Social Psychology Flashcards
Describe social cognition
How you perceive the social world around you and how you attend to, store, remember and use information about other people and the social world.
Describe impression formation
the process of developing initial views of others. “thin slices” is a theory that small amounts of exposure to another person is enough to form an attitude.
Describe impression management
Our attempt to influence others beliefs and attitudes about us.
What is the Halo effect?
if you think someone has a positive and important trait, then you are likely to infer that he or she has other positive and important traits. E.g. If you think someone is physically attractive, you might think that he or she had other positive attributes.
What effect is described here?
Whether positive, negative, or neutral, the information you notice early on is more likely to bias your impression than is the information you pick up subsequently.
The Primacy effect
The theory that people come to understand themselves by making inferences from their behaviour and the events surrounding their behaviour. is called..?
The self-perception theory
What is learned riskiness?
without consciously changing our idea we believe children aren’t a risk as they are good at stopping. (Ray Fuller, roadside playing and crossing roads) Children usually do behave safely, something we have learnt through observation, so we have adjusted our behaviour to reflect this.
Explain the use of self serving biases.
the inclination to attribute your failures to external causes and your successes to internal ones, but to attribute other people’s failures to internal causes and their successes to external causes.
What is an attribution?
An explanation for the cause of an event or behaviour.
What are internal and external attributions?
Internal attributions: An explanation of someone’s behaviour that focuses on the person’s preferences, beliefs, goals or other characteristics; also called dispositional attribution.
External attributions: An explanation of someone’s behaviour that focuses on the situation; also called situational attribution.
The strong tendency to interpret other people’s behaviour as being due to internal (dispositional) causes rather than to external (situational) ones is called?
Correspondence bias
Describe Harre’s (2003) child speed study and the results.
Asked people to identify how fast they would go down a busy rural road under 3 different conditions:
1. In normal traffic conditions.
2. When there are children playing with a ball on the footpath.
3. When there are children waiting to cross the road.
And then measured how fast people actually went when under these conditions.
Results: People tended to identify accurately their speed under normal conditions. However, most people under estimated how much they would slow down under both conditions 2 and 3. This could be due to a self perception theory in which we see ourselves in a better light than we actually act. Another contributor could be learned riskiness in which we think children act safe usually so will not cause a risk. Self-serving biases distort our self-perception in ways to protect our self-esteem i.e. We believe we would slow down if we saw kids trying to cross the road because we are good people, but in fact we only slow down a very small amount.
Describe Harre, Houkamau & Branst (2004) driving attribution study and their results.
Study of young drivers attributions about why they and their friends took risks on the road. Participants were 70 year 12 drivers (39 male, 31 female) from Auckland secondary schools.
Results:
Greater feeling of being “at risk” when not in control and tends to give negative bias towards friends driving. (We have a self-serving bias towards how good we are at driving.)
Greater knowledge of the diversity of own driving than our friends so it exacerbates correspondence bias. (We know how we drive safely with our nana in the car so we trust our driving, however we have only seen our friends driving recklessly with friends in the car and not how sensible they can drive.)
What is the above average effect?
the tendency of people to consider themselves better than others. This is a self-serving bias.
People from individualist cultures are motivated to think of themselves as better than others, as this is part of the cultural definition of status.
Culture difference
Describe Harre, Foster & O’Neill (2005) Crash risk optimism and their results.
Study of 314 first year New Zealand technical institute students, both male and female. They were asked to compare themselves in 10 different categories against others in their peer group.
Results: The items tended to cluster together into two groups, indicating different patterns of perceived superiority
- Driving ability - some people rated themselves as superior in driving ability; judgment, reflexes, skills and experience
- Driving caution - some people rated themselves as superior in driving caution; (not) being as risky, obeying rules, safe
Men showed more self-enhancement on driving ability.
Woman showed more self-enhancement on driving caution.
Conclusion: These results show an above average effect in which people tend to consider themselves better then others.
Describe Donoghue’s 2008 study on above average effect and body image.
30 Australian men and women between the ages of 18-88 were photographed and asked to judge their body size, attractiveness and sexiness as well as the other people’s photos.
Results:Both women and men judged themselves as larger than others judged them.
Both women and men judged themselves as more attractive and sexier than others judged them.
Conclusion: Body size judgements may be due to the inability to compare oneself with ‘naked’ others except those who advertise underwear. Again shows an above average effect for their judgements on their own attractiveness.
What are the 4 factors that underline attraction?
- Repeated contact (mere-exposure effect)
- Physical attraction
- Similarity and homogamy
- Reciprocity
Describe what is involved in passionate love.
an intense feeling that involves sexual attraction, a desire for mutual love and physical closeness, arousal and a fear that the relationship will end.
Describe what is involved in companionate love.
a type of love marked by very close friendship, mutual caring, liking, respect and attraction
Describe what is involved in parental love
cultures survive on mother-child love as infants are reliant on them for survival. Infant strategies for “being lovable” include smiling and looking cute.
Sternberg’s triangular model of love includes Passion, Intimacy and Commitment. Explain how the triangle works.
Romantic love=passion + intimacy
Companionate=intimacy + commitment
Fatuous love=passion + commitment
Only Consummate love has all passion, intimacy and commitment.
What are the 3 attachment styles in love?
Secure - 55% not concerned with the possibility of loss of the relationship.
Avoidant - 25% uncomfortable with intimacy and closeness.
Anxious-ambivalent - 11% those who want, but simultaneously fear, a relationship.
What role does arousal have in romantic love?
- In times of high tension we are more likely to fall in love because of that arousal.
- The Romeo and Juliet effect - parental opposition can intensify passionate attraction.
- Dutton and Aron (1974) - swing bridge study; arousal was heightened by the nervousness felt by the fear of the swing bridge.
