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Psychology > Social Psychology > Flashcards

Social Psychology Flashcards

1
Q

What did Verplank’s work suggest?

A

Social approval influences behaviour.

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2
Q

What is reinforcement theory?

A

Behaviour is motivated by anticipated rewards.

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3
Q

What did social learning theorists posit?

A

At behaviour is learned through imitation.

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4
Q

What is role theory?

A

The notion that people are aware of the roles they should fill and that behaviour is reflection of adapting those roles.

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5
Q

What is an attitude?

A

Cognition or beliefs, feelings, behavioural predisposition.

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6
Q

What do consistency theories posit?

A

That people prefer consistency in their attitudes and behaviours and that they will change or resist change on this basis.

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7
Q

What is Fritz Heider’s Balance Theory?

A

Encompasses the relation between: the person in question, some other person, and an idea/other person. Balance is one or three positives of the triad. Unbalance is zero or two positive signs.

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8
Q

What is Leon Festinger’s Dissonance Theory?

A

Cognitive dissonance is the felt conflict when your attitudes are not in sync with your behaviours.

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9
Q

What is free-choice dissonance?

A

Making a choice between several desirable options : the dissonance comes from not choosing options that you still like.

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10
Q

How does the process of spreading alternatives reduce dissonance?

A

It forces the person to consider the relative worth of options in a free-choice paradigm.

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11
Q

What is forced compliance dissonance?

A

Being forced to behave in a way in consistent with your beliefs or attitudes (for avoidance of punishment or reward, e.g.).

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12
Q

What happened in a classic experiment by Festinger’s and Carlsmith?

A

When participants were asked to rate a boring experiment after receiving 1 or 20 dollars, those receiving 1 dollar rated it higher. Participants receiving less money were less able to justify lying to future participants, reducing dissonance consisted of convincing themselves that the experiment really wasn’t boring.

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13
Q

What is the minimal justification effect?

A

Changing internal cognition so due to the fact that there are no external justifications to completing/performing a certain task.

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14
Q

What is Daryl Bem’s self-perception theory?

A

That when attitudes are weak, we observe our own behaved and attribute an attitude based on our behaviour.

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15
Q

How could Bem’s theory explain the Festinger’s and Carlsmith experiment?

A

Lying is not behaviourally justifiable due to only one dollar, therefore your behaviour must be indicative of your attitude - that the experiment wasn’t that boring.

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16
Q

What is the over justification effect?

A

Theory that rewarding people for what they like will make them like it less.

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17
Q

What are the three components of Carl Hovland’s attitude changing model?

A

The communicator, the communication, the situation. The communicator’s credibility is crucial. Further, people arguing against their own self interest are deemed more credible (drug addicts against drugs).

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18
Q

What is the unusual sleeper effect?

A

Over time, persuasive impact of credible sources decreases and that of un-credible sources increases.

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19
Q

What are the two routes to persuasion according to Petty and Cappio’s elaboration likelihood model?

A

Central (strong arguments win when we care about the issue) and peripheral (credible sources and environment impacts when we don’t care about an issue).

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20
Q

Who is Norman Triplett?

A

Published the first study in social psychology : effect of competition on performance. We perform better on familiar tasks in the presence of others.

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21
Q

How does William McGuire use the analogy of inoculation in regards to the resistance to persuasion?

A

Resistance to the attack on your beliefs can be built by learning common defences for arguments against your beliefs. Getting in the practice of countering arguments makes beliefs less susceptible to attack.

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22
Q

What is belief perseverance?

A

Holding beliefs after they h been proven incorrect.

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23
Q

What is reactance?

A

The resistance to persuasion when you try too hard to persuade someone.

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24
Q

What are the three principles of Festinger’s social comparison theory?

A
  1. When we cannot evaluate ourselves objectively, we do so in relation to others.
  2. We compare ourselves less to owe who are less similar to us in attitudes and abilities.
  3. When there are discrepancies between opinions and abilities, we are more likely to change our opinion.
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25
Q

What relationship did Stanley Schacter find between anxiety and the need to affiliate?

A

Greater anxiety led to a greater desire to affiliate - but only from equally anxious individuals.

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26
Q

What is the reciprocity hypothesis?

A

We tend to like people who indicate that they like us (similar with dislike).

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27
Q

What is the gain-loss principle and who proposed it?

A

E gain-loss principle proposes that our evaluation of others is predicated on whether their evaluation of us changes. If it changes for the better, we like them more than if their evaluation of us is constant. Proposed by Aronson and Linder.

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28
Q

What is social exchange theory?

A

Idea that we weight the costs and benefits of interacting with a person.

29
Q

What is equity theory?

A

The idea that the cost and benefit for us must be equivalent to the cost and benefit of the other person. If one party benefits more from the interaction, than there is perceived inequity.

30
Q

Cite and explain two categories of individual characteristics.

A

Similarity: increased affiliation due to similar attitudes, education, drinking habits, political standpoint.

Need complementarity: mutual satisfaction of needs; dominant-submissive, talker-listener.

31
Q

What is the attractiveness stereotype?

A

Attributing good qualities to attractive people.

32
Q

Name two important characteristics in attraction.

A

Spatial proximity and the exposure hypothesis (research by Robert Zajonc).

33
Q

What is the difference between helping behaviour and altruism?

A

Altruism is done with the intent of aiding another, even at the cost of the self. Helping behaviour includes altruism AND behaviours motivated by selfishness and egoism.

34
Q

Who conducted research on the bystander intervention effect?

A

John Darley and Bibb Latane.

35
Q

What are the two situational factors used to explain the bystander effect?

