Quiz 4 Flashcards
Social comparison theory Festinger
We evaluate our abilities and beliefs by
comparing them with those of others
* E.g., siblings
Upward social comparison
Superior others ex: athletes
Downward social comparison
Inferior others ex: exam grade
Attribution
cause for behavior
Internal
Dispositional attributions
External
Situational attributions
Fundamental Attribution Error
(FAE)
attribute our own behavior to contextual factors (self-serving bias) ex: everyone is dumb but ME
Conformity social influence
Peer/group influence, no pressure to change behavior
Obedience social influence
leader/authority influence, change behavior due to pressure
Milgram study
63% of participants gave xxx shock
Higher Psychological distance b/w teacher &
experimenter
Less obedience
Psychological distance between teacher and
learner
More obedience
Higher moral stage
less obedience
Greater authoritarianism
greater obedience
Pluralistic ignorance
If nobody else is reacting, it must not be an issue
Bystander effect
See someone in need of help but think others will do it
Diffusion of responsibility
Recognize emergency, but feel someone else will take care
of it
Enlightenment effect
Exposure to research can change real-world behavior
Social loafing
People’s tendency to slack off in groups
Prosocial
Helping others
Altruism
Helping if for an unselfish reason
Belief
Conclusion regarding factual evidence
* E.g., death penalty effectively deters people from committing
murder versus does not
Attitude
Belief with an emotional component
* E.g., death penalty is morally wrong and thus should not be legal
(versus should be)
Cognitive dissonance
An unpleasant state of tension
resulting from holding two
conflicting thoughts or beliefs.
Ex) Helping someone in need
Threat to self-concept
Only certain conflicts between attitudes cause cognitive
dissonance.
* Inconsistency challenges self-concept
Self-perception theory
We acquire our attitudes by observing our behavior
Impression management theory
We don’t really change our attitudes in cognitive dissonance
studies. We only tell experimenters that we have.
* We do so because we don’t want to appear inconsistent
Central route
Focuses on informational content of the message ex; what a person says
Peripheral route
focuses on its surface aspects of the message or source ex: what the person looks like
Foot in the door
Start with a small request and move on to a larger one
Door in face
Start big then backs off
Low ball technique
Start with a low price, then “add-on” all desirable options
Stereotypes
Assumptions about a person
Prejudice
Holding negative views toward some group, negative attitudes
In-group bias
Favor people inside our group over people outside
Out-group homogeneity
Tendency to view all people outside our group as highly similar ex: all other football fans are dumb cus the gators are the best
Discrimination
Negative behaviors
Explicit prejudice
Unfounded neg beliefs that we’re aware of
Implicit prejudice
Unfounded neg beliefs that we’re less aware of
Personality
Predispositions to think/behave certain ways
Traits
◦ Dimensions of personality
◦ Ex: agreeableness, extraversion
Nomothetic
Broad study of personality across all
people
Idiographic
Studying a specific individual’s personality
Causes of personality
Genetic factors, shared environmental, nonshared environmental factors
Psychic determinism
Cause & effect: nothing is spontaneous/random
Symbolic meaning
Derive deeper meaning from “surface level” actions
Unconscious motivation
Inaccessible, unconscious drives and motivations
Id
basic instincts
Ego
Principal decision maker
Superego
Sense of morality
Repression
motivated forgetting of threatening memories
Denial
refusal to acknowledge some threatening current state
Projection
attribution of own negative qualities to others
Rationalization -
explaining away unreasonable thoughts or feelings
Regression –
returning to a younger and safer time
Reaction-formation –
reversing an experience (attraction into hate)
Displacement
directing a desire from one target to another
sublimation –
turning something unacceptable into a goal
Neo-Freudians
Less emphasis on sexuality, more on social drives
Conditions of worth
We accept ourselves only if we act in certain ways
* Come from others first; then we internalize them
Factor analysis
Identify primary traits
Five traits Ocean
O- Openness to Experience
◦
Five traits C
Conscientiousness
◦
Five traits E
Extraversion
◦
Five traits A
Agreeableness
◦
Five traits N
Neuroticism
Empirical approach
Interest is whether the items distinguished between
groups, not why or how
◦ Low face validity
Rational/theoretical approach
Begin with clear-cut conceptualization of a trait, then
write items to assess
Projective hypothesis
When interpreting ambiguous stimuli, people will project
aspects of their personality onto them
Rorschach Inkblot Test
People say what each inkblot means to them
