PSYC Exam (Weeks 22-24) Flashcards
What are the big five or OCEAN?
Openness - Curious vs. cautious
Conscientiousness - Organized vs. careless
Extroversion - Outgoing vs. reserved
Agreeableness - Friendly vs. judgmental
Neuroticism - Sensitive vs. resilient
What are Tracts?
Broad personality traits can be broken down into narrower facets or aspects of the trait. For example, extraversion has several facets, such as sociability, dominance, risk-taking and so forth.
What is Openness?
- Fantasy prone
- Open to
- Feelings
- Diverse behaviours
- New & different
ideas - Various values &
beliefs
What is HEXACO model?
an alternative to the Five-Factor Model. The HEXACO model includes six traits, five of which are variants of the traits included in the Big Five (Emotionality [E], Extraversion [X], Agreeableness [A], Conscientiousness [C], and Openness [O]). The sixth factor, Honesty-Humility [H], is unique to this model.
What is Conscientiousness?
- Competent
- Orderly
- Dutiful
- Achievement oriented
- Self-disciplined
- Deliberate
What is Extraversion?
- Sociable
- Warm
- Assertive
- Active
- Excitement-seeking
- Positive emotionality
What is Agreeableness?
- Trusting
- Straightforward
- Altruistic
- Compliant
- Modest
What is Neuroticism?
- Anxious
- Angry
- Depressed
- Self-conscious
- Impulsive
- Vulnerable
What are some Predict outcomes form the big 5?
- Subjective wellbeing
High Extraversion, Low neuroticism - Physical health
Conscientiousness, agreeableness - Relationship quality
HighAgreeableness low neuroticism - Volunteerism
High Agreeableness - Academic & work performance
High Conscientiousness - Work preferences
- Artistic work & High openness
What is Lexical hypothesis
The lexical hypothesis is the idea that the most important differences between people will be encoded in the language that we use to describe people. Therefore, if we want to know which personality traits are most important, we can look to the language that people use to describe themselves and others.
What are the other traits other than the big 5?
- Machiavellianism
- Need for Achievement
- Cognition
- Authoritarianism
- Narcissism
- Self-esteem
- Optimism-
- Alexithymia- self-aware but not others
What is Heterotypic stability
Consistency in the underlying psychological attribute across development regardless of any changes in how the attribute is expressed at different ages.
What is Homotypic stability
Consistency of the exact same thoughts, feelings, and behaviors across development.
What is stress reaction
The tendency to become easily distressed by the normal challenges of life.
What is Differential stability
Consistency in the rank-ordering of personality across two or more measurement occasions.
What is Absolute stability
Consistency in the level or amount of a personality attribute over time.
What Mechanisms Produce Personality Stability?
- Attraction: Individuals select careers, friends, social clubs, and lifestyles because of their personality attributes.
- Selection: Gatekeepers like employers, admissions officers, and potential relationship partners often select individuals because of their personalities.
- Attrition: Individuals with characteristics that are a bad fit with a particular environment may leave such settings or be asked to leave.
- Manipulation: Individuals can actively manipulate their environments to match their personalities.
What is Evocative person–environment transactions
The interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever attributes of the individual draw out particular responses from others in their environment.
What is Reactive person–environment transactions
The interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever attributes of the individual shape how a person perceives and responds to their environment.
What is Active person–environment transactions
The interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances that occurs whenever individuals play a key role in seeking out, selecting, or otherwise manipulating aspects of their environment.
What is Assessment?
- Objective tests
- Self-report measures
- Informant ratings
- Projective & Implicit tests
- Rorschach (aka Inkblot) Test
- Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
- Implicit Association Test
- Behavioural & performance measures
- EAR
What are Self-report measures?
- Describe self in response to questions – level of
agreement/accuracy - E.g. International Personality Item Pool (IPIP)
- 3320 Items, 463 Scales
- E.g. Assertiveness, Locus of Control, Sensation Seeking*
*How much do the following statements describe you? - Love dangerous situations
- Would like to try bungee jumping
- Prefer fear to boredom
What are Self-report measures?
Pros:
* Ppl have the most information about themselves
* Direct access to thoughts, feelings, motivations
* Cost effective & easy
* High validity: predict behaviour & outcomes
Cons:
* Social desirability
* May not be honest about “negative” feelings/thoughts/behaviours
* Reference group effects
* Relative, not absolute, measures e.g. in comparison to other people we
know
What is Informant Ratings?
