Week 3

Question 1

Perceived control

Answer 1

Subjective capacity to influence or predict certain outcomes or experiences.
Believing we can control our environment
- rooted in accomplishment and achievement

Question 2

Jingle-jangle

Answer 2

Having multiple terms in research that measure the same thing.
Or measures that study different things, but are labeled the same
Ex: self-efficacy, locus of control, mastery

Question 3

What are some advantages of perceived control?

Answer 3

• promotes happy and healthy lifestyle
• promotes goal engagement

Question 4

Perceived control study by Langer and Rodin

Answer 4

Residents in nursing home randomly assigned to 2 groups:
- treatment group: provided with autonomy to make choices on social activities and given a plant to care for
- control group: had choices made for them and plant was taken cared of by staff

Inducing residents’ perceived control over their environment was benefit for wellbeing and social engagement

Question 5

Perceived control is negatively associated with

Answer 5

• depression
• distress
• negative discrete emotions (shame, anger, fear)

Question 6

Perceived control is positively associated with

Answer 6

• subjective well-being
• life satisfaction
• optimism
• positive discrete emotions (happiness, relief, gratitude, hope)

Question 7

Primary control model of perceived control

Answer 7

• people’s beliefs that they can influence the environment to suit their needs through exerted effort
• what one actively does to be in control: skills and problem-solving

Question 8

Secondary control model of perceived control

Answer 8

• people’s beliefs they can attain control by means other than influencing the environment, but rather aligning with it
• finding a way of still being in control of well-being, despite a social/environmental factor not going our way: positive reappraisal, reprioritizing, acceptance

Question 9

Paty’s research study on sport setbacks

Answer 9

• the most important factor of setback was injury
• what happens when an athlete comes across a setback? Will they use primary control or secondary control?
• secondary control was linked to lower rumination and lower negative emotions following sport setbacks
• when primary control was low, secondary control was associated with less setback-related anxiety

Question 10

Motivational theory of lifespan development

Answer 10

• a departure from the two-process model
• focuses on control strategies (vs beliefs)
• primary control capacity is adaptive for development (over time, on a graph it will look like a curve)

Question 11

Attention

Answer 11

• attending to social information
• external stimuli: listening to a lecture
• internal stimuli: thinking about a memory

Question 12

Selective focus has two components

Answer 12

• direction: selectivity on what we pay attention to
• intensity: effort on that focus

Question 13

Working memory

Answer 13

Information held in mind while executing a cognitive tasks
- voluntary control

Question 14

Top-down sensitivity control

Answer 14

• perceptions from general to specific
• voluntary allocation of attention to a specific feature

Question 15

Competitive selection

Answer 15

• competition between two stimuli at the same time for selecting our attention
• voluntary action is what we choose to pay attention to: teacher’s lecture or noise outside the classroom

Question 16

Encoding

Answer 16

The transforming of a perceived external stimulus into a mental representation

Question 17

Gaze

Answer 17

An attention cue from others

Question 18

Our brain identifies: (facial perception)

Answer 18

fixed features of faces
Changing facial expressions
Faces are encoded quite rapidly

Question 19

Inferences based on physical features

Answer 19

Adults with baby-like features are perceived as less dominant, less strong, and less intellectual; and more naive, more kind, warm, and honest.

Question 20

Inferences from facial expressions

Answer 20

Angry faces “pop out” - they are salient!
Facial expressions lead to inferences about people and their personality/traits
These inferences impact stereotyping and even criminal sentencing

Question 21

Salience

Answer 21

Property of a stimulus

How much a particular stimuli stands out compared to other stimuli (context-dependent)

solo status: novelty of gender, race, visual distinction
Negative stimuli: unexpected

Depends on perceiver goals

For ex: being the only person in the room who is pregnant.

Question 22

Vividness

Answer 22

property of stimuli. Inherent attention-grabbing features of a stimulus irrespective of the environment (stimulus-dependent)

something emotionally interesting
Imagery provoking
Appeals to our senses

Not that much support for the vividness effect.

Question 23

Still-face experiment

Answer 23

a parent plays with the baby, interacting like they normally would. And then the parent looks away, then looks back at the baby but this time staring with a serious facial expression. Not with a face showing emotion. The baby picks up on the change of facial expressions and begins to feel uncomfortable due to the unresponsiveness.

Question 24

Todorov’s article on face perception

Answer 24

Longer visual experience with members of a social category leads to a better visual differentiation and memory for these members…relative to members from less familiar categories

Question 25

Social categorization hypothesis

Answer 25

Normal human tendency to put people you encounter into social categories (gender, ethnicity, age, religion).

Categorization of faces as ingroup or outgroup leads to greater difficulty recognizing other race faces.

Implication: inducing individual learning of other-race faces may enhance memory for other-race faces and reduce negative implicit biases against members of other races.