Social Psychology Flashcards
1
Q
What did Thomas Hobbes, William Golding and Konrad Lorenz think of human aggression?
A
- That aggression is an innate part of human nature.
- Lorenz argued that aggression is something that builds up and needs to be expressed.
- If no target then –> Catharsis.
2
Q
Catharsis
A
Releasing pent-up emotions through activities that redirect the focus onto other resources. E.g. Using a punching bag when you’re angry.
3
Q
Releasing your anger on a punching bag is a form of?
A
Catharsis.
4
Q
What is the criticism of the catharsis theory?
A
Theory would predict that players who are angry on the pitch would be the mildest off the pitch but the opposite is true.
5
Q
Instrumental Aggression
A
Using aggression consciously to achieve your goal.
6
Q
Hostile Aggression
A
Using aggression spontaneously and without premeditation.
7
Q
Aggression
A
Behaviour whose purpose is to harm another.
8
Q
Frustration-Aggression Principle (Berkowitz, 1989)
A
People aggress when their goals are thwarted.
9
Q
Trut et al. 2009
A
Dmitri Belyaev - Silver foxes - Selective Breeding - More docile.
10
Q
Eugenics
A
Selective breeding in humans to increase the prevalence of desired characteristics in the population. E.g. Nazi’s genocide.
11
Q
What is the best biological predictor of aggression?
A
Gender (Wrangham & Peterson, 1997).
12
Q
Two chemicals strongly correlated with aggression?
A
Serotonin (Low) and Testosterone (High).
13
Q
Which type of aggression are women more likely to use?
A
- More premeditated anger
- More likely to cause social harm.
14
Q
When are men more likely to aggress?
A
Mainly in response to perceived challenges or threats towards their status.
15
Q
Culture of honour
A
Aggression linked to one’s reputation for toughness/willingness to avenge an insult.
16
Q
WHO Ecological Model of Violence
A
- Individual
- Relationships
- Community
- Society
17
Q
Public Goods Dilemma
A
Situation where individuals are better off if they do not contribute but the group is worse off as a whole.
18
Q
The Wason Card Selection Task
A
E.g. Each card (16, 25, Beer, Soda) has an age on one side, and a drink on the other. Which card(s) must be turned over to test the idea that if you are drinking alcohol then you must be over 18?
19
Q
Hypothesis Confirming Bias
A
The tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.
20
Q
Pluralistic ignorance
A
Where people fail to accurately evaluate others’ behaviour. E.g. University Students thinking others drink more than they do and are happier.
21
Q
Kin Selection
A
The process by which evolution selects for genes that cause individuals to provide benefits to their relatives.
22
Q
Reciprocal Altruism
A
Being nice to someone in expectation that they will do the same in the future.
23
Q
Identifiable Victim Effect (IVE)
A
Tendency to offer greater assistance to an individual rather than a group.
24
Q
Machiavellianism
A
A personality trait of willingness to exploit and manipulate others.
25
Extensivity
The obligation individuals feel towards others beyond their immediate friends and family.
26
Just World Hypothesis
Belief that people get what they deserve.
27
Situational attributions
We decide that the person's behaviour was caused by the situation.
28
Dispositional attributions
We decide that the person's behaviour was caused by what they are actually like.
29
Covariation Model (Kelley, 1967)
According to the model we use 3 pieces of evidence to decide whether to make a situational or dispositional attribution:
1. Consistency information = Is the behaviour regular?
2. Distinctiveness information = Do they engage in the same behaviour in similar circumstances?
3. Consensus information = What did everyone else do?
30
Correspondence bias
We tend to make dispositional attribution even when the behaviour was caused by the situation.
31
Fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977)
Participants consistently ranked the game show host (who asked questions) as the smartest compared with contestants (who tried to answer them), even though they knew the roles were randomly assigned.
32
Actor-observer effect
Tendency to attribute one's own actions to external causes, while attributing other people's behaviors to internal causes.
