Social Psychology - Semester 1 Flashcards
What is social psychology?
“Social psychology is the scientific study of how the behaviour, cognition and emotions of individual humans are influenced by other humans.”
What is a scientific study?
making controlled observations. (Take measurements and observations of the world. Make a hypothesis and either prove or disprove, make predictions and go out and try and prove them right.)
What is behaviour?
observable actions things that we can see around us that will influence us
What is cognition?
is not observable it refers to the working of your brain e.g. thinking, unconscious processes, memory.
What are emotions?
it’s a confusing one as you can see emotions in people’s actions, but they are a form of mental/cognitive process. It’s the way that we feel e.g. sad. It’s classified as a different type of cognitive process
What is individual humans?
the study of the individual, one person at a time
What does influenced mean?
things around us that change us or influence us. We are constantly being influenced.
What is meant by other humans?
how people influence and affect us through their actions or emotions.
What was Lewin’s equation?
B=f(PE)Lewin thought that we should not just look at a person or their environment but the relationship between the two and how they interact.
What is observational research?
Is field based observations of behaviour, observations in real life situations. Largest scale research method
What is qualitative research?
Interview-based reporting collected from small samples. Smallest scale of research, using things such as interviews
What is correlational research?
Quantitative examination of the relationship between two or more variables (generally not causal). If the research is not vigorous it could just be chance, correlation does not mean that it is causing something it could just be chance. E.g. The relationship between height and salary. If you are taller, do you get paid more?
What is empirical research?
Experimental investigation driven by a hypothesis. Create a prediction and then carry out experiments or questionnaire to prove or disprove these predictions.
What is self?
Self is thought of as a unity but self-changes throughout your life. Our sense of self although it feels fixed, but it is actually somewhat as an illusion.
What is meant by ‘you have many selves’?
You act differently infront of your friends, teachers or parents. In different social environments different selves are activated. If we become more self-aware, we become more self-aware.
What is individuation?
When your self-awareness is raised, we have heightened sensed of individuation.
What is deindividuation?
When we have a self-awareness is reduced deindividuation takes place
What are the two concepts of self?
Self-concept
Self-esteem
What is self-concept?
Your knowledge of who you are (biography) and your personal characteristics (somewhat more subjective than our biography).
What is self-esteem?
The value that people put on their self-concept and self-knowledge. Is it good for me to be Scottish, a woman, etc … Your evaluation of yourself, the value you place on your characteristic individually and collectively. Many self-report (e.g. questionnaire) measures of self-esteem. (Rosenburg self-esteem measures)
What is self-perception theory? (Bem 1967)
Self-perception theory (Bem 1967)– suggests that we receive feedback on our behaviour from different sources and this provides knowledge about our self. We do this by the reaction of others, emotional reactions and your own self-perception. E.g. if you donate to charity, you might perceive yourself as generous, caring or soft touch. Other people’s reactions might be admiration or scorn.
What is cognitive dissonance?
Tension produced by holding two contradictory ideas (Festinger, 1957). E.g. Knowing that smoking kills but continuing to smoke
What are consonant cognitions?
It might be bad but it makes me happy or reduce importance of dissonant cognitions
What is self-discrepancy?
You have an idea of what you think you are or what you think other people think of you. If you have a difference between your actual self and your ideal self it has negative effects on self-esteem. Increased discrepancies = Increased dissonance.
What is social comparison theory?
Comparing oneself to external markers (often other people) to evaluate one’s opinions, abilities and value (Festinger, 1954).
What is upward comparison?
Comparing yourself to someone better than you
What is downward comparison?
Comparing yourself to someone less than you
What does upward social comparison cause?
Lower self esteem
What does downward social comparison cause?
Improved self-esteem
How do people protect self esteem through escape?
Easiest way to reduce threat is to escape or avoid the situation that produces, people with low self-esteem are more likely to give up (Di Paula & Campbell 2002)
What is self-serving bias as a way to protect self-esteem?
Tendency to attribute failures to situational factors, but successes to disposition, people with low self-esteem less likely to exhibit. self-bias (Fitch 1970). We attribute our success to ourselves and our failures to our situation.
What is social identity?
“That part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups), together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership”
(Tajfel, 1981)
What were the in-group effects of the robbers cave experiment?
Ingroup favoritism
Perceived ingroup heterogeneity (everyone in the ingroup is different)
What were the outgroup effects of the robbers cave experiment?
- Outgroup derogation and discrimination
- perceived outgroup homogeneity (everyone in the other group is the same)
What is minimal group paradigm?
- Developed by Tajfel and colleagues
- Participants allocated to a group basis of a meaningless categorisation
- Participants only know OWN group membership
- No interaction between groups no history of conflict/relationships)
What are the three social theory stages?
- Categorisation
- Identification
- Comparison
What is categorisation?
Defining ourselves and other people as belonging to specific social groups
Categorisation boosts self-esteem
What is the I am not a number experiment?
I am not a number! (Lemyre & smith, 1985)
Participants either given an individual number (16) or given a individual number and a group membership (16 in the red group). Participants in the number & group membership condition had higher self-esteem than those in the number only condition.
What two assumptions identification makes?
Ingroup similarity (we are all alkie in some way)
Outgroup dissimilarity (they are different from us)
What is comparison?
We make direct comparisons between ingroup & outgroup.
We employ self-serving bias/attribution errors when doing so
The biases allow us to gain a positive self-evaluation from comparison
What are the three levels of self-categorisation theory?
Superordinate, Intermediate, subordinate
What is the superordinate level of self-categorisation?
Global membership, humanity
What is the intermediate level of self-categorisation?
Group membership, social identity
What is the subordinate level of the self-categorisation theory?
Personal characteristics
What are the two OFFICICAL definitions of social cognition?
Definition 1: A sub-discipline of social psychology. (Applies a cognitive approach to the study of social behaviour.
Definition 2: The way information about people is represented cognitively.
What is the used definition of social cognition?
Attempting to understand the way we extract, process and use information about other people.
What does limited attentional resources cause?
- We can’t always consciously focus attention
- We can’t process/store all incoming info
- We can’t consciously control all our responses
What is meant by cognitive miser?
We have limited attentional resources
We are motivated to preserve our attentional resources by using strategies and mental shortcuts. (Fiske & Taylor, 1991)
Our brain is going to use a shortcut wherever possible