Social Psychology Chapters 3 and 4

Question 2

Dual process of intuitive judgement.
-What is intuitive judgement?
-Controlled processing?
-Automatic processing?
Examples of each?

Answer 2

Intuitive Judgement- unconscious decisions made quickly
CP- System 2 (reflective, deliberate, conscious) Looking for a friend in a crowd
AP- System 1 (Impulsive and effortless) Emotional reactions

Question 3

What is priming?
How does it work?
Example?

Answer 3

-Activating particular associations in memory.
-This only works by activating things already inside your brain.
-Watching a scary movie at home, Smelling Cleaner

Question 4

How does preconception influence social judgement?
Example?

Answer 4

preconception- beliefs formed before having enough information or experience. (Usually negative)
- Negative thoughts about a new student before getting to know them.

Question 5

Overconfidence Phenomenon

Answer 5

Tendency to be more confident than correct

Question 6

How does overconfidence influence planning fallacy?

Answer 6

Overconfidence causes people to study or prepare less which makes them more likely to fail. (A student being overconfident about an upcoming test)

Question 7

Confirmation Bias

Answer 7

Tendency to search for confirmation that confirms one’s preconceptions

Question 8

How can confirmation bias be used to justify inaccurate beliefs?

Answer 8

People are going to use other people’s beliefs that agree with them and only look for opinions that follow what they believe rather than what thing really are.

Question 9

How can you reduce overconfidence?

Answer 9

Be less ignorant.

Question 10

What is heuristic?

Answer 10

Thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgment

Question 11

Representative Heuristic

Answer 11

Snap judgements of whether someone or something fits a category
Ex. Bob is an opera fan who enjoys touring art museums when on holiday. Growing up, he enjoyed playing chess with family members and friends. Which situation is more likely?
A. Bob plays clarinet for a major symphony orchestra (correct answer)
B. Bob is a farmer

Question 12

Availability Heuristic

Answer 12

Quick judgments of likelihood of events (more easily we recall, the more likely it seems)
Ex. Tokyo vs. New York City (Which is bigger)

Question 13

What is counterfactual thinking?

Answer 13

Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened but didn’t. Also, imagining worse alternatives help us feel better, and imagining better alternatives make us feel bad.
- Ex. Olympic game: which medalist will be the happiest?

Question 14

What is illusory correlation?
Example?

Answer 14

Perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists
-Ex. Librarians are quiet/Doctors are wealthy

Question 15

What is illusion of control?

Answer 15

Perception of uncontrollable events as subject to one’s control or as more controllable than what they really are

Question 16

How does illusion of control influence gambling behavior?

Answer 16

People believe that they can beat the odd or control uncontrollable situations

Question 17

What is regression toward the average?
How does this relate to illusion of control?

Answer 17

-statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to return toward the average over time
-if someone gambles and wins a lot of money, the next time that they gamble they will not earn as much like before

Question 18

What is belief perseverance?
How do we reduce this?

Answer 18

-tendency to maintain one’s beliefs even in the face of evidence that contradicts them
-Thinking about the explanations that support the opposing belief

Question 19

What is misinformation effect?

Answer 19

Incorporating “misinformation” into one’s memory of the event

Question 20

How do we reconstruct our past attitude and
behavior?

Answer 20

-Recall unpleasant events more favorably
-Underreport bad behavior and overreport good behavior

Question 21

What is misattribution?

Answer 21

Mistakenly attributing a behavior to wrong source
-Ex. Men attribute a woman’s friendliness to mild sexual interest

Question 22

What is attribution theory?

Answer 22

The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others’ behavior

Question 23

Dispositional Attribution

Answer 23

When a person attributes someone’s behavior to their disposition or personality
- Ex. A criminal is seen as an inherently violent person

Question 24

Situational Attribution

Answer 24

-Attributing someone’s behavior to external factors
-Ex. Being late for work and blaming the weather or public transport.

Question 25

What is spontaneous trait inference?

Answer 25

inferring that other people’s actions are indicative of their intentions and dispositions
Ex. If someone steps on their partner’s foot while dancing, they are inferred as clumsy

Question 26

-What is fundamental attribution error?
-Example?
-Why do we make this error?

