Short Answer Questions

Question 1

Intra-attitudinal structure has three components of attitudes please name each one with definitions?

Answer 1

• Cognition – Subjective attitude, beliefs about the issue or object
• Affect – Your mood, feeling about the issue or object
• Behaviour – Positive or negative, action to or from issue or object

Question 2

What are the two ways we can learn by association?

Answer 2

• Classic conditioning

* Operant conditioning

Question 3

What are the four factors affecting dissonance?

Answer 3

• Freedom of choice
• Investment
• Self-concept
• Consequences of the fact

Question 4

What are the five principles of social influence?

Answer 4

• Social proof – what the information or proof incur
• Liking – you are more likely to do the act if you know the person
• Authority – do the act because the person can give commands e.g. police
• Scarcity – associated with greed, you do the act to get something out of it
• Consistency – being faithful and doing something because of past experience

Question 5

What are the 4 basic structures across all cultures & briefly explain them:

Answer 5

• Communal sharing – The understanding that everyone in the group is equal
and undifferentiated. The focus is a common goal, and individual differences are disregarded. There is thought that there is a commonality between group
members (e.g. blood).
• Authority ranking – The understanding that there is a social hierarchy, those
individuals who are ranked higher are help in higher prestige, there is a linear
order between group members.
• Equality matching – The understanding that there is an even balance in all
relationships, e.g. if you do something for me I will do something for you.
• Market pricing – The understanding that all relationships are based around
ratios and rates, features of the relationships are brought down to a single value or metric, you can compare relationships based on this value.

Question 6

Describe the communal sharing aspect of the 4 elementary forms of sociality in a workplace paradigm, a decision making paradigm and a socially influential paradigm

Answer 6

Communal sharing at work involves everyone putting effort in to complete a work task. In a decision making paradigm, communal sharing is achieved when a consensus is arrived at. In the paradigm of social influence communal sharing is achieved when all members of a team conform to some sort of cultural norm.

Question 7

Explain the four major guiding principles of social psychology.

Answer 7

• Practicality Principle: The study of psychological processes and their
outcomes should be useful and applicable to human thought and action
• Universality Principle: We must be prepared to study all and any facet of
human behaviour and thought, no matter how strange
• Ethical Principle: We must behave in an ethical manner towards the
participants in our investigations
• Precautionary principle: Take no action until you are sure that it will do no
harm

Question 8

What does the term ‘Experimenter effects’ mean?

Answer 8

Subtle cues given out by a (novice) experimenter

Question 9

What are the positive and negative consequences of self-esteem?

Answer 9

• Positive characteristics: Initially likeable, extraverted, unlikely to suffer from depression, perform well in public.
• Negative characteristics: Crave attention, overconfident, lacking in empathy

Question 10

Name and explain the components of attitudes.

Answer 10

• Cognition: Beliefs about the issue or object; knowledge, understanding,
thoughts, correct or incorrect, firm, or hazy.
• Affect: Feeling about the object or issue; Hate revulsion, liking, affection;
positive and negative
• Behaviour: Action towards or away from the object or issue; approach and
avoidance

Question 11

Within the functional approach of attitude formation, 4 psychological needs have been identified. Provide the 4 psychological needs as well as a short example of each

Answer 11

• Utilitarian Example - Attitudes can help gain approval from others – instrumental attitudes
• Knowledge Example - Attitudes can help us to organise and predict the social world (cognitive schemes)
• Ego Defence Protect the individual from acknowledging threatening self- truths
• Value-expressive Example - Higher order determinants of attitudinal specifics

Question 12

There are 3 common attribution biases that effect attribution. Name the 3 biases and then define them

Answer 12

• The fundamental attribution error Definition: The tendency to make internal rather than external attributions for people’s behaviour
• The actor-observer bias Definition: The tendency for people to attribute their own behaviour to external (situational) causes but that of others to internal factors.
• Self-serving attributions Definition: The pervasive tendency to attribute successes to internal, personal attributions, and failure to external factors outside of our control.

Question 13

please state the stages of the Frustration-aggression hypothesis.

Answer 13

• Frustration at an event
• Aggression
• Inability to express aggression at true target
• Aggression redirected onto a realistic target

Question 14

state the Cathartic hypothesis and its purpose.

Answer 14

A build up of emotions from day to day irritations creates an imbalance which
leads to acts of aggression. The purpose of which is to get rid of negative emotions and restore balance.

Question 15

explain the excitation-transfer model.

Answer 15

• Non-specific arousal (i.e. not just anger) can inadvertently influence
aggression.
• We differentiate arousal by labelling it depending on external cues.
• E.g., elevated heart rate following an argument or when we have been in the
presence of an attractive individual.
• Arousal in one situation can transfer to an unrelated situation – residual
arousal – increasing the likelihood that we will behave aggressively in another situation.

