PSYC260: Midterm #1 Flashcards
Difference between anthropology/sociology and social psychology
Anthro/socio=how people are influenced by their social enviro
Social psych=how people are influenced by their interpretation (aka construal) of their social enviro
Naïve realism
Special kind of construal
We all believe that we see things “as they really are” and that other reasonable people see things the same way we do
Lee Ross
Social psychology
The scientific study of the way that people’s thoughts/feelings/behaviours are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people
Social psych vs sociology
Both: influence of social and societal factors on human behaviour
Diffs:
- level of analysis: individual in the context of a social situations vs society at large
- what they are trying to explain: goal of social psych is to identify universal properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence (regardless of class/culture)
Social psych vs personality psych
Focus of attention of individual differences instead of recognizing the power of social influence involved
Fundamental attribution error
Tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behaviour stems from internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational forces
Hindsight bias
Tendency for people to exaggerate how much they could have predicted something after knowing it occurred
Three methods used to answer questions in social psych
1- observational method
2- correlational method
3- experimental method
Theory vs hypothesis
Theory: organized set of principles that can be used to explain observed phenomena
Hypothesis: testable statement or idea about the relationship between two or more variables
Diffusion of responsibility
Bystanders less likely to do something if there are others around to shift responsibility to
Operational definition
Precise specification of how variables are measured or manipulated
Observational method
Technique where researcher observes people and systematically records measurements of their behaviour
Ethnography
Method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside without imposing any preconceived notions they might have
Interjudge reliability
The level of agreement between 2+ people who independently observe and code a set of data; by showing that two or more judges independently come up with the same observations, researchers ensure that the observations are not the subjective impressions of one individual
Archival analysis
Form of the observational method where the researcher examines accumulated docs or archives of a culture like diaries, novels, magazines, etc
-looking back can teach a lot about how people viewed themselves
Correlational method
Technique where researchers systematically measure two or more variables and assess the relation between them (aka how much one can be predicted by the other)
Correlation coefficient
Statistic that assesses how well you can predict one variable based on another (aka how well you can predict people’s weight from their height)
Expressed as numbers ranging from -1.00 to +1.00 (two variables perfectly correlated in a positive direction vs a negative direction)
Surveys
Research in which a representative sample of people are asked questions about their attitudes of behaviour
- advantages: convenient, looks at variables that are hard to observe, sample representative segments of the population
- potential problem: accuracy
Random selection
Way of ensuring that a sample of people is representative of a population, by giving everyone in the population an equal chance of being selected for the sample
Hindsight bias
Tendency for people to exaggerate how much they could have predicted the outcome after knowing that it occurred
Three methods used to study social psych
1- observational method
2- correlational method
3- experimental method
Theory vs hypothesis
Theory= organized set of principles that can be used to explain observed phenomena
Hypothesis= a testable statement or idea about the relationship between two or more variables
Diffusion of responsibility
When more people around, responsibility is spread out and people don’t feel as much need to do something
Operational definition
Precise specification of how variables are measured or manipulated
Ex: defining bullying as power imbalance
Observational method
The technique whereby a researcher observes people and systematically records measurements of their behaviour
Focus: description
Question: what is the nature of the phenomenon?
Ethnography
Method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside without imposing any preconceived notions they might have
Interjudge reliability
Level of agreement between two or more people who have taken data on the same thing; if they have higher agreement, it shows that there is less bias or subjectivity
Archival analysis
A type of observational method
Researcher examines accumulated document or archives of a culture like diaries, novels, magazines, newspapers etc
Correlational method
Technique whereby researcher systematically measure two or more variable and assess the relation between them (how much one can be predicted from the other)
Focus: description
Question: what is the relation between variable C and variable Y?
Correlation coefficient
Statistic that assesses how week you can predict one variable based on another (like how you can predict people’s weight by their height)
Represented from +1.00 to -1.00
Negative vs positive correlation
Positive: both variables go up and down together (ex: height and weight)
Negative: variable moves up, other variable moves down and vice versa (ex: hours of tv watching with GPA)
Surveys
Used often in correlational method
Representative sample of people asked questions about their attitudes or behaviour
Random selection
A way of ensuring that a sample of people is representative of a population by giving everyone an equal chance of being selected for the sample
What’s the main limit of the correlational method?
Correlation does not equal causation
Experimental method
Method in which the researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions and ensured that these conditions are exactly the same expect for the independent variable (the one thought to have a causal effect of people’s responses)
Focus: causality
Question: does variable Y cause variable X?
