Rest of Semester Flashcards
1
Q
Describe factor analysis
A
A correlational technique for reducing the possible number of traits to a manageable number
2
Q
what is the purpose of factor analysis?
A
To interpret emerging patterns found in managed data
3
Q
What two types of traits did Cattell propose?
A
Surface traits and source traits
4
Q
Describe surface traits
A
refers to observable things e.g. trait of friendliness can be seen by smiling, saying hello etc.
5
Q
Describe source traits
A
more explanatory - underlying causes of surface traits
6
Q
What was Cattell’s goal?
A
To identify source traits through factor analysis through 3 sources
7
Q
Cattell’s 3 sources - L Q T
A
L- life records
Q - questionnaire
T - tests
8
Q
How many personality factors or ‘source traits’ did Cattell devise?
A
16 - now developed into the 16PF personality test
9
Q
What were Eysenck’s 3 personality dimensions?
A
Extraversion-Introversion (E)
Neuroticism - Stability (N)
Psychoticism (P)
10
Q
true or false: most traits have a normal distribution
A
True - Eysenck’s dimensions are in fact on a continuous scale
11
Q
What are the four stages of organisation into specific actions (Eysenck)
A
Type - introversion
Traits - persistence
Habits - persists with hobbies
Specific behaviours
12
Q
Who is high psychoticism found in?
A
high degree of psychopathy found among schizophrenics, criminals, sociopaths etc.
13
Q
What are some dispositions of people with high P (psychoticism) scores?
A
- troublesome, not fitting in
- cruel, inhumane
- hostile and aggressive
14
Q
What supporting evidence is there for introverts have higher levels of cortical arousal than extraverts?
A
- conditioning speed
- drugs (depressants and stimulants)
- relation between performance and stress
15
Q
Summarise the Yerkes-Dodson Law
A
inverted U-shape, as arousal goes up our performance increases to the ‘optimal level’, extra arousal after this level will result in drop in performance
16
Q
What is the emerging consensus for number of factors needed to describe personality?
A
5 factors
17
Q
What are the 5 factors? Who devised the model?
A
Costa & McCrae's five factor model: Openness Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism
18
Q
What is personality assessment?
A
Gathering of info about a person to aid understanding, prediction or decision making about said person
19
Q
Briefly summarise two basic assumptions underlying personality assessment
A
- there is consistency over time within an individual
- sufficient regularity and similarity in overt behaviours
20
Q
What are the three requirements for a good personality test?
A
- Reliability
- Validity
- Standardisation
21
Q
What is meant by reliability?
A
the extent to which a test produces consistent results
22
Q
What is meant by validity?
A
extent to which a test measure what it claims to measure
23
Q
According to Mischel (1968), what is the correlation of cross-situational consistency?
A
r = 0.3, that is, the same behaviour from an individual across different situations has a correlation of 0.3
24
Q
What are two levels of influence?
A
- Sociocultural
- Situational
Note: refers to physical and social environment e.g. the whole psychological situation
25
What do situationists suggest?
That personality doesn't exist, and that situational factors determine a person's behaviour
26
What is interactionism?
The idea that traits and situations combine to produce behaviour e.g. a person will behave according to a trait in some situations, but not others
27
How can interactionism be tested?
1. Experimental method (manipulating situations to observe behaviours)
2. Variance-components method (response to naturally occurring situations for analysis - correlation)
28
What are the models of interactionism?
1. Static (person + situation = behaviour)
| 2. Dynamic (reciprocal relationships between persons, situations and behaviour)
29
The fundamental problem for the study of personality is...
empirical evidence for human knowledge development
30
Social psychology can be defined as...
The scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals are influenced by one's social environment
31
What does social psychology assume?
We construct our world and selves socially, in interaction with other people
32
What is a meta-theory?
A theory about theories; a more abstract theoretical perspective that finds expression in different concrete theories
33
Explain the "power of the situation" and how it can affect normal people
Well-adjusted people can commit evil deeds under strong situational demands e.g. Milgram obedience studies
34
Define situationism
Human behaviour is primarily determined by the forces of the situation, the social environment
35
The Carnahan & McFarland (2007) differing ad study found that:
volunteers for prison life study were higher in aggression, narcissism and social dominance, lower in altruism and empathy
36
Explain interactionism
Personality factors and situational factors interact and jointly determine how people act in certain circumstances
37
When do people take on a group role?
After they have internalised them as part of a social identity shared with other people
38
What is distinctive about social psych research methods?
manipulation and control, and randomisation. this leads to inferences of causality and high validity levels
39
What does prior knowledge have to do with social cognition?
Our behaviour depends on the stimuli in a situation, but also prior knowledge that we bring to the situation
40
What is bottom up processing?
