Social Psychology 1

Question 1

The self

Answer 1

The person including mental processes, body and attributes. Considered to be a driving force behind social cognition. Can be stable, transformative and adaptive.

Question 2

Three parts of the self

Answer 2

1 Self-knowledge – Self-concept
Self-awareness
Self-esteem
Self-deception
Self-schema

2 Interpersonal Self – Public self
Self-presentation
Group membership
Social roles
Reputation

3 Agent Self – Executive functioning
Decision making
Taking charge of situations

Question 3

Self-concept

Answer 3

An organised pattern of thought and perception about oneself.

Question 4

The contemporary Western view of the person

Answer 4

Is of a bounded individual, distinct from significant others, who is defined by more or less idiosyncratic attributes. In contrast, most cultures have understood the person in social and familial context. Technological development has fostered individualism.

Question 5

Self-esteem

Answer 5

How favourable someone evaluates themselves. Low or High for different abilities.

Question 6

Self-handicapping

Answer 6

A process where people set themselves up to fail when success is uncertain in an attempt to maintain their self-esteem.

Question 7

Self-Presentation

Answer 7

(Also known as impression management) the process by which people attempt to control the impressions that others form of them.

Question 8

First impressions

Answer 8

We infer stable character traits from a single behaviour. We use our impressions as guides to predict how people will behave in the future.

Question 9

Impression updating

Answer 9

Highly immoral and highly competent are less frequent, thus, making stronger impressions.

Question 10

Neural process of updating impressions

Answer 10

When updating impressions based on people’s behaviours, activity in the Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and superior temporal sulcus correlates with perceptions of how frequently those behaviours occur in daily life. In other words, the brain tracks low-level statistical properties of behaviour in order to make complex decisions regarding other people’s behaviour. Is it out of the ordinary or typical behaviour?

Question 11

Downward social comparison

Answer 11

When people compare themselves with other people on a particular dimension, a process termed social comparison, they often use as their comparison group individuals who are worse off than they are to maintain a positive view of their own traits and abilities.

Question 12

Basking in reflected glory (BIRGing)

Answer 12

People who BIRG associate with people or groups that succeed but distance themselves from the same people or groups when they fail.

Question 13

Self-consistency

Answer 13

The motivation to interpret information to fit the self-concept and to prefer people who verify rather than challenge it.

Question 14

Self-presentational predicaments

Answer 14

Occurs that threaten the image we would like to portray.

Question 15

Actual self

Answer 15

How they really are.

Question 16

Ideal self

Answer 16

The self they would like to be.

Question 17

Ought self

Answer 17

The self they feel they should be.

Question 18

Attribution

Answer 18

The process of inferring the causes of one’s own and others’ mental states and behaviours.

Question 19

External attributions

Answer 19

Attributions to the situation or environment. Can be made on interaction between external and internal attributions.

Question 20

Internal attributions

Answer 20

Attributions to the person and their personality. Can be made on interaction between external and internal attributions.

Question 21

Three types of information needed to make an attribution

Answer 21

Consensus- how most people act in that situation.

Consistency- how this person typically reacts in that situation.

Distinctiveness- how this person usually reacts in different situations.

Question 22

Three steps taken to make an attribution

Answer 22

First, people categorise the behaviour they have observed. Then, based on the way they have interpreted the behaviour, they categorise the person’s personality. Finally, if the situation seems to have elicited or contributed to the behaviour they may discount the attribution of hostility.

Question 23

Discounting

Answer 23

Occurs when people downplay (discount) the role of one variable (such as personality, intelligence or skill) because they know that others may be contributing to the behaviour in question.

Question 24

Augmentation

Answer 24

Increasing (augmenting) an internal attribution for behaviour that has occurred despite situational demands.

Question 25

Attributional style

Answer 25

A person’s habitual manner of assigning causes to behaviours or events. May have an optimistic or pessimistic explanatory style.

Question 26

Schemas

Answer 26

Patterns of thought that organise experience — guide attention, encoding and retrieval of information about people, situations and relationships. Reduces amount of information that needs to be processed.

Question 27

Social cognition

Answer 27

Refers to the processes by which people make sense of others, themselves, social interactions and relationships. Higher ordering thinking is taxing. Many cognitions are a result of automatic and efficient thinking. Errors can occur.

Question 28

Self-Serving Bias

Answer 28

Crediting success to internal factors or own competence, blaming external factors for failure. Helps protect self-esteem and reduces negative emotions that can’t be controlled. Can have negative effects such as not accepting fault for failure and never improving. Tend to see ourselves better than others do. This bias is pervasive in the Western individualistic cultures but much less so in collectivist cultures such as Asian cultures.

