other concepts.
Help organize information by connecting beliefs that are related to each other. Help the mind form expectancies.
What Is Something That Sparks Deliberate Thinking (Schemas)
A violation of expectancies.
Define Scripts
Knowledge structures that define situations and guide behaviour.
Schemas about certain kinds of events.
Can be learned by direct experience or by observing others.
Define Priming
Activating an idea in someone’s mind so that related ideas are more accessible.
Define Framing
How information is presented to others.
Define Gain Framed Appeal
Focuses on how doing something will add to your health.
Define Loss Framed Appeal
Focuses on how not doing something will subtract from your health.
Thought Suppression Processes (automatic and deliberate)
Automatic: keeps a lookout for anything that might remind the person of the unwanted thought. Checks all incoming information for danger.
Deliberate: redirects attention away from the unpleasant thought.
Define Counter Regulation
The “whatever” effect that occurs when people indulge in a behaviour they are trying to regulate after an initial regulation failure.
Define Attributions
The causal explanations people give for their own and others’s behaviours, and for events in general.
Bernard Weiner And The Two Dimensional Theory Of Attribution For Success And Failure
First dimension: internal verses external.
Second dimension: stable verses unstable.
People prefer to attribute their success to ability and effort but tend to attribute their failures to bad luck or task difficulty.
Internal, Stable Attributions (Two Dimensional Theory Of Attribution For Success And Failure)
Ability
Success: intelligence or talent
Failure: lack of relevant ability
Internal, Unstable Attributions (Two Dimensional Theory Of Attribution For Success And Failure)
Effort
Success: work hard
Failure: low effort
Cultural Differences For Effort And Ability (collectivist vs individualist)
Collectivist: Effort
Individualist: Ability
External, Stable Attributions (Two Dimensional Theory Of Attribution For Success And Failure)
Difficulty of task
Success: task was easy
Failure: task was hard
External, Unstable Attributions (Two Dimensional Theory Of Attribution For Success And Failure)
Luck
Little credit or blame due to the person.
Define Self Serving Bias
The tendency to take credit for success but deny blame for failure. Or internal attributions to success and external attributions to failure.
Define Actor / Observer Bias
The tendency for actors to make external attributions and observers to make internal attributions.
Define Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias)
The tendency for observers to attribute other people’s behaviour to internal or dispositional causes and to downplay situational causes.
Explanations For Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias)
- Behaviour is more noticeable than situational factors.
- People assign insufficient weight to situational causes even when they are made aware of them.
- People are cognitive misers; they often take quick and easy answers rather than thinking long and hard about things.
Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias) In Different Cultures (Collectivist vs Individualist)
Collectivist: more emphasis on situational explanations
Individualist: more common to have fundamental attribution error (correspondence bias)
How Can Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias) Be Reduced
Taking other people’s perspectives. (walking in their shoes)
Explaining Actions (Intentional And Unintentional Behaviour)
Intentional: typically interpreted and explained on the basis of reasons
Unintentional: explained more by causes
Define Heuristics
Mental shortcuts that provide quick estimates about the likelihood of uncertain events.
Define Representativeness Heuristic
The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the extent to which it resembles the typical case.
Define Availability Heuristic
The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which relevant instances come to mind.
Define Simulation Heuristic
The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which you can imagine or mentally simulate it.
Define Anchoring And Adjustment Heuristic
The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by using a starting point (called an anchor) and then making adjustments up or down.
Define Confirmation Bias
The tendency to notice and search for information that confirms one’s beliefs and to ignore information that disconfirms one’s beliefs.
Define Illusory Correlation
The tendency to overestimate the link between variables that are related only slightly or not at all.
Define One Shot Illusory Correlation
An illusory correlation the occurs after exposure to only one unusual behaviour preformed by only one member of an unfamiliar group.
Define Base Rate Fallacy
The tendency to ignore or underuse base rate information and instead to be influenced by the distinctive features of the case being judged.
Define Hot Hand
The tendency for gamblers who get lucky to think the have a “hot” hand and their luck will continue.
Define Gambler’s Fallacy
The tendency to believe that a particular chance event is affected by previous events and that chance events will “even out” in the short run.
Define False Consensus Effect
The tendency to overestimate the number of other people who share one’s opinions, attitudes, values, and beliefs.
Define False Uniqueness Effect
The tendency to underestimate the number of other people who share one’s most prized characteristics and abilities.
Define Theory Perseverance
Proposes that once the mind draws a conclusion, it tends to stick with that conclusion unless there is overwhelming evidence to change it.
Due to: the mind being quite impressed with its own activity.
Define Statistical Regression (regression to the mean)
The statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behaviour to be followed by others that are less extreme and closer to average.
Define Illusion Of Control
The false belief that one can influence certain events, especially random or chance ones.
Define Counterfactual Thinking
Imagining alternatives to past or present events or circumstances.
Define First Instinct Fallacy
The false belief that it is not better to change one’s first answer on a test even if one starts to think that a different answer is correct.
Define Upward Counterfactuals
Imagining alternatives that are better than actuality.
Define Downward Counterfactuals
Imagining alternatives that are worse than actuality.
