Social Psychology

Question 1

social psychology

Answer 1

Looks at how social processes impact on how we think, feel and behave.

Question 2

levels of social behaviour

Answer 2

Social thinking
	- Cognitions, attitudes 
Social influences 
	- How others and social situations can shape our behaviour. 
Social relations 
	- Between individuals 
	- Between groups

Question 3

attitude

Answer 3

An attitude is a relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings, and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events and symbols.

Question 4

components of attitude

Answer 4

• Cognitive component (thinking) e.g. I have negative thoughts of management
• Emotional (feeling) - I don’t trust managers
• Behavioural (acting) - I will never have a close relationship with a manager.

Question 5

attitude factors

Answer 5

Strength- durability and impact
Importance- personal relevance
Accessibility- Ease with which an attitude comes to mind
Complexity- degree of reasoning that forms an attitude
Ambivalence: Conflicting evaluative responses toward an attitude object (positive and negative)
Coherence: Internal consistency- do we like what we believe? .

Question 6

attitude persuasion

Answer 6

Deliberate efforts to change attitudes. 
Considers; 
communicator
				□ Credibility 
				□ Attractiveness 
			§ Message (content) 
				□ Fear (fear surrounding smoking etc.) 
				□ Humour 
			§ Channel (medium of message delivery) 
			§ Context (background factors) 
			§ Audience variables (receiver)

Question 7

Cognitive dissonance theory

Answer 7

When behaviour is inconsistent with our attitudes or we receive information that is inconsistent with our attitude we experience cognitive dissonance- leading to attitudinal change.
Inconsistency between cognitions results in an aversive psychological state called dissonance (negative psychological tension).

Question 8

Reducing dissonance

Answer 8

• Changing one of the cognitions
• Reducing the importance of one of the cognitions
• Adding additional consonant cognitions
  Reducing dissonance changes attitudes

Question 9

social cognition

Answer 9

The study of how people attend to, perceive, interpret and respond to social stimuli.
How we perceive and think about ourselves and others.

Question 10

Schemas

Answer 10

Cognitive structures that represent knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus.

- Help us understand our social world. 
- Link together in an associative network 
- When one schema is activated, other related schemas are also activated. 
- Formed on basis of past experience both direct (personal experience) and indirect (media) 
- Not just facts but also emotions, reactions, attitudes and beliefs. 
- May suggest prototypical type

Question 11

types of schemas

Answer 11

Event schemas/scripts
- Associated with a particular situation, they tell us what to expect.

Self schemas
- Self concept

Person schemas

- Knowledge structures about specific people/types of people 
- Stereotypes- classifying people according to social categories (gender etc.) 
- Implicit personality theories (extravert etc.) 
- Schemas for specific people (mother, father etc.)

Question 12

heuristics

Answer 12

Shortcut cognitive processes that yield quick estimates or answers without having to engage in careful consideration.

Question 13

availability heuristics

Answer 13

Availability heuristic: people judge an event’s frequency by the ease with which they can bring it to mind.

Question 14

representativeness heuristics

Answer 14

Representativeness heuristic: People judge likelihood of group membership by comparing features of particular case to the prototype ignoring information on probability. We assume similarity in one aspect leads to similarity in another.

Question 15

attribution

Answer 15

The processes by which people infer the causes of their own and others behaviour

Question 16

actor-observer bias

Answer 16

Tendency to attribute our own behaviour to external factors and others behaviours to dispositional causes.

Question 17

self-serving bias

Answer 17

Tendency to attribute successes to stable, internal factors and failures to temporary, external factors.

Question 18

false concensus effect

Answer 18

Tendency to see one’s own behaviour as typical

Question 19

obedience

Answer 19

Obedience is an extreme form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct commands, usually from someone in a position of authority.

Question 20

Conformity

Answer 20

Conformity occurs when people yield to social pressure (real or imagined)