social psychology Flashcards

1
Q

what is social psychology?

A

the study of how influence other’s thoughts, feelings, behaviour, beliefs, and attitudes
* It tries to understand behavior and mental processes within its social context
* humans are inclined to form intimate interpersonal networks

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2
Q
A
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3
Q

what is person-environment? who theorized about P-E?

A

P-E focuses on an individual’s needs
kurt lewin - behaviour is a product of the person and environment
B = f(P, E),

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4
Q

what is social context?

A

social context includes
* The real, imagined, or symbolic
presence of other people
* the activities and interactions that take place among people
* the setting and the norms of behaviour in that given setting

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5
Q

what is the need to belong theory?

A

humans have a biologically-based need for interpersonal connections
*isolation -> associated with a risk for anxiety, abnormal eating, reduced intelligence or test performance

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6
Q

what are social influences?

A

obediance, confomity, etc.
* are adaptive unless they are blind/unquestioning -> then are maladaptive

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7
Q

what is social comparison theory?

A

individuals seek to evalute their abilities and beleifs by comparing them with those of others
* upward (superiors) and downward (inferiors) comaprison

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8
Q

what are social norms?

A

Standards of behaviour and attitudes expected of members of group regarding attitudes and behaviors
in given situations

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9
Q

what are social roles?

A

socially defined patterns of behavior
that are expected of persons in a given setting or group.
* The roles people assume may be the result of a person’s interests, abilities and goals, or they may be imposed on a person by cultural, economic or biological conditions.

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10
Q

what does social pressure do?

A

can create powerful psychological effects such as prejudice,
discrimination, blind obedience, and violence
* cause us to adopt behaviour to the demands of the social situation and take cues from behaviour of others

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11
Q

what is confomity?

A

The tendency for people to change or
adapt their behaviors, attitudes, and
opinions to be consistent with norms,
expectations of others.
* Influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval

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12
Q

what is asch’s experiment and the asch effect?

A

**asch effcect: a form of conformity in which a group majority influences individual judgements **
experiment: asking to pick a line and seeing how the group influenced the individual’s choice
results: majority of subjects in line experiment conformed to incorrect answers of majority (5% all the time & 70% some of the time)

asch’s outcomes are questioned because tendency to conform has decreased over time

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13
Q

what factors make conformity increase?

A
  • You feel incompetent or insecure.
  • You are in a group of 3 or more.
  • You are impressed by the status of the group.
  • You have made no prior commitment to a response.
  • You are being observed by the others in the group.
  • Your culture strongly encourages respect for social standards.
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14
Q

what is part of first impressions and why do they matter?

A

primacy effect: overal impression of another -> is influenced most by initial information
expectations affect how we percieve behaviour
self-fulfilling prophecy -> first impression affects behaviour which confirms the inital impression

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15
Q

what are attributions? what are internal vs external attributions?

A

assigning causes to explain behaviour

internal/dispositional: attribute behaviour at internal cause (qualities or actions of the individual)
* e.g. intelligence, gender, ethnicity, etc.
external/situational: atibute behaviour to external cause (context in which person is situated)
* e.g. time, environment, experinces with others

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16
Q

what are the types of attributional biases?

A

actor-observer bias: our issues due to situtaional factors while others’ issyes due to internal factors
funamental attibution error: overemphasize internal, underemphasize external factors when explaining others.
self-serving bias: successes are from internal causes while failures are from situational causes

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17
Q

what is attraction?

A

Human have a need to affiliate with other people, through
belonging to groups and developing close interpersonal relationships

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18
Q

what factors influence attraction?

A
  • proximity (geographic closeness)
  • mere-exposure effect (more positive twoard stimuli with repreated exposure)
  • reciprocal liking
  • attractivness (symmetrical faces, bodies seen as more attractive, sexually appealing)
  • halo effect (attribution of positive/negative traits to person due to observing one positive/negative trait)
  • similarity
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19
Q

how do groups influence?

A

social facilitation: the effect on the performance due to presence of others
* Robert Zajonc explained that
1. the presence of others heightens our
arousal
2. heightened arousal leads to better
performance on tasks we are good at and worse performance on tasks that are difficult for us
audience effects: impact of passive spectators
co-action effects: impact on performance caused by presence of others in same task

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20
Q

what three features characterize a group?

A

roles
norms
cohesiveness

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21
Q

what is group polarization?

A

groups discussion causes shift to more extreme positions

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22
Q

what is social loafing?

A

the tendency to exert less efort working with others than working alone
* studying in a group could lead to social loafing through a diffusion-of-
responsibility effect

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23
Q

what is deindividualization?

A

the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster action and anonymity

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24
Q

what is groupthink? how is it treated?

A

the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-
making group overrides a realistic view of the alternatives

treated by:
* Appointing a “devil’s advocate”
* Independent expert for evaluating decisions
* Holding follow-up meetings

25
Q

what are groupthink symptoms?

