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GRE: Psychology Subject Test > Social Psychology > Flashcards

Social Psychology Flashcards

1
Q

What is social psychology concerned with?

A

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

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2
Q

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

A

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

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3
Q

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

A

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

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4
Q

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

A

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

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5
Q

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

A

Pavlov, Thorndike, Hull, and Skinner

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6
Q

Who proposed that behavior is learned through imitation

A

Albert Bandura

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7
Q

Role theory

A

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

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8
Q

_____ has an influence in social psychological theory and research

A

Cognitive theory

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9
Q

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

A

Perception, judgement, memories and decision making

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10
Q

Attitudes have which three components?

A

Cognition/beliefs, feelings, and behaviorist predisposition

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11
Q

Attitudes are typically expressed in what type of statements?

A

Opinion statements

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

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12
Q

Attitudes includes what?

A

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

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13
Q

What are consistency theories?

A

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

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14
Q

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

A

an Inconsistency

resolve it

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15
Q

Fritz Heider’s Balance Theory

A

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

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16
Q

Leon Festigner’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory

A

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

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17
Q

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.

A

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

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18
Q

two types of dissonant situations are?

A

Free choice dissonance and forced compliance dissonance

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19
Q

Free choice dissonance

A

occurs in a situation where person makes choices btw desirable alternatives

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20
Q

Post-decisional Dissonance

A

The emergence of dissonance after a choice was made

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21
Q

Forced-Compliance Dissonance

A

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

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22
Q

Minimal Justification Effect

A

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

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23
Q

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

A

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)

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24
Q

Two Principles of Cognitive Dissonance Theory

A
  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
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25
Daryl Bem's perception theory
if attiudes about topic is weak/ambiguous --> you infer your attitude based on observation of own behavior
26
Difference between Bem's Self Perception theory and Festinger
Bem doesn't hypothesize a state of discomfort or dissonance
27
over justification effect
rewarding ppl for something they like may make them stop liking it
28
Carl Hovland's Model
deals with attitude change at a process of communicating a message with intent to persuade someone
29
Communication of persuasion has three components. State them.
the communicator,, communication, the situation
30
Communicator
source; someoen who takes a position on an issue and tries to persuade someone to adopt her position
31
Communication
produces a communication (presentation of argument) --> designed w. itnent to persuade others
32
The Situation
surroundings which communication takes place
33
The more ___ the source is perceived to be --> greater the ___ impact.
The more credible | greater the persuasive impactHighly credible sources
34
____ depends on how expert and how trustworthy a source appears to be
Credibility
35
Carl Hovland and Walter Weiss (1952) FIndings
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
36
Sleeper Effect
Over time, the persuasive impact of high credibility source decreased while persuasive impact of low credibility source increased
37
Sources can increase their credibility by arguing against their ___
own-self interest | ex. drug addicts who argue against drugs or criminals who argue for greater police power can be very persuasive
38
Two sided messages
contains arguments for and against a position, are often used for persuasion since such messages seem to be "balanced" communication"
39
Petty and Cacioppo's elaboration likelihood model of persuation
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
40
What happens if the persuader is trying to change our minds in the central route?
We follow persuader's argument very closely and mentally evaluate the persuader's arguments by generating counterarguments of our own
41
___ arguments change our minds more often than ___ arguments
Strong arguments | Weak arguments
42
What happens if the persuader is trying to change our minds in the peripheral route?
We either aren't paying attention or can't pay attention to persuader's message --> strength of persuader's argument really doesn't matter
43
What matters in an argument for the peripheral route?
What matters is how, by whom, or in what surroundings the argument is being presented
44
William McGuise uses the ___ of ___
uses the analogy of inoculation against diseases in Resistance to persuation
45
Cultural truisms
beliefs that are seldom questioned
46
Inoculation process is analogous to ___ | Cultural truisms is vulnerable to attack, which is analogous to vulnerability of ____ people
The mind | un vaccinated people
47
Accordign to McGuire how can people be psychologically inoculated?
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 -->
48
Refuted counterarguments
defending your beliefs via arguments
49
Inoculating led to people developing a ___ of cultural truisms
developing a resistant of cultural truisms
50
Belief perseverance
Under certain conditions, people will hold beleifs even after those beliefs were shown to be false
51
What makes people develop belief perseverance?
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
52
Reactance
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
53
Accordance to the concept of reactance, what would happen is someone tried to hard to persuade you to do something?
You will choose to believe the opposite of your position
54
Leon Festinger's social comparison theory
suggests that we are drawn to affiliate because of a tendency to evaluate ourselves in relationships to other people
55
In Festinger's social Comparison Theory, what are the three principles?
(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
56
What did Stanley Schacter's research find about the the link between anxiety and desire to affiliate?
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
57
Reciprocity hypothesis
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
58
Arson and Linder Gain-Loss Principle
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
59
Social Exchange theory
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
60
Equity theory
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
61
Need complementary
claims that people choose relationships so that they mutually satisfy each other's needs
62
Physical attractiveness stereotype
The tendency to attribute positive qualities and desirable characteristics to attractive people, is a likely explanation
63
Spatial proximity
People who we like we tend to stand closer to compared to people that we don't like or don't know well
64
Mere exposure hypothesis (based on familiarity)
States that the mere repeated exposure to a stimulus leads to enhanced liking for it --> more you see something the more you like it
65
By stander Intervention and bystander effect
In a crisis with a lot of others, people tend to not

GRE: Psychology Subject Test (1 decks)

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