Answer 26

-Tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others’ behavior
-Assuming questioning hosts on game shows are more intelligent than the contestants
-We make judgements based on our assumptions without knowing the internal state of others

Question 27

Why do we call fundamental attribution error fundamental?

Answer 27

This is a basic concept that everyone does. We use this because it is easier for quick thinking and judgement of others.

Question 28

What is attitude?

Answer 28

It is the belief and feeling related to a person or event.

Question 29

What are the three ABC components of attitude?
Example?

Answer 29

-Affect, Behavior, and Cognition
-I am scared of spiders (A), I will scream if I see a spider (B), I believe that they are dangerous (C)

Question 30

What is moral hypocrisy?
Explain the experiment done to find this concept.

Answer 30

-Appearing moral while avoiding the costs of being so
-People’s expressed attitudes hardly predicted their varying behaviors (Allan Wicker, 1969)
-Example: Appealing tasks with $30 vs. dull tasks with no money) – I know I should not take the first task for myself, but I will do so anyway.

Question 31

What does explicit and implicit attitude measure?
Explicit attitudes are good for…?
Implicit attitudes are good for…?

Answer 31

We are measuring expressed attitudes. Explicit attitudes reflect conscious values, beliefs, and desired responses. (Political Attitude, conscious beliefs)
Implicit attitudes reflect experience. (Racial or gender attitude, unconscious)

Question 32

What are the four situations in which attitudes can predict
behavior?
Examples of each.

Answer 32

1. Social influences on what we say are minimal.
   Ex. Attitude on the Iraq war after 9/11
2. Other influences on behavior are minimal.
   Ex. Religious attitude → going to church on a given day
   Ex. Batting Averages
3. Attitudes specific to the behavior are examined
   Ex. Condom use
   Ex. Recycling
4. When attitudes are potent
   Ex. Telling the waiter that your meal was “fine” even if it was just “so-so”.

Question 33

How does role play affect people’s attitude?
Explain Zimbardo’s prison study.

Answer 33

-When we play a certain role, we are much more likely to believe it
“Fake it till you make it”
“Saying becomes believing”
-A certain artificial role or any role we are given and act on, can change and shape our attitude. Prisoner students slowly played the role of a prisoner while the guard students started to adapt to the role of a guard.

Question 34

How will this whole idea about “behavior affects our attitudes” explain evil and immoral acts?

Answer 34

-We tend to not only hurt those we dislike, but also, we tend to dislike those that we hurt.
-Actions and attitudes feed on each other.
-If you help somebody, it increases your liking of that person that you helped.

Question 35

What is self-presentation theory?

Answer 35

To create good impressions, people will adapt their attitude to appear consistent with their actions. We express attitudes that match our actions.

Question 36

How will self-presentation theory explain why behavior affects attitudes?
Example

Answer 36

People have to adapt their attitude to make their actions look consistent.
Ex. A supervisor taking credit for the accomplishments of others or publicly critiquing an employee who failed to meet a particular standard.

Question 37

What is self-justification?

Answer 37

Tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions/thoughts/behaviors. To reduce this tension, we adjust our thinking.

Question 38

How will self-justification explain why behavior affects attitudes?
Example.

Answer 38

Making the behavior to reduce tension helps ease our mind and reduce the stress of conflict.
Ex. If we believe that we are careful and committed at work, but we make a mistake because we found the task tedious, we are likely to look for a scapegoat or blame it on external factors

Question 39

What is insufficient justification?

Answer 39

Reduction of dissonance by internally justifying one’s behavior when external justification is “insufficient”
Ex. In a study, participants were offered money to lie about their interest in a task. Those who received $1 were more motivated to lie than those who received $20

Question 40

What is deciding-becomes-believing effect?

Answer 40

After a decision is made, we reduce dissonance by upgrading the chosen alternative and downgrading the unchosen option.

Question 41

What is self-perception theory?

Answer 41

A theory that describes the process in which people develop attitudes or emotional responses by observing their own behavior and coming to conclusions as to what attitudes must have driven that behavior

Question 42

How does self-perception explain why behavior affects attitudes?
Example.

Answer 42

-Observing our own behavior and concluding what attitudes must have caused it.
Ex. Teens performing community service, which positively alters their self-image.