Social Psychology Flashcards
Social Psychology
•Examines how people affect one another, and it looks at the power of the situation
Situationism
•Refers to the view that our behavior and actions are determined by our immediate environment and surroundings
Dispositionism
•Holds that our behavior is determined by internal factors
Internal Factor
•An attribute of a person and includes personality traits and temperament
Fundamental Attribution Error
- Tendency to explain someone’s behavior based on internal factors, such as personality or disposition
- Underestimate the influence that external factors, such as situational influences, have on another person’s behavior
Individualistic Culture
•Focuses on individual achievement and autonomy, have the greatest tendency to commit the fundamental attribution error
Collectivistic Culture
•Focuses on communal relationships with others, such as family, friends, and community – less likely to commit the fundamental attribution error
Actor-observer Bias
•The phenomenon of attributing other people’s behavior to internal factors while attributing our own behavior to situational forces
Self-serving Bias
•Tendency of an individual to take credit by making dispositional or internal attributions for positive outcomes but situational or external attributions for negative outcomes
Attribution
•A belief about the cause of a result
Three Dimensional Model of Attribution
- Locus of Control (internal vs external)
- Stability (stable vs unstable) – extent to which the circumstances that result in a given outcome are changeable
- Controllability (controllable vs uncontrollable) – extent to which the circumstances that are associated with a given outcome can be controlled
Just-world Hypothesis
•The belief that people get the outcomes they deserve
Social Roles
•A pattern of behavior that is expected of a person in a given setting or group
How do Social Roles Influence your Behavior
•Social roles are defined by culturally shared knowledge – everyone in a given culture knows what behavior is expected of a person in a given role
Social Norms
•A group’s expectation of what is appropriate and acceptable behavior for its member
Script
•Refers to a person’s knowledge about the sequence of events expected in a specific setting
Stanford Prison Experiment
- Conducted in 1971; Philip Zimbardo
- A social psychology experiment that attempted to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison officers
Attitude
•Our evaluation of a person, an idea, or an object
Cognitive Dissonance
•Defined as psychological discomfort arising from holding two or more inconsistent attitudes, behaviors, or cognition (thoughts, beliefs, or opinions)
Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
•States that when we experience a conflict in our behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs that runs counter to our positive self-perceptions, we experience psychological discomfort
The Effect of Initiation
- An experiment conducted by Aronson and Mills
- Hypothesis: participants who underwent a severe initiation to join a group expressed more liking toward the group than participants who underwent a mild or no initiation
- Participants who underwent a difficult initiation process to join the group rated the group more favorably than did participants with an easy initiation or no initiation
Persuasion
•The process of changing our attitude toward something based on some kind of communication
Carl Hovland and Yale Attitude Change Approach
- Describes the condition under which people tend to change their attitudes
- Demonstrated that certain features of the source of a persuasive message, the content of the message, and the characteristics of the audience will influence the persuasiveness of a message
Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion
•Considers the variables of the attitude change approach – that is, features of the source of the persuasive message, contents of the message, and characteristics of the audience are used to determine when attitude change will occur
Elaboration of Likelihood Model of Persuasion - Central Route
- Logic driven and uses data and facts to convince people of an argument’s worthiness
- Audience – motivated, analytical
- Processing – high effort, evaluate message
- Persuasion – lasting change in attitude
Elaboration of Likelihood Model of Persuasion - Peripheral Route
- An indirect route that uses peripheral cues to associate positivity with the message
- Relies on association with positive characteristics such as positive emotions and celebrity endorsement
- Audience – not motivated and analytical
- Processing – low effort, persuaded by cues outside of message
- Persuasion – temporary change in attitude
Foot-in-the-door Technique
•Persuader gets a person to agree to bestow a small favor or to buy a small item, only later request a larger favor or purchase of a bigger item
Principle in Consistency
•Our past behavior often directs our future behavior, and we have a desire to maintain consistency once we have committed to a behavior
Confederate
- Refers to a person who is aware of the experiment and works for the researcher
- Used to manipulate social situations as part of the research design
Conformity
•Refers to the change in a person’s behavior to go along with the group, even if he does not agree with it
Compliance
•Going along with a request or demand
Asch Effect
•The influence of the group majority on an individual’s judgement
Factors associated:
•The size of majority
•The pressure of another dissenter
•The public or private nature of the responses
Normative Social Influence
•People conform to the group norm to fit in, to feel good, and to be accepted by the group
Informational Social Influence
•People conform because they believe the group is more competent and has the correct information, particularly when the task or situation is ambiguous
Obedience
•The change of an individual’s behavior to comply with a demand by an authority figure
Stanley Milgram
- Interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person
- Conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience
Milgram’s Agency Theory
- Autonomous state – people direct their own actions, and they take responsibility for the results of those action
- Agentic state – people allow others to direct their actions and then pass off the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders. In other words, they act as agents for another person’s will
Groupthink
- Modification of the opinions of members of a group to align with what they believe is the group consensus
- May hinder opposing train of thought; elimination of diverse opinions contribute to faulty decision by the group
