Week 1: What is Social psychology

Question 1

What is social psychology?

Answer 1

study how people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people

Question 2

What sort of environment do social psychologists study?

Answer 2

Social environments –> how we are shaped by this!

Question 3

What is social influence?

Answer 3

• the effect that words, actions, or presence of other people have on our own thoughts, feelings, behaviours
• can be direct or indirect

Question 4

What is an example of direct social influence?

Answer 4

-intimidation, peer pressure, intentional persuasion
ex: group of students use peer pressure to persuade a classmate to smoke a cigarette

Question 5

What is indirect social influence?

Answer 5

• through presence of others or cultural values, even in the absence of direct interaction
  ex: new employee joins company and without explicit communication adopts the ways of the work environment demonstrated by colleagues

Question 6

What social phenomena is important to social psychologists in terms of interpretations?

Answer 6

Construal’s (subjective interpretation)

Question 7

What is a construal? provide an example

Answer 7

your interpretation of a situation
- based on how you have percieve, comprehend, and base your interpretation on knoweldge you have aquired or the influences you have had
ex: someone walks down the street and starts grabbing chest and falls to ground –> could be a heart attack, coule be a joke, could be an emergency –> all based on your OWN interpretation

Question 8

What 4 things are wrong with using folk wisdom and common sense to understand human nature?

Answer 8

1. unreliable
2. oversimplified
3. contradictory
4. underestimate the power of a particular situation (birds of a feather flock together vs opposites attract –> both contradict each other and are contextual!)

Question 9

Is social psych an experiment-based science? if so, why?

Answer 9

YES!
- ideas and assumptions about social stuff are tested by using the scientific method (objective and systematic collection of data)

Question 10

Is doing experiments in social psychology difficult because…

Answer 10

attempting to predict the behaviour of people in complex situations
ex: asch experiment and grou conformity

Question 11

How is social psychology the same as sociology?

Answer 11

both share an interest in situational and societal influences behaviour

Question 12

How does social psychology and sociology differ?

Answer 12

1. levels of anaylsis
   - social psych = micro –> individuals
   - sociology = macro –> broad societal factors
2. their goals
   - social psych wants to identify universal properties of humans that make everyone suspectable to social influence REGARDLESS of social class/culture

Question 13

What are some challenges that social psych faces compared to sociology?

Answer 13

• early stages of development
• most research is WEIRD populations in north america –> bias in assuming universal humans
• lack of cross-cultural testing and broader cross-cultural studies –> affecting universal properties of humans

Question 14

What is a WEIRD population>

Answer 14

Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic

Question 15

How is social psychology and personality psychology the same?

Answer 15

both share an emphasis on INDIVIDUALS and the reasons for their behaviour

Question 16

How are social psych and personality psych different?

Answer 16

• social pych focuses on psych processes SHARED by most people, making them susceptible to social influence
• personality psych ocuses on INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES (personality traits) that make them different from others

Question 17

What was the study by Liberman et al (2004)?

Answer 17

• asked students to predict if fellow students would behave cooperatively or competitively in a strategy game –> wanted to see how many choose cooperative strategy
• students who played were either told the game was a “wall street game” or a “community game”

Question 18

What were the results of the Liberman et al. (2004) study?

Answer 18

• student’s personality made no measurable difference
• Wall street game = 1/3 were cooperative
• community game = 2/3 were cooperative
• saw that players were influenced by the NAME of the game –> conveyed strong social norms about what behaviours were appropriate for the game

Question 19

What is fundamental attribution error?

Answer 19

the tendency to OVERESTIMATE the extent to which a person’s behaviour is due to internal, dispositional factors and UNDERESTIMATE the role of external, situational factors

Question 20

WIth respect to fundamental attribution error, what do we tend to attribute OTHER’S negatives towards?

Answer 20

• internal explanations
  ex: they were late because they are lazy

Question 21

WIth respect to fundamental attribution error, what do we tend to attribute OTHER’S positive towards?

Answer 21

• external situational-based factors
  ex: she scored well becuase she was the teacher’s favourite)

Question 22

WIth respect to fundamental attribution error, what do we tend to attribute our OWN negatives towards?

Answer 22

• external things
• because we want to preserve our self-esteem
  ex: we are late because of traffic

Question 23

WIth respect to fundamental attribution error, what do we tend to attribute our OWN positives towards?

Answer 23

• internal factors
  ex: i did well on the test because i am smart

Question 24

The fundamental attribution error is a potential reason why we tend to favour internal attributions (e.g., personality – this person is “shy”) when explaining others’ behavioural
tendencies over situational factors (e.g., being uninterested in the conversation, being among
strangers, feeling at risk of rejection or negative social evaluation, etc.). true or false

Answer 24

true

Question 25

What does underestimating the power of the situation lead to?

