Social Psychology Flashcards
What were the 3 types of self that Brewer and Gardner developed (1996) ?
Individual - personal traits that distinguish you from others e.g. friendly, kind
Relational - dynamic relation with others such as family e.g. mother, son
Collective - group membership and belonging e.g. academic, sporty
What is self-awareness ?
Psychological state
Traits, feelings and behaviours
Can be present in some more than others
Not born with self-awareness
Realisation of being individual
What is the mirror test (Gallup, 1970) ?
They put the child in front of a mirror
Then when away from the mirror they put a mark on the child’s face
They put the child back in front of the mirror
Observe whether or not the child touches their face or the mirror when noticing the mark
What is the difference between private and public identity ?
Private identity is your thoughts and feelings
Public identity is your social image and what you want others to see
What is the public self and what can it cause ?
The self that can be seen and evaluated by others
Can cause evaluation apprehension
People may enjoy the admiration
Makes you adhere to social standards of behaviour
What is chronic self-awareness ?
Constant aware of shortcomings
Result in avoidance behaviour such as drinking and drugs
What is reduced self-awareness ?
Deindividuation
Less likely to monitor your own behaviour and be aware of what you’re doing
What is mindfulness ?
Incorporates self-awareness and includes acceptance
What can heightened private self-consciousness cause ?
More intense emotion of looking inwards
Accurate self-perception
Adhere to personal beliefs
Less stress related illnesses
Depression and neuroticism
What can heightened public self consciousness cause ?
Nervousness
Loss of self-esteem
Adhering to group norms to avoid embarrassment
Concerned with physical appearance of yourself and others
What is self-knowledge ?
Accessing information about what we know about yourself and how we store the knowledge
What is a self-schema ?
A stereotype of yourself, act, think, behave, feel
What does self-schematic mean ?
Important part of self-concept
What does aschematic mean ?
Non important part e.g. criticising a footballer about their singing
What are the two theories for how a schema should be developed ?
Control theory/self-regulation
Self-discrepancy theory
What is the control theory/self-regulation ? (Carver & Scheier, 1981, 1998)
Setting standards set by yourself and aiming to reach these goals
If they aren’t the same then you operate change
Different for public and private standards
What is the self-discrepancy theory ? (Higgins, 1987)
Motivating change if the ideal (like to be) and actual (ought to be) are not the same
What are the two theories for how a schema develops in relation to other individuals ?
Social comparison theory
Self-evaluation maintenance
What is the social comparison theory ? (Festinger, 1954)
An objective benchmark in comparison to those around us
Downwards comparison - see people that aren’t as good as you to make you feel good
What is the self-evaluation maintenance ? (Tesser, 1988)
Upwards comparison - comparing to someone who is better than you
Exaggerate targets ability
Change target
Distance self from the target
Devaluate comparison
e.g. bronze medallists are happier than silver as silver is upwards comparing
What are the two theories for how a schema develops in relation to other groups of people ?
Social identity theory
Self-categorisation theory
What is the self identity theory ? (Tajfel & Turner, 1979)
Having a separate social identity that is defined by group membership and inter-group behaviours
Using this identity depending on the context
What is the self-categorisation theory ? (Turner, 1987)
Internalising the groups attributes and categorising yourself into groups
Meta-contrast principle - accentuate your similarities with in-groups and differences with out-groups
BIRGing - associate with people who do well e.g. when Andy Murray loses he is called Scottish but when he wins he is called British
What are the three stages of self-concept development ?
- self-assessment = desire for accurate info and seek the truth about yourself
- self-verification = confirm and reinforce what they know and seek consistency about yourself
- self-enhancement = maintain good image and seek favourable info about yourself
What is self-serving attribution bias ?
Taking credit for what causes success and remove credit for failure
What are individualist cultures ?
Independent
Autonomous individual - separate from context
Focus on internal traits
Stable across situations
Promote own goals and differences
What are collectivist cultures ?
Interdependent
Embedded in social context
Represented in terms of roles and relations
Fluid and changing in situations
Belonging and fitting in is important
What did Semin and Rubini find in 1990 in Italy ?
In northern Italy insults were personal whereas in southern Italy insults were about family and relationships with people
What is social cognition ?
How we process and store social information and how this affects our perceptions of behaviour
What is an attribution ?
Process of assigning a cause to our and other peoples behaviour
What are social schemas ?
Knowledge about schemas
Predict and fill in the gaps in our knowledge
Facilitate top-down processing
What is a category ?
Organising hierarchically
Fuzzy sets of features, where are boundaries ?
What are prototypes ?
Cognitive representation of typical defining features of a category
What is a causal attribution ?
