SAFMEDs Chapter 24: Social Cognition and Influence

Question 1

Social psychology

Answer 1

• a branch of psychology that uses a scientific approach to understand how and why social groups influence individual behavior and attitudes
• how individual attitudes and behaviors affect social groups

Question 2

Social cognition

Answer 2

-how we think about ourselves and others in social situations

Question 3

Social Influence

Answer 3

-how we are influenced by others in a social situation

Question 4

Social behavior

Answer 4

-how we behave in social situations

Question 5

Schema

Answer 5

-a cognitive filter through which we view the world and interpret information

Question 6

Self-schema

Answer 6

-a construct about yourself and your experiences

Question 7

Possible selves

Answer 7

-aspects of ourselves that we either aspire to be or could conceivably be

Question 8

Self-Serving Biases

Answer 8

• most people like to think of themselves as being good, moral individuals
• the tendency to perceive ourselves in a positive light

Question 9

Attribution

Answer 9

-the way in which we explain the cause or causes of behavior

Question 10

Internal attribution

Answer 10

-an assumption that behavior is driven internal characteristics as traits or feelings

Question 11

External attribution

Answer 11

-an assumption that behavior is driven by external characteristics as traits or feelings

Question 12

Stable Attributions

Answer 12

• stable qualities within a given individual

- ex: internal stable (dispositional) -smartness

Question 13

Unstable attribution

Answer 13

-attributing performance to an unstable factor

Question 14

Attribution theory

Answer 14

• Fritz Heider
• an investigative tool to determine the causes of behavior
• internal vs external
• stable vs unstable

Question 15

Actor-observer bias

Answer 15

• the tendency to attribute internal, stable explanations of behavior when we observe other people’s behaviors
• attributing external or temporary explanations of behaviors when we explain our own behaviors

Question 16

Fundamental attribution error

Answer 16

• the tendency to attribute behaviors of others to dispositional factors
• ignoring external factors

Question 17

Ultimate attribution error

Answer 17

-applying the fundamental attrivution error to all individuals from a minority or underrecognized group

Question 18

Attitudes

Answer 18

-how you feel toward various objects

Question 19

Kurt Lewis

Answer 19

• the father of social psychology

- attitude is social psychology’s most indispensable concept

Question 20

Richard LaPiere

Answer 20

• study suggests that a very weak link exists between attitudes and behaviors
• took a Chinese couple to restaurants around the US and was only refused service at one
• wrote those same restaurants and many said they would never serve Asians

Question 21

Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 21

• Leon Festinger
• the discomfort felt when we hold two contradictory views simultaneously
• act in a way that conflicts with our beliefs

Question 22

Role playing

Answer 22

-an aspect of cognitive dissonance as people assume the characteristics of the roles they play

Question 23

Philip Zimbardo

Answer 23

• Stanford prison experiment
• prisoner vs guard groups
• implications for modern prison reform

Question 24

Primacy effect

Answer 24

• explains that information that comes early has greater persuasive power than information that comes late
• all information is presented and a judgement is made later

Question 25

Recency effect

Answer 25

• information that comes later than information that comes earlier has greater persuasive power
• later information comes just before a judgement is made

Question 26

Reason vs Emotion

Answer 26

• important distrinction in persuasion

- central vs peripheral route

Question 27

Central route

Answer 27

• Richard Petty and John Cacioppo
• involves reason and logic
• highly motivated audience that thinks and makes decisions about the topic at hand
• more strongly persuaded for a longer period of time
• controlled processing
• thoughtful evaluation

Question 28

Peripheral route

Answer 28

• Richard Petty and John Cacioppo
• relies on emotion or other superficial factors
• requires less motivation to think about the topic or make good good decisions
• temporarily convinced by communication
• persuasion is temporary
• can become an automatic process if certain emotions are continually associated with a particular object over an extended period of time

Question 29

Foot-in-the-door approach

Answer 29

-the idea that if you ask people to do a small thing first, they are more likely to comply with a larger request later

Question 30

Door-in-the-face approach

Answer 30

• begin by asking someone for a very large request and later ask for a much smaller request
• refusing to comply would challenge their sense of reciprocity
• you adjusted your rejuest so it only seems fair that they should adjust their response

Question 31

Normative social influence

Answer 31

• When your behavior is influenced by social norms

- manners

Question 32

Informational social influence

Answer 32

• provides noncoercive information that helps solve a problem or make a decision
• does not have a persuasive purpose

Question 33

Conformity

Answer 33

-behavior that is in accors with accepted group standards

Question 34

Solomon Asch

Answer 34

-Polish Gestalt psychologist
-determined to what degree other people influence our opinions or the external expression of our opinions
-social pressure conformity experiments
measured differences in research subjects’ visual judgements
-subjects would originally give the correct answer and then began making mistakes uniformly

Question 35

Stanley Milgram

Answer 35

• obedience to authority

- shocking experiment

Question 36

Debrief

Answer 36

-the process by which the researchers explain the goal, aim, and purpose of the study

Question 37

Social facillitation

Answer 37

-the process by which the researchers explain the goal, aim, and purpose of the study

Question 38

Social inhibition

Answer 38

-when your performance is poorer when you are watched by others

Question 39

Social loafing

Answer 39

-the tendency to exert less effort when working in a group if individual effort cannot be measured independently

Question 40

Deindividuation

Answer 40

-the loss of identity as a result of participation in a larger group, which lessens the sense of person resposibility for one’s actions and can lead to a higher degree of agression

Question 41

Risky shift

Answer 41

-the tendency to shift from uncertainty about performing a task or not to making a decision with greater risk

Question 42

Group polarization

Answer 42

-the tendency for people to hold even more extreme views on topics after a group discussion of like-minded people

Question 43

Groupthink

Answer 43

-the tendency to make bad decisions because of the illusion that the plan of action is a good one and supported by all members of the group

Question 44

Devil’s advocate method

Answer 44

-An individual is assigned to be the outsider by questioning all group decisions and to consider the alternative view

Question 45

Dialectical inquiry method

Answer 45

-two subgroups work on different plans of action and the leader of the entire group does not express his/her preference before the plans are presented

Question 46

Minority influence

Answer 46

-a disproportionate influence of the minority opinion over a majority opinion under certain conditions