Social Psych Flashcards
What is Social Psych?
The study of how social context as well as broader cultural environments influence people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions.
What two things often combine to explain the variability in how people behave?
Individual predispositions and situational context.
What core motivations underlie our actions? (5)
The need to belong, to form trusting relationships, to perceive ourselves positively, to understand the world, and feel a sense of control over our actions and outcomes.
The guiding motivations that direct how people are influenced by their _.
Social context.
What is Informational Social Influence?
The pressure to conform to others’ actions or beliefs based on a desire to behave correctly or gain an accurate understanding of the world.
Why do we form and transmit our beliefs to others?
To make sense of ambiguous situations.
When we conform to gain approval from others or avoid disapproval, what are we responding to?
Normative social influence.
What does Deindividuation involve?
Losing sight of your own individuality.
What does Social Facilitation refer to?
The mere presence of others can boost arousal in a way that facilitates the dominant response, or most likely behavioral reaction.
What is the Hawthorne Effect?
The tendency for people to perform better when they know that they are being observed.
What is Social Loafing?
The tendency for people to expend less effort on a task when they are doing it with others.
What was the Milgram paradigm?
The shock obedience test
What was Milgram’s interpretation?
Situations are more powerful than we imagine, rather than people are cruel.
Define Aggression
Any behavior directed toward the goal of harming another living thing.
What is the General Aggression Model?
A framework for connecting various factors that, in combination, predict the likelihood that people will act aggressively.
What is the strongest trigger for angry outbursts?
The personal slights and insults that threaten our fundamental need for belonging and acceptance.
_ + _ = Resulting Action
Background + Event
Which individuals are more prone to react with aggresssion?
People with certain personality traits of the environments they were raised in.
What variables can also shape the way a person shows aggression?
Situation-level and person-level variables.
What is the Weapons Effect?
A phenomenon whereby simple expose to a weapon can increase aggressive responses by bringing violent thoughts to mind.
What is Kin Selection?
An evolved or adaptive strategy of assisting those who share one’s genes, even at person cost, as a means of increasing the odds of genetic survival.
What is the Norm of Reciprocity?
An automatic tendency to help others who have helped in the past or are expected to help in the future.
What is the Empathy Gap?
The phenomenon where we don’t always find it easy to mentally stimulate the suffering of others.
What are Stereotypes?
The mental representations or schemas we have about groups.
