Psych Soc Flashcards
(266 cards)
Social Loafing
- tendency that people have to put in less effort in a group setting
- especially true when group is evaluated on a whole
“foot-in-the-door technique” of persuasion
- involves getting a person to agree to a small request, followed by makeing a much larget request
- Ex: asking customer to purchase small item in store, followed by making a much larger request to buy something else
Heuristics
- refers to mental shortcuts or simplified iterations of principles that can help us make decisions, but can also lead to poor judgement
If Weber’s law states that a subject detects a noticable difference when shifting from 5kg to 8kg mass, how many kg must be added to a 15kg mass to replicate effect?
A) initial ratio = [5:8]
B) new ratio = [15:24] – ∴ a 9 kg mass must be added to a 15 kg mass to notice the same difference
The House Money Effect
- after a prior gain, people become more open to assuming risk when the new money is not treated as one’s own
Harry Harlow Experiment (Rhesus Monkeys)
- experiment examined parent/child attachment, social isolation, and dependency in rhesus monkeys
- Attachment:
• Results:
– infant monkeys preferred spending time clinging to cloth mother vs. wire mother (even when wire mother was only one to provide food, still visited cloth mom just to eat)
– wire vs. cloth paired monkeys consumed and grew in similar amounts, but wire monkeys sought less soothing from their moms
– monkeys paired w/wire mom displayed abnormal behavior—»behavior could not be corrected by pairing them w/cloth mom after development of abnormal behavior
• Conclusion: contact comfort was crucial to psychological devleopment and health of infants
Weber’s Law
- states that the just-noticeable difference for a stimulus is proportional to the magnitde of the stimulus, and this proportion is constant over most of the range of possible stimuli
Prejudice
- a preconcieved notion about a person, group, or thing
- specifically target people (unlike stereotypes), groups, etc
- EX: if i see someone wearing red and form a negative opinion about that person
Relative Deprevation Theory
- posits that individuals who perceive themselves as having less resources than others will often act in ways to obtain these resources
- individuals lash out against others due to perceived deprivation of resources that they believe they are entitled to (i.e. minority groups w/discrimination)
Accommodation
- Term for how we adjust our schemas to incorporate new experiences to remeber
- Acronym: accommodation has cc” for change or create”
Compliance
- Compliance: when an individual changes his or her behavior in response to a direct request (usually a person or group that doesn’t actually have authority to enforce that change)
Wernicke’s Aphasia
- Damage to Wernike;’s area—»causes the loss of speech comprehension
- patients can speak, but words are non-sensical—»problem with creating meaningful, intelligible speech
Expert Power
- refers to the power conferred by the socially symbolic status of being a credentialed expert in the field with specialized knowledge
- group believes the person has a special knowledge or skill, and is trustworthy—»appeal to high-knowledge/high-motivation people
Classical Conditioning
- Unconditioned stimulus (US) and the subsequent uconditioned response (UR) to it are used to turn a neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus
- Ex: Pavlov’s dog’s expt.
- US: meat
- UR: salvation at sight of meat
- neutral stimulus: bell rung before meat
- CR: salvation upon bell ring
Place Theory
posits that one can hear different pitches b/c different sound waves trigger activity at different places along the cochlea’s basilar membrane
Symbolic Interactionism
- focuses on symbolic meaning that people develop and rely upon in the process of social interactions
- Ex: smoking—»symbolic interactionism of smoking is point of contention; some social circles see smoking as trendy while others