1
Q
what is psychological arousal?
A
- refers to alertness and readiness to respond
2
Q
what is social facilitation?
A
the idea that we perform tasks better in group settings where psycholigcal arousal is higher (only to a certain extent)
3
Q
what is the Yerkes-Dodson law?
A
- for complex tasks, we get a Ushape curve with the best performance being somewhere in the middle under conditions of moderate arousal.
4
Q
what is social loafing?
A
- idea that you can work less hard, or be less productive in a group setting because other people will pick up the slack
5
Q
what is the bystander effect?
A
- it refers to people’s tendency not to offer help to someone in distress if other people, or bystanders, are present
- one reason could be diffusion of responsibility within a crowd
6
Q
what is deindividuation?
A
- describes how people tend to lose their sense of self-awareness in a large group setting, due to a high degree of psychological arousal and a low degree of perceived responsibility
7
Q
what are the 3 main factors that contribute to deindividuation?
A
- anonymity- the sense that no one will know what you do in a crowd
- diffused responsibility- the sense that you’re not responsible for what happens
- group size which increases the effects if both anonymityand diffused responsibility
8
Q
what is group polarization?
A
- refers to the tendency of a group to make decisions or arrive at final opinions that are more extreme than the initial positions of the individual members of the group
- this reflects a dynamic in which initial opinions get amplified over the course of a discussion
9
Q
what are the 2 main factors tnat contribute to group polarization?
A
- informational influence- refers to the idea that in a group discussion, people are more likely to express POV’s in line with the dominant viewpoint, and the disproportionate attention paid to such information reinforces individuals pre-existing viewpoints
- normative influence- refers to our desire to be socially accepted, affirmed, or admired within a group
10
Q
what is group think?
A
- irrational decisions are made within a group due to pressures towards harmony and individual conformity
11
Q
what are the 8 specific factors that are characteristic of groupthink?
A
- illusion of invulnerability- refers to the belief that no serious harm will happen to the group
- illusion of unanimity- refers to the assumption that the majority of opinions in the group are unanimous
- illusion of morality- refers to a rigid, unbending belief in the moral righteousness of the groups cause, which helps blind group members to objections and leads them to overlook possible consequences of their action
- self-censorship- members who do disagree don’t share their opinion
- pressure on dissenters- the members feel pressure to not express opinions contrary to the majority group
- collective rationalization- tendency for group members to find reasons to ignore warning signs and to avoid reconsidering their actions or assumptions
- excessive stereotyping- negative views about outside opinions or viewpoints lead group members not to take their perspective seriously
- mindguards- phenomenon where certain members of the group filter out information that could destabilize the groups consensus
12
Q
what is conformity?
A
- describes situations where someone’s behaviours, beliefs, or thinking changes to line up with the perspectives of others or with social norms in the community
- the term for such a situation where someone’s beliefs or behaviours just happen to line up with those of the group is convergence or congurence which emphasizes that this concept refers to pre-existing overlap
13
Q
what is a genuine change in someone’s beliefs?
A
- internalization or conversion
14
Q
if someone just goes along with the group but internally dissents is known as?
A
- compliance
15
Q
what happens if someone’s behaviour and beliefs change, but only kind of, and only in the presence of th group?
A
indentification
16
Q
what is the Soloman Asch experiment?
A
- thought-provoking example of the power of conformity
- shown a card with 3 lines and asked which line matched the card in a group setting but the confederate said the wrong answer and most group members would repeat the wrong answer
17
Q
what is compliance?
A
- refers to responses to requests from someone who has no power to enforce the reuqest
- ex. marketing adds (request to buy a certain product)
18
Q
what is the foot-in-the-door technique?
A
- involves first making a small request of someone and then making a larger request
19
Q
what is the door-in-the-face technique?
A
- involves making a large request at first that you know will be rejected only to follow it up with a smaller, more reasonable request
20
Q
what is the low ball technique
A
- involves offering something at a low price, only to raise the price at the last minute once the customer is invested in the purchase
21
Q
what is obedience?
A
- refers to a change in behaviour in response to a direct request from someone who has power to enforce that request
22
Q
what is the Milgram experiment?
A
- an experiment that tested obedience to see how far people would go in terms of inflicting pain on someone in response to direct instructions
- Stanford prison experiment is a similar experiment
23
Q
what are norms?
A
- the tules (spoken or unspoken) that regulate the behaviour, beliefs, attitudes, and values of members of society
24
Q
what is the concept of social control?
A
- refers to the myraid of ways in which those norms are taught, enforced, and perpetuated
25
what is deviance?
* occurs when someone doesn't follow a norm
26
what are formal norms?
* must be encoded somewhere, usually in a law or regulation, and have specific penalties for being violated
27
what are informal norms?
* folkways refer to relatively insignificant informal norms that typically involve small details of everyday behaviour (wearing socks with sandles)
* mores refer to rules of thumb people follow that are more like norms and if broken, you'll get some serious disaproval for violating (cheating on a partner)
* taboos refer to the most restrictive norms, or things you just don't do (ex. incest)
28
what are sanctions?