33
Purpose of Non-verbal communication (Patterson, 1983)
1. Intimacy
2. Regulating verbal communication
3. Information about inner state (e.g. facial expressions)
4. Directing other's behaviour (e.g. by pointing)
5. Status
34
What are the 6 channels of human interaction?
1. Physical Contact
2. Facial Expressions
3. Gaze
4. Behavioural Mimicry
5. Emotional Contagion
6. Decoding non-verbal communication
35
4 zones of interpersonal space (Hall, 1966)
1. Intimate <0.5m
2. Personal 0.5-1m
3. Social 1-4m
4. Public >4m
36
Chameleon effect
The chameleon effect usually applies to people who are getting along so well, each tend to mimic each other's body posture, hand gestures, speaking accents, among others.
37
Mirror neurons
A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting.
38
What did Robert Provine study?
Laughter as an allegiance signal
39
Thin slicing
The ability to find patterns in events based only on "thin slices," or narrow windows, of experience. The term means making very quick inferences about the state, characteristics or details of an individual or situation with minimal amounts of information.
40
Mere exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968)
Liking increases with the frequency of exposure.
41
Concordance rates
Degree of statistical similarity based on co-occurrence.
42
Passionate vs. Compassionate love
```
Passionate = Euphoria, Intimacy, Sexual attraction
Compassionate = Trust, Affection, Concern for well-being.
```
43
Social Exchange theory
People remain in relationship as long as they perceive a positive ratio of costs vs benefits.
44
Ostracism
Active rejection by other group members
45
Social Pain Hypothesis
Rejection triggers the dorsal anterior cingulate (active during actual pain).
46
Entitativity
The perception of the extent to which a group is a pure entity, abstracted from its attendant individuals who are similar and working towards a common goal.
47
4 types of groups based on levels of Entitativity
1. Intimacy groups
2. Task groups = Committees, Colleagues
3. Social categories = Women, Muslim, Polish
4. Loose associations = Neighbours, Heavy Metal Fans
48
Social Identity Theory (Tajfel, 1978)
Tajfel (1979) proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, football team etc.) which people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world.
49
Self-Categorization Theory (Turner, 1987)
Theory that describes the circumstances under which a person will perceive collections of people (including themselves) as a group, as well as the consequences of perceiving people in group terms.
50
4 main factors maintaining stereotypic thinking
1. Perceptual Confirmation
2. Self-fulfilling prophecy
3. Causing the stereotyped person to behave in a stereotyped way
4. Subtyping ('they're outliers')
51
Social Dominance Orientation
A measure of an individual's preference for hierarchy within any social system and the domination over lower-status groups. It is a predisposition toward anti-egalitarianism within and between groups.
52
Realistic Group Conflict Theory (Sherif, 1966)
The theory explains how intergroup hostility can arise as a result of conflicting goals and competition over limited resources, and it also offers an explanation for the feelings of prejudice and discrimination toward the outgroup that accompany the intergroup hostility. The feeling of hostility may not fully go away once the resources are abundant however.
53
Superordinate Goals
Goals that require the cooperation of two or more people or groups to achieve, which usually results in rewards to the groups.
54
Sherif (1954)
Study at a camp involving two groups of boys, the Eagles and the Rattlers, that were in opposition to one another in a zero-sum situation. The opposing groups had strong negative feelings towards each other, resulting in hostile actions such as 'garbage wars'. Simple noncompetitive interactions between groups was not enough to alter the hostile opposition of one another. Sherif was able to successfully bring these two groups together by using superordinate goals, such as solving the problems of a breakdown of the water supply and the breakdown of a food delivery truck.
55
Social Facilitation
Improved individual performance in the company of others.
56
Social Inhibition
Impaired performance in the company of others.
57
Spotlight effect
Overestimation of how much attention others are paying us.
58
Zajonc model explaining Social Facilitation (Activation Theory).
