Social Psychology (CH13)

Question 1

Social Psychology

Answer 1

Study of causes and consequences of sociality

• Social behaviour: how people interact with each other -how it solves problems
• Social influence: how people change each other -3 basic motivations that make people susceptible to influence
• Social cognition: how people understand each other -how people use information about another person’s affiliations and actions to make judgments and to make mistakes

Question 2

Aggression

Answer 2

Behaviour whose purpose is to harm another (to obtain scarce resources)

Question 3

Frustration-aggression hypothesis

Answer 3

Animals aggress when and only when their goals are frustrated
ex. The chimp wants the banana (goal) but the pelican is about to take it (frustration), so the chimp threatens the pelican with his fist (aggression).

Question 4

Cooperation

Answer 4

Behaviour by 2/+ individuals that leads to mutual benefit

• Risk vs. Trust
• Prisoner’s Dilemma: trustworthiness
• Wason’s Card-Selection Task: capacity to detect cheaters that surpasses capacity for logical reasoning
• Ultimatum Game: rather get nothing that be cheated

Question 5

Group

Answer 5

Collection of people who have something in common that distinguishes them from others
-Tend to treat those in your group nicer

Question 6

Prejudice

Answer 6

+‘ve/-‘ve evaluation of another person based on group membership

Question 7

Discrimination

Answer 7

+‘ve/-‘ve behaviour toward another person based on group membership

Question 8

Deindividuation

Answer 8

When immersion in a group causes people to become less concerned with personal values (thus, tend to adopt group’s value that own & steal/vandalize other’s property)

Question 9

Diffusion of responsibility

Answer 9

Individuals feel diminished responsibility for action because they are surrounded by others who are acting the same way (less likely to help others in need or more likely to engage in bad behaviour)

Question 10

Altruism

Answer 10

Behaviour that benefits another without benefiting oneself

ex. birds and squirrels give alarm calls when they see a predator even if it increases their risk of being eaten
ex. ants and bees spend life caring for queen’s offspring rather than have offspring of their own

Question 11

Kin selection

Answer 11

Process by which evolution selects fro individuals who cooperate with their relatives (thus not really altruistic)
*Promote survival of relatives to promote survival of own genes

Question 12

Reciprocal altruism

Answer 12

Behaviour that benefits another with the expectation that those benefits will be returned in the future (thus not really altruistic)

Question 13

Mere exposure effect

Answer 13

Tendency for liking to increase with frequency of exposure

Question 14

Passionate love

Answer 14

Experience involving feeling of euphoria, intimacy and intense sexual attraction

Question 15

Compassionate love

Answer 15

Experience involving affection, trust, and concern for a partner’s well-being

Question 16

Social exchange

Answer 16

Hypothesis that people remain in relationship only as long as they perceive a favourable ratio of costs to benefits

Question 17

Comparison level

Answer 17

Cost-benefit ratio that people believe they deserve or could attain in another relationship

Question 18

Equity

Answer 18

State of affairs in which the cost-benefit ratios of 2 partners are roughly equal

Question 19

Social influence

Answer 19

Ability to control another person’s behaviour

Question 20

Hedonic motive

Answer 20

People are motivated to experience pleasure and avoid experiencing pain

Question 21

Approval motive

Answer 21

People tend to be accepted and to avoid being rejected

Question 22

Accuracy motive

Answer 22

People are motivated to believe what is right and to avoid what is wrong

Question 23

Normative influence

Answer 23

Occurs when another person’s behaviour provides information about what is appropriate

Question 24

Norm

Answer 24

Customary standard for behaviour that is widely shared by members of a culture

Question 25

Norm of reciprocity

Answer 25

Unwritten rule that people should benefit those who have benefited them

Question 26

Door-in-the-face technique

Answer 26

A strategy that uses reciprocating concessions to influence behaviour
ex. ask for something more valuable than you want, when refused, ask for something that you really want (increase chance to get it since you “compromised” and they are more likely to as well)

Question 27

Conformity

Answer 27

Tendency to do what others do simply because others are doing it
ex. Asch’s conformity study (line length test)

Question 28

Obedience

Answer 28

Tendency to do what powerful people tell us to do

ex. Milgram’s Obedience Study

Question 29

Attitude

Answer 29

Enduring +’ve/-‘ve evaluation of an object or event

-What we SHOULD do

Question 30

Belief

Answer 30

Enduring piece of knowledge about an object or event

-How to do what we SHOULD do

Question 31

Informative influence

Answer 31

Another person’s behaviour provides information about what is good or right
ex. see a crowd running and screaming for exit, you will do the same

Question 32

Persuasion

Answer 32

Person’s attitudes or beliefs are influenced by communication from another person
ex. election

Question 33

Systematic persuasion

Answer 33

Process by which attitudes or beliefs are changed by appeals to reason
-Appeals to logic and reason (strong evidence and arguments for persuasion)

Question 34

Heuristic persuasion

Answer 34

Process by which attitudes or beliefs are changed by appeals to habit or emotion
-Appeals to habit, emotion

Question 35

Cognitive dissonance

Answer 35

Unpleasant state that arises when a person recognizes the inconsistency of his or her actions, attitudes or beliefs

ex. ask homeowners to install “drive carefully” sign -most say no
ex. ask homeowner to sign petition to promote safe driving then ask to install sign -if signed petition already, will install sign too
- “invent comfortable illusion to rationalize less favourable solution”
ex. Pay for something because you value them, but really you value something more because you paid for them

Question 36

Social cognition

Answer 36

Process by which people come to understand others

Question 37

Stereotyping

Answer 37

Process by which we draw inferences about others based on knowledge of categories to which they belong

Question 38

Perceptual confirmation

Answer 38

Tendency for people to see what they expect to see

Question 39

Self-fullfilling prophecy

Answer 39

Tendency for people to cause what they see

Question 40

Subtyping

Answer 40

Tendency who are faced with disconfirming evidence to modify their stereotype than abandon them
ex. exception to the “rule” but does not change stereotype itself

Question 41

Attributions

Answer 41

Inferences about the causes of people’s behaviours

• Situational attributions: caused by some temporary aspect of the situation in which it happened
• Dispositional attributions: person’s behaviour was caused by his/her relatively enduring tendency to think, feel or act a particular way

Question 42

Covariation model

Answer 42

3 kinds of information: consistency, distinctiveness and consensus
ex. Neighbour didn’t mow his lawn last weekend; is he lazy (dispositional attribution) or did bad weather keep him indoors (situational attribution)?
Need to consider regularity, generality and typicality to determine

1. If neighbour usually mows his lawn on the weekend, “not mowing” is inconsistent. If he fixed the screen door and poianted the kitchen last weekend, his action is distinctive. If no one else on the block mowed their lawns last weekend, his action is consensual with the actions of others. *Situational attribution
2. If neighbour rarely mows lawn, “not mowing” is consistent. If he avoided every other form of work last weekend, lawn mowing is not distinctive. If everyone else on the block mowed lawns last weekend, not consensual. *Dispositional attribution

Question 43

Correspondence bias

Answer 43

Tendency to make a dispositional attribution even when a person’s behaviour was caused by the situation
(aka. fundamental attribution error)

Question 44

Actor-observer effect

Answer 44

Tendency to make situational attributions for our own behaviours while making dispositional attributions for the identical behaviour of others