Soical Psychology Flashcards
What is the fundamental attribution theory
the tendency for an observer, when interpreting and explaining the behavior of another person (the actor), to underestimate the situation and to overestimate the personal disposition
Imagine this situation, you are at school and someone you know comes by, you say hello, and this person just gives you a quick, unfriendly “hello” and then walks away. How would you attribute this situation – why did this person act this way? If you react to this situation by saying the person is a “jerk” or an “ass”, then you have made the fundamental attribution error
What is the attribution theory
attribution is the process by which people use information to make inferences about the causes of behavior or events. Simply put, this is how we go about inferring behavior (our own and those of others).
For example, if you take an exam and you do well but a friend of yours fails, you might say that you did well because you are smart but your friend failed because he partied all night and didn’t study. In this case, you “attributed” your success to an internal attribution (you’re smart) but “attributed” your friend’s behavior to an external attribution (partied all night).
What is an attitude
Attitudes can be defined as an affective feelings of liking or disliking toward an object (which can be basically anything) that has an influence on behavior.
What is the foot in door phenomenon
The phenomenon is the tendancy for people to comply with some large request after first agreeing to a small request
For example, someone might want you to give to give 5 hours of your time a week for the three months as a volunteer to a charity (a big request). But to get you to agree to this big request, they first ask you to volunteer for 1 hour one time and one time only. After hearing this small request, which you are willing to agree to, they then work their way up asking you to volunteer time until you are willing to agree to the big request. You are more likely to agree to this when you have already said yes to the small request.
Who phillp zimbardo
Philip Zimbardo (1933 - ) is known for leading the Stanford Prison Study, a controversial experiment which investigated the psychological effects of being a prisoner or prison guard. In the experiment, college students were randomly assigned to become prisoners or guards.
During the course of the experiment, both the prisoners and guards rapidly internalized their roles (they started to become their roles), with the guards becoming sadistic, and the prisoners becoming passive and depressed. Originally designed as a two-week experiment, the duration was cut short after 6 days due to the emotional trauma experienced by the participants.
The study demonstrated what Zimbardo calls the Lucifer Effect - how good people can turn evil in response to the situation they are in, and not as a result of their real personalities.
What is Cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors.This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance etc.
For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition).
Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and beliefs in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance).
What is disopitional alattributes
we have decided that the main cause of a person’s behavior is his or her internal, personal characteristics. We’re saying that the person behaved that way because “that’s the kind of person they are.”
What is Situational Attributions
Making a situational attribution means that we believe a person’s behavior is best understood as a result of his or her circumstances. We might think that any sensible person would behave similarly in the same situation.
What is Self serving bias
Self-serving bias refers to people’s tendency to attribute positive outcomes to personal factors, but attribute negative outcomes to external factors. In other words, “If it’s a success, it’s because of me. If it’s a failure, it’s because of someone or something else.”
For example, if I met my sales target, it’s because I’m a great salesperson. But if I did not meet my sales target, it’s because the economy is bad.
What is the Foot-In-The-Door phenom
There is both foot-in-the-door phenomenon and foot-in-the-door technique. As you can guess, the technique is used to get the phenomenon. The phenomenon is the tendancy for people to comply with some large request after first agreeing to a small request. As you can then imagine, the technique is used to get compliance from others (to get them to behave in a way you want) in which a small request is made first in order to get compliance for a larger request.
For example, someone might want you to give to give 5 hours of your time a week for the three months as a volunteer to a charity (a big request). But to get you to agree to this big request, they first ask you to volunteer for 1 hour one time and one time only. After hearing this small request, which you are willing to agree to, they then work their way up asking you to volunteer time until you are willing to agree to the big request. You are more likely to agree to this when you have already said yes to the small request.
What is Low balling
The Low-Ball Technique is a technique used in sales and other styles of persuasion to offer products or services at a bargain price in order to first attract a buyer, but then adds on additional expenses to make the purchase less of a bargain than originally thought. This is the technique often seen in car sales when the salesperson quotes a low price for the basic car, but then tacks on options, extended warranties, service packages, etc. to end in a much higher price tag than was originally quoted.
What is compliance
Compliance is the tendency to agree to do what is requested especially if there are certain factors present: a feeling that there is give and take, believability, likeability, limited supply and positive feedback from others
For example, soft drink labels have long used celebrities to increase Compliance. The ordinary consumer would buy the drink because they liked the celebrity, assumed that the celebrity approved of the product, and believed what he had to say about it.
What is conformity
Conformity can be defined as adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to match those of other people or a group standard.
When you see people in a room and they all are siting down you fell the need to sit down
Who is Solomon ash
Solomon Asch (1907-1996) was an an American scientist who is known for his research in social psychology. His primary areas of research included impression formation, prestige and conformity and the nature of group pressure. His most famous work seems to be on conformity – video of Asch’s conformity study are often quite popular in American Universities.
