Psychology/Sociology (Ours) Flashcards
experimental design
technical term for a specific type of research
ex) to show that consuing a healthy diet helps cause or lead to heart health and longevity, an exp design is needed
steps to a good experimental design
1) select a population
2) operationalize variables
3) divide into groups
4) random sampling
5) random assignment
6) measuremnt
7) test the hypothesis
The phenomenon whereby individuals tend to favor internal attributions in explaining others’ behavior is known as:
the fundamental attribution error
The fundamental attribution error is the phenomenon whereby individuals tend to favor internal attributions in explaining others’ behavior
In-group/out-group bias
In-group/out-group bias refers to a pattern of favoring members of one’s group over out-group members
ultimate attribution error
The ultimate attribution error is the tendency for people to explain an out-group’s negative behavior as being due to personality flaws (as described in the psg), and to explain an out-group’s positive behavior as the result of chance or circumstance
Stereotyping
Stereotyping refers to the attribution of certain characteristics to an individual on the basis of his or her membership in a particular group
Social schemas
are cognitive structures that guide the information processing of ideas about categories of social events and people. When a social schema is made more accessible through priming, it can be activated and used more quickly in a particular situation.
Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory
discusses how inconsistency among attitudes (cognitive dissonance) propels people in the direction of attitude change.
Illusory correlation
refers to people’s overestimation of instances that support their beliefs about the association between two things.
Social cognitive theory
refers to Albert Bandura’s theory that learning occurs in a social context with a dynamic and reciprocal interaction among the person, environment, and behavior.
Classical conditioning
refers to learning as a result of pairing an unconditioned stimulus with a conditioned stimulus
Modeling
refers to learning based on observing and imitating the behavior of another
Negative reinforcement
is the strengthening of a response by removal of an aversive stimulus
removes a painful or unwanted stimulus (like an electric shock) in order to similarly encourage the desired behavior
reinforcement schedules and their resistance to extinction
**Psychology: Learning**
A continuous reinforcement schedule is less resistant to extinction than an intermittent reinforcement schedule. A variable-ratio reinforcement schedule is more resistant to extinction than a fixed-ratio reinforcement schedule. A fixed-interval reinforcement schedule is less resistant to extinction than a variable-ratio reinforcement schedule.
The rules that govern appropriate emotional responses vary from culture to culture. These social mores are called:
display rules
Emotional expression
is what is being regulated by the display rules
Rituals
are a series of set activities, which can include gestures or words, that occur in a set place and in a set order; the social rules governing the expression of emotions do not (generally) address the order or place of the emotional display
Emotional responses
refers to the experience of feeling emotions, which is thought to be innate; there is no such thing as “cultural emotions,” per se
When a person belonging to a minority group is primed to recall his or her minority status while engaged in a task that is traditionally thought of as not typical for that group, the individual tends to perform worse than if he or she had not been reminded of the prejudice associated with that status. What is this phenomenon called?
Stereotype threat
When people are primed with a negative stereotype about their group’s expected performance in a particular subject, they tend to do worse than if there had been no priming (a phenomenon known as stereotype threat). For example, when female participants are led to believe that the difficult math test they are taking is one on which women do worse than men, they tend to perform in line with the stereotype that “women are bad at math.” However, when the second half of the test is presented to the same group without the gender priming, there are no gender differences in outcome. The priming can be as simple as having men outnumber women in a room
Racism
includes the actions, beliefs, or social systems that place different races in a hierarchy based on stereotyped expectations of people based on their racial characteristics; the concept does not deal directly with performance
Unstable self-esteem
The concept of self-esteem is not used to refer to group stereotypes, but is the worth a person places on him or her self
Self-verification
Self-verification posits that people wish others to perceive them as they perceive themselves; a positive view of a person that is not in line with his or her self-concept is likely to be rejected
The bystander effect
Social loafing
Social facilitation
- someone get’s attacked, and all the bystanders do nothing. The more bystanders there are, the less likely someone helps out.
- you pitch in less effort on a group project than an individual project
- people perform simple tasks better when in the presence of others. Eg. you can hike longer when with other people, or you study better when you have a study buddy. This rule does not apply for complex tasks since you might get nervous and mess up.
All of the following are true of learned helplessness, EXCEPT that:
it is often linked to an internal locus of control
Learned helplessness occurs when an organism is repeatedly subjected to a negative or aversive stimulus that cannot be escaped or avoided; eventually, the organism will give up trying to avoid or escape the stimulus and behave as though it were utterly helpless to change the situation. Even when opportunities to escape are presented, learned helplessness will prevent any action. Individuals with an internal locus of control tend to believe that they are capable of controlling events in their lives; in contrast, those with an external locus of control tend to feel as though life events are out of their control. Learned helplessness is associated with an external (not internal) locus of control. Learned helplessness does often result in a cognitive expectation that nothing the individual does will prevent or eliminate a negative or aversive outcome. It is also true that while learned helplessness is strongly tied to animal psychology and behavior (it was first discovered and demonstrated through extensive experiments with dogs), psychologists believe that learned helplessness also applies to many situations involving human beings. Psychologists have also theorized that learned helplessness is associated with several psychological disorders, including depression and anxiety.
