Social Lecture 1: Decision-Making

Question 1

Describe what social psychology is compared to other types of psychology

Question 2

Give an example of how social psychology is related to other disciplines

Question 3

Explain why deception is often used in social psychology experiments

Question 4

Social psychology

Answer 4

The scientific study of how the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others

Question 5

Hawthorne effect

Answer 5

• Social desirability bias
• The mere fact of knowing that one is being studied may alter one’s behaviour

Question 6

List 2 or 3 typical errors that clinicians may make when making a diagnosis

Question 7

Explain what is meant by Type 1 vs Type 2 reasoning

Question 8

Give an example of a heuristic in a context where is it negative vs context where heuristics are helpful

Question 9

Heuristics

Answer 9

Rules or principles that allow us to make social judgements more quickly with reduced effort

Question 10

Availability heuristic

Answer 10

Make social judgements based on specific kinds of information that can easily be brought into mind (eg. the first thing to mind)

Question 11

Representativeness heuristic

Answer 11

Make social judgements based on the extend to which current person’s or event’s characteristics resemble the characteristics of stored schema

Question 12

False consensus effect

Answer 12

The tendency to assume that others behave or think as we do to a greater extent than is actually true

Question 13

Planning fallacy

Answer 13

Tendency to make optimistic prediction concerning on how long a task will take

Question 14

Automatic vigilance

Answer 14

We pay more attention to negative stimuli rather than positive ones

Question 15

Magical thinking

Answer 15

Assumptions that do not hold up to rational inquiry

Question 16

Law of Contagion

Answer 16

When two objects touch, they pass properties to one another

Question 17

Law of Similarity

Answer 17

Things that resemble one another share fundamental properties

Question 18

Homeopathy

Answer 18

Properly conducted studies show no effect beyond placebo

Question 19

Define the term ‘casual attributions’

Question 20

Give an example of a causal attribution error

Question 21

Outline model that explains causal attributions processes