Social Psychology Flashcards
What is Social Psychology?
Social Psychology can be broadly defined as the scientific study of the nature and causes of individual behaviour in social situations. It describes how people think, feel and behave in the company of, and interaction with others
What is a Group?
A group is any collection of two or more people who interact with and influence one another and who share a common purpose
What does Group Polarisation refer to?
- It has been found that when individuals are in group with others who hold similar attitudes or beliefs, the discussion within the group tends to strengthen opinions
- Group Polarisation helps understand the processes that can lead to actions such as those of suicide bombers and the young men and women joining ISIS
What does Social Facilitation refer to?
There is a boost in performance when in the presence of others, such as others performing the same task
What does Social Inhibition refer to?
When the presence of others leads to a worser performance
What did Yerkes & Dodson discover about performance arousal?
- Discovered that people generally perform best at a moderate level of arousal
- Their performance drops off when they are not sufficiently aroused and when they are over aroused
- The optimum level of arousal for best performance varies depending on the type of task
- With simple or well learned tasks, we perform better with a relatively high level of arousal
- For difficult or new tasks, we perform better at lower arousal levels
What does Obedience refer to?
Occurs when one follows the commands of someone with authority, or the rules of the law of our society
What does Compliance refer to?
Involves changing one’s behaviour in response to a request to do so, it does not necessarily involve an authority figure
What does Conformity refer to?
- The tendency to adjust one’s thoughts, feelings or behaviour in ways that are in agreement with those of a particular individual or group, or with accepted standards about how a person should behave in certain situations
- Changing in behaviour in response to group pressure
Who were the Theorists of the Attribution Theory?
Hieder, Kelley
Who was the theorist of the Cognitive Dissonance theory?
Festinger
What is the Attribution Theory?
- Attribution theory is concerned with how and why ordinary people explain events as they do
- Explains how we infer the reasons behind the behaviour of others
What is Internal Attribution / Dispositional Attribution?
- The process of assigning the cause of behaviour to some internal characteristic, rather than to outside forces
- When we explain the behaviour of others we look for enduring internal attributions such as personality traits
e. g. we attribute behaviour of a person to their personality, motives or beliefs
What is External Attribution (Situational Attribution)?
- The process of assigning the cause of behaviour to some situation or event outside a person’s control rather than to some internal characteristic
- When we try to explain our own behaviour we tend to make external attributions, such as situational or environmental features
e. g. we attribute behaviour to some external cause - peer pressure or threats for example is responsible for the behaviour
What is Social Facilitation and Social Inhibition concerned with?
The different effects the presence of others in behaviour can be understood when we consider that being watched increases our level of arousal, Yerkes and Dodson (1908) discovered people generally perform best at moderate levels of arousal. Performance drops off when people are not succinctly aroused and when they are over aroused.. The optimum level of arousal for best performance varies depending on the type of task. Simply or well learned tasks one is seen to perform better with a relatively huh level of arousal. For difficult or new tasks, we perform better at lower arousal levels.
