Psychology For Two Or More

Question 1

Define persuasion

Answer 1

• Social psychology is the scientific study of the ways in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions are affected by others and the nature and causes of individual behavior in social situations.
• Attitudes are evaluations of a particular person, behavior, belief, or concept.
• Cognitive dissonance occurs when an individual simultaneously holds two cognitions—attitudes or thoughts—that contradict each other. To resolve the contradiction, the person may modify one cognition, change its importance, add a cognition, or deny a link between the two cognitions, thereby bringing about a reduction in dissonance

Question 2

Explain social cognition.

Answer 2

• Social cognition involves the way people understand and make sense of others and themselves. People develop schemas that organize information about people and social experiences in memory and allow them to interpret and categorize information about others.
• People form impressions of others in part through the use of central traits, personality characteristics that receive unusually heavy emphasis when we form an impression.
• Information-processing approaches have found that we tend to average together sets of traits to form an overall impression.
• Attribution theory tries to explain how we understand the causes of behavior, particularly with respect to situational or dispositional factors.
• Even though logical processes are involved, attribution is prone to error. For instance, people are susceptible to the halo effect, assumed-similarity bias, self-serving bias, and fundamental attribution error (the tendency to overattribute others’ behavior to dispositional causes and the corresponding failure to recognize the importance of situational causes).

Question 3

Define conformity

Answer 3

• Social influence is the area of social psychology concerned with situations in which the actions of an individual or group affect the behavior of others.
• Conformity refers to changes in behavior or attitudes that result from a desire to follow the beliefs or standards of others.

Question 4

Explain compliance

Answer 4

Compliance is behavior that results from direct social pressure. Among the ways of eliciting compliance are the foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face, that’s-not-all, and not-so-free-sample techniques.

Question 5

Discuss obedience

Answer 5

Obedience is a change in behavior in response to the commands of others.

Question 6

Identify the foundations of prejudice

Answer 6

• Stereotypes are generalized beliefs and expectations about a specific group and its members. Stereotyping can lead to prejudice and self-fulfilling prophecies.
• Prejudice is the negative (or positive) evaluation of a particular group and its members.
• Stereotyping and prejudice can lead to discrimination, behavior directed toward individuals on the basis of their membership in a particular group.
• According to observational learning approaches, children learn stereotyping and prejudice by observing the behavior of parents, other adults, and peers. Social identity theory suggests that group membership is used as a source of pride and self-worth, and this may lead people to think of their own group as better than others.

Question 7

Describe how the Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures prejudice

Answer 7

The Implicit Association Test, or IAT, is a measure of prejudice that permits a more accurate assessment of people’s discrimination between members of different groups.

Question 8

Assess ways to reduce prejudice and discrimination

Answer 8

Among the ways of reducing prejudice and discrimination are increasing contact, demonstrating positive values against prejudice, and education.

Question 9

Compare and contrast the concepts of liking and loving

Answer 9

• The primary determinants of liking include proximity, exposure, similarity, and physical attractiveness.
• Loving is distinguished from liking by the presence of intense physiological arousal, an all-encompassing interest in another, fantasies about the other, rapid swings of emotion, fascination, sexual desire, exclusiveness, and strong feelings of caring.
• Love can be categorized as passionate or companionate. In addition, love has several components: intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment.

Question 10

Explain aggression and prosocial behavior

Answer 10

• Aggression is intentional injury of, or harm to, another person.
• Explanations of aggression include instinct approaches, frustration-aggression theory, and observational learning.
• Helping behavior in emergencies is determined in part by the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility, which results in a lower likelihood of helping when more people are present.
• Deciding to help is the outcome of a four-stage process consisting of noticing a possible need for help, interpreting the situation as requiring aid, assuming responsibility for taking action, and deciding on and implementing a form of assistance.

Question 11

Define stress and discuss how it affects us

Answer 11

Stress is a response to threatening or challenging environmental conditions. People encounter stressors—the circumstances that produce stress—of both a positive and a negative nature.

Question 12

Explain the nature of stressors

Answer 12

• The way an environmental circumstance is interpreted affects whether it will be considered stressful. Still, there are general classes of events that provoke stress: cataclysmic events, personal stressors, and background stressors (daily hassles).
• Stress produces immediate physiological reactions. In the short term, those reactions may be adaptive, but in the long term, they may have negative consequences, including the development of psychophysiological disorders.
• The consequences of stress can be explained in part by Selye’s general adaptation syndrome (GAS), which suggests that there are three stages in stress responses: alarm and mobilization, resistance, and exhaustion.

Question 13

Describe how people cope with stress

Answer 13

• Stress can be reduced by developing a sense of control over one’s circumstances. In some cases, however, people develop a state of learned helplessness.
• Coping with stress can take a number of forms, including the use of emotion-focused or problem-focused coping strategies.