* refers both to any punishment or negative consequence for violating a social norm and tp any reward for following those norms
29
what is an anomie according to Emile Duskheim?
* refers to a situation in which there's no longer a good match between society's stated norms and the norms individuals respond to
* results in a breakdown of traditional systems of moral regulation, sometimes accompanied by negative feelings
30
what is deviance?
* refers to someone not following, or violating a norm
* can be trivial or serious
31
what is differential association theory?
* focuses on the deviance as behaviours that's learned socially
* ex. criminals become criminals because they hangout with other criminals and learning to commit crime from them
32
what is primary deviance?
* refers to deviant acts committed before someone receives a label
33
what is secondary deviance?
* refers to such acts that are committed after someone has been labelled
34
what is the labeling approach to deviance?
* focuses on how people's behaviour is affected by being labeled as deviant
35
what is strain theory?
* looks at why people engage in deviant behaviour, and in particular focuses on the role of social and economic pressures in pushing people towards criminal behaviour
36
what is general strain theory?
* hypothesizes that people who experience social, economic, or even personal stressors may have negative emotional experiences that push them towards deviance and crime
37
what is the process of socialization?
* refers to how we learn the whole range of informal and formal norms that govern society by interacting with other people and institutions
38
what are fads?
* occur when a new behaviour suddnely becomes extremely popular, and then its popularity fades
39
what is mass hysteria?
40
what are riots?
even more temporary than fads and mass hysteria which can be thought of spontaneous episodes of civil disorder where people violently lash out against authority in some form or another
41
what are attributions?
* we form impressions of people or have those impressions confirmed or challenged
* we try to figure out why people act the way they do, and in part, we judge them based on those explanations
42
what is a dispositional attribution?
* explain someone's behaviour in terms of something internal, or inherent to his disposition or character
43
what is situational attribution?
* externally-focused explanation
44
what are consistency cues?
* the more consistent the behaviour over time, the more likely we are to make a dispositional attribution
45
what are distinctiveness cues?
* focuses more on how someone behaves differently in comparable situations
* the idea is that if someones behaviour doesn;t line up with what's socially expected, we're likely to make a dispositional attribution
46
what is actor-observer-bias?
* refers to the idea that we're more likely to make a dispositional attribution of someone else but a situational attribution for ourselves, especially when explaining negative behaviours
47
what is fundamental attribution error?
* we're more likely to apply dispositional attributions than situational attributions to other peoplr
48
what is self-serving bias?
* focuses just on ourselves, and the idea here is that we're more likely to make dispositional attributions of our own behaviour if the outcomes are good and situational attributions if the outcomes are bad
49
what is the locus of control?
* people differ somewhat systematically in terms of whether they view themselves as having personal control over their circumstances
50
what is the halo effect?
* it describes how positive or negative impressions of someone in one domain can expand out to affect judgements of them in other domains
51
what is the just-world-hypothesis?
* impacts how we assess people
* idea is that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people
52
what does prejudice refer to?
* irrational attitudes (positive or negative) towards various groups, or even objects
* prejudice is an affective or emotional response
53
what are stereotypes?
* they are contentful (contain specific content about what we assume about people)
54
what is the stereotype content model?
* proposes that stereotypes of social groups can be arranged on 2 axes:
* warmth and competence
* warmth refers to our fondness for the group in question, and competence refers to how capable we perceive that group as being
* the combo of high warmth and low competence is a paternalistic stereoty[es
* the combo of high warmth and high competence is admiration
* low warmth and low competence is a contemtuous stereotype
* low warmth and high competence is an envious stereotype
55
what is discrimination?
* occurs when someone is treated differently based on prejudices regarding their membership in a group
56
what is individual discrimination?
* reflects behaviour on the individual level- that is the way in which a single person can treat other people differently based on their group membership
57
what is institutional discrimination?
* refers to larger patterns of unequal behaviour or outcomes, as mediated by entire institutions
58
what is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
* occurs when our perceptions of ourselves, usually but not always derived from other people's statements about ourselves, wind up shaping our behaviour
59
what is a stereotype threat?
* describes how self-fulfilling prophecy can occur even on a subconcious level
* even being reminded indirectly of relevant sterotypes can affect someone's performance
60
what is a stereotype boost?
occurs to how poeple can perfom better if they're reminded of positive stereotypes that apply to them
61
what is stigma?
* related to negative stereotypes
* refers to intense disapproval that society directs towards certain identities and behaviours, and that dissaproval goes hand in hand with negative stereotypes about the people in question
62
what is ehtnocentrism?
* refers to applying the norms and beliefs of one's own culture directly to another, or in other words judging other cultures by the standards of one's own
63
what is cultural relativism?
* the idea is that if we encounter a tradition or behaviour in another culture that seems strange or uncomfortable, instead of immediately judging that behaviour in teh same way that would be applied to someone in our culture, we should put in some mental effort to understand the role and function of that tradition or behaviour in its cultural context
MCAT psych/soc
flashcards
Decks in class (12)
# Cards