A

Social influence (social cues indicating a state of non emergency - the faction of others) and diffusion of responsibility (the presence of others minimizes your sense of responsibility).

36
Q

What is pluralistic ignorance?

A

Believing and accepting a truth solely because it is believed by others in your surrounding.

37
Q

How did Latane and Darley control for social influence?

A

They removed the visual interaction between participants. Participants then reacted most when they thought they were the only listeners and increasingly less when they thought there were increasing amounts of other people listening.

38
Q

What is Batson’s empathy-altruism model?

A

Model positing that noticing others in need incites distress and/or empathy, both states that can determine helping behaviour.

39
Q

What did Batson’s series of experiments show?

A

That those who reported more distress in the easy escape condition were more likely to leave than help. Those who reported more empathy were more likely to help regardless of which condition they were in.

40
Q

How does Bandura’s social learning theory relate to aggression?

A

Theory proposes that aggression is learned through modelling. Famous Bobo doll experiment where frustrated kids having witnessed aggression were more likely to exercise it on the doll.

41
Q

How did Muzafer Sherif study conformity?

A

Sherif made use of the auto kinetic effect of a light in a dark room and had participants give individual estimates of the movement perceived from the light. Then a group had to agree on a movement score and Sherif noted that solitary estimates changed to conform to the group.

42
Q

Which experiment exemplifies yielding to group pressure with no explicit demand to do so?

A

The Asch lines study.

43
Q

What did Stanley Milgram aim to measure and how did he do it?

A

The obedience to authority, as determined by the maximum shock administered.

44
Q

What is the foot in the door effect?

A

Compliance with a small request increases the likelihood of compliance with a larger request.

45
Q

What is the door in the face effect?

A

Those who refuse a large request are more likely to accept a smaller request.

46
Q

What is the Clark and Clark famous study?

A

Doll preference: experimenters asked young participants about white and black dolls and about how they felt about them. This highlighted the negative effects of racism and minority group status on one’s self-concept.

47
Q

Explain the primacy and decency effects.

A

Primacy : First impressions are most important.

Recency : The most recent information is most important.

48
Q

What is the attribution theory and who is one of the founding fathers of this theory?

A

The tendency to infer the causes of others’ behaviours, posited by Fritz Heider.

49
Q

What are the two main categories normally used to infer behavioural cause in the attribution theory?

A

Dispositional and situational.

50
Q

What is the fundamental attribution error?

A

The tendency to overestimate dispositional attributes to the behaviours of others.

51
Q

What is the halo effect?

A

The tendency to let a general evaluation of an individual influence your evaluation of their specific characteristics.

52
Q

Who studied the belief in a just world and what is one negative implication?

A

M. J. Lerner. There is a higher likelihood of victim blaming, because the work would not allow bad to happen to good people.

53
Q

How did Theodore Newcomb demonstrate the influence of group norms?

A

He tracked the political allegiances of college women whose parents were conservative but where the school had a liberal atmosphere. Upper years were less likely to vote republican, and those who were liberal remained so 20 years later (conservatives remained the same as well).

54
Q

What is proxemics?

A

The study of how individuals space themselves in relation to others. Edward Hall suggested cultural norms for this phenomenon.

55
Q

What is Zajonc’s theory on the relationship between the presence of others and arousal?

A

Others increase arousal and the emission of dominant responses. If you are skilled and have positive dominant responses, these will be enhance amongst others; if you have poor responses, these will be enhanced as well.

56
Q

What is social loafing?

A

Tendency for people to put forth less effort in a group as compared to individually (e.g., tug of rope).

57
Q

What principle did Zimbardo demonstrate in his prison experiment?

A

Anonymity.

58
Q

What was one of he main processes at work in Zimbardos experiment?

A

Deindividuation: The loss of self awareness and personal identity; they were overcome by the roles they played and forgot that they were in an experiment.

59
Q

Who coined the term groupthink?

A

Irving Janis.

60
Q

What is groupthink?

A

Tendency to strive for consensus and disregard disconcordant information.

61
Q

What is a risky shift?

A

Finding that group decisions are more risky on a whole than the sum of individual decisions.

62
Q

What is the value hypothesis?

A

Believed to be an explanation to the risky shift: people become more risky in groups when riskiness is culturally valued (e.g., business).

63
Q

What did James Stoner’s experiment find?

A

When asked to choose between risking a mothers life and terminating a pregnancy, groups tended to be more on the cautious side. This indicates that the group tends to lean towards extremes and not necessarily risk.

64
Q

What is the term for groups tending to vote in favour of extremes?

A

Group polarization. If groups begin more risky, the group will enhance this, and vice versa with caution.

65
Q

What is the relationship between leadership and communication?

A

Leaders communicate more; if an individual’s communication is increased, their perceived leadership increases.

66
Q

Which three learning styles did Kurt Lewin study?

A

Autocratic: Hostile, greater amount of work, aggressive, dependent on leader.
Laissez-faire: lazy, unproductive, less organized and satisfying
Democratic: The most satisfying and cohesive, more interest and motivation.

67
Q

What is the difference between cooperation and competition?

A

Cooperation is working together for mutual benefit, competition is working for your self for limited resources.

68
Q

What is the classic method of investigating one’s choice to cooperate or compete?

A

The prisoner’s dilemma. Two conspirators must choose whether to confess or not to a crime.

69
Q

Which experiment by Muzafer Sherif investigated cooperation and competition?

A

The Robber’s Cave Experiment: 22 12-year olds wherein alliances ere first created within groups, then a tournament was staged. Then more contact between groups (to no avail) and then introducing super ordinate goals, best obtained through group relations.

Psychology (8 decks)

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