Ask someone who knows the person well e.g.
teacher, parent, best friend, romantic partner
Pros:
* High validity
* Strong self-other agreement
* Predictive of behavioural & performance measures
* Lack distortions of self-ratings
* Lower risk of social desirability effects
Cons:
* Limited information available to the rater: only
what is observed, not inner processes
n effects
* We are going to ask people who we have positive
relationships with to be informants, not those who view
us negatively
What is Projective Tests?
- E.g. Inkblot, Thematic Apperception Tests (TAT)
- Based on “The Projective Hypothesis”
- Responses to/descriptions of ambiguous stimuli as
influenced by non-conscious processes
What are Implicit Tests?
E.g. Implicit Association Test (IAT)
* Examine strength of association between concepts
* E.g. faster responses to categorization
Pros:
* Lower risk of social desirability
* May measure “non-conscious” aspects of
personality
Cons:
* Mediocre reliability
* Disputes regarding what it is actually measuring
* Strength of associations? Beliefs? Conscious or
unconscious?
What are the pro and cons of projective Tests?
- Pros:
- Some evidence of validity for TAT
- Can provide window into affect & cognition
- E.g. more aggressive content in TAT descriptions after being primed
with images of guns vs. control objects - Cons:
- More difficult to administer & score
- Lack of standardized scoring & norms (how people usually respond)
- Rorschach
- Widely considered pseudoscientific
- Lack empirical evidence of validity
- No demonstrated value over & above self-reports
What are Behavioural &
Performance
Measures?
- E.g. Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR)
- Captures auditory information (e.g.,
speech) outside of laboratory
environments - Pros:
- Permits longer durations of observation
e.g. over days - Unobtrusive (Now an app!)
- Habituation
- Correlates with self- and other-rated
traits e.g. extraversion - Cons:
- Hawthorne Effect
- Noncompliance 22
Mehl, 2001
What is social situation
The people with whom we interact every day
- Social situations, such as relationships with others, are crucial in shaping our thoughts and behaviors.
- Social psychologists emphasize that the social situation is often a stronger determinant of behavior than personality.
- Social psychologists have found that we often underestimate the importance of the social situation in determining behavior.
- Research shows that extreme acts, such as terrorists or suicide cult members, are more caused by the social situation than by individual characteristics.
What are Social Situation’s Impact on Mental and Physical Health?
- Adequate social support leads to happiness and fewer psychological problems.
- People with social support are less depressed, recover faster from negative events, and are less likely to commit suicide.
- Married individuals report being happier than unmarried individuals.
- Effective psychotherapy aims to help people generate better social support networks due to their positive effect on mental health.
- People with adequate social support are more physically healthy.
- They have fewer diseases, live longer, have lower blood pressure, and have fewer deaths at all ages.
What are social norms?
The ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members and perceived by them as appropriate
customs, traditions, standards, rules, and group values.
* These norms influence our actions and guide us in our interactions with others.
What is Social neuroscience?
The study of how our social behavior both influences and is influenced by the activities of our brain
Attitudes as Evaluations and Their Importance
- Attitudes are evaluations involving a preference for or against an attitude object.
- Expressing attitudes involves expressing the relationship between the self and an attitude object.
- Attitudes are an essential part of the self-concept, tying the self-concept to the attitude object.
- Every human holds thousands of attitudes, each with unique characteristics.
- Some attitudes are inherited, partly via genetic transmission from parents.
- Other attitudes are learned through direct and indirect experiences with the attitude objects.
- Attitudes can be learned via media or through interactions with friends.
- Some attitudes are shared, while others are more individualized.
- Attitudes that are highly heritable are stronger and more resistant to change.
What are Attitudes?
- Attitudes are influenced by cognition, affect, and behavior, but they vary across individuals.
- Attitudes can be based on beliefs, feelings, or behaviors.
- Attitudes towards certain items, like chocolate ice cream, are more cognitive, admiring their positive features.
- Attitudes towards others, like neighbors, are influenced by behavior.
What are the reasons and uses for Attitudes?
- Attitudes can be influenced by different reasons, such as liking or dislike for an individual.
- Attitudes enable humans to quickly and effortlessly determine which behaviors to engage in, which people to approach or avoid, and which products to buy.
What are Assessment of Attitudes?
- self-report measures
- neuroimaging techniques
- looking at the prefrontal cortex
What is Attitude Strength and how to make it stronger?
- Attitudes are assessed by how quickly they come to mind, a measure known as attitude strength.
- Strong attitudes are those that are cognitively accessible, meaning they come to mind quickly, regularly, and easily.
- Attitudes become stronger when we have direct positive or negative experiences with the attitude object, especially in strong positive or negative contexts.
