Exam 1: Social Psychology – Flashcards
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Define Social Psychology
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the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by other people
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Is social psychology science?
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Yes
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What makes something a science?
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-needs to be observable -needs to be objective & reliable -needs to be predictable -needs to have a theory
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What are theories?
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-stories
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Why are they great?
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-provide magic to science -difficult -makes the complicated seem simple -can't be faked -represent the biggest accomplishments in science
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Replication issues
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-cultures changes -environment changes -biological changes
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What makes social psychology powerful?
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-the power of a simple change -small changes to environment can completely change the output (outcome) -the ability to describe unbelievable phenomenon in human history -ability to be a "bridge discipline"
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Bridge discipline
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-social psychology is an interdisciplinary bridge - Scientists from other disciplines study human behavior -Varied disciplines influences social behavior
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Major Theoretical Perspectives
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-Sociocultural perspective -evolutionary perspective -social learning perspective -social cognitive perspective
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socialcultural perspective
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-influences of the larger social group -culture
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evolutionary perspective
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-physical and psychological predispositions -natural selection -adaptions searches for the causes of the social behavior in the physical and psychological predispositions that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce
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social learning perspective
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-past learning experiences -compare/contrast with sociocultural perspective focuses on past learning experiences as determinants of a person's social behaviors
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Social cognitive perspective
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-subjective evaluation of social events focuses on the mental processes involved in paying attention to, interpreting, and remembering social experiences.
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two major assumptions of social psychology
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1. the person and the situation interact to create our social reality 2. social behavior is goal oriented
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Person explanation
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-broken down into individual differences Ex: biological factors, personality
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Situation explanation
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-"classic" social psychology focused on the social situation -broken down into proximal and distal influences -Ex: presence of others, lighting of the room, social climate
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Situations controlling people
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-tall person gets chosen for basketball training at an early age -person develops anxiety from growing up in chaotic household
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People controlling situation
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-Research shows that individual differences play an important role in ambiguous situations -People choose the situations that they want to be in
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assumptions
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drive science -especially within social science
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How do you combat the problems associated with assumptions?
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-Standardization -Following scientific rules -Using theory
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Standardization
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we are all following the same protocols -process to establish norms and uniform procedures
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Following scientific rules
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all following the same rules, scientific method is a good example
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Correlation
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the extend that two or more variables extend together -positive and negative correlation
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Causation
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empirical relationship which exists between two events which can be summed up as one event (the cause) bringing about the occurrence of the other (the effect)
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Based on John Stuart Mills recommendations, there were 3 determined requirements for causality:
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-Temporal Priority -Concomitant Variation -Elimination of the other plausible alternatives
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Temporal Priority
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the cause precedes the effect
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Concomitant variation
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there must be an association or correlation between the treatment and outcome
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Elimination of other plausible alternatives
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You must control for spurious or other possible causes
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most common way to test to determine causality
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manipulation
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moderators
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affect strength and /or direction of the relation between two other variables
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common examples of moderator
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-relationships between happiness and test scores are higher in females -money causes happiness
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mediators
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causation meaning the relationship only occurs as a result of the 3rd variable -implies temporal precedence
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Reliability
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"precision" stand on the scale and get the same number
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Validity
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"accuracy" it is measuring the right thing
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The Person Motivation:
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what drives us -motivates and goals -conscious and automatic goal pursuit -thought suppression
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The Person Knowledge:
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-Sense memory, beliefs, explanations -Exemplar versus schema -Purpose -Priming and chronic accessibility
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Self-concept
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a mental representation capturing our views an beliefs about ourselves -your beliefs about yourself
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Self-esteem
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our attitude toward ourselves -how you feel about yourself
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Self-regulation
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the process through which people select, monitor, and adjust their strategies in an attempt to reach their goals -how you regulate yourself -depends on the availability of willpower: the mental energy needed to change the activities of the self to meet the desired standards
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Self-presentation
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the process through which we try to control the impressions people form of us -what you present to other people
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Executive self
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engages in self-regulation, exercises willpower
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Common Individual Differences
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-Personality -General Positive Affect -General Negative Affect
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Self-perception Process
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The process through which people observe their own behavior to infer internal characteristics such as traits, abilities, and attitudes
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Reflected appraisal process
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the process through which people come to know themselves by observing or imagining how others view them.
