Social Psychology

Question 1

What is social psychology concerned with?

Answer 1

Concerned with social behavior, the ways people influence each other’s attitude and behavior, impact of individuals have on one another, impact that social groups have on individual group members, impact that individual group members have on social group, impact that social groups have on other social groups

Question 2

What did Norman Triplett known for? What were the findings of his study?

Answer 2

Published the first study of social psychology in 1898. He investigated effect of competition on performance and found people perform better on familiar tasks when in presence of others than alone

Question 3

Which two figures (a psychologist and sociologist) who published the frist textbooks on social psychology in 1908?

Answer 3

William McDougall (psychologist) and E. H. Ross (sociologist).

Question 4

What were the findings in Verplank’s 1950s social experiment on social approval influencing behavior?

Answer 4

Found that the course of a covnersation changes dramatically based upon the feedback (approval) from others

Question 5

which four figures helped to establish reinforcement theory as an important perspective in studying social behavior?

Answer 5

Pavlov, Thorndike, Hull, and Skinner

Question 6

Who proposed that behavior is learned through imitation

Answer 6

Albert Bandura

Question 7

Role theory

Answer 7

perspective that people are aware of the social roles they are expected to fill, and much of their observable behavior can be attributed to adopting those roles

Question 8

_____ has an influence in social psychological theory and research

Answer 8

Cognitive theory

Question 9

What are examples of cognitive concepts that have influenced our understanding of social behavior?

Answer 9

Perception, judgement, memories and decision making

Question 10

Attitudes have which three components?

Answer 10

Cognition/beliefs, feelings, and behaviorist predisposition

Question 11

Attitudes are typically expressed in what type of statements?

Answer 11

Opinion statements

E.g I love Chinese food. I have strong positive feelings towards it

Question 12

Attitudes includes what?

Answer 12

likes and dislikes, affinities for and aversions to things, people, ideas

Question 13

What are consistency theories?

Answer 13

Theories that hold that people prefer consistency, and will change or resist changing attitudes based upon this preference

Question 14

If a person hates cigarette smoking, but falls in love with cigarette smoker, this would be an ____. If a person is aware of this inconsistency, then according to consistency theories, this person ill try to ___ it

Answer 14

an Inconsistency

resolve it

Question 15

Fritz Heider’s Balance Theory

Answer 15

Concerned with how three elements are realted
Person P and other person O and a thing X
Imbalance occurs when someone aggrees with someone he or she dislikes or disagrees with someone he or she likes
If there are zero or two + signs, the triad is unbalance
If there are one or three + signs, the triad is balanced

Question 16

Leon Festigner’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Answer 16

The conflict that you feel when your attitudes are not in sync with your behaviors. Engaging in behavior that conflicts with an attiude may result in changing one’s attitude so that it’s consistent witht he beahvior

Question 17

Case Study: Joe beleives that cigars cause cancer. Joe smokes cigarettes, since Joe beleives that cigarettes cause cancer, what can be said about what Joe is experiencing right now.

Answer 17

Joe is being a hypocrite so he’s most definitely feeling cognitive dissonance

Question 18

two types of dissonant situations are?

Answer 18

Free choice dissonance and forced compliance dissonance

Question 19

Free choice dissonance

Answer 19

occurs in a situation where person makes choices btw desirable alternatives

Question 20

Post-decisional Dissonance

Answer 20

The emergence of dissonance after a choice was made

Question 21

Forced-Compliance Dissonance

Answer 21

Forced into behaving in a manner that is inconsistent with his/her beliefs –> Two elements the cognition and the action

Question 22

Minimal Justification Effect

Answer 22

changing internal cognition to reduce dissonance as shown in Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) study

Question 23

Describe Festinger and Carlsmith (1959( Study on Minimal Justification Effect

Answer 23

Groups: $1 and $20 group
Task: put 12 spools in a tray –. empty –> refill and repeat –> then tell next person (confederate) that it was fun
Findings: $1 group said it was ‘fun’ more than the $20 group
Conclusion: $20 group could explain away their dissonance since they got money. But the $1 group could not explain it away so they were forced to change their internal factor or the cognition to yeah this is fun, it’s better than studying (minimal justification effect)

Question 24

Two Principles of Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Answer 24

1. If a person is pressured to say or do something contrary to his or her privately held attitudes, tendency for his.her to change those attitudes
2. the greater the pressure to comply, the less the person’s attitude will change. Ultimately attitudes change generally occurs when behavior is induced with min pressure

Question 25

Daryl Bem’s perception theory

Answer 25

if attiudes about topic is weak/ambiguous –> you infer your attitude based on observation of own behavior

Question 26

Difference between Bem’s Self Perception theory and Festinger

Answer 26

Bem doesn’t hypothesize a state of discomfort or dissonance

Question 27

over justification effect

Answer 27

rewarding ppl for something they like may make them stop liking it

Question 28

Carl Hovland’s Model

Answer 28

deals with attitude change at a process of communicating a message with intent to persuade someone

Question 29

Communication of persuasion has three components. State them.

Answer 29

the communicator,, communication, the situation

Question 30

Communicator

Answer 30

source; someoen who takes a position on an issue and tries to persuade someone to adopt her position

Question 31

Communication

Answer 31

produces a communication (presentation of argument) –> designed w. itnent to persuade others

Question 32

The Situation

Answer 32

surroundings which communication takes place

Question 33

The more ___ the source is perceived to be –> greater the ___ impact.

