psych/soc

Question 1

symptoms of groupthink

Answer 1

inherent morality, mind guards, collective rationalization (discount warnings b/c they don’t align with what you believe), illusion in unanimity, self-censorship, direct pressure on dissenters (those in the group that don’t go agree with group’s beliefs), stereotyped view of out-groups

Question 2

fundamental attribution error, self-serving bias, actor-observer bias

Answer 2

fundamental: tendency to attribute people’s actions to their personality. self-serving bias: when it’s good, it’s because of our internal traits, when it’s bad, it’s the environment. actor-observer bias is the tendency to blame the environment when we do something

Question 3

what’s systems theory

Answer 3

ystems theory deals with whole units/groups and acknowledges how each person contributes to the unit; identify how each person responds to anxiety in the unit → adapt responses into a more productive manner; or person is made aware of the systematic resources that are available to them

Question 4

institutional memory

Answer 4

Institutional memory is the collective memory of the individuals in an organization about its history, about situations the organization has confronted, and about what was necessary to deal with them. Long-term employees are valuable as they provide institutional memory for an organization, which means that the organization does not have to figure out what to do from scratch whenever an issue similar to one in the past comes up.

Question 5

antipositivism

Answer 5

studying social realm requires different approach than studying natural realm; have to go beyond the scientific method and empiricism to study social sphere

Question 6

which sociological frameworks does patient sick role in medicalization of health fall under?

Answer 6

functionalism (because when someone is sick they can’t do the tasks they normally do and other people have to pick up their slack); social constructionism because we have to define what it means to be sick

Question 7

behavioral exemptions and requirements for people in the sick role

Answer 7

exemptions: temporarily exempt from social roles, you are not blamed for being sick. requirements: have to want to get better, abide by medical advice (the exemptions are contingent on the fact that the requirements are followed)

Question 8

what functions is the anterior cingulate cortex involved in?

Answer 8

autonomic (blood pressure and heart rate); anticipation of reward, decision making, impulse control, and emotions

Question 9

types of social movements

Answer 9

active (promote social change), expressive (promote individual change)

Question 10

major classification of stressors

Answer 10

catastrophic (out of our control; usually a natural event like hurricane, tornado, etc); micro-stressor/daily hassles (annoying things that happen on a day to day basis; forgetting keys in room); ambient stressors (affect everyone; in the background and not really aware of it; like heavy pollution in the air); major life event (lasting impact, rare; leaving home for the first time, diagnoses w/ cancer)

Question 11

levels of conscious mind that id, ego, and superego exist

Answer 11

Id is present at birth and wants instant gratification without care about the consequences, only at unconscious level; superego is developed later on as it learns about the rules of society (latent stage); all levels of consciousness but mainly unconscious (places a check on Id); ego directs behavior by balancing the desires of the two systems (exists at all three levels). three levels are unconscious, preconscious, and conscious

Question 12

three stages towards developing the “I self” and “Me self”

Answer 12

1) preparatory (child is mimicking what they see); 2) play stage (more than mimicking b/c child can take on roles and act based on how they think someone else would act; can take on the perspective of someone else); 3) game stage (child learns the attitudes, beliefs, and values of society as a whole; learn that ppl act in accordance to societal views and not always their own; learn that people can have many roles; start to be concerned w/ how people view them; this is when the “I” and “Me (society)” is developed)

Question 13

source vs surface traits

Answer 13

surface traits describe behavior (endless amount of examples), source traits are the underlying factors for that behavior and personality (i.e. OCEAN)

Question 14

contributors to trait theory

Answer 14

1) Hans Eyeseck (we all have personality traits that fall under three general categories - neuroticism, extraversion, psychoticism- and differ to the degree we express them b/c of our genome (don’t necessarily for psychoticism); 2) Gordon Allport (everyone has diff traits unique to them that can be classified as cardinal, central, or secondary); 3) Raymond Cattell thought everyone possessed 16 personality traits and created a test for it

