Notes Flashcards
Challenges of surveys
Sampling error
Investigator bias
Respondent mistrust
Conformity
Group expectations establish norms that wiled significant influence over individual behaviour
Social exchange theory
Social interaction depend on evaluating rewards and costs
Drive theory
Explores how learned responses affect task performance in front of an audience
Positivism
Involves uncritical acceptance of science as the sole path to the truth
Volkerpsychologie
An early precursor to social psychology
Roots of social psychology
European roots
Became American centric
Resurgence in European social psychology
Naive scientist model
Portrays individuals as employing rational, cause effect analyses akin to scientists in understanding their environment, reinforcing attribution theories prevalent during that period
Cognitive misers theory
Depicts individuals as favouring simple, adaptive cognitive strategies, using full processing capacity sparingly and resorting to processing shortcuts, albeit often unreliable
Motivated tactician model
Individuals possess multiple cognitive strategies, selecting them based on personal goals, motives, and needs
Central traits when forming initial impressions
Tend to emphasise specific pieces of information known as central traits
Peripheral traits
Carry far less wight, playing a minor role in shaping the final impressions we form
Script
A schema specifically tailored to events
Accentuation Principle
Principle asserts that categorisation accentuates the perceived similarities within groups and the differences between them
Bookkeeping
Gradual schema change occurs through the accumulation of bits of information that are inconsistent with the existing schema
Conversion
Sudden schema change results from the gradual accumulation of information that contradicts the existing schema
Subtyping
Schema change arises when schema inconsistent information leads to the formation of subcategories within the existing schema
4 stages of social encoding
Pre-attentive analysis
Focal attention
Comprehension
Elaborative reasoning
Salience
Salience refers to a feature or person that stands out in relation to other stimuli and attracts attention
Priming
Activating accessible categories or schemas in memory, influencing how we process new information and manipulating the accessibility of certain knoweldge
Central route processing
Involves carefully and deliberately considering information, while peripheral route processing entails making rapid decisions based on stereotypes, schemas, and other cognitive shortcuts
Normative models
Ideal processes for making accurate social inferences, collectively forming the basis of behavioural decision theory.
Kelley’s Covariation Model
A theory of causal attribution where individuals attribute behaviour to factors that covary closely with it
What are the three types of information associated with the co-occurence of an action by a specific person?
Consistency information
Distinctiveness information
Consensus information
Self perception theory
Suggests that we understand ourselves by making self attributions
Correspondence bias
People tend to overestimate the influence of stable personality traits on behaviour, attributing actions to internal dispositions rather than situation factors
Fundamental attribution error
Involves attributing others’ behaviour more to internal characteristics than to external circumstances
Essentialism
The tendency to view behaviour as reflecting innate, immutable properties of individuals or groups, related to correspondence bias and fundamental attribution error
Explanations for correspondence bias
Attentional focus
Differential forgetting
Linguistic facilitation
Actor observer effect
Tendency to attribute our own behaviours externally and others’ internally
Two main factors of actor observer effect
Perceptual Focus
Informational Differences
False Consensus Effect
Occurs when individuals perceive their own behaviour as more typical than it actually is and assume others would behave similarly
Self serving biases
Attributional distortions that protect or enhance self esteem
Illusion of Control
Belief that we have more control over our world than we actually do
Belief in a Just World
The belief that the world is fair and predictable
Looking glass self concept
Suggests that we derive our self image from how others perceive us
Self enhancing triad
Reflects people’s tendency to overestimate their positive qualities, control over events, and maintain unrealistic optimism
Self discrepancy theory
Explores the consequences of comparing the the actual self with the ideal and ought selves
Regulatory focus theory posits two distinct self regulatory systems
Promotion system
Prevention system
Promotion system
Focused on achieving aspiration and ideals, employing approach oriented strategies
Prevention system
Concerned with fulfilling duties and obligation, utilising avoidance strategies
Social comparison theory
Involves comparing behaviours and opinions with others to establish socially approved norms
Self evaluation maintenance model
Explains how individuals, faced with esteem damaging comparisons, may deny similarity to the source or withdraw from the relationship
Birging
Involves associating oneself with esteemed individuals or groups to enhance one’s own image
Identity can be categorised into two broad classes
Social identity
Personal identity
What are the three forms of self?
Individuals self
Relational self
Collective self
Three motivational classes affecting self-construction and self knowledge seeking
Self assessment
Self verification
Self enhancement
Self affirmation theory
Suggests individuals mitigate threats to their self concept by affirming competence in other areas
Self handicapping
Involves pre-emptively attributing anticipated failures to external factors
What are the 5 strategic motives behind impression management?
Self promotion
Integration
Intimidation
Exemplification
Supplication
What is an attitude
A general sentiment or assessment, be it positive or negative, toward a person, object, or issue
Three component model for attitude has:
Cognitive
Affective
Behavioural
Balance theory
Individuals prefer attitudes that align with each other rather than those that conflict
Mere exposure effect
Demonstrates that repeated exposure to an object increases attraction to it
Terror management theory
The core human drive is to alleviate the anxiety stemming from the awareness of mortality
Relative homogeneity effect
The tendency to perceive outgroup members as uniform while viewing in-group members as more diverse
Language use bias
People tend to imply abstract language when discussing unfavourable traits of an outgroup and concrete language for favourable traits, relating underlying biases
Three key variables influence persuasion
The communicator or the source of the message
The content and delivery of the communication
The audience being targeted
Expectation states theory
Explains how roles emerge based on status based expectations about performance, influenced by specific and diffuse status characteristics
Uncertainty-identity theory
Suggests that people join distinctive, well defined gourds with consensual norms to reduce uncertainty about their identity