Answer 33

The more credible

greater the persuasive impactHighly credible sources

Question 34

____ depends on how expert and how trustworthy a source appears to be

Answer 34

Credibility

Question 35

Carl Hovland and Walter Weiss (1952) FIndings

Answer 35

Groups: (1) Shown the highly credible J RObert Oppenheimer (2) Shown the less credible Prava Russian Newspaper
Task: “Can a practical atomic-powered submarine be built at the present time>”
DV: Yes and NO responses depending on the type of source
Findings: Highly credible source led to more effective in changing attiudes than by communications by low credibility sources

Question 36

Sleeper Effect

Answer 36

Over time, the persuasive impact of high credibility source decreased while persuasive impact of low credibility source increased

Question 37

Sources can increase their credibility by arguing against their ___

Answer 37

own-self interest

ex. drug addicts who argue against drugs or criminals who argue for greater police power can be very persuasive

Question 38

Two sided messages

Answer 38

contains arguments for and against a position, are often used for persuasion since such messages seem to be “balanced” communication”

Question 39

Petty and Cacioppo’s elaboration likelihood model of persuation

Answer 39

suggests that two routes: central and peripheral exists
If the issue = very important to us = central route
If the issue = not very important to us = peripheral

Question 40

What happens if the persuader is trying to change our minds in the central route?

Answer 40

We follow persuader’s argument very closely and mentally evaluate the persuader’s arguments by generating counterarguments of our own

Question 41

___ arguments change our minds more often than ___ arguments

Answer 41

Strong arguments

Weak arguments

Question 42

What happens if the persuader is trying to change our minds in the peripheral route?

Answer 42

We either aren’t paying attention or can’t pay attention to persuader’s message –> strength of persuader’s argument really doesn’t matter

Question 43

What matters in an argument for the peripheral route?

Answer 43

What matters is how, by whom, or in what surroundings the argument is being presented

Question 44

William McGuise uses the ___ of ___

Answer 44

uses the analogy of inoculation against diseases in Resistance to persuation

Question 45

Cultural truisms

Answer 45

beliefs that are seldom questioned

Question 46

Inoculation process is analogous to ___

Cultural truisms is vulnerable to attack, which is analogous to vulnerability of ____ people

Answer 46

The mind

un vaccinated people

Question 47

Accordign to McGuire how can people be psychologically inoculated?

Answer 47

They can be inoculated against an oncoming attack by first exposing them to a weakened attack (similar to how vaccines work) –> inoculated people by presenting arguments against cultural truisms –> people refutes via refuted counterarguments –>

Question 48

Refuted counterarguments

Answer 48

defending your beliefs via arguments

Question 49

Inoculating led to people developing a ___ of cultural truisms

Answer 49

developing a resistant of cultural truisms

Question 50

Belief perseverance

Answer 50

Under certain conditions, people will hold beleifs even after those beliefs were shown to be false

Question 51

What makes people develop belief perseverance?

Answer 51

If you are induced to believe a statement and then provide your own explanation for it, you will tend to continue to believe the statement even when the statement is shown to be false

Question 52

Reactance

Answer 52

When social pressure to behave in a particular way becomes so blatant that the person’s sense of freedom is threatened, the person will tend to act in a way to reassert a sense of freedom

Question 53

Accordance to the concept of reactance, what would happen is someone tried to hard to persuade you to do something?

Answer 53

You will choose to believe the opposite of your position

Question 54

Leon Festinger’s social comparison theory

Answer 54

suggests that we are drawn to affiliate because of a tendency to evaluate ourselves in relationships to other people

Question 55

In Festinger’s social Comparison Theory, what are the three principles?

Answer 55

(1) People prefer to evaluate themselves by objective, nonsocial means
(2) The less the similarity of opinions and abilities between two people, the less the tendency to make these comparisons
(3) When a discrepancy exists with respect to opinions and abilities, there is a tendency to change one’s position so as to move it in line with the group

Question 56

What did Stanley Schacter’s research find about the the link between anxiety and desire to affiliate?

Answer 56

The greater the anxiety –> greater desire to affilidate
Situation that provokes little anxiety –> does not lead to desire to affiliate
However, anxious people prefer other anxious people –> perceived similarity

Question 57

Reciprocity hypothesis

Answer 57

we tend to like people who indicate that they like us

Inverse is true–> we tend to dislike people who dislike us –> attraction is a two way street

Question 58

Arson and Linder Gain-Loss Principle

Answer 58

an evaluation that changes will have more of an impact than an evaluation that remains constant
we like someone more whose liking for us has increased

Question 59

Social Exchange theory

Answer 59

assumes that a person weights thr rewards and costs of interacting with another
(1) The more rewards outweigh the costs, greater the attraction to other person

Question 60

Equity theory

Answer 60

we consider not only our own costs and rewards, but the costs and rewards of the other person –> we prefer that our ratio of costs to rewards be equal to the other person’s ratio

Question 61

Need complementary

Answer 61

claims that people choose relationships so that they mutually satisfy each other’s needs

Question 62

Physical attractiveness stereotype

Answer 62

The tendency to attribute positive qualities and desirable characteristics to attractive people, is a likely explanation

Question 63

Spatial proximity

Answer 63

People who we like we tend to stand closer to compared to people that we don’t like or don’t know well

Question 64

Mere exposure hypothesis (based on familiarity)

Answer 64

States that the mere repeated exposure to a stimulus leads to enhanced liking for it –> more you see something the more you like it

Question 65

By stander Intervention and bystander effect

Answer 65

In a crisis with a lot of others, people tend to not