Question 15

somatic symptom disorder, illness anxiety disorder, conversion disorder, factitious disorders

Answer 15

somatic symptom disorder is when the physical symptoms cannot be explained by somatic or biological causes; illness anxiety disorder is when person is constantly preoccupied with their health, always thinks they’re sick and doesn’t have to accompanied by physical symptoms. conversion disorder is when the anxiety has manifested into changes in motor or sensory functioning; factitious disorders is when person fakes to be sick for the purpose of getting attention (no financial gain), will even physically harm themselves

Question 16

positive and negative checks in Malthusiasn

Answer 16

positive checks increase the death rate through disease, crime, disasters, and hunger. preventative checks reduce the number of births through contraceptives, same-sex relationships, late marriage

Question 17

secularization vs fundamentalism

Answer 17

secularization is the idea that as a society becomes more modern, religion will have a lesser importance in the different social spheres. fundamentalism advocates for the opposite

Question 18

Three component theory of stratification (weberian stratification)

Answer 18

power, class (determined by birth), status (has to do with prestige, respect you’re given, honor, doesn’t have to correlate with class) all influence where a person stands in society

Question 19

absolute, relative, marginal, residual poverty

Answer 19

absolute poverty is the inability to meet the BARE MINIMUM of needs to survive; relative is the inability to meet the AVERAGE standard of living (can be relatively poor but not absolutely poor); marginal poverty is due to chronic underemployment or illness; residual poverty is being born into poverty, chronic and multigenerational

Question 20

memory interference

Answer 20

unable to successfully retrieve memory from LTM storage because recalling one memory requires recalling similar memories which makes it difficult to retrieve the correct memory; retroactive (newly formed memory makes it hard to retrieve an older memory); proactive interference (older memory makes it difficult to retrieve a new memory)

Question 21

observer bias vs actor-observer bias vs acquiescence bias

Answer 21

observer bias is also called “hawthorne effect” and refers to the phenomenon of how research subjects act differently when they know they’r being watched; actor-observer bias is the tendency to attribute other people’s actions to their disposition and our actions to the environment; acquiescence bias is when subjects respond in a way to please the researcher

Question 22

optimistic bias

Answer 22

the belief that bad things happen to others but not to ourselves; due to self-enhancement, personal control, and self-presentation; feels good to know that good things will happen to us, helps us cope; more in control we feel, more likely to adopt this bias (if you’re the one driving the car, more likely to think that you’ll be safe in an accident); want to appear well-off to others

Question 23

replacement fertility rate vs. sub-replacement fertility

Answer 23

replacement fertility rate is the rate at which the population is in equilibrium; sub-replacement fertility indicates that the birth rates are less than the death rates –> population will not be sustained

Question 24

general vs total fertility rate

Answer 24

general fertility rate is the total number of births per 1000 women; total fertility rate looks at a single women and predicts how many kids she will have (assuming the woman is in her child-rearing years and lives past her reproductive life)

Question 25

conversion disorder

Answer 25

psychological impairment manifests to a physical impairment (problem with sensory system(s) or motor functioning)

Question 26

midbrain, forebrain, hindbrain

Answer 26

forebrain is most advance (foremost, diencephalon [thalamus and hypothalamus] and telecephalon [cerebrum, different lobes]), midbrain connects forebrain to hindbrain, hindbrain involves things that have been around since primitive times (pons, medulla, cerebellum)

Question 27

brainstem

Answer 27

midbrain, pons, medulla; has important processing centers and conveys info to and from the cerebrum and cerebellum

Question 28

what does ganglia in the nervous system mean?

Answer 28

neurons that are outside of the CNS; these neurons are found in bundles

Question 29

binocular cues of the eye

Answer 29

both used to detemine depth; retinal disparity (greater the difference of the image on both retinas, better our brain is at determining depth and object is closer); convergence describes the angle amount that your eyes turn inward when viewing an object; greater the angle means closer the object

Question 30

partial report technique

Answer 30

way to test iconic memory; have a grid (3x3 or 3x4) of letters and numbers; use a cue (certain frequency tone) which tells person what line they need to recall; people can recall most letters which is evidence that we can hold a lot more in our iconic memory than whole report suggests (when asked to recall as many symbols as possible, 4-5)

Question 31

operational span task

Answer 31

measure used to test working memory; present person with a mathematical problem followed by a word..do many times and ask person to recall as many words?