Stimuli received through our senses that are processed
41
What it top down processing?
Information that we bring to a situation e.g. people wearing suits
42
Our capacity to process information is limited (social cognition basic assumptions). expand
Depending on capacity and necessity, we process info in a given situation to a greater or lesser depth
43
What is the basic assumption in social cognition about cognitive processes?
Cognitive processes can be conscious and controlled or automatic and uncontrolled
44
Define a schema
Cognitive structures containing information about how the social world operates
45
Explain a prototype in terms of category representation
A prototype is a cognitive representation of the typically ideal characteristics of a category - a stereotype is the same but for groups
46
How do categories become activated in social cognition?
Depends on how cognitively accessible the categories are - determined by frequency and recency
47
What is priming?
Exposing someone to a certain aspect of a category so they can expect that from said category
48
How is motivation relevant to categorisation?
Your motivations at the time depend how you categorise something e.g. a tomato can either be food when hungry or a projectile when angry
49
What is judgement?
Cognitive shortcuts when mental capacity is limited: decision heuristics
50
What is an anchoring heuristic?
judgements start with an initial value (anchor_ and are adjusted during subsequent course of judgement, often insufficiently
51
What is an availability heuristic?
Judgements of frequency or probability based on ease of information coming to mind (the easier an example comes to mind, the more frequent)
52
What is a representativeness heuristic?
judgements are based on typicality of a case for a broader category or event, ignoring base rates
53
Why are social psychologists interested in the self?
1. social behaviour
2. influence of social environment
3. construction of social world/self through interaction
54
What is the looking-glass self?
The way we perceive ourselves through the imagined lens of others
55
Define your self-concept
the representation of yourself, in terms of attributes, roles, group memberships...
56
Self-schemas are...
cognitive generalisations about the self derived from past experience. They also guide processing of self-relevant information
57
What determines self-complexity?
the number of independent, non-redundant self-aspects
58
What is the importance of self-complexity?
protects the self from the impact of negative experiences in one domain of self
59
What are the three selves detailed in the self-discrepancy theory? (Higgins, 1987)
```
Actual self (self in actual terms)
Ideal self (self you want to be)
Ought self (self others expect of you)
```
60
When discrepancies exist between your actual self and ideal self, what happens?
Can feel disappointed, frustrated, sad
61
When discrepancies between your ideal self and ought self occur, what happens?
Can feel guilty, ashamed, resentful and afraid
62
What are the two aspects of the regulatory focus theory? (Higgins, 1987)
Promotion focus and prevention focus
63
What is promotion focus?
focusing on the approach of gains, striving for ideals
64
What is prevention focus?
avoidance of losses; fulfilling duties or oughts e.g. concerned about doing wrong thing - less risk-taking
65
Define self-regulation
controlling and changing one's self and one's behaviour towards certain goals and expectations
66
What is the relational self?
Oneself in relation to other relevant individuals e.g. individualist societies promote independent self, collectivist societies promote interdependent self
67
Define self-esteem
"A person's overall self-evaluation or sense of self-worth", linked to well-being, happiness, optimism, productivity and resilience against failure
68
What is explicit self-esteem?
conscious, measured via self-report
69
What is implicit self-esteem?
subconscious, measured via implicit associations or indirect measures
70
What happens when there are discrepancies between explicit and implicit self-esteem?
high explicit but low implicit - particularly defensive to self threats (insecure)
71
Explain self-presentation
managing and influencing others' impressions of us
72
Why do we engage in self-presentation?
As well as strategic reasons, for self-expressive reasons: for others to confirm your view of yourself
73
Define attitude
a psychological tendency of positively or negatively evaluating something
74
What are the two elements of attitudes?
1. object
| 2. process of evaluation
75
In relations to the importance of attitudes, it is assumed that...
attitudes guide our behaviour, and attitudes are a means for social influence
76
What are some methodological issues of attitudes as a behaviour guide?
Measurement correspondence - attitude measurement tends to be global, but behaviour measurement tends to be specific
77
What is the theory of reasoned action?
That the attitude towards the behaviour is the sum of the values of all potential outcomes weighted by their probability
78
What is the subjective norm? (theory of reasoned action)
belief that significant other think one should perform the behaviour, weighted by one's motivation to comply with the person
79
What is reverse causality?
Behaviour affecting attitudes
80
What are the 3 characteristics of dissonance theory? (Festinger, 1957)
- people attempt to maintain consistency between thoughts and actions
- inconsistency arouses cognitive dissonance
- dissonance is reduced by changing attitudes in line with behaviour
81
What is the self-perception theory? (Bern, 1965)
- people infer attitudes from their own behaviour
82
What is induced compliance? (dissonance theory)
Induced behaviour elicits dissonance, resolved by attitude change, then affects further behaviour
83
Induced compliance is also known as the foot in the door tactic. What are the three steps?
