Impression Formation And Social Interaction

Question 1

Aggression

Answer 1

Behaviour that is intended to harm another person who does not wish to be harmed

Question 2

Altruism

Answer 2

Behaviours that are acted out without any expectation that you will be rewarded for them

Question 3

Attraction

Answer 3

the power of eliciting feelings of desire, interest, or liking.

Question 4

Bystander effect

Answer 4

the inhibiting influence of the presence of others on a person’s willingness to help someone in need.

bystander is less likely to extend help when he or she is in the real or imagined presence of others than when he or she is alone.

Question 5

Bystander-calculus model

Answer 5

Proposes 3 steps that people proceed through when faced with an emergency involving another person:

Physiological arousal - first response

Arousal labelling - feelings of personal distress.
Anxiety/tension. Labels physiological responses to reflect this

Evaluation of consequences. Weigh up the costs of acting and not acting

Question 6

Central traits

Answer 6

an attribute in someone’s personality that is considered particularly meaningful, in that its presence or absence signals the presence or absence of other traits

Question 7

Cost-reward ratio

Answer 7

We all undergo an appraisal of what is will cost to seek reward from another

Costs outweigh rewards = relationship won’t work

Question 8

Diffusion of responsibility

Answer 8

Person assumes other people will take responsibility with the result that nobody does

Question 9

Empathy

Answer 9

Ability to experience the emotions that somebody else is experiencing

Question 10

Empathy-altruism hypothesis

Answer 10

Only behaviour associated with empathy feelings is truly altruistic

Daniel Batson

Question 11

Equity theory

Answer 11

Suggests that along with a cost-reward analysis, liking is dependent on how fair people think the exchange is

E.g effort into a relationship but not a lot in return = inequity

Question 12

Excitation-transfer approach

Answer 12

Proposes that aggression is the product of learned behaviour, arousal (or excitation) from another stimulus and the persons interpretation of this aroused state (I.e. aggression is appropriate)

E.g after-match violence between football fans could be cause by the heightened states of arousal generated while watching the game

Question 13

Halo effect

Answer 13

If information we get about a person is positive we form a positive impression (positive halo) and vice versa (negative halo)

Question 14

Helping

Answer 14

The act of a person or thing that helps

Question 15

Implicit personality theory

Answer 15

Argues that people have preconceptions of what a person is broadly like based on knowledge about central traits

Question 16

Impression formation

Answer 16

We attend to central traits of a person when forming an impression

Peripheral traits - far less importance for the impression developed

Central + peripheral traits guide the impression formed

Soloman Asch - godfather of impression formation research

Question 17

Impression management

Answer 17

Strategic self presentation - changing or managing others perceptions of you

Motives we have for self-presentation: ingratiation, self-promotion, intimidation, supplication, exemplification

Expressive self presentation - people trying to get some validation of their self-concept through their behaviours

Question 18

Interpersonal distance zones

Answer 18

AKA proxemics.

Form of non verbal communication that does not involve explicit parts of the body to convey information.

Hall identified 4 that describe the function of non verbal communication in social interaction: intimate distance, personal distance, social distance, public distance

Question 19

Just world hypothesis

Answer 19

To protect self-esteem, people attribute negative outcomes to the victims themselves

Question 20

Liking

Answer 20

A feeling of regard or fondness

Lamm + Weismann (1997) “liking is about wanting to interact with a person”

Question 21

Loving

Answer 21

Feeling or showing love or great care

Rubin (1973): “loving comprises attachment, caring and intimacy and is completely distinct from liking”

Lamm + Weismann (1997) “loving is trusting a person. Being in love is being aroused by another person”

Question 22

Mere exposure effect

Answer 22

The more we are exposed to someone the more we like them, even strangers

Question 23

Modelling

Answer 23

Form of observational learning
People reproduce the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours displayed by another person

Albert Bandura “modelling is the key vehicle through which learning occurs”

classic bobo doll experiment

Question 24

Negative state relief theory

Answer 24

We act pro-socially to relieve our own distress about another’s misfortune

Cialdini

Question 25

Non verbal communication

Answer 25

Nonverbal communication is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, distance and body language.

Question 26

Peripheral traits

Answer 26

one whose presence or absence does not imply many other characteristics

E.g. if a person is sarcastic, it might imply that he or she is cynical about the world or has a dark sense of humor—but not much else.

Question 27

Person-positivity bias

Answer 27

Argues that we seem to assume that people are good so if negative info is seen or heard it tends to grab our attention

Question 28

Pluralistic ignorance

Answer 28

Each person believes their personal perceptions and feelings are difference from other people’s, while at the same time their behaviour is the same (not helping)

=co-occurrence

=people think that other people in the emergency situation believe the event to be harmless and therefore nothing needs to be done

Question 29

Primacy effect

Answer 29

First things we hear, read or observe in another person

• Asch’s trait reversal experiment*
• Luchin’s 4 experimental groups*

Question 30

Pro-social behaviour

Answer 30

acts that are evaluated positively by your society, contribute to the psychological and physical wellbeing of others

Question 31

Recency effect

Answer 31

a cognitive bias in which those items, ideas, or arguments that came last are remembered more clearly than those that came first.

If there is a delay in getting info

If asked not to make an immediate impression

Used more when forming impressions of people we know

Question 32

Reinforcement-affect model

Answer 32

People learn to associate particular feelings (like, love, hate) with particular people

Question 33

Self concept

Answer 33

an idea of the self constructed from the beliefs one holds about oneself and the responses of others.

Question 34

Self-esteem

Answer 34

A person’s overall subjective sense of personal worth or value.

may be defined as how much you appreciate and like yourself regardless of the circumstances.

defined by many factors including: Self-confidence.

Question 35

Social exchange theory

Answer 35

Proposes that people like or dislike others in terms of the rewards they exchange between each other

Liking/disliking dependent on cost reward ratio

Question 36

Social learning theory

Answer 36

Albert Bandura

Adopted principles of reward and punishment from operant conditioning

suggests that social behavior is learned by observing and imitating the behavior of others.

Question 37

Stereotypes

Answer 37

generalizations about the personal attributes or characteristics of a group of people

Question 38

Triangular model of love

Answer 38

Theory of love developed by Robert Sternberg

In the context of interpersonal relationships, “the three components of love, according to the triangular theory, are an intimacy component, a passion component, and a decision/commitment component.”