Question 32

monocular cues

Answer 32

important for judging distance of objects that are far away; relative size (when objects are assumed to be the same size), interposition (obj that blocks another is closer), relative clarity (hazy objects further away), texture gradient (coarse and distinct texture means closer/fine indistinct texture is further away), relative motion (objects that move faster are closer), linear perspective (converging lines), light and shadow (objects that are lighter appear closer)

Question 33

criticisms of sick role

Answer 33

1) doesn’t apply to chronic illnesses b/c these people won’t ever fully be cured and thus have to continue fulfilling their roles; 2) some people who are sick are blamed if it’s due to a lifestyle (i.e. kidney failure due to excessive drinking); 3) assumes patient is passive and doctor is authoritative which isn’t always the case

Question 34

illness experience

Answer 34

looks at HOW the patient views their illness and how it affects their life (social sphere, self-concept, self-esteem, daily responsibilities, etc)

Question 35

behaviorist vs social cognitive perspective

Answer 35

behavior involves classical and operant conditioning and posits that people’s personalities and behaviors are sculpted by shaping and learning (rewards and punishments and conditioning stimuli); social cognitive perspective is alburt bandura and posits that people learn from others; and can learn without displaying the act; learn from our environment and through social processes

Question 36

positive punishment vs negative punishment

Answer 36

both REDUCE behavior (punishment); but positive punishment reduces the behavior by ADDING (positive) something (beating, detention, etc); whereas negative punishment punishment does so by REMOVING (neg) something

Question 37

age for psychosexual stages

Answer 37

oral (birth to 1yrs old); anal (1-3 yrs old); phallic (3-6 yrs old); latent (6-12 yrs old); genital (12+)

Question 38

Belief Bias

Answer 38

we already have an idea or conclusion in mind so we accept any sort of reasoning that supports that conclusion; accepting something as true because you believe the conclusion is correct irregardless of it’s reason to arrive at the conclusion; will accept faulty reasoning as long as it supports our belief

Question 39

binding problem

Answer 39

with all the information we get from our visual system (shape, color, movement), how do we know which object to attribute the characteristics to? makes it easier when we are attending to one thing; if attending to many things at once (or trying to), will misattribute characteristics

Question 40

names and ages of erik erikson’s stages of development

Answer 40

trust/mistrust (birth –> 1), autonomy/shameanddoubt (1-3), initiative/guilt (3-6), inferiority/industry (6-9), identity/role confusion (12-18), intimacy/isolation (18-35), generativity/stagnation (35-60), integrity/despair (60+)

Question 41

how to tell if positive or negative reinforcement

Answer 41

positive adds something after behavior is done; negative removes something bad (no more spanking) when behavior is done

Question 42

insight learning

Answer 42

when previously learned information is combined in unique ways to help you solve a problem (ex: kid knows that sliding on belly can help him get toy, and a broom can help him reach for something that’s far, what to do when the toy is underneath is bed out of reach? never been in that EXACT situation before but can combine the info he does have)

Question 43

the thomas theorem

Answer 43

if someone accepts something as real, it has real consequences; how you perceive something affects your behavior

Question 44

cultural lag

Answer 44

non-material culture takes a longer time to evolve than material culture; seen with technological advancements, with new technology, need a social consensus which can take awhile to arrive at in regards to the technology (i.e. cloning people); technology itself is the material culture but it brings with it a question of values and ethics which is nonmaterial culture

Question 45

location of hair cells in cochlea

Answer 45

actually rest on the basilar membrane, when they move (hyperpolarize and depolarize), they shift the tectorial membrane which is rests on top of it