1. small request, easy to comply
2. compliance and shift in attitudes
3. larger request now more likely to be complied with
84
What is the opposite of the foot in the door tactic?
Door-in-face tactic. Won't say yes to the large request, but may say yes to smaller one due to comparison with the larger one
85
Describe the central route of persuasion
effortful scrutiny of the message content
86
Describe the peripheral route
use of message-external cues
87
What factors determine elaboration likelihood (likelihood that message is critically evaluated)
Ability (intelligence, distraction)
| Motivation (personal relevance
88
Define altruism
Motive to increase another's welfare without conscious regard for one's self-interest
89
What are the three explanations for altruism?
1. Social exchange theory
2. Social norms
3. Evolutionary psychology
90
Social exchange theory is a minimax strategy. What does this mean?
Maximise benefits for yourself and minimise the costs
91
What does Batson say is 'genuine altruism'?
Empathy; putting oneself in another's shoes, to experience their distress and help them
92
What are social norms?
Social expectations: prescribing what we ought to do
93
Explain the reciprocity norm
expectation that people will help those who have helped them
94
Explain the reciprocity norm in the context of finding a stranger's wallet
Finder might be rewarded with a small amount of money from the wallet for returning it
95
What is the social responsibility norm?
Expectation that people will help those dependent upon them (children, disabled)
96
Each of the three theories there are two types of altruism. What are they? Give a brief example of each
Mutual altruism: external rewards/reciprocity norms
| Intrinsic altruism: empathy, social responsibility, kin selection
97
What did Milgran suggest contributed to Kitty Genovese's murder?
The natural extension of urban environment - less willing to help strangers due to massive number of people
98
What have experiments shown the effects of bystander passivity to be?
as the no. of bystanders increased, any individual is less likely to assume responsibility, or interpret the incident as a problem
99
How does guilt affect helping behaviour?
Guilt is painful, and we act to reduce it by helping other people
100
What role do traits play in helping behaviour?
People high in emotionality and empathy are predisposed to help
101
How does gender of the helpless effect helping behaviour?
Men are more likely to offer help in situations that present danger - women more likely to help in safe situations
102
What does kinship mean in the context of Indigenous Australian communities?
- different responsibilities and rights
- elders are leaders, upholders of interpreted law
- sharing and reciprocity within communities
103
How is land seen in Indigenous Australian communities?
The responsibility of the community, whereas Western cultures advocate individual ownership in exchange for money
104
What were the consequences of land disposession for Indigenous Australians?
- no meaning to life
- lack of food and medicine
- many people died
105
Colonists explained their actions as 'social darwinism'. Explain this
Darwinism refers to the survival of the fittest. Settlers suggested the inevitable extinction of the Indigenous was beneficial to them due to their inferiority
106
When was the Stolen generation 'stolen'? How many children were stolen?
1910
| 70-100 000 children placed into institutions or white families
107
What did the Closing the Gap program aim to achieve?
Improving health, housing, education and employment
108
What was the Northern Territory Intervention? (2007)
An initiative of the Howard government that aimed to decrease levels of child abuse in Indigenous communities by banning alcohol and increasing police presence
109
Was the Northern Territory Intervention helpful?
Police presence further deteriorated relationships between law and community, and Indigenous people were not involved in implementation in any way
110
What are the four characteristics of communication?
Sender, receiver, medium, content
111
What are the five nonverbal behaviours?
```
Kinesics (movement)
Oculesics (eye)
Haptics (touching)
Proxemics (space)
Vocalics (pitch, tempo)
```
112
What is discursive psychology?
analysis of spoken/written text to understand how people construct their reality
113
What is social constructivism?
The idea that no universal truth exists, because experience constructs your knowledge
114
What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (also known as the linguistic relativity hypothesis)?
Your language dictates what you see and what you perceive, many argue the opposite
115
What are the main Aboriginal values?
- spirit and integrity
- reciprocity
- respect and equality
- survival and protection
- responsibility
116
Defining prejudice
A prejudgmental attitude to a group and its members (combination of ABC)
117
Where do prejudices stem from?
our need to justify our behaviour or from negative beliefs or stereotypes
118
What is a stereotype?
A negative or positive generalised belief towards a particular group
119
Define discrimination
Discrimination is the negative behaviour, resulting from prejudice (negative attitude)
120
What is an illusory correlation?
The perception of a relationship between two variables that does not exist in the real world
121
What is the superiority theory?
Related to malicious schadenfreude; pleasure is a product of superiority about disadvantaged people's adversity for which the disadvantaged are blamed