A
  • illusion of groups invulnerability
  • illusion of groups unanimity
  • unquestioned moral correctness
  • stereotyping of the out-group
  • self-censorhsip
  • mind-guards (self-appointed individuals whose job it is to stifle disagreement)
26
Q

what factors promote group think?

A
  • isolation of the group
  • high group cohesiveness
  • directive leadership
  • lack of norms requiring methodical procedures
  • Homogeneity of members’ social background
  • High stress from external threats
27
Q

what is obediance?

A

the adherence to orders from those of higher authority

28
Q

what is the milgram paradigm?

A

experiement showed how powerful authoity could be using a “teacher” (paticipant) and “learner” and authority figure “the experimenter”
* teacher tested learner on memory and if learner got wrong then teacher had to shock him
* the presence of an authority figure made the participant continue to shock
* Most subjects (approx 65%) despite the protestations of the learner continued to electrocute because authority figure said so

29
Q

what are cults?

A

groups that exhibit intense and unquestioning devotion

*Can be resisted via inoculation effect: first introducing reasons the
perspective might be correct and then debunking the myths

30
Q

how is group think promoted in a cult?

A
  • Have a persuasive leader who fosters loyalty
  • Disconnect members from the outside world
  • Discourage questioning of assumptions
  • Gradually indoctrinate members
31
Q

what myths surround cults?

A

Cult members are emotionally disturbed
* Most are normal, but leaders are often seriously mentally ill

Cult members are brainwashed and turned into unthinking zombies
* Techniques do not permanently change beliefs

32
Q

what is the bystander effect/apathy?

A

the observation that an individual is less likely to help when they percieve that others are not helping

e.g. kitty genovese

33
Q

what is diffusion of responsibility?

A

the reduction in feelings of personal responsibility in the presence of others

34
Q

what is prosocial behaviour?

A

broad category of behaviors that includes any action that provides benefit to others (helping, cooperation, sympathy)
e.g.
* casual helping
* emergency helping
* substantial personal helping
* emotional helping

35
Q

what is altruism?

A

behaviour aimed at helping others
requires some self-sacrifice and no reward is expected
empathy affects our likihood of helping
* dimensions of empathy:
* perspective taking
* empatheic concern
* personal disress response for others
* fantasy generation

36
Q

what is a stereotype?

A

a belief (positive or negative) about the characteristsics of members of a group that is applied generally to most memebers of the group
* lead to harmful prejuduces

37
Q

what is prejudice?

A

negative attitudes, beleifs, emotions, that can escalate to hatred

38
Q

what is discrimination?

A

negative actions toward others (e.g. racism, agism, sexism, ableism)

39
Q

what is social learning theory?

A

Parents, peers, others reward children mimicking their own prejudices; children learn these prejudices quickly
can learn to be nonprejudiced or prejudiced

40
Q

what is social cognition?

A

ways we process, notice, interpret, remember, apply imformation about social world - categorizing the world
plays role in prejudice

41
Q

what is informational influence?

A

occurs when people feel the group is giving them useful information

42
Q

what is normative influence?

A

is a result of social pressure to adopt a group’s perspective in order to be accepted

43
Q

what is ostracism?

A

being ignored or excluded from social contact - a powerful form of social pressure

44
Q

what is contact hypthesis?

A

predicts that social contact between members of different groups is important to overcome prejudice

45
Q

what are dual process models?

A

models of behaviour that account for both implicit and explicit processes

46
Q

what are explicit processes?

A

concious thought - deliberative, effortful, relatively slow, and under intetional control

47
Q

what are implicit processes?

A

unconcious thought - intuitive, automatic, effortless, fast, outside of intentional control

48
Q

what is false consensus effect?

A

tendency to project the self-concept onto the world

49
Q

what is naive realism?

A

assuming our perceptions of reality are accurate

50
Q

what is persuasion?

A

process by which a message induces change in ebeliefs, attitudes, or behaviours

51
Q

what is the central route to persuasion?

A

focudes on facts, logic, and the content of a message in order to persuade
Occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with
favorable thoughts

52
Q

what is the peripheral route to persausion?

A

focuses on deatures of the issue or presentation that are not facual/irrelevant factors
Occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker’s
attractiveness

53
Q

what is the foot in the door phenomenon?

A

Tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply
later with a larger request

54
Q

what is the door in the face technique

A

asking for something relatively big, then following with a request for something relatively small

55
Q

what is the cognitive dissonance theory?

A

when we hold inconcsistent beleifs, this creates inner tension (dissonance) and we are motivated to reduce this
* often by chnaging the beleifs that created the dissonance

56
Q

what is construal level theory?

A

information affects us differently depending on our psychological distance from the infomation
* more personal -> more concrete info
* more general -> more abstract info

57
Q

what is the elaboration liklihood model?

A

dual process model of persuasion that predicts what info will be more influential

58
Q

what is the identifiable victim effect?

A

people more moved by individual story of suffering rather than info about whole group of people