Independent vs dependant variable
Independent variable: variable a researcher changes or varies to see if it has an effect on some other variable
Dependant variable: measured to see if it is influenced by independent variable; researcher hypothesizes that it will be influenced by the level of the independent variable
Internal validity
Keeping everything about the situation the same except for the independent variable in an experiment
Done by controlled all variables and randomly assigning people to different experimental conditions
Probability level (p-value)
A number, calculated with statistical techniques, that tells researchers how likely it is that the results of their experiment occurred by chance and not because of the independent variables
The convention in science including social psych is that results=significant if the probability level is less than 5 in 100 that the results might be attributable to change factors and not the independent variable studied
External validity
The extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other situations and to other people
2 kinds: generalizability across people and across situations
Mundane realism
To do with external validity
The extent to which an experiment is similar to real life situations
Psychological realism
Has to do with external validity
Extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment are similar to psychological processes that occur in every day life; this can be high in an experiment even if mundane realism is low
Cover story
A description of the purpose of the study is given to participants that is diff than the real purpose; used to maintain psychological realism (external validity)
Replication
Repeating a study, usually with diff subject populations, in diff settings or by using diff methods
Meta analysis
A statistical technique that averages the results of two or more studies to see if the effect of an independent variable is reliable
Similar to p-levels but finds an average from results of many different studies
Basic dilemma of social psychologists
The trade off between internal and external validity aka
1- having enough control over situation to ensure that no outside variables are influencing the results and to randomly assign people to conditions
2- ensuring that results = generalizable to everyday life
What’s one of the best ways to increase external validity?
Field experiments aka experiments conducted in a natural setting (not in a lab)
Cross cultural research
Research conducted with members of diff cultures to see if psychological processes of interest are present across cultures or specific to one culture
Two main themes of social psych
1- power of the situation
2- importance of subjective construal
Two main methods of measurement in social psych
1- observation (observe people and record their behaviour)
2- self report (ask people about their psychological states and behaviours; PRIMARY METHOD in social psych)
Automatic thinking vs controlled thinking
Automatic: thinking that’s non conscious, unintentional, involuntary and effortless
Controlled: the opposite ^
Schemas
Mental structures that people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects
Influences the info people notice, think about and remember
Can be negative (stereotypes)
Content of Schemas affected by our culture
What neurological disorder creates problems forming Schemas ?
Korsakov’s syndrome
Accessibility
The extent to which Schemas and concepts are at the front of people’s minds and are therefore likely to be used when making judgments about the social world
Three reasons that Schemas can be accessible
1- past experience
2- related to current goal
3- recent experiences
Priming
The process where recent experiences increase the accessibility of a Schema, trait or concept
Example of automatic thinking
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Where someone has an expectation for what another person is like, which influences how they act towards that person, which then causes that person to behave consistently with their original expectation
Judgemental heuristics
Mental shortcuts people use to make judgements quickly and efficiently
Availability heuristic
Mental shortcut where people base a judgement on the ease with which they can bring something to mind
Representativeness heuristic
A mental shortcut where people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case
Base rate information
Info about the frequency of members of diff categories in the population
Typically not used very well when making assumptions about people
Counterfactual thinking
Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been
Usually when a negative event happens and one feels that they were very close to it not happening
Thought suppression
The attempt to avoid thinking about something a person would rather forget
Two processes:
1- monitoring process=searches for evidence that the unwanted thought is about to be detected by consciousness (automatic)
2- operating process=conscious attempt to distract oneself from thinking about the bad thought (controlled)
Overconfidence barrier
The barrier that happens when people have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgements; people’s judgements usually aren’t as correct as they think they are
One way to possibly avoid the overconfidence barrier
Studying statistics (even a one day course helps!)
Hopefully student will apply to real life
Doesn’t always work
Analytic vs holistic thinking style
Analytic: type of thinking where people focus on properties of objects without considering their surrounding context (common in western culture)
Holistic: type of thinking where people focus on overall context, particularly in ways which objects relate to one another (common in East Asian cultures like China Japan Korea etc)
Attribution theory
A description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people’s behaviour
Father of this theory: Fritz heider
Internal vs external attribution (attribution theory)
Internal attribution: inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about him or her (like attitude character personality etc)
External: person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation they’re in (assumption that most people would respond the same way)
Covariation model (attribution theory)
Theory stating that to form an attribution about what caused a persons behaviour, we systematically note the pattern between the presence (or absence) of positive causal factors and whether or not the behaviour occurs
Three key types of info used to form an attribution
1- consensus info: info about the extent to which other people behave to the same stimulus
2- distinctiveness info: refers to how the person responds to other stimuli
3- consistency info: refers to the frequency with which the observed behaviour between the same person and the same stimulus occurs across time and circumstances
Counterfactual thinking
Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been
Usually when a negative event happens and one feels that they were very close to it not happening
Thought suppression
The attempt to avoid thinking about something a person would rather forget
Two processes:
1- monitoring process=searches for evidence that the unwanted thought is about to be detected by consciousness (automatic)
2- operating process=conscious attempt to distract oneself from thinking about the bad thought (controlled)
Overconfidence barrier
The barrier that happens when people have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgements; people’s judgements usually aren’t as correct as they think they are
One way to possibly avoid the overconfidence barrier
Studying statistics (even a one day course helps!)
