Week1: The Social & Cultural Individual Flashcards
Describe the 3 early theories for human social behavior (the history of human social behavior)
1) The psychoanalytic theory ( Freud, 1920/1960) : human behavior is directed by aggressive and sexual drives
2) Behaviorism (Watson, 1930) : psychology should only focus on overt behavior because it can be directly observed and measured
3) Social Cognition perspective: humans are processor of information that form to understand how people perceive remember and interpret individuals and events in their social world.
What are the 5 perspectives modern social psychology uses to answer questions?
- social cognitive (how people perceive, remember and interpret events) –> inside
- evolutionary ( human’s social abilities as a result of evolution) –> past
- cultural (the influences of culture on thoughts feeling and behavior) –> surrounding
-existential (on the cognitive, affective and behavioral consequences that knowledge of mortality/desire of knowledge has) –> how important questions affect how we relate to others - social neuroscience (neural processes that underly social judgment) –> physical changes in brain
What are the 4 core assumptions of social psychology? Explain each
1) behavior is a joined product of the individual and the environment (situation) 🧍♀️+🌍
2) all thoughts,feelings and actions are social in nature 👯 –> we act ini a way to fit in with society
3) our view on reality is shaped by social connections –> social cognitions (the explanations we give to how other people act) shape behavior
4) the scientific method is the best way to study social psychology
What is the attribution theory? What is attributed to people? What perspective on modern psychology is it part of?
Attribution theory: people observe other’s and personal actions actions to try and understand why they acted the way they did
Explanations for behaviors are called causal attributions.
Attributions are shaped by one’s culture.
What are potential downsides of explaining behavior through introspection? What even is introspection?
Introspection: the examination of one’s own mental and emotional processes
- people won’t always tell the truth
- people themselves don’t know why they acted in a certain way –> idk why im crying
What are the downsides of explaining behavior through intuitive observation?
Intuitive observation: making judgments based on initial instincts
- people are lazy when they need to come to explanations on unimportant topics and over thinkers when it comes to important things
- our observations come from our unique and limited perspective–> only see one side of a person/situation
- we tend to want to confirm what we already think🪢 –> confirmation bias
- when people are being observed they change behavior 🧑💼🥷
What is a theory? Whats the difference to a fact?
Explanations to how and why things happen the way they do. Theories are explanations for facts. A fact is a content of research that has been replicated over and over (fact-when you cry tears fall from your eyes & theory-you cry because you are sad). Theories are always evolving.
What is the cycle of research?
Theory –> hypothesis–> research (correlational or experimental) –> outcome –> back to evaluating theory
What does it mean to have high internal validity in the experimental method?
That all variables are controlled but the iv
What are domain general adaptation? What are the 4 main ones?
A domain general adaptation are attributes ( explanations we give things) that we use for dealing with various challenges across different areas of life. So basically ways we help ourselves:
1) Humans as social beings –> behavior depends on the social construction of reality –> adaptation and passing genes is vastly influenced by sociability and social sensitivity also causing alterations in the brain Examples include: trying to fit in to avoid pain
2) Humans and their intelligence 💯 : immagination (altering environment to follow visions), language ( transfer of information for decision and plan action), the self (being self-conscious to evaluate your actions, behaviors, thoughts. We do also have unconscious thoughts)
3) motivated and goal striving: to achieve needs 🎓, we set ourselves goals 📝.(these are arranged in a hierarchy) Hendonism (approaching pleasure -growth- and avoiding pain-security-)
4) emotions: influence and are influenced by cognition ↔️. Positive emotions–> reinforce one’s successful actions and provide more energy Negative emotions–> avoid actions
Define socialization
The lifelong process of learning from others from both desirable and undesirable styles of living –> 🧽
What is the 3 part division of emotions? By Antonio Damasio
1) background emotions: what we refer to when we talk about mood
2) primary emotions: we are aware of these emotions and they include 6 basic emotions (happiness 😀, sadness ☹️, fear 😧, anger 😠, surprise 😲 and disgust 🤢)
3) secondary emotions: variations of the primary 6 emotions (joy 😁 or panic 😱)
In what ways does cultural socialization shape emotional experiences and expressions
✅- People can experience different emotional reactions based on which morals they believe are being threatened
- Different cultures emphasize different moral domains. Moral judgments are based on various moral domains like religion political orientations and values
❌- same primary emotions are triggered by same physical and social environments because they are controlled by brain structures found in all humans
Describe Cognitive appraisal theory
Cognitive Appraisal Theory explains how people evaluate and interpret events and how these interpretations shape their emotional responses.
Peoples subjective experience of emotion is determined by a 2 step process:
- primary appraisal: unconscious understanding of situation (good/bad)
- secondary appraisal: where we interpret what is happening (refinement + modification of situation
What are 3 major theories of emotions
Cognitive appraisal theory, 3 part division of emotion, emotion affecting cognition
