Social Psych Midterm

Question 1

Social Psychology

Answer 1

scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people

Question 2

Fundamental Attribution Error

Answer 2

tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior is due to their own personality traits and to underestimate the power of social influence

Question 3

Self Fulfilling Prophecy

Answer 3

an expectation of how someone will act, that expectation influences how you act towards that person, this causes that person to act how you originally expected them to, “I was right about them”

Question 4

Example of Fundamental Attribution Error

Answer 4

we see someone acting like an assholes so we would automatically assume they are an asshole

Question 5

Naive Realism

Answer 5

idea that people believe that they perceive things accurately

Question 6

What motivates people?

Answer 6

hunger
fear
need for control
rewards
love
need to feel good about ourselves
need to be accurate

Question 7

Wall Street Game v. Community Game

Answer 7

a study where 2/3 played competitively compared to the community where 1/3 played competitively

Question 8

Example of social influence

Answer 8

effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behaviors

Question 9

What are the advantages of using experiments/experimental method?

Answer 9

You get to observe both groups and measure the differences in their responses

Question 10

Benefits of Observational Method?

Answer 10

shows at least 2 judges independently came up with the same observations, researchers ensure that the observations are not subjective or biased

Question 11

Benefits of Correlational Method?

Answer 11

technique that assesses how well you can predict one variable form another

Question 12

Benefits of Experimental Method?

Answer 12

determines if one variable causes another

Question 13

How do researchers come up with their theories and their research?

Answer 13

research comes from scientists not feeling satisfied with current answers to problems

Question 14

Does correlation equal causation?

Answer 14

No

Question 15

Types of research design?

Answer 15

observational
correlational
experimental

Question 16

Internal Validity

Answer 16

You are confident that the results are correct and not based on other factors

Question 17

External Validity

Answer 17

examines whether the study findings can be generalized to other contexts

Question 18

social cognition

Answer 18

how people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgements and decisions

Question 19

social perception

Answer 19

study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people

Question 20

Heuristics

Answer 20

mental shortcuts people use to make judgements quickly and efficiently

Question 21

Barnum Effect

Answer 21

tendency for people to believe that vague personality descriptions uniquely apply to them

Question 22

Automatic thinking v. Control thinking

Answer 22

automatic thinking: thinking that is unconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless

control thinking: thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful

Question 23

Analytic thinking v. Holistic thinking

Answer 23

analytic thinking: ability to identify a problem and develop solutions

holistic thinking: focuses on the whole picture and relationships of things

Question 24

Counterfactual thinking

Answer 24

mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been

Question 25

Schemas

Answer 25

mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember

Question 26

Nonverbal communication cues

Answer 26

facial expressions
tone of voice
gestures
body position and movement
touch
gaze

Question 27

6 basic emotions

Answer 27

anger
sadness
fear
disgust
happy
surprise

Question 28

Internal attribution

Answer 28

deciding that the cause of the behavior was something about him, like his personality, his disposition, his attitude, character, etc

Question 29

Two-step attribution process

Answer 29

initial, automatic thought that the person’s behavior must be due to something about that person (internal attribution), then after getting more information, we can adjust our thinking to include situational or social impacts on the behavior

Question 30

Self-serving attribution

Answer 30

explanations for one’s success that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors