Week 1 - History and Methods Flashcards
Group Norms
Unspoken and often unwritten set of informal rules that govern individual behaviours in a group (follow the group, be a sheep)
Pluralistic Ignorance
a situation in which the majority of group members privately reject a norm, but incorrectly assume that most others accept it and therefore go along with it.
Motivated Cognition
refers to the influence of motives on various types of though processes such as memory, information processing, reasoning, judgement, and decision making. (You pay attention to things that are relevant/interesting to you)
Motivated tactition
shifting from quick-and-dirty cognitively economical tactics to a more thoughtful, thorough strategies when processing information, depending on the type and degree of motivation. eg only stereotyping in some situations
Cognitive Miser
The ability and the tendency of the human brain to problem solve in the most simple and straight forward ways rather than utilising more sophisticated and effort-intensive ways eg judging someone before you get to know them
Motivational Principles (construction of reality)
Individual ———> Social World
Mastery (accuracy) - Understanding and predicting outcomes in order to control outcomes (also obtain rewards)
Connectedness (belonging) - Support, liking and acceptance from individuals and groups
Identity and Ownership (self -esteem) - Seeing oneself and one’s group in a positive light
Processing Principles (Pervasiveness of Social Influence)
Social world ——–> Individual
Conservatism - Established views are hard to change eg chair, don’t change your view with every new experience
Accessibility - readily available information has the strongest impact
Processing Depth - People can process information superficiality or in depth (and tend to prefer superficial processing) cognitive miser —> motivated tactician
Construct Validity (abstract construct)
the degree to which a test measures what it claims to measure
Convergent Validity - the degree to which two measures of constructs that theoretically should be relate, are related
Discriminant Validity - the degree to which two measures of constructs that theoretically should be unrelated, are in fact, unrelated
Research Ideal - multiple measures and manipulations
Internal Validity (casual relations)
the extent that a study can rule out or make unlikely alternative explanations of the results. Addresses the casual relationships between two variables, ie are there any other factors that have an effect on your results eg history, maturation, testing, instrumentation, regression or selection.
Research ideal - Good experimental design
External Validity (broad scope)
refers to the extent to which the conclusions from a study can be generalised to the people outside of the study. No experiment can have complete external validity.
Ecological validity - other settings
Population validity - other people
Historical validity - over time
Research Ideal - multiple replications
Empirical Science
its theories and conclusions about social behaviour rest on the results of research