Who is Standly millgram
The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram.
What Is Normative social influence
Sometimes people behave in ways just to gain approval from others, even if they don’t necessarily believe in what they are doing. This is normative social influence – influence resulting in the desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval.
For example, if you go to a play, many times you will applaud when others do even if you didn’t really like the play that much. You do this to avoid the diapproval of the other people.
What is Informative social influence
When you make decisions about how to behave, there are many sources of information available to help you make these decisions. Sometimes you may need to seek out experts, conform to the way others or a group are behaving, or look to some other source of information. One other way is to use informational social influence; you look to the behaviors of others who are also in the same or similar situation to see how they behave. Then, you can follow their lead.
For example, you travel to another planet, where some nice aliens offer to show you around. They decide to take you to one of their sporting events that is unlike anything you have ever seen. The problem is that, since you have no idea what the game is about, you don’t know what is good, bad, when to cheer, boo, or how to act in general. What can you do? You can simply watch how others are behaving, what they react to, what is going on when they cheer, when they boo, etc. In this way, you seek information from your social surroundings, which influence your behavior.
What is obedience
Obedience occurs when you change your opinions, judgments, or actions because someone in a position of authority told you to. The key aspect to note about obedience is that just because you have changed in some way, it does not mean that you now agree with the change.
For example, if you are a democratic senator, and the president came to you and demanded that you vote for a something that you were not in favor, and you did go ahead and vote the way the president said, you would be obeying (or displaying obedient behavior). However, this does not mean that you now agree with the way you voted or what you voted for….only that you did what you were told to do.
Read more: http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?
What is the central route to persuasion
a method of persuasion (i.e., a way to persuade others). This method focuses on facts and the content of the message in order to convince the listener, as opposed to relying on peripheral factors like the personality of the speaker, or how the message was delivered.
For example, a TV ad that presents laboratory findings to demonstrate the effectiveness of an acne treatment would be using the Central Route to Persuasion, as opposed to one that only uses a celebrity endorser.
What is the peripheral route to persuasion
The peripheral route to persuasion involves being persuaded in a manner that is not based on the arguments or the message content. For example, after reading a political debate you may decide to vote for a candidate because you like the sound of the person’s voice, or the person went to the same university as you did. The peripheral route can involve using superficial cues such as the attractiveness of speaker
What is Social loafing
When more people are involved in a task, the task is done faster, more easily, and better…right? Not necessarily! Social loafing is the tendency for people in a group to put less effort into the task when the effort is pooled (when they are all supposed to work on the task) compared to when they are all responsible for their own contributions. By having more people involved in the group task, each person can put in a little less effort, thinking that others will make up for their lack of effort. You may have seen this type of situation with, for example, road crews…sometimes there are 10 on the crew, 3 are working hard, 2 are sort of working, and the other 5 are sitting around talking. Are they all putting in as much effort as they would if each worked alone? Probably not.
What is devindividation
that people in groups tend to lose some of their own self-awareness and self-restraint when in groups. They become less of an individual and more anonymous. In a sense, people will do things in groups they otherwise would not because they feel less responsible for their actions and less like an individual.
This process of deindividuation can have powerful effects. For example, how can soldiers kill innocent children? They often answer this question by saying that they are not monsters, but that they were going along with the group and that they were just following orders, and that they were not the only ones doing it….all engaged in heinous acts of violence because, in part, they had become
What is Group polarization
When people are placed into a group and these people have to deal with some situation, the group as a whole typically has some overriding attitude toward the situation. Over time and with group discussion, the group’s attitude toward that situation may change. When it changes in such a way that the group attitude is enhanced and strengthened, then group polarization has occurred.
For example, let’s say a group of Republicans gather to discuss welfare reform and some new policy proposed by a democratic politician. The welfare policy calls for more money to be taken from private sector businesses and given to welfare centers. In the beginning of the discussion, the group as a whole may be somewhat against the welfare reform policy (thus having an initial group attitude). After discussing the policy, the group indicates that they are now more against the policy than ever. What has happened is that the initial attitude has been bolstered and the group is more polarized against the policy.
What is groupthinking
groupthink is “a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures.” Essentially, people within a group become so consumed with the group, maintaining group cohesiveness, and doing what is important for the group that they themselves lose their ability to think independently and make good, sound judgments. There are quite a few symptoms and causes of groupthink, but it is important to know what groupthink is and that it has been used to explain a variety of tragic events throughout history such as, mass suicides (like the Heaven’s Gate suicides), poor political decisions (like the Bay of Pigs invasion), riots, and more.
