PYSC 100 Chapter 15 Flashcards
social psychology
The study of how the immediate social context as well as broader cultural environments influence people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions
core motivations that underlie actions
- to belong and form trusting relationships with others
- to understand the world and feel a sense of control over our actions and outcomes
- to perceive ourselves and our groups positively
Fusiform Face Area (FFA)
underlies facial recognition
Impression
schemas that organize the associated pieces of information we know about a person, like a mental file folder
Two key dimensions that capture our attention
Competence and Warmth
Heuristics for forming impressions
Transference, false consensus effect
Transference
tendency to assume that a new and familiar person has the same traits as another, known person whom they resemble in some way.
False consensus
The tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people’s beliefs and attitudes are similar to our own.
Impression management
A series of strategies that people use to influence the impressions that others form of them
Impression management strategies
Self-promotion, Ingratiation, Exemplification, Intimidation, Supplication
Ingratiation
To be seen as likable
ex. congratulating a friend
Attribution
Assignment of a casual explanation for an event, action, or outcome
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)
The tendency to assume that people’s actions are more the result of their internal dispositions than of the situational context- Internal Attribution
People raised in ___ cultures, where group harmony is valued over the individual agency, are more sensitive to situational constraints
collectivistic
Internal attribution
Believing peoples actions are caused more so by who they are as people than the situation (aka FAE)
External Attribution
Believing peoples actions can be explained by situational context
Self-Serving attributions
The attributions people make for their own behaviors or outcomes: We tend to make dispositional attributions for positive events but situational attributions for negative events
Affective Forecasting Errors
People’s inability to accurately predict the emotional reactions they will have to event
(because we overestimate the influence of some factors and underestimate the influence of others)
Attitude
An orientation toward some target stimulus that is composed of:
an affective feeling, a cognitive belief, and a behavioral motivation toward the target
Implicit attitude
An automatically activated evaluation of a stimulus ranging from positive to negative, often learned through repeated exposure to a person, place, thing, or issue
Implicit attitude
An automatically activated evaluation of a stimulus ranging from positive to negative- often learned through repeated exposure to a person, place, thing, or issue
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)
A theory of persuasion contending that attitudes can change by two different routes: a central route that focuses on the strength of the argument and a peripheral route that is sensitive to more superficial cues
Central route
relies on more thoughtful, reflective processes. people form a positive attitude when the evidence is strong and form a negative attitude when the evidence is weak.
Peripheral route
more slapdash and impressionable. attitudes are swayed by surface-level features and more automatic associations.
Compliance Strategies
used to change behavior more directly without targeting people’s attitudes towards the product, idea, or message.
changing of someone else’s attitude
persuasion
Door-in-the-face strategy
big request followed by a smaller request. elicits guilt after people decline so they feel more open to a smaller one
foot in the door approach
small request followed by a bigger request. people who comply to the first will be more likely to comply to the second
social proof
comparing to other people to show it is worth supporting
scarcity principle
where people tend to place higher value on things that are short in supply
Cognitive Dissonance
A sense of conflict between people’s attitudes and actions that motivates efforts to restore cognitive consistency
Post-decision dissonance
when we have to forgo an option that we have a positive attitude toward
Western vs Collectivist Dissonance
Western: when their actions are out of sync with their personal attitudes
Collectivist: when their actions are out of sync with the attitudes of important others or with the way they wish to appear in others’ eyes
effort justification
a person’s tendency to attribute the value of an outcome they put effort into achieving as greater than the objective value of the outcome
social norms
the patterns of behavior, traditions, and preferences that are tacitly sanctioned by a given culture or subculture.
conformity
The process by which people implicity mimic, adopt, or internalize the behaviors and preferences of those around them.
Informational social influence
Pressure to conform to others’ actions or beliefs based on a desire to behave correctly or gain an accurate understanding of the world.
Normative social influence
Pressure to conform to others’ actions or beliefs in order to gain approval from others or avoid social sanctions
Deindividuation
losing sight of our own personality
factors that influence conformity
Unanimity, Size of group, Culture, Low Self-Esteem, Deindividuation, conformity to our social role
Social Facilitation
An enhancement of the dominant behavioral response when performing a task in the mere presence of others; easy or well-learned tasks are performed better, but difficult or novel tasks are performed worse
Social loafing
The tendency for individuals to expend less effort on a task when they are doing it with others rather than alone
Homogeneity in a group
Means that everyone gets along very well and with relatively little conflict, can also lead to bias decision making
Group polarization
tendency for people’s attitudes to become more extreme after they discuss an issue with like-minded others.
Groupthink
A form of biased group decision making whereby pressure to achieve consensus leads members of the group to avoid voicing unpopular suggestions.
