Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is social psychology?
Study of how individuals thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by other people in social situations
Do others need to be physically present to influence us?
no – memory of thoughts and behaviours of others (peers, teachers, parents) are enough to influence
other people affect how we: (3 ways)?
- interpret events since behavour occurs in a social context (ex. bystander effect)
- feel about ourselves (ex. social comparison theory)
- behave/act in a situation (ex. deindividuation)
What is the social comparison theory?
self comparison to peets about things like intelligence, athleticism, etc. causing us to feel better or worse about ourselves
True or False?
“Blowing off steam” is an effective means of reducing one’s motive to act aggressively.
FALSE
- increase anger by keeping aggressive thoughts active in memory due to it’s rewaring feeling
- destruction therapy
True or false?
Opposites attract
FALSE
- more successful relationship when similar morals, backgrounds, beliefs, values
True or false?
People’s attitudes are always highly predictive of their behaviour
False
- would be correct if sometimes
- behaviour can our without agreement with attitude
- ex. kid eating vegetables with motive
True or false?
The best way to get something off your mind is to actively try to suppress your thoughts
FALSE
- makes us think about the “thought” even more
- though suppression fails bc of unconscious mind
- engage in tasks/postpone thought instead
True or false
The more options we have to choose from, the better
NOT USUALLY
- choice overload
- ↑ options = ↑ drawbacks = paralyzed by indecision
- fewer options (3-5) makes people more satisfied with decision
Is social psychology just common sense?
no! Our intuitions about human behaviour are sometimes right, sometimes wrong (ex. hindsight bias)
what is hindsight bias?
allows people to convince themselves after an event that they accurately predicted it before it happened (“knew it all along”)
the best way to understand how people behave is…
empirical testing using the scientific method to get an accurate answer
What are the major themes of social psychology?
- We construct our social reality
- our social intuitions are powerful, sometimes perilous
- we have a strong motivation to feel good about ourselves even when we have done something bad by rationalizing unethical behaviour
- Situations exert powerful influences on our behaviour
- Culture plays a foundational role in shaping people’s views of the world
- Social behaviour is also biological behaviour
- relating to others is a basic human need
- social psychology’s principles are applicable to everyday life
what is confirmation bias?
search for confirmation of what we already believe
what are the 2 types of social intuition?
- automatic: beyond control, emotional factors
- controlled: consciously choose to think a certain way and override “gut feeling”, deliberative thought
ex. stereotype of automatically seeing someone
why is “gut feeling not always accurate?
forget times when your gut feeling was incorrect
What was Darley & Baston’s The Power of the Situation experiment? What was the result?
- theology students who had just read the good samaritan from bible told to deliever a sermon on this parable in another building
- independent variable was time pressure: told they were on time or late
- on their walk to the other building, they Came across confederate lying on ground outside
result: on time = 2/3 of people stopped to help
late = 1/10 people stopped to help
culture is a ____ factor
situational