Define Regret
Involves feeling sorry for one’s misfortunes, limitations, losses, transgressions, shortcomings, or mistakes.
Define Debiasing
Reducing errors and biases by getting people to use deliberate processing rather than automatic processing.
Define Meta Cognition
Reflecting on one’s own thought processes.
Define Emotion
A conscious evaluation of a reaction that is clearly linked to some event.
Define Mood
A feeling state that is not clearly linked to some event.
Define Affect
The automatic response that something is good (positive affect) or bad (negative affect)
Define Conscious Emotion
A powerful and clearly unified feeling state, such as anger or joy.
Define Automatic Affect
A quick response of liking or disliking toward something.
Define Arousal
A physiological reaction, including faster heartbeat and faster or heavier breathing, linked to most conscious emotions.
Define James Lange Theory Of Emotion
The proposition that the bodily processes of emotion come first, and then the mind’s perception of these bodily reactions and creates the subjective feeling of emotion.
Define Facial Feedback Hypothesis
The idea that feedback from the face muscles evokes or magnifies emotions.
Schachter Singer Theory Of Emotion
The idea that emotion has two components: a bodily state of general arousal and a cognitive label that specifies the emotion.
Arousal determines that there is going to be an emotion.
Define Excitation Transfer
The idea that arousal from one event can transfer to a later event.
Define Appraisal Theory Of Emotion
Is the idea that emotion is determined by how an event in the environment is appraised (i.e. evaluated, interpreted, explained)
Define Affect Balance
The frequency of positive emotions minus the frequency of negative emotions.
Define Life Satisfaction
An evaluation of how one’s life is generally and how it compares to some standard.
Define Hedonic Treadmill
A theory proposing that people stay at about the same level of happiness regardless of what happens to them.
Define Emodiversity
Refers to how much a person experiences a variety of different emotions.
Define Anger
An emotional response to a real or imagined threat or provocation.
Ways People Deal With Anger
Never show anger, vent anger, get rid of one’s anger.
Define Catharsis Theory
The proposition that expressing negative emotions and is therefore good for the psyche
Effects Of Guilt
Guilt motivates people to do good acts. i.e. apologizing
Define Guilt
An unpleasant moral emotion associated with a specific instance in which one has acted badly or wrongly
Define Shame
A moral emotion that, like guilt, involves feeling bad but, unlike guilt, spreads to the whole person. i.e. I am a bad person
Define Survivor Guilt
An unpleasant emotion associated with living through an experience during which other people died
Define Disgust
A strong negative feeling of repugnance and revulsion
What Do Emotions Do
Promote belongingness, communicate social information, kinda causes behaviour, guides thinking and learning, (anticipated) emotion guides decisions and choices, help and hurt decision making
Define Affect As Information Hypothesis
The idea that people judge something as good or bad by asking themselves if they feel good or bad about it.
Define Affective Forecasting
The ability to predict one’s emotional reactions to future events.
Define Risk As Feelings Hypothesis
The idea that people rely on emotional processes to evaluate risk, with the result that their judgements may be biased by emotional factors
Define Broaden And Build Theory
The proposition that positive emotions expand an individual’s attention and mindset and promote increasing one’s resources
Benefits Of Positive Emotions
Helps flexibility, creativity, and problem solving ability
Are Emotions Different Across Cultures
No
Define Yerkes Dodson Law
The proposition that some arousal is better than none, but too much can hurt performance.
Upside down U curve
Define Emotional Intelligence
The ability to perceive, access and generate, understand, and reflectively regulate emotions.
The Four Parts Of Emotional Intelligence
Perceiving emotions: the ability to recognize how you and those around you are feeling.
Facilitating thought: the ability to generate an emotion and then reason with this emotion.
Understanding emotions: the ability to understand complex emotions and how emotions can transition from one stage to another.
Managing emotions: the ability to be open to feelings and ti modulate them in oneself and others so as to promote personal understanding and growth.
Define Dark Tetrad Of Personality
Four dark personality traits - narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavelliaism, and sadism - that are related to emotional intelligence.
These people tend to be high in emotional intelligence, but the use their emotional intelligence to manipulate others
Cheering Up
Do things that produce good feelings, physical arousal, seeking social support, trying to deal directly with the problem.
Affect Regulation Goals
Seek to get into, get out of, or prolong a good or bad mood.
Define Obedience
Following orders from an authority figure.
Define Kin Selection
The evolutionary tendency to help people who have our genes
Define Empathy
Reacting to another person’s emotional state by experiencing the same emotional state
Define Testosterone
The male sex hormone, high levels of which have been linked to aggression and violence in humans and other animals
Define Serotonin
The “feel good” neurotransmitter, low levels of which have been linked to aggression and violence in humans and other animals
Define Homophobia
An excessive fear of homosexuals or homosexual behaviour
Define Stigmas
Characteristics of individuals that are considered socially unacceptable (i.e. being over weight, mentally ill, sick, poor, or physically scarred)
Define In-group Favoritism
Preferential treatment of, or more favourable attitudes toward, people in one’s own group
Define Minimal Group Effect
The finding that people show favouritism toward in group members even when group members are randomly determined.