Hopefully student will apply to real life
Doesn’t always work
Analytic vs holistic thinking style
Analytic: type of thinking where people focus on properties of objects without considering their surrounding context (common in western culture)
Holistic: type of thinking where people focus on overall context, particularly in ways which objects relate to one another (common in East Asian cultures like China Japan Korea etc)
Attribution theory
A description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people’s behaviour
Father of this theory: Fritz heider
Internal vs external attribution (attribution theory)
Internal attribution: inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about him or her (like attitude character personality etc)
External: person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation they’re in (assumption that most people would respond the same way)
Covariation model (attribution theory)
Theory stating that to form an attribution about what caused a persons behaviour, we systematically note the pattern between the presence (or absence) of positive causal factors and whether or not the behaviour occurs
Three key types of info used to form an attribution
1- consensus info: info about the extent to which other people behave to the same stimulus
2- distinctiveness info: refers to how the person responds to other stimuli
3- consistency info: refers to the frequency with which the observed behaviour between the same person and the same stimulus occurs across time and circumstances
Correspondence bias
The tendency to infer that people’s behaviour corresponds to or matches their disposition (personality)
Aka fundamental attribution error
Perceptual salience
Info that is the focus of people’s attention; people tend to overestimate the causal role of perceptually salient info
Two-step process of attribution
First part: analyzing a persons behaviour by making an automatic internal attribution
Second part: thinking about possible situational reasons for the behaviour after which one may ADJUST the original internal attribution (may be culturally specific)
Actor/observer difference
The tendency to see other people’s behaviour being caused by something about them or their personality, whereas when explaining ones own behaviour, one focuses on situational factors
Self-serving attributions
Explanations for one’s successes that credit internal, personal factors and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors
Defensive attributions
Explanations for behaviour that avoid feelings of vulnerability and mortality
Belief in a just world
A form of defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people
Encode vs decode (nonverbal communication)
Encode: to express or emit nonverbal behaviour like smiling or patting someone on the back
Decode: to interpret the meaning of the nonverbal behaviour other people express, such as deciding that a pat on the back was an expression of condescension and not kindness
Darwin’s ideas about nonverbal communication and facial expression
- primary emotions shown on the face are universal
- nonverbal forms of communication are species specific and not culture specific
- evolutionary significance in understanding and producing important facial expressions/emotions
Affect blend
A facial expression in which one part of the face registers one emotion while the another part of the face registers a different emotion
Emblems
Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture; they usually have direct verbal translations such as the “okay” sign 👌🏻
Implicit personality theory
A type of Schema people use to group various kinds of personality traits together; for example, many people believe that if someone is kind, he or she is also generous
Self concept vs self awareness
Self concept: the contents of the self aka our knowledge about who we are
Self awareness: the act of thinking about ourselves
Self-schemas
An organized body of knowledge about the self (ex: attitudes, preferences, traits) that influences what people notice, think about and remember about themselves
Self-reference effect
People can remember things better if they relate them back to themselves
Independent view of the self vs interdependent view of the self
Independent: defining yourself in terms of your own internal thoughts, feelings, and actions (not other people’s)
Interdependent: defining yourself in terms of relationships to other people; recognizing the ones behaviour is often determined by the thoughts feelings and actions of others
Gender differences in defining the self
Women: relational interdependence
Men: collective interdependence
Introspection
The process where people look inward and examine their own thoughts, feelings and motives
Self-awareness theory
The idea that when people focus their attention on themselves, they evaluate and compare their behaviour with their internal standards and values
Causal theories
Theories about the causes of ones own feelings and behaviours; typically, we learn such theories from our culture (ex: absense make the heart grow fonder”)
Self-perception theory
Theory that when our attitudes and feelings are uncertain or ambiguous, we infer these states by observing our behaviour and the situation in which it occurs
Overjustification effect
When people view their behaviour as being caused by compelling extrinsic reasons, making them underestimate the extent to which their behaviour was caused by intrinsic reasons
Task contingent vs performance contingent rewards
Task contingent rewards: rewards given for performing a task, regardless of how the task is done (participation ribbons)
Performance contingent rewards: rewards based on how well we perform a task
Analytic thinking style vs holistic thinking style
Analytic: westerners; type of thinking where people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context
Holistic: East Asian; type of thinking where people focus on the overall context, specifically in ways in which objects relate to each other
Schema durability
Beliefs stick in our heads, even when proven wrong
Primacy effect
Shows tendency to over rely on initial info (first impressions) even when more info becomes available
Micro-expressions
Fleeting, short facial expressions
True emotions sneak out
Easiest to detect in slow mo
Improves with practice
Four areas of body language
Posture (open vs closed, relaxed vs tense)
Touch
Personal space
Emblems
Relationship between liking and mimicry
Mimicry leads to liking and vice versa
Emotional contagion
Two factor theory of emotion
A persons level of arousal determines the intensity of an emotional experience
Specific type of emotional experience determined by contextual clues
Emotion = arousal X cognitive label
Misattributional of arousal
Because we observe our own behaviour to figure out why we feel aroused, we can make mistakes about where our arousal comes from
Excitation transfer theory
When residual (leftover) excitation from an earlier event is misattributed as a reaction from a new stimulus
Affective forecasting
Our guesses about how we will feel in the future following projected events
Two underlying processes:
Focalism
Immune neglect
Trait vs state self-esteem
Trait: enduring level of self regard
State: dynamic changeable aspect of self evaluation
Two types of group based self esteem acts (collective self aspects)
BIRGing: basking in reflected glory
CORFing: cutting off reflected failure