Stanley Milgram Experiment
In Milgram’s classic studies of obedience, participants were instructed to flip switches on this shock generator to administer what they believed to be increasingly painful electric shocks for each memory error made by a learner.
General Agression model
An integrative framework of the various factors and psychological processes that contribute to an act of aggression.
Most potent triggers of angry outbursts caused by
personal slights and insults that threaten our fundamental need for belonging and acceptance
Obedience
changing behaviors in response to a demand from an authority figure
Weapons effect
A phenomenon whereby simple exposure to a gun or weapon can increase aggressive responses by bringing violent thoughts to mind
prosocial behavior
actions aimed at assisting others toward their goals.
kin selection
An evolved or adaptive strategy of assisting those who share one’s genes, even at personal cost, as a means of increasing the odds of genetic survival.
norm of reciprocity
An automatic tendency to help others who have helped in the past or are expected to help in the future
Daniel Batson’s key to altruism
empathy
empathy gap
The inability to accurately simulate the mental suffering of another person.
Kitty Genovese is an example of
Bystander effect
Bystander effect
The lower likelihood of people coming to the aid of a victim when in the presence of other observers than if they are alone.
What is needed to intervene in an emergency
- Acknowledging it
- Interpret the event as an emergency
- Take personal responsibility for helping
- know what needs to be done
- follow through with some plan
Pluralistic ignorance
A situation that can occur when people are collectively unaware of each other’s true attitudes or beliefs.
Diffusion of responsibility
A tendency for people in a group to assume that someone else is in a better position to act or has already acted
Need to belong theory
biological need for interpersonal connection
isolation can cause mood and anxiety problems
stereotypes
Mental representations or schemas that summarize the beliefs and/or associations we have for a group of people. Used mostly when we have little energy to properly sort things out.
complementary stereotypes
attribute both positive and negative traits to certain groups
prejudice
A negative attitude toward a group or members of a group
discrimination
A tendency for individuals to receive different treatment or outcomes as a result of their membership in a given social group
Realistic group conflict theory
A theory asserting that negative intergroup attitudes develop whenever groups compete against one another for access to the same scarce resources
ingroup
someone’s social group which by thinking positively about themselves, people tend to extend positive emotions to as well
Social Identity Theory
A theory that explains why people develop a more positive attitude toward their own ingroup than towards outgroups. Having positive feelings about your ingroup by having negative ones about outgroups
outgroups
other groups
minimal group paradigm
experiment used to form groups based only on purported similarity of artistic preferences, perceptual biases, or even a random flip of a coin
Ingroup favoritism
favoring those in your ingroup, giving more of the goods to their own group than to others
Symbolic racism
The tendency to redirect one’s prejudice towards a racial or ethnic group to the policies that might benefit that group.
implicit racial bias
occurs when people have negative attitudes or formulate stereotypes (about members of a different race) that are easily and automatically associated with thoughts about that racial group.
Aversive racism
A tendency, even among egalitarian-minded people, to have unconscious negative reactions to people of racial or ethnic outgroups
Contact hypothesis
The proposal that prejudice can be reduced through sanctioned, friendly, and cooperative interactions between members of different groups working together as equals towards a common goal.
four important elements of positive contact that can help reduce prejudicial attitudes
- working together
- as equals
- toward a common goal
- in an environment where those in the position of authority support social change
jigsaw classroom
A technique to reduce intergroup prejudice by dividing an assignment among a diverse group of students and having them learn the information cooperatively.
mere exposure effect
all things being equal, the more we see something the more we like it.
our attitudes, interests, and backgrounds shape the contexts we seek out, so people around us are often similar to us.
Chameleon effect
we mimic the mannerisms, accents, and speech of people we like and when people do this we like them more.
sexual selection
the physical differences between men and women lead to the evolution of sex differences in mating strategies that enhance genetic survival.
parental investment theory
A theory that predicts sex differences in attraction due to the greater time, effort, and risk assumed by women than by men during procreation
social role theory
different social roles to men and women
women have traditionally held fewer higher status positions
triangular theory of love
A model that specifies passion, intimacy, and commitment as distinct elements that combine in various ways that lead to different types of love
3 most important things in a happy marriage
faithfulness
a happy sexual relationship
equity
Poor conflict management
(criticism), a tendency to be hostile or dismissive of the other person’s point of view
(contempt), denial of any personal responsibility (defensiveness),
withdrawing from any further conversation (stonewalling)
self-disclosing
leads to feeling more socially connected and less lonely
frequent checking of social media
predicts a drop in momentary happiness and life satisfaction
3 unique aspects of online dating
- have access to many more potential dating partners in a short period of time
- mode of communication is different
- match a user to potential partners who seem to be the best fit for the user’s interests