He argued that the presence of others serves as a source of arousal, and heightened arousal increases the likelihood of an organism to do better on well-learned or habitual responses. For this reason, arousal improves performance on simple, or well-learned tasks, but impairs performance on complex, or not well-learned tasks. Zajonc's reasoning was based on Yerkes-Dodson's law, which holds that performance works like an inverse "U" function. This means that an individual's optimal drive is higher for simpler, or well-practiced tasks, and that the same individual's optimal drive is lower for more complex, or less-practiced tasks.
59
Evaluation apprehension
Performance is affected by how people think they are being judged.
60
Social Loafing
People exert less effort when working in a group than when working alone.
61
Ringelman (1913)
Ringelmann (1913) found that having group members work together on a task (e.g., pulling a rope) actually results in significantly less effort than when individual members are acting alone. Furthermore, Ringelmann discovered that as more and more people are added to a group, the group often becomes increasingly inefficient, ultimately violating the notion that group effort and team participation reliably leads to increased effort on behalf of the members.
62
Earley (1989)
Found that collectivist thinking reduces the social loafing effect.
63
Emergent Property
Patterns that arise out of the interaction of many elements such that the larger entities exhibit properties the smaller/simpler entities do not exhibit.
64
Deindividuation
The loss of self-awareness in groups.
65
Lucifer Effect (Zimbardo)
Zimbardo's main assumption on why good people do terrible things is due to situational influences and power given from authority.
66
Emergent Norm Theory
Individuals in groups are motivated to behave in ways that reflect the group norms.
67
Groupthink
People set aside individual opinions and doubts in favour of achieving a group consensus.
68
Group Polarization
The tendency for a group to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members. These more extreme decisions are towards greater risk if individuals' initial tendencies are to be risky and towards greater caution if individuals' initial tendencies are to be cautious. The phenomenon also holds that a group's attitude toward a situation may change in the sense that the individuals' initial attitudes have strengthened and intensified after group discussion, a phenomenon known as attitude polarization.
69
Normative Influence
One person's behaviour is influenced by the behaviour of another because it tells that person what is appropriate in a given situation.
70
Informational influence
Person's behaviour is influenced by another because it provides information about what is true/good e.g. running away may tell you that there is something dangerous worth running away from.
71
Door-in-the-face technique
Asking for something big, getting rejected then asking for what you really want.
72
Asch (1951)
Asch’s sample consisted of 50 male students from Swarthmore College in America, who believed they were taking part in a vision test. Asch used a line judgement task, where he placed on real naïve participants in a room with seven confederates (actors), who had agreed their answers in advance. The real participant was deceived and was led to believe that the other seven people were also real participants. The real participant always sat second to last.
73
Moscovici (1969)
The procedure was that groups of six participants were shown 36 slides after being given a colour blindness test. The task was a simple perceptual judgement that involved saying aloud the colour on the slide. There were two confederates seated in either the first and second position or first and fourth position. In the consistent condition they answered ‘green’ on each trial (irrespective of the colour on the slide). In the inconsistent condition they answered ‘green’ on 2/3 of the trails and ‘blue’ on the rest. There was a control condition in which there were just six naive participants and no confederates.
74
Milgram exp.
.
75
Zimbardo prison study.
.
76
Systematic Persuasion
Change in attitudes or beliefs brought about by appeals to reason.
77
Heuristic Persuasion
Change in attitudes or beliefs brought about by appeals to habit or emotions.
78
Perseverance effect
At least some of the initial belief remains even after a full debriefing.
79
Unbelieving effect
.
80
Sleeper effect
.
81
Foot-in-the-door technique
Uses person's desire for consistency to influence behaviour e.g. Petition - Ugly Sign.
82
Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger, 1957)
Mental stress (discomfort) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values; when performing an action that contradicts one of those beliefs, ideas, or values; or when confronted with new information that contradicts one of the beliefs, ideas, and values. According to Festinger, a person who experiences inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and so is motivated to try to reduce the cognitive dissonance occurring, trying to "justify" their behavior by changing or adding new parts of the conflicting cognition, as well as actively avoids situations and information likely to increase the psychological discomfort.
83
Theory of Planned Behaviour
The theory states that attitude toward behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, together shape an individual's behavioral intentions and behaviors.
