Social Psychology Flashcards
In causal attribution, the tendency for an observer to overestimate the effects of dispositional factors when making attributions about an actor’s behavior but to overestimate the effects of situational factors when making self-attributions.
Actor-Observer Bias
is the tendency to accept vague, general descriptions of oneself (e.g., a horoscope) as accurate.
Barnum Effect
is the tendency to underutilize or ignore relevant statistical (base rate) data and to rely, instead, on irrelevant information when making probabilistic judgments about an event or characteristic.
Base Rate Fallacy
French and Raven identified six bases of social power that induce compliance in another person: coercive, reward, expert, legitimate, referent, and informational.
Bases Of Social Power
refers to the tendency of people to not intervene in emergency situations when others are present. It has been attributed to three factors: social comparison, evaluation apprehension, and diffusion of responsibility.
Bystander Apathy
predicts that an act of aggression reduces an individual’s arousal level which then decreases the likelihood that he/she will act aggressively again in the near future. The research has not been supportive of this claim.
Catharsis Hypothesis
affect its persuasiveness - e.g., the level of discrepancy between the positions of the recipient and the message, the order in which the two sides of an argument are presented (primacy/recency effects), and whether the message is intentionally delivered or is overheard.
Characteristics Of The Communication
Research on attitude change has confirmed that credible communicators are more persuasive and that one factor that contributes to credibility is trustworthiness (e.g., if the person is arguing against his/her own best interests, the person may seem more trustworthy).
Characteristics Of The Communicator
Festinger proposes that inconsistencies in cognitions produce discomfort (dissonance) that motivates the individual to reduce the dissonance by changing his/her cognitions.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
is the tendency to seek or pay attention to information that confirms one’s hypothesis or current beliefs and to ignore disconfirming information.
Confirmation Bias
proposes that prejudice may be reduced through contact between members of majority and minority groups as long as the following conditions are met: Members of the different groups have equal status and power, members are provided with opportunities that disconfirm negative stereotypes about members of the other group, and intergroup cooperation is necessary to achieve mutual (superordinate) goals.
Contact Hypothesis
is a state of relative anonymity that allows an individual to feel unidentifiable. It has been associated with increases in antisocial behavior, apparently because the deindividuated person’s behavior is no longer controlled by guilt, fear of evaluation, or other inhibitory contro
Deindividuation Model
conditions tend to enhance positive experiences and increase the unpleasantness of negative experiences. Men seem to be more stressed by crowded conditions than women and are more likely to react with increased aggressiveness, apparently because men require more personal space.
Effects Of Crowding
The research has generally confirmed that viewing media violence increases aggression by providing viewers with models for aggressive behavior. In addition, media violence can affect attitudes as well as behavior - e.g., frequent viewing of media violence has been linked to a tendency to overestimate the likelihood that one will be a victim of violence.
Effects Of Media Violence
Studies investigating the effects of pornography have shown that, while exposure to mild erotica may reduce aggressiveness, exposure to pornography with violent themes tends to increase aggressive behaviors toward women as well as increase acceptance of rape myths and the adoption of callous attitudes toward sexual violence
Effects Of Pornography
is a cognitive theory of attitude change that distinguishes between two information processing routes - central and peripheral. Use of the central route is likely when the listener’s motivation is high, the listener has the ability to process the information contained in the message, and/or the listener is in a neutral or slightly negative mood. Use of the peripheral route is likely when the listener is unmotivated, the listener lacks the ability to process the information, and/or the listener is in a positive mood.
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)
provides an explanation for the experience of strong emotions in close relationships and proposes that there is an innate mechanism that generates emotion in response to unexpected events that disrupt ongoing sequences of behaviors.
Emotion-In-Relationship Model
supported the predictions of self-perception theory by confirming that, when internal cues are insufficient or difficult to interpret, people acquire information about themselves by observing their external behaviors and/or the context in which those behaviors occur.
Epinephrine Studies (Schachter & Singer)
predicts that motivation (e.g., motivation to remain in a relationship) is affected by a comparison of the input/outcome ratios of oneself and one’s partner.
Equity Theory
Lewin’s describes human behavior as being a product of interdependent factors in the person and his or her physical and social environment.
Field Theory
This hypothesis proposes that aggression is motivated by frustration, and a revised version predicts that frustration leads to aggression in the presence of aggressive cues.
Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis
is the tendency for an observer to overestimate dispositional causes and underestimate situational causes when making attributions about an actor’s behavior.
Fundamental Attribution Bias
predicts that people tend to be most attracted to individuals who show increasing liking for them and to be least attracted to individuals who show decreasing liking for them.
Gain-Loss Effect
The research has shown that women generally spend more time than men engaged in conversation, are more likely to talk to people of the same gender, and may affiliate more than men do in public places.