An inference process through which perceivers attribute an affect to no one or more causes
e.g. why did I fail this test ?
What are the 4 theories of attribution ?
Naïve psychologist
Attribution theory
Correspondent inference theory
Covariation model
What is the naïve scientist theory ? (Heider 1958)
Three principles include:
Need to form a coherent view of the world - search for motives in others behaviours
Need to gain control over environment - search for enduring properties that cause behaviour
Need to identify internal vs external factors
What is the attributional theory ? (Weiner 1979)
Causality of success or failure
Multidimensional approach
Locus, Stability, Controllability
What is the correspondent inference theory ? (Jones & Davis 1965)
Focuses on internal cues:
Act was freely chosen
Act produced a non-common effect
Not socially desirable
Hedonic relevance
Personalism
Correspondence inference - act reflects a true characteristic of the person
What is the co-variation model ? (Kelley 1967)
Use observations to identify factors that co-vary with each other
Consistency - does it always co-occur
Distinctiveness - is it exclusively linked
Consensus - do other people react in the same way
What is attribution biases ?
Systematic errors indicative of shortcuts, gut feeling, intuition
What is the fundamental attribution error ?
The tendency to attribute behaviour to enduring propositions
Target more salient - internal attribution most accessible
More likely to forget situational causes
What is actor-observer bias ?
Assume a shop assistant is rude to you but you are simply stressed if you act the same
Perceptual focus and informational difference
Perspective taking can reverse the effect
What is a self-serving bias ?
Success - internal
Failure - external
To motivate and maintain self-esteem
What is a heuristic ?
A cognitive short cut
Make it quick and easy and avoid effort
What are the 3 types of heuristics ?
Availability heuristic - how easy is it to think of examples
Representative heuristic - similarity between instance and category members and allocate a set of attributes
Anchoring ad adjustment heuristic - start point for subsequent judgement
What is an attitude ?
An enduring organization of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards attitude objects
What is Rosenberg and Hovland’s 1960 three component model ?
Affective - expression of feelings
Cognitive - expression of belief
Behavioural - Actions/statements
What is the difference between a simple and complex dimension ?
A simple belief has one opinion/feeling whereas complex has multiple
e.g. dogs are sociable or dogs look cute but they smell bad
What are the 4 functions of attitudes ?
- knowledge function - organise and predict social world, provides a sense of meaning and coherence
- utilitarian function - help people achieve and avoid negative outcomes
- ego-defensive - protecting self esteem
- value expressive - facilitate expression of ones core values
What is the mere exposure effect ? (Robert Zajonc 1968)
Repeated exposure of stimulus to enhance preference
Participants were more likely to say that familiar novel words meant something positive
Familiarity results in increase of likeness
What is classical conditioning ?
Repeated association of a previously neutral stimulus and generate a reaction of another stimulus
e.g. Pavlov’s dog
What is instrumental conditioning ?
Behaviour followed by a positive consequence is more likely to be repeated
Reinforcement
Insko 1965
What is self perception theory ? Bem 1972
Gain knowledge of our self
Infer attitudes from own behaviour
e.g. I read one novel a week so I like novels
What are the 3 methods of how attitudes are revealed ?
Self report and experimental paradigms - attitude scales and implicit association task
Physiological measure - skin resistance, heart rate, pupil dilation
Measures of overt behaviour - frequency of behaviour, non verbal behaviour
What impacts how well attitudes predict behaviour ?
How strong the attitude is
Whether it is formed through direct experience
How it is measured
What is the theory of planned behaviour ?
People make decisions as a result of rational thought processing
e.g. going to the gym - all factors are considered like what does the doctor say, do you have any fears etc
What is cognitive dissonance ?
Unpleasant state of tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions that are inconsistent or do not fit together
What is the elaboration likelihood model ? Petty & Cacioppo 1986)
Central route - following a message closely - analytical, high effort, enduring
Peripheral route - not well attended message - not analytical, low effort, temporary
What is the heuristic systematic model ? (Chaiken 1980)
Systematic processing - when messages are attended to (central route)
Heuristic processing - use cognitive heuristics (peripheral route)
According to Johnson and Johnson what is a group ?
A group is two or more individuals in a face to face interaction, each aware of his or hers membership in the group, each aware of the others who belong to the group, and each aware of their positive interdependence as they strive to achieve mutual goals
Example of strong interpersonal relationships
Families, small groups of close friends
Example of formed to fulfil tasks groups
Committees, work group
Example of groups based on large social categories
Women, Americans
Example of group based on weak social relationships
People who enjoy Taylor swift, people from the same local area
Example of transitory groups
People waiting at a bus stop, people in the queue for the bank