Question 16

state the Situation-centred determinants of aggression.

Answer 16

• Physical environment
• Temperature
• Crowding
• Noise

Question 17

explain the social disadvantage – relative deprivation explanation of aggression. please provide an example.

Answer 17

If an individual or group feels that they are being unjustly disadvantaged compared to others, and believes they cannot improve this through legitimate means, they may instead act aggressively.
•Riots - Student street marches in London or the uprisings in Libya, Algeria, Syria.

Question 18

detail and explain the 3 pro-social behaviour definitions.

Answer 18

Pro-social behaviour – actions that are generally valued by other people in a
particular society
 Helping behaviour – acts where people voluntarily and intentionally behave
in a way they believe will benefit others
 Altruism – an act which benefits others but is not expected to have any
personal benefits

Question 19

Name and briefly explain two individual differences in self-awareness

Answer 19

• private self-awareness: evoked when looking in a mirror and when
experiencing physiological arousal
• public self-awareness: evoked when giving a presentation in public or being photographed or filmed

Question 20

Explain the difference between internal and external attributions.

Answer 20

Internal attributions: the outcomes are attributed to the self, usually when
they are positive.
External attributions: The outcomes are attributed to other people, usually when the outcome is negative

Question 21

Give a short example of how one of these could play out in a real setting

Answer 21

• (internal): “I did such a great job at work, we made all our targets because of
my hard work.”
• (external) “Everyone at work is so lazy, they didn’t make their targets

Question 22

Describe the control theory of self-regulation?

Answer 22

• test and re-test ie: compare the self to with the current standards –
• if not matched, alter behaviour and retest self
• pif standards are matched, then exit

Question 23

What is cognitive dissonance theory? Provide an example:

Answer 23

Definition: Cognitive dissonance theory is the feeling of discomfort caused by performing an action that is inconsistent with one’s attitude.
• Example 1: “I joined a riot even though I believe that violence solves nothing”
• Example 2: “It made me feel conflicted but I did it because everyone else
was”

Question 24

What is the “Ringelmann effect”? Provide an example:

Answer 24

Definition: The tendency for individuals to contribute less as the size of the
group increases.
• Example 1: “I felt I could do less because there were more people to help
contribute”

Question 25

What is the definition of attitude?

Answer 25

A positive or negative evaluation of an object where an attitude an object is a person, thing event or issue

Question 26

What are the 2 key approaches that make up the biological theory of aggression? Describe each briefly.

Answer 26

Psychodynamic theory: Aggressive behaviour is a result of the displacement of self destructive tendencies onto other targets
• Evolutionary: Aggression ensures we live long enough for our genes to be passed onto offspring

Question 27

When it comes to social influences what is Tuckmans 5 stages?

Answer 27

forming , storming , norming , performing and deforming

Question 28

Part 1: Identify 3 social norms that is responsible for helping behaviour. Part 2: Expand on all three

Answer 28

• Reciprocity - returning a favour for a favour
• Social Responsibility - we should help others when they depend on us
• Social Justice - we should help others who are in need of help

Question 29

What are the three components of intra-attitudinal structure: cognition, effect and behaviour? Pick one and describe it.

Answer 29

• Cognition: beliefs about the issue or object, (knowledge, understanding, thoughts, correct or incorrect, firm or hazy)
• Affect: Feeling about the object or issue (hate, revulsion, liking, affection, pos and neg)
• Behaviour: action towards or away from the object or issue (approach and avoidance)

Question 30

What are the three factors to assess co-variation?

Answer 30

• Consensus
• Consistency
• Distinctiveness

Question 31

Define social identity theory and give an example.

Answer 31

People want a positive self concept, one way we can get a positive sense of
self is through our group membership (social identity) if we see our group negatively … we are motivated to see our groups as being better than other groups (ingroup bias) to maintain self esteem

Question 32

List Four basic structures across all cultures?

Answer 32

Communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching and market pricing…

Question 33

What is self awareness?

Answer 33

A psychological state in which people are aware of their traits, feelings and behaviours.

Question 34

Define the four factors affecting dissonance.

Answer 34

•Freedom of Choice - with no choice there is no dissonance. With choice, if an action is in contravention to personal attitudes this will cause dissonance.
•Investment - when there is more investment in attitude, it is more important
for a self concept, therefore stronger effects of dissonance.
•Self-concept - The more someone thinks they are moral and honest, the
more they need to believe it.
•consequences of the act - The more one see’s that their actions have had an
effect upon another person the more one comes to accept responsibility for the action and believe what they said.