social psychology

Question 1

define social psychology

Answer 1

is the study of how and why people, think, feel, and do the things they do depending upon the situation that they are in

Question 2

group polarisation

Answer 2

when individuals are in groups with others who hold similar attituides or beliefs, discussion within the group tends to stengthen opinions

Question 3

Myers and Bishop study

Answer 3

found that when students who were low in racial prejudice talked together about racial issues, their attitudes became more accepting. However when highly prejudiced students talked about the same issues they become even more prejudiced

Question 4

henri tajfel - intergroup discrimination

Answer 4

conducted with the participants of 64 school boys ages between 14 and 15 years. They all attended the same school and were in the same house. They partcipated in a visual judgement test at were randomly categorised into over estimaters and under estimaters. when the boys had to choose between maxmimsing profit for their own group or sharing he profit they chose to maxmise their own group and tried to create the largest difference possible

Question 5

conformity is

Answer 5

changing behaviour in response to group pressure.

Question 6

normative social influnce

Answer 6

when we conform to group standards in order to be a part of a group and be accepted by the group

Question 7

solomon asch - visual judgement task

Answer 7

8-10 people were shown 2 cards, on one there was a set of 3 lines of different lengths and on the other there was one line. participants had to choose which line matched with the other card. all participants but one were acting. The results were 75% conformed at least one trial and 50% one 6 more trials

Question 8

2 reasons why we conform

Answer 8

1- normative social influnce: when we conform to group standards in order to be a part of group and be accepted by the group
2- informational social influnce: taking over cues on how to behave from watching people around us

Question 9

factors increasing conformity

Answer 9

• size of the group
• difficulty of task
• status of majority group

Question 10

factors decreasing conformity

Answer 10

• social support

- answer in private

Question 11

an abstract is a..

Answer 11

summary of an experiment

Question 12

obediance is

Answer 12

changing behaviour in response to a demand by an authority figure

Question 13

stanley milgram experiment

Answer 13

milgram did an experiment on the effects of puishment on learning. Participants arrived in pair one allocated the student the other the learner. The learner had to learn a list of words in pairs. The teacher had to adminster an electric shock each time the learner have the wrong answer. 26 of the participants adminsterd 450 volts believing that they were hurting others, all participants admistered 300 volts but five refused to continue. 65% of people were willing to give the maximum shock

Question 14

social facilitation

Answer 14

an improvment in performance produced by the mere presence of others

Question 15

social inhibition

Answer 15

with complex tasks the presence of others either as observers or as people doing the same tasks often led to worse performance

Question 16

summarise triplett studies

Answer 16

found that cyclists would race faster when they were competing against others than when they were competing against the clock

Question 17

what type of tasks are likley to occur better in the prescence of others

Answer 17

• simple tasks
• well rehersed tasks
• cycling

Question 18

what type of tasks are likley to occur worse in the prescence of others

Answer 18

• complex tasks

- tasks requiring concentration

Question 19

2 types of attribution

Answer 19

1- internal attribution

2- external attribution

Question 20

internal attribution

Answer 20

the inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character or personaility

Question 21

external attibution

Answer 21

the inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he or she is in

Question 22

what is an attribution

Answer 22

a judgement about a reason for someones action

- how people infer the reasons behind the behaviour of others

Question 23

why do we make attributions

Answer 23

• working out how to respond to other people and to determine the type of response to use
• to acquire a greater understanding behind human behaviour
• to determine why something has occured

Question 24

heiders theory

Answer 24

1- dispositional (internal) attribution: is we infer something about the person - their attitude, personaility is responsible for their behaviour
2- situational attribution (external): is we conclude that some external cause is responsible for the behaviour

Question 25

what does self serving mean

Answer 25

we distort facts and make situational attributions to maintain self esteem

Question 26

what is the fundemental attribution error

Answer 26

is the general tendancy people have to make internal, dipositional attributes for others behaviour rather than external, situational ones, when there may be equally convincing evidence for both types of cause

Question 27

what does corivation mean

Answer 27

that a person has information from observations at different times and situation they can perceive the associated variation of an observed effect together with its causes.

Question 28

kelley - corivation model

Answer 28

he developed a logical model for judging whether a particular action should be attributed to some characteristics (internal) of the person or the environment (external)

Question 29

3 types of evidence which influnces judgement (kelley)e

Answer 29

• consensus: the extent to which other people behave in the same way in similar situations
• distinctiveness: the extent to which the person behaves in the same way in similar situations
• consistancy: the extent to which the person behaves like this every time the situation occurs

Question 30

according to kelley we fall back on past experiences and look for 2 things

Answer 30

1- multiple necassacy causes

2- multiple sufficient causes

Question 31

when are we likley to show biases in attributions

Answer 31

fundemental attribution error: we favour a dispostional attribution for the behaviour
self serving bias: distort facts and make situational attributions to maintain self esteem

Question 32

define cognitive dissonance

Answer 32

refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviours to reduce the discomfort adn restore balance.

Question 33

CDT - Festinger and Carlsmith

Answer 33

investigated is making people perform a dull task would create congnitive dissonance through forced compliance of behaviour. They asked people to turn pegs for one hour, they got paid $1 or $20 to tell a waiting participant it was interesting. The people paid $1 rated the task higher than the people paid $20 dollars. Because they got less money their actions didnt match their thoughts so they changed their previous view of the expeirment to be good so that the thoughts matches with their actions.

Question 34

3 ways of reducing inconsistancy between attituides

Answer 34

1- reduce the importance of the cognitions
2- change one or more of the attituides
3- acquire new information