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Social comparison
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the process through which people come to know themselves by comparing their abilities, attitudes, and beliefs with those of others.
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what do we do when we encounter the person/situation debate?
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we experience the fundamental attribution error Correspondence bias
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Correspondence Bias
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"describes perceivers' tendency to infer stable personality characteristics from other people's behavior even when this behavior was caused by situational factors."
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Four causes for Correspondence Bias
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-lack of awareness -unrealistic expectations -inflated categorizations -incomplete corrections
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The Person as the situation
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mere presence affordances descriptive norms pluralistic ignorance
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Mere Presence of others
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-social impact of others can exist without interaction at all -Research on task performance shows it is moderated by the type of task
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Injunctive norms
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a norm that describes what is commonly approved or disapproved in a situation
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Scripted situation
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a situation in which certain events are expected to occur in a particular sequence
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Norms can be implicit or explicit
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implicit: tend to listen to the professor explicit: not to be on social media
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Strong versus weak situations
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-demand certain behaviors (strong) -norms are more in strong situation -allow for variety of behaviors (weak)
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Four core processes of social cognition
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-attention -interpretation -judgement -memory
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attention
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limited, attention is a resource . you can use it on certain things, it is goal dependent
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interpretation
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gain meaning from something, what does it mean
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judgement
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your impression of it. provides an normative on it. important factor on our decisions. what do i do about it?
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memory
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how do i store this? memory in cooperates time. it influences future decisions
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goals of social cognition
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-conserving mental effort -flexibility -think well of self -accuracy
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Heuristics
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mental shortcuts -representativeness -availability -anchoring and adjustment
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Representative Heuristic
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-a mental shortcut people use to classify something as belonging to a certain categoroy to the extend that it is similar to a typical case from that category. -new student is class example -important to understand how we represent things
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availability heuristic
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a mental shortcut people use to estimate the likelihood of an event by the ease with which instances of that event come to mind.
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Anchoring and adjustment heuristic
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a mental shortcut through which people begin with a rough estimation as a starting point and then adjust this estimate to take into account unique characteristics of the present situation
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Kelly's Covariation Model
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We weight the various possibilities -discounting principle -augmenting principle
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Discounting Principle
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the judgmental rules that states that as the number of possible causes for an event increases, our confidence that any particular cause is the true one should decrease
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Augmenting Principle
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the judgmental rule that states that if an event occurs despite the presence of strong opposing forces, we should give more weight to those possible causes that lead toward the event.
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Convariation Model
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The theory that proposes that people determine the cause of an actor's behavior by assessing whether other people act in similar ways (consensus), the actor behaves similarly in similar situations (distinctiveness), and the actor behaves similarly across time in the same situation (consistency).
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Self-perception theory
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how do we learn ourselves, we learn about ourselves by looking at ourselves like we looked at others
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Self Schema
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a representation capturing the general characteristics of a particular class of episodes, events, or individuals
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Festinger's Theory of Social Comparison
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subjectively comparing ourselves to others
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motivated by two factors
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-downward social comparison -upward social comparison
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Downward social comparison
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contrast out ability to someone less able to make ourselves feel better
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Upward social comparison
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evaluate our ability with a superior person's to motivate ourselves to work harder/perform better
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False consensus effect
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when people believe that their opinions or behaviors are more common than they actually are
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False uniqueness effect
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when people hold incorrect beliefs about how different they are
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Better-than-average effect
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believing we are better than the average person on desirable characteristics
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Bias Blind Spot
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the belief that you, and you alone, are somehow immune to those very same biases that everyone else possesses
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Self-serving attributional bias
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taking credit for successes, but blame outside factors/others for failures
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Strategies of Self-Presentation
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-Self-monitoring -Ingratiation -Self-promotion -Self-handicapping
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Self-monitoring
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Changing one's behavior and attitudes to fit in
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Ingratiation
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-attempts to get particular people to like us Flattery, giving gifts, doing favors, opinion agreement
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Self-promotion
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Demonstrating competence, claiming competence
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Self-handicapping
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creating obstacles to provide excuses for failure
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High self-monitors
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are social chameleons: they change their appearance and behavior to fit the circumstances
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Low self-monitors
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stay true to themselves and act similarly across situations
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Multiple audience dilemma
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a situation in which a person needs to present different images to different audiences, often at the same time.