If a grocery store clerk diagnosed with schizophrenia were to adamantly believe that she was a celebrity, and that the paparazzi had installed cameras in her home to watch her every move, she would most likely be diagnosed with what type of schizophrenia?
Paranoid schizophrenia
Paranoid schizophrenia
is primarily marked by delusions of grandeur and/or persecution
Disorganized schizophrenia
is associated with such symptoms as inappropriate affect, extreme social withdrawal, grotesque mannerisms, and bizarre behavior; it does not explain the scenario described in the question stem
Catatonic schizophrenia
is frequently associated with either complete stillness and stupor, or a high level of agitation and great excitement; this type of schizophrenia also does not explain the beliefs and behaviors of the woman in the question stem
Undifferentiated schizophrenia
describes types of schizophrenia that do not fall neatly into the other three categories; it does not best explain the clerk’s behavior, which more clearly suggests paranoid schizophrenia
Gender studies have been of interest to scholars of various academic disciplines, including sociologists. Those sociologists who adhere to the functionalist perspective would note that gender stratification and gender roles:
exist to maximize social coherence; for example, men have instrumental social roles and women have expressive social roles.
The functionalist perspective, also called functionalism, is concerned with structural processes that maintain social order. Based on this theoretical perspective, social functioning is possible through the independent contributions of individual social structures. Thus, it is expected that sociological theorists interested in functionalism would research the contributions of gender stratification to overall social cohesion. Functionalists might propose that men and women have separate social roles, which together have social benefits. For example, it might be expected that men are represented in the workplace and that women are represented in the household, both of which contribute to social coherence.
conflict theorists example
Discussion of traditions preventing the advancement of women, and capitalism in particular, as well as discussion of power inequalities, is expected from conflict theorists
This perspective is concerned with structural processes that maintain social inequalities.
The theoretical paradigm LEAST suited to microsociological studies is the:
options: constructionist perspective, symbolic interactionist perspective, dramaturgical perspective, and conflict theory perspective
conflict theory perspective
Theories with a micro level orientation are concerned with the nature of social interactions on the scale of the individual; theories with macro level orientation, in contrast, are concerned with the broader social structure. The main microsociological perspective is symbolic interactionism, which includes the dramaturgical approach. Social constructionism has both macro and micro versions, which reflects the fact that social realities are constructed both through greater social structures and through face-to-face social interactions. Conflict theory, however, is a macrosociological perspective concerned with social inequalities as a result of the greater social structure, which is of particular concern in capitalistic societies.
Spreading activation model
says that the mind maintains networks of words that are associated with each other to varying degrees. When one word is activated, those words with the strongest associations to the activated word are also activated. The way verbal insight problems use words that lead to incorrect activations is best explained by the spreading activation model
Feature-detection theory
is a theory of visual perception that proposes that different neurons fire in response to detecting different features; in other words, some neurons fire only in response to vertical lines or motion or contrast. Feature-detection theory cannot explain how verbal insight problems most likely activate the wrong set of internal representations because these problems are word-based and not image-based. While feature-detection theory may help explain how we learn to read, it does not help explain how word problems would trick us the way the verbal insight problems do
Weber’s Law
states that two sensory stimuli must differ by a minimum constant proportion (not a constant amount) in order for us to notice the difference
Bottom-up processing
suggests that we start with the information gathered by sensory receptors and build up to a final representation in our brain; this type of processing tends to be used more with novel stimuli
If researchers wanted to include a participant with severe damage to her lateral geniculate nucleus, they would need to revise the procedure by:
reading the problems aloud rather than providing the participants with the text
The lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) is the area behind the retina that serves as an intermediate way station for electrochemical signals passed from the retina to the visual cortex of the brain. Accordingly, the vision of a participant with damage to the LGN would be impaired, requiring that the problems be read aloud rather than presented in text form
damage to Broca’s area, the left hemisphere of the brain would lead to
expressive aphasia, the loss of the ability to produce spoken or written language
Expressive aphasia is the loss of the ability to produce spoken or written language. This ability would be directly affected by damage to Broca’s area, the corresponding language production region in the left hemisphere.