- Attitude strength can be made stronger by increasing the accessibility of the attitude.
- This can be done directly by having people think about, express, or discuss their attitudes with others.
- Attitudes are stronger when the ABCs of affect, behavior, and cognition all line up.
- For example, a universally positive attitude towards a country can lead to strong positive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.
What is the sleeper effect?
The sleeper effect occurs when we initially discount the message given by an untrustworthy or nonexpert communicator but, over time, we remember the content of the message and forget its source. The result is attitude change in the direction of the initially discounted message.
What is the difference between Spontaneous Processing and Thoughtful Processing?
- Spontaneous processing is direct, quick, and often involves affective responses to the message.
- Thoughtful processing is more controlled and involves a careful cognitive elaboration of the message’s meaning.
- The route taken when processing a communication is important in determining whether a particular message changes attitudes.
What is Message strength?
The message contained either strong arguments (persuasive data and statistics about the positive effects of the exams at other universities) or weak arguments(relying only on individual quotations and personal opinions).
What is Source expertise?
The message was supposedly prepared either by an expert source (the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, which was chaired by a professor of education at Princeton University) or by a nonexpert source (a class at a local high school).
What is Personal relevance?
The students were told either that the new exam would begin before they graduated (high personal relevance) or that it would not begin until after they had already graduated (low personal relevance).
What is forewarning
Giving people a chance to develop a resistance to persuasion by reminding them that they might someday receive a persuasive message, and allowing them to practice how they will respond to influence attempts
What is inoculation?
Building up defenses against persuasion by mildly attacking the attitude position
What are Groups?
3+ ppl
Shared goals/needs
Permanent/temporary
Natural/deliberate
Specific social norms
Unwritten rules governing behaviour
Enhance survival/reproduction
Can facilitate or inhibit various processes
What is Social Facilitation
Happens when people are working alone, but
in the presence of an audience
Performance is enhanced on simple, well-
learned tasks, and diminished on novel,
complex tasks
- People seem to work better in group rather than alone
- they perform better on task in groups than alone
- If your good at a task and someone is watching, you will want to perform better than alone
- the oppsite happens for those who are bad at a task
What is Mechanism?
Mere presence & arousal
Evaluation Apprehension
Distraction
Competition
Difficult to disentangle increased arousal from other
explanations
Are the other explanations necessary?
What is Social Loafing?
Happens when people
are working together
towards some goal
The more people in the
group, the less each
individual contributes
Diminished performance
Why and When do People Loaf?
Diffusion of evaluation
How to stop people from loafing?
▪ Monitor individual output
Other variables that affect
likelihood of loafing
Gender: males > females
Tasks: boring > appealing
Group makeup: Strangers > friends
Culture: individualistic vs.
collectivist
What is Group Think?
Cohesion > facts
“the bus to Abilene”
Occurs when group is
Homogenous
Isolated from contradictory
opinion
Lead by directive leader
High stress
Poor procedures
Results in
Perception of invulnerability
Belief in correctness
Elimination of dissenters
▪ Creates illusion of unanimity
Self-censorship
Mindguarding the leader
How to Avoid group think
Impartial leadership
Consulting outside sources
Creating sub-committees
E.g. “red teaming”
Soliciting anonymous feedback
What is Group Polarization
occurs when a group of like-minded people reinforce each other’s opinions, positive or negative, and these opinions become more extreme as they’re discussed.
Group Polarization
Origins in “risky shift” phenomenon
Enhancement of individual members’ initial
position
Positive or negative
E.g. judges took extreme action in 30% of cases
when alone vs. in 65% when in group of 3
What is Social dominance orientation (SDO)?
A belief that group hierarchies are inevitable in all societies and are even a good idea to maintain order and stability
What is Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA)
Endorses respect for obedience and authority in the service of group conformity
What are stereotypes
- Stereotypes of outgroups can be both negative and positive.
- The Stereotype Content Model helps understand these mixed feelings across different groups.
- People view groups based on their intentions, which are either good or ill.
- The dimensions of warmth and competence are used to classify groups in society.
- Stereotypes can be mixed, with some groups being seen as competent but not warm, making people feel envy.
- The “model minority” stereotype includes people with excessive competence but deficient sociability.
- The “high warmth but low competence” stereotype includes older people and disabled people, who are pitied for staying in their place.
- These stereotypes and their associated emotional prejudices occur globally, predicting specific types of discrimination for different groups.
What is Self-categorization theory
Self-categorization theory develops social identity theory’s point that people categorize themselves, along with each other into groups, favoring their own group.
