Social Psychology Flashcards
Social psychology is…
Scientific study of how peoples thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influences by the actual, imagines or implied presence of others
Deals with factors that lead us to…
Behave in a given way in the presence of others and look at the conditions
Social factors and presence of others influence…
Conformity, obedience, performance and decision making
Impression formation obvious attributes
Gender, ethnicity, age and physical attractiveness
The primary effect
Tendency for information that we learn first to be weighed more heavily than is infirmation that we learn later
Primary effect first half
Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious
Primary effect second half
Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious and intelligent
Expectations become..
A self-fulfilling prophecy and influence the way other people act
Expectations may be based upon
Gender, age, racial or ethnic group, social class, role or occupation, personality traits, past behaviour, relationships with us and so on
Expectations affect..
How we perceive the behaviour of others - what we pay attention to and what we ignore
Attribution is our explanation of
Behaviour
Behaviour can be influenced by both
The person and the situation
The process of trying to determine that causes of people’s behaviour is known as
Causal attribution
Because we cannot see personality, we must…
Work to infer it
Dispositional attribution
Personal attribution when we decide that the behaviour was caused primarily by the person
Situational attribution
Situation or external attribution
What is the fundamental attribution error
A bias
A bias
Frequently male disposition (personal) versus situational attributions about others
Actor-observer bias or difference
Make more personal disposition attributes for the behaviour of others
Biased by affect
We often tend to distort them to make us feel better
Self-serving attributes
Attributions that help us meet our desire to see ourselves positively
Attraction-similarity hypothesis
Develop romantic relationships with those whose levels of physical attractiveness and other traits are similar to their own
Attraction opposites
Opposites do not attract
Proximity
Propinquity
Reciprocity
Potent determinant of attraction
Physical attractiveness
Major determinant of interpersonal and sexual attraction
Physical attractiveness factors
Facial symmetry, age, leg to hip ratio etc
Symmetrical attractiveness
Dominance sexiness and health and are perceived to be more desirable as potential mates
Non-physical traits of attractiveness
Familiarity, liking, respect and shared values and goals
Three components of love
Intimacy
Passion
Commitment
Sternbergs triangular theory of love
Passionate love
Romantic love
Companionate love
Types of love relationships
Infatuation
Liking
Romantic love
Consummate love
Empty love
Fatuous love (lacking intimacy)
Companionate love
Conformity
Changing or adopting a behaviour or an attitude in order to be consistent with the norms of a group or the expectations of other people
Norms
The standards of behaviour and the attitudes that are expected of me members off the group
Majority influence
When the beliefs held by the larger number of individuals in the curent social group prevail
Obedience
Compliance with commands given by an authority figure
Compliance
A response - specifically, a submission - made in reaction to a request
Milligram study
Powerful ability of those in authority to control others
People tend to over orders from other people of they recognize their authority as
Morally right
Or
Legally based
Group influence
Tasks can be enhanced or impaired by the mere presence of others
Effects of a group
When important tasks need to be performed quickly or effectively we frequently create groups to accomplish them
Social facilitation
An improvement in performance produced by the mere presence of others
Two types of social facilitation
Co-action effects
Audience effect
Social loafing
Effects of group on decision making
Profound and predictable effects n decision making
Group polarization
One common decision-making task of groups is to come to a consensus regarding a jugement
Social roles use
Because they tell us beforehand how people are ikely to act towards us in many situations
What can roles shape
Human behaviour to an alarming degree
Prejudice
Attitudes (usually negative) toward others based on their gender, religion, race or membership in a particular group
Discrimination consists of
Behaviour
Realistic conflict theory
Competition among various social grips for scarce economic resources
Us versus them
Prejudice can also spring from the distinct social categories into which we divide our world
Us versus them leads to
Excessive competition, hostility, prejudice, discrimination and even war
Social learning theory
Acquiring prejudice through modelling and reinforcement
Social cognitive
The processes we use t simplify, categorize and order our world are the very same processes we use to distort it
Pro social behaviour
Social situation itself, the most important influence on whether and when we help
Bystander effect
The greater the number if bystander, the less likely they are to help
Bystander effect variables
Ambiguity
Cohesiveness
Diffusion of responsibility