Symptoms of Groupthink
- Perceiving the group as invulnerable or invincible – believing it can do no wrong
- Believing the group is morally correct
- Self-censorship by group members, such as withholding information to avoid disrupting the group consensus
- The quashing of dissenting group members’ opinions
- The shielding of the group leader from dissenting views
- Perceiving an illusion of unanimity among group members
- Holding stereotypes or negative attitudes toward the out-group or others’ with differing viewpoints
Causes of Groupthink
- Group is highly cohesive, or has a strong sense of connection, maintaining group harmony may become more important to the group than making sound decisions
- Group leader is directive and makes his opinions known – discourage group members from disagreeing with the leader
Strategies to improve group decision
- Seeking outside opinions
- Voting in private
- Having the leader withhold position statements until all group members have voiced their views
- Conduct research on all viewpoints
- Develop contingency plans
Group Polarization
•The strengthening of an original group attitude after the discussion of views withing a group
*If a group initially favors a viewpoint, after discussion the group consensus is likely a stronger endorsement of the viewpoint; if the group was initially opposed to a viewpoint, group discussion would likely lead to stronger opposition
Social Facilitation
•Occurs when an individual performs better when an audience is watching as compared to when the individual performs the behavior alone
Social Loafing
•Exertion of less effort by a person working in a group because individual performance cannot be evaluated separately from the group, thus causing performance decline on easy tasks
Prejudice
•A negative attitude and feeling towards an individual based solely on one’s membership in a particular social group
*Common against people who are members of an unfamiliar cultural group
Stereotype
•A negative belief about individuals based solely on their membership in a group, regardless of their individual characteristics
Discrimination
•A negative action towards an individual as a result of one’s membership in a particular group
Racism
•Prejudice and discrimination against an individual based solely on one’s membership in a specific racial group
Sexism
•Prejudice and discrimination towards individuals based on their sex
Ageism
•Prejudice and discrimination towards individuals based solely on their age
Homophobia
•Prejudice and discrimination of individuals based solely on their sexual orientation
Why do Prejudice and Discrimination Exist?
- Children learn prejudiced attitudes and beliefs from society: parents, teachers, friends, and medias
- If certain type of prejudice are acceptable in a society, there may be normative pressures to conform and share those prejudiced beliefs, attitudes and behaviors
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
- Refers to an expectations held by a person that alters his or her behavior in a way that tends to make it true
- When we hold stereotypes about a person, we tend to treat the person according to our expectations, thus confirming to our stereotypic beliefs
Confirmation Bias
•We seek out information that supports our stereotypes and ignore information that is inconsistent with our stereotypes
In-groups
•Refers to groups that we identify with or see ourselves as belonging to
Out-groups
•Refers to groups that we view as fundamentally different from us
In-group Bias
•Result in prejudice and discrimination because the out-group is perceived as different and less preferred than our in-group
Scapegoating
•The act of blaming an out-group when the in-group experiences frustration or is blocked from obtaining a goal
Aggressive
•When they seek to cause harm or pain to another person
Hostile Aggression
•Motivated by feelings of anger with intent to cause pain
Instrumental Aggression
•Motivated by achieving a goal and does not neccessarily involve intent to cause pain
Bullying
•Repeated negative treatment of another person, often an adolescent, over time
*Must be repeated behavior; not one-time occurrence
Who are the Three parties that Bullying is involved?
- Bully – positive experience; boost of self-esteem
- Victim – negative experience; decreased mental health
- Witnesses/bystanders
Cyber-bullying
- Repeated behavior that is intended to cause psychological or emotional harm to another person
- Typically covert, concealed, done in private, and the bully can remain anonymous
Bystander Effect
•A phenomenon in which a witness or bystander does not volunteer to help a victim or a person in distress; instead, they just watch what is happening
Diffusion of Responsibility
•The tendency for no one in a group to help because the responsibility to help is spread throughout the group
Prosocial Behavior
•Refers to the voluntary behavior with the intent to help other people
Altruism
•Refers to the people’s desire to help others even if the costs outweigh the benefits of helping
Empathy
•Refers to the capacity to understand another’s perspective, to feel what he or she feels
Homophily
•The tendency for people to form social networks, including friendships, marriage, business relationship, and many other other types of relationships, with others who are similar
Reciprocity
•Refers to the give and take in relationships
Self-disclosure
- Refers to the sharing of personal information
- A characteristic of healthy intimate relationships, as long as the information disclosed is consistent with our own views
Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love
Robert Sternberg proposed that there are three components of love:
- Intimacy – sharing of details and intimate thoughts and emotions
- Passion – physical attraction
- Commitment – standing by the person regardless of ups and downs
Consummate Love
- Intimacy, passion, and commitment are present
* Feel like best friends as well as lovers and they are committed to staying together
Liking
•Defined as having intimacy but no passion or commitment
Infatuation
•Presence of passion without intimacy or commitment
Empty Love
•Having commitment without intimacy or passion
Compassionate Love
- Characteristic of close friendships and family relationships
- Consists of intimacy and commitment but no passion
Romantic Love
•Define by having passion and intimacy, but no commitment
Fatuous Love
•Defined by having passion and commitment, but no intimacy
Social Exchange Theory
•According to this theory, we act as naive economists in keeping a tally of the ratio of costs and benefits in forming and maintaining a relationship with others
