Social Psychology Flashcards
How do we, as naïve psychologists form impressions of people?
Intuitively form impressions based on their actions
What is an attribution?
A claim about the cause of someone’s behavior.
What is meant by person bias?
When we give too much weight to personality and not to the environmental situation when judging a person.
What is the fundamental attribution error?
The person bias
Who is most likely to have a person bias? What is thought to be the reason for this?
Adults in western culture because western cultures emphasize personal independence whereas eastern cultures emphasize greater interdependence.
Name and explain two biases regarding facial features. What could cause these?
Attractiveness bias has shown that people automatically view attractive people as more intelligent, competent, sociable and moral than less attractive people. This could be caused by associating looks with good genes or a symmetrical face with less problems in the womb.
Baby face bias results in people perceiving people with less matured faces as more naïve,honest, helpless kind and warm than more mature faced adults. These faces could cause adults to react with compassion and care which would usually be towards children for the purposes of survival.
What is a self concept?
The way a person defines themself
How does self concept come about?
It is a social product. You must become aware of your species, then become aware you are one of them, then become aware that they are aware of you.
Why might people like each other better on the internet rather than face to face ?
The anonymity of the internet can make an interaction more intimate, revealing what each person sees as their ‘true self.’ It can also remove any biases based on physical appearance so when they meet they already know a great deal about each other and this can make the other more attractive.
What is the looking-glass self?
We all naturally infer what others think of us by their reactions and use those inferences to build our own self-concepts.
What is a self-fulfilling prophecy or a Pygmalion effect?
When the beliefs and expectations that others have of a person create reality by influencing that persons self-concept and behavior.
What is self-esteem?
Self esteem is one’s feeling of approval,acceptance and liking oneself
Where is our self esteem primarily derived from? What is this theory called?
Our perceptions of others attitudes towards us. This is called sociometer theory.
Give three pieces of evidence supporting the sociometer theory
Individual difference in self esteem correlate strongly within with how people believe that they are accepted or rejected by others.
In experiments people’s self esteem was raised after praise, social acceptance or other satisfying social encounters.
Feedback about success or failure on a test has greater effects on self esteem if the person was led to believe others would hear of this success or failure.
What is the practical element of self esteem
It was vital to be accepted by others for our survival, low self esteem could cause us to change our ways to be more accepted while good self esteem would result in us continuing our path maybe even more vigorously.
How do we measure our height, weight, math ability etc according to our self concept? Name a consequence of this
By comparing ourselves to others. This is called social comparison. A consequence of this is how we perceive ourselves depends on a reference group.
What is the big fish in a small pond effect?
When someone who is top of their reference group views themselves as more superior than someone who is equally capable in a more select reference group.
What is a positive illusory bias?
When people overestimate their abilities
What is a self serving attributional bias?
The tendency to attribute our successes over our inner qualities and our failures to external circumstances.
How does selective memory influence how we view ourselves?
We have a better long term memory for positive events and successes than the opposite.
How could an inflated self esteem be caused and what are the possible consequences?
An excess of praise when it is not warranted can cause an inflated self worth. This can build an unstable foundation and lead to depression when they encounter failure
What is an attitude
Any belief or opinion that has an evaluative component.
What do we call our most central attitudes?
Values
Name and distinguish between the two main types of attitudes. How are they measured?
Implicit attitudes manifest in automatic mental associations. They are measured by implicit association tests (black/white intelligent)
Explicit attitudes are conscious, verbally stated evaluations. They are measured by traditional attitude tests.
The more we think about implicit values the less effective they are, the more we think about explicit values the more effective they are.