Amusia
a defect in recognizing pitch or other aspects of music, is not localized in the left hemisphere
Dyslexia
is characterized by difficulty in learning to comprehend written language, which is a receptive rather than productive skill
auditory verbal agnosia
the inability to comprehend speech, concerns receptive language skills
As they embarked upon deliberations during a trial nine jurors were leaning towards finding the defendant guilty, while three jurors thought the defendant was not guilty. During deliberations the nine who believed that the defendant was guilty tended to confer with one another, while the three who believed he was not guilty also conferred more with one another than with the other nine jurors. This tendency resulted in the jury members all becoming more entrenched in their initial positions than they had been before. This exemplifies what concept in social psychology?
Group polarization
Group polarization is the phenomenon whereby groups make more extreme decisions acting together as a group than the individual members would if acting alone. Accordingly, as individuals these jurors believed in their points of view from the beginning, but after they formed oppositional groups they became even more entrenched in their respective positions
Cognitive appraisal
is a process whereby a physiological arousal is assessed in the brain and processed for the appropriate physiological and psychological coping strategies
Informational influence
is a group effect whereby individuals look to other members in order to know how to behave in a given situation; it arises from a desire to be correct and to understand how best to act
Social categorization
is the process by which people sort themselves into categories
ex) When we meet a new professor, for example, we may classify her as a woman, as middle-aged, as Asian, as an academic, etc
Men and women display different characteristics with respect to their aggressive behavior. Women are more likely to engage in:
verbal aggression
Women are more likely to engage in verbal aggression (e.g., hurling insults, spreading rumors, or disparaging someone), whereas men are more likely to be physically aggressive. Differences in the average size and strength of males and females, along with a strong societal bias against female physical aggression, may account in part for this gender disparity. There is no evidence to suggest that women are more likely than men to commit aggressive acts associated with a social ritual. Women rarely commit sexually aggressive acts, which are much more commonly associated with males.
Socialized medicine is a term used to describe governmental regulation of health care, with this public administration of health services being funded through taxation. This is also often referred to as universal health care. In the United States, there are some socialized insurance programs, such as military medicine. However, despite the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, private companies continue to provide most of the nation’s health care. Public opinion has been slow to accept the notion of universal health care, as evidenced by the opposition to presidential reform efforts during the Truman, Clinton, and Obama administrations. This hesitation could be attributed to several factors, such as the public’s agreement with conservative critics. and best matches the approach to inequalities described in the theories of:
Max Weber
The theoretical perspective most concerned with social inequalities is conflict theory. Classical sociologists associated with this theory include Karl Marx, Ludwig Gumplowicz, and Max Weber.
The persistent opposition to forms of socialized medicine best reflects the theories of Max Weber. Unlike the other theorists, Weber argued that the presence of inequalities would not necessitate the collapse of capitalism. He suggested that responses to inequalities are moderated through additional social factors, such as agreement with authority figures (e.g., public political figures).
Emile Durkheim
is associated with structural functionalism, which is focused on contributions to social stability
Karl Marx
Marx argued that social inequalities, and subsequent conflict and internal tensions as a result of power differentials, would lead to the rise of socialism. The Marxist perspective then suggests the rise of socialized medicine, as opposed to the continuation of capitalistic private systems
Ludwig Gumplowicz
Expanded on Marx’s ideas via proposing that society is shaped by war and conquest and that cultural and ethnic conflicts lead to certain groups becoming dominant over other groups
object permanence
the awareness that physical objects exist even when they are not seen or experienced through any other physical sense
object permanence is attained by roughly 18-24 months.
A-not-B error
individual perseveres in looking for an object in a location in which it was previously placed, even with the knowledge that it has been placed elsewhere - most common in infants under 12 months of age
Ambivalent attachment - part of Mary Ainsworth’s Stranger Paradigm
Infants with ambivalent attachment show stress when their parents leave, but do not want to be comforted when their parents return
conservation - part of Piaget’s concrete operational stage of development (ages 7-11)
child’s capacity to determine that a certain quantity remains the same despite adjustment of the container, shape, or apparent size
Gestalt Law of continuity
we tend to see smooth continuous patterns rather than discontinuous ones
Gestalt principle of proximity
we tend to group nearby things together
Gestalt principle of similarity
we tend to group similar things together
polygraph
the most controversial lie detection instrument
purports to expose lying by gauging the physiological effects presumably associated with it
fight-or-flight response
increased heart rate, sweating, pupils dilate, inhibition of salivation
schizophrenics
suffer from delusions that they firmly believe, no matter how bizarre or implausible
positive reinforcement
provides a rewarding stimulus (like a treat) in order to encourage a desired behavior
negative reinforcement
positive punishment
involves following the unwanted behavior with an unfavorable outcome or negative stimulus (such as a spanking)
negative punishment
involves taking something good or pleasant away (such as recess for the rest of the week) in order to reduce the reoccurrence of the undesirable behavior
punishment
used to discourage an undesirable or unwanted behavior (such as lying) from happening again
