Psych/Soc Flashcards
Lawrence Kohlberg
Responsible for introducing a theory of personality development that focused on moral reasoning. He believed that individuals progress through six stages of moral development, with each stage signifying more developed and advanced arguments/reasoning of moral dilemmas.
all the C words
preconventional, conventional and post conventional
Stages of Moral Reasoning
Kohlberg
Pre-conventional: Obedience (avoid punishment) 2-4 and self-interest (seek reward) 4-7
Conventional: conformity (obey social rules) 7-10, Law and Order (obey real rules) 10-12
Post-conventional: social contract (most good for most people) teens, universal ethics (abstract morals) adults
What is attribution theory?
Explaining why someone acts a certain way. Behavior can we seen as intrinsic (dispositional attribution) or extrinsic (situational attribution).
Explain the difference between Fundamental Attribution Error and Self-Serving Bias.
FAE: humans innately explain behavior of strangers/out-groups as dispositional (d>s). Meaning they blame someone’s lack of motivation, poor time management ect… Self-serving bias: We explain behavior of friends/self/family as situational (s>d). This means if a friend is running late for lunch, I am more likely to blame traffic than I am to blame her bad time management skills. We also use this bias to take personal credit for success and blame a situation for our failures.
What are three factors that contribute to whether we deem an act dispositional/situational?
- Consistency: How often does Lucy cancel lunch on short notice? 2. Distinctiveness: Does Lucy cancel lunch on short notice on other people? 3. Consensus: Do other people cancel lunch on short notice?
Deindividuation
Losing sense of individuality, becoming anonymous ex. Participating in mosh pit vs not (being violent when surrounded by many others also being violent)
Bystander Effect
“someone else will do it” help when just a few people around will not help when many people around
Social Loafing
being more lazy in a group (think group projects)
Peer pressure
social influence (pos/neg/net) on an individual (think: at the library, everyone is studying so I should too)
Social Facilitation
Performance of simple tasks becomes better with more people watching (ex. playing trumpet with small crowd vs large crowd)
Difference between top-down processing and bottom-up processing
Both theories are explaining how we make our behaviors. bottom-up: DATA-DRIVEN. Individuals start with the details and then go to the big picture. We take sensory input from our surroundings are make a behavior from that (ex. you hear and see a mosquito, you make a decision to swat it) top-down: CONCEPTUALLY DRIVEN. Looks at big picture first. We use information in our head to influence our behaviors (ex. walking around the house at night, we have an image in our head of how the house conceptually is laid out so we can navigate fairly well)
What are Gestalt principles?
A series of principles that deal with how the mind can infer a complete picture based on incomplete information. (Examples include law of proximity: bunch of red balls grouped together like a triangle-we see a triangle) If we have a whole bunch of things in space we don’t see them as individual, but as groups as long as they are close enough together.
Inclusive fitness
Theory that an organism improves its own generic success (passing of genes to offspring) through altruistic social behavior. Inclusive fitness is the # of offspring an animal has, how they support them, and how offspring support each other. Inclusive fitness is thinking about fitness on a larger scale – evolutionary advantageous for animals to propagate survival of closely related individuals and genes in addition to themselves.
Socialization
The life-long process in which people learn to behave within the accepted confines of social norms.
Primary Socialization
Family/home, Initial Learning actions and attitudes in childhood ex. sneezing into elbow
Secondary Socialization
learning the rules of specific environments during adolescence and into adulthood ex. playground vs. store
Anticipatory Socialization
prepares for future change in adulthood ex. you get a dog to prep for a child, you take cooking classes so you can cook in your own home
Resocialization
The process by which people discard old behaviours in favor for new ones in adulthood ex. go to college and then you return home prison/rehab and back into the world
Conformity
aligning behavior to social norms
Obedience
modifying behavior per authority
Assimilation
One group or individual’s behaviour and culture begin to resemble another culture (somewhat necessary for acceptance/merging into new culture)
Group Polarization
Groups tend to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial ideas of an individual member. Group polarization refers to attitude change on the individual level due to the influence of the group
Choice Shift
Choice shift refers to the outcome of that (group polarization) attitude change; namely, the difference between the average group members’ pre-group discussion attitudes and the outcome of the group decision (ex. Jury)
Groupthink
Thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility. A desire for harmony/conformity results in a group coming to a poor decision