Question 29

Fundamental attribution error (correspondence bias)

Answer 29

People tend to attribute behaviours to internal factors instead of external or circumstances, like judging someone in a bad mood as bad if they are just having a bad day. Western people more likely to do this than East Asian. People more to do this on others than themselves.

Question 30

Confirmation Bias

Answer 30

Tendency to notice / search for information that confirms a pre-existing belief.

Question 31

Motivational biases

Answer 31

Schemas and attributions are influenced by wishes, needs and goals.

Question 32

Cognitive biases

Answer 32

Heuristic techniques allow quick judgments without conscious reflection that may not be accurate.

Question 33

Attitude

Answer 33

An association between an act or object and an evaluation, which usually includes cognitive, evaluative/affective and behavioural components.These three components can, however, vary independently. Attitudes vary on a number of dimensions, such as their strength, accessibility and complexity; whether they are implicit or explicit; and the extent to which they involve ambivalence. They also differ on their coherence (particularly the fit between cognitive and evaluative components). Broad attitudes tend not to be good predictors of behaviour.

Typically viewed as positively or negatively. Can be more complex and even neutral (not the same as no attitude).

Question 34

Persuasion

Answer 34

Refers to deliberate efforts to change an attitude. The effectiveness of a persuasive appeal depends on a number of factors related to the source of the communication (people tend to be more persuasive when they are credible, attractive, likeable and powerful), the message, the channel (the means by which a message is sent, verbal or visual matters), the context (presence of competing messages, background stimuli like cheering or music) and the receiver (personality traits and strength of point of view).

Question 35

Central route processing

Answer 35

Paying attention to all important details. Careful explicit thought.

Question 36

Peripheral route processing

Answer 36

Paying attention to details that aren’t important. Less explicit and rational thought.

Question 37

Cognitive Dissonance and cognitive dissonance theory

Answer 37

When Behaviours and Attitudes are inconsistent. This leads to a state of tension. To eliminante cognitive dissonance either the attitude has to change or the behaviour has to change. Can also happen with attitudes and new information, motivating change for attitude. Dissonance reduction occurs automatically, without conscious reflection.

Question 38

Elaboration likelihood model

Answer 38

How likely are you to think hard about something and use central route processing or use peripheral route processing.

Question 39

Implicit vs Explicit Attitudes

Answer 39

Implicit- unconscious and automatic evaluations.

Explicit- conscious evaluations (implicit and explicit attitudes may not always correlate).

Implicit Association Test to find unconscious attitudes.

Question 40

Mere-exposure effect

Answer 40

Like things after repeated exposure (neutral or like things more that are initially liked).

Exception- if dislike something initially, will likely not change this attitude (or get worse).

Question 41

Polarisation

Answer 41

Attitudes can become more extreme through reflecting upon them.

Question 42

Three components of an attitude

Answer 42

A cognitive component or belief (alcohol contributes to social problems such as traffic fatalities and child abuse); an emotional or evaluative component (alcohol is bad); and a behavioural disposition (alcohol should be avoided).

Question 43

The tripartite theory of attitudes (CAB or ABC).

Answer 43

A stands for affective (feelings or emotions linked to an attitude object), B for behavioural (past behaviours or experiences regarding an attitude object) and C for cognitive (beliefs, thoughts and attributes associated with an object) components.

Question 44

Attitude strength

Answer 44

Refers to the durability and impact of an attitude on behaviour. It is influenced by both attitude importance (the personal relevance of an attitude and the psychological significance of that attitude for an individual) and attitude accessibility or the ease with which an attitude comes to mind.

Question 45

Attitudinal ambivalence

Answer 45

A condition in which an attitude object is associated with conflicting evaluative responses.

Question 46

Attitudinal coherence

Answer 46

Refers to the extent to which an attitude (particularly its cognitive and evaluative components) is internally consistent. Logically, the cognitive and emotional aspects of attitudes should be congruent because an emotional evaluation of an object should reflect a cognitive appraisal of its qualities. That is, we should like things we believe have positive consequences.

Question 47

Self-perception theory

Answer 47

Individuals infer their attitudes, emotions and other internal states by observing their own behaviour.

Question 48

Attitude inoculation

Answer 48

Building up a receiver’s resistance to an opposing attitude by presenting weak arguments for it or forewarning of a strong opposing persuasive appeal.