Answer 25

oversimplification of complex situations –> leads to decreasing our understanding of human behaviour

Question 26

What is behaviourism?

Answer 26

focuses on understnading human behaviour through environmental reinforcement

Question 27

What is a fundamental principle of behaviourism?

Answer 27

-behaviour that is rewarded will CONTINUE
-behaviour that is punished will STOP

Question 28

What experiment is an example of behaviourism?

Answer 28

Little Albert Experiment
- goal was to create a fear response in Little Albert
- first of all they introduced him to rats, white rabit and stuff –> no fear
- next, everytime he touched white rat, researchers made a loud noise –> overtime developed a fear response to white rat –> starting fearing other things similiar to white rat

Question 29

what 2 limitations to early behaviourism are there?

Answer 29

• overlooked importance of how people interpret their environments
• did not concern themselves with cognition, thinking, and feeling

Question 30

What is Gestalt psychology?

Answer 30

study the subjective way an object appears in people’s minds
- look at the situation from the viewpoint of the people in it to see how they construe the world around them

Question 31

What did Kurt Lewin have to say about when applying Gestalt principles?

Answer 31

more important to understand HOW people perceive, comprehend and interpret each other’s behaviour than the behaviours objective properties

• behaivour = function of person and environemnt

Question 32

What special kind of construal called by Lee Ross?

Answer 32

Naive realism

Question 33

What 3 things does Naive realism consist of?

Answer 33

1. we perceive things “as they really are”
2. reasonable others see things just as we do
3. anyone with an alternative perspective to your own is biased

mentality of “my way or the highway”

Question 34

Are we underestimating or overestimating how much we are interpreting or seeing when there is naive realism present?

Answer 34

underestimating

Question 35

What is a example of Naive realism?

Answer 35

• people construe the behaviour of others on the road driving
  1. we drive safe
  2. others that drive like us are reasonable
  3. anyone who does not drive like us are an idiot or maniac

Question 36

What are 2 central motives that steer people’s construal’s towards situations?

Answer 36

1. need to feel good about themselves (self esteem approach)
2. need to be accurate about ourselves and our social world (social cognition)

Question 37

Can the 2 motives that steer personal construals pull in the same direction or opposite direction?

Answer 37

BOTH!!!

Question 38

What is an example were our motives pull us in same direction?

Answer 38

A person may want to feel good about themselves by being accepted into a popular social group. To achieve this, they might construe situations in a way that enhances their self-
esteem, emphasizing their positive qualities and downplaying potential negatives.

Question 39

What is an example where our motives pull us in opposite directions?

Answer 39

, a person needs to provide constructive feedback to a friend on a project. The need to feel good about themselves may push them to soften the feedback to avoid conflict or appearing critical, emphasizing positive aspects. However, the need to be accurate might pull
them in the opposite direction, pushing for honest feedback to help their friend improve.

Question 40

What is self-esteem?

Answer 40

an evaluation of one’s self-worth –> usually want this to be positive views about ourselves

Question 41

Will we saccrifice the need to be accurate in order to protect our self esteem?

Answer 41

YES

Question 42

What is self-justification?

Answer 42

• alter our recollections of past actions of which we are unhappy, upset, or ashamed, in order to feel good about our past actions and decisions
  OR….
• modify our attitudes about painful situations we have chosen to endure, in order
  justify our participation to ourselves (ex: the initiation was worth it for the sorority although it was embarrassing because the group is wonderful)

Question 43

What is social cognition?

Answer 43

need to be accurate
- study of how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgements or decisions
- cognitive approach

Question 44

What is an example of social congition?

Answer 44

Trying to understand why your significant other is acting strange or distant. The need to be accurate in social cognition would drive you to carefully observe and
analyze your SO’s actions, seeking accurate information about the reasons behind the behavior change.

Question 45

What two things social psychologists are driven by?

Answer 45

1. curiosity to understand social behaviour
2. strong desire to address and resolve pressing social problems

Question 46

What was the research done by UWaterloo students in coordination with Health Canada?

Answer 46

• anti-smoking study
• results showed that larger and more graphic images on packaging inspired more fear and rendered the anti-smoking messages more persuasive
• led to new legislation of packaging of commercial cigarettes

Question 47

Fear does not always increase the persuasiveness of an intervention or drive positive behavioural change in every social issue. what examples showed this and what did they revert to?

Answer 47

1. drivers from speeding
2. french-canadian students practicing safe sex

• they reverted to DENIAL –> chose to address their motivational need to maintain self-esteem and not confront their past/present behaviour accurately