Gender Differences In Affiliation
Research by Kobasa et al. (1982) found that the personality trait of hardiness acts as a protective factor against stress and has three primary characteristics: commitment (a sense of purpose and involvement in one’s relationships and life events); challenge (an openness to new experiences and change); and control (the belief that one has the ability to influence or manage life events).
Hardiness
are mental shortcuts that people use when making attributions and other social judgments and include the representativeness, availability, simulation, and anchoring and adjustment heuristics. Although heuristics allow us to reach conclusions quickly, they may result in errors.
Heuristics
Lewin (1931) and Miller (1944) distinguished between four intraindividual (motivational) conflicts: approach-approach, avoidance-avoidance, approach-avoidance, and double approach-avoidance. Of these, the double approach-avoidance (which occurs when we have to choose between two goals that both have positive and negative qualities) is the most difficult type to resolve.
Intraindividual Conflict
is a method of learning in which assignments must be completed by teams with each team member being assigned a different piece of the project. It has been found to improve intergroup relations, cooperation, and self-esteem as well as academic achievement, especially for members of minority groups.
Jigsaw Method
According to Byrne’s (1971) law of attraction, we are attracted to others who have similar attitudes because interacting with those individuals is more rewarding than interacting with people who have dissimilar attitudes and is, therefore, more likely to generate positive affect.
Law Of Attraction (Byrne)
Several investigators argue, to understand the effects of racism, it is necessary to recognize that it operates on multiple levels. These levels may be categorized as cultural, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized.
Levels Of Racism
The research shows that a minority can influence the majority by maintaining a consistent (but not dogmatic) position.
Minority Influence
Schachter concluded that people like to affiliate most with others who are in similar circumstances (e.g., anxious people prefer to affiliate with other anxious people).
Misery Loves Miserable Company
Milgram’s famous and controversial studies evaluated participants’ willingness to obey the direct order or command of a high-status individual (authority) even when doing so seemed to harm another person.
Obedience To Authority (Milgram)
predicts that, when people are externally rewarded for a task they previously found intrinsically interesting, their intrinsic interest in the task will decrease.
Overjustification Hypothesis
Zimbardo’s prison simulation study demonstrated that people alter their behaviors to fit their assigned roles.
Prison Study
demonstrated the effects of the social context on impression formation. Once admitted to a mental hospital, the pseudopatients were viewed, especially by hospital staff, as being schizophrenic even though they did not exhibit any abnormal behaviors.
Pseudopatient Study (Rosenhan)
is the tendency to resist being influenced or manipulated by others, usually by doing the opposite of what is expected or requested.
Psychological Reactance
Sherif’s research with boys at a summer camp demonstrated that the most effective way to reduce intergroup hostility is having the members of the groups cooperate to achieve a mutual (superordinate) goal.
Robber’s Cave Study (Sherif)
Schemata (schemas) are cognitive structures that organize past information and experience and provide a framework for processing and understanding new information and experiences.
Schemata
predicts that people make attributions about their own attitudes and behaviors on the basis of observations of their behaviors and other external cues.
Self-Perception Theory
refers to the tendency to attribute our own successes to dispositional (internal) factors and failures to situational (external) factors.
Self-Serving Bias
predicts that people prefer to receive feedback from others that is consistent with their own self-evaluations.
Self-Verification Theory
theory predicts that people use other (usually similar) people as sources of comparison to evaluate their own attitudes and behaviors.
Social Comparison Theory
predicts that a person’s decision to leave a relationship depends on the relationship’s costs and rewards - i.e., a person is likely to stay in a relationship when rewards exceed costs but leave when costs are greater than rewards.
Social Exchange Theory
predicts that people have three “categories of judgment” by which they evaluate persuasive messages - a latitude of acceptance, a latitude of non-commitment, and a latitude of rejection - and that people are most likely to be persuaded when the message is within their latitude of acceptance.
Social Judgment Theory
predicts that learning can occur simply by observing the behavior of a model. It has been used to explain the acquisition of aggressive behaviors (e.g., the effects of media violence).
Social Learning Theory
can be achieved only when individuals or members of different groups work together cooperatively and have been found useful for reducing intergroup conflict.
Superordinate Goals
Sears et al. propose that that symbolic (modern) racism has gradually taken the place of “old-fashioned” racism and that symbolic racists believe that African Americans and other minorities violate such traditional American values as individualism, self-reliance, and the work ethic. They also deny their prejudice and attribute the social and economic problems of minority group members to internal factors (e.g., a lack of effort and discipline).
Symbolic Racism
predicts that attitudes are accurate predictors of behavior when the attitude measure assesses all three components of the behavioral intention - the person’s attitude toward engaging in the behavior, what the person believes other people think he or she should do, and the person’s perceived behavioral control.
Theory of Planned Behavior
is the tendency to remember interrupted and unfinished tasks better than completed ones, especially in non-stressful situations.
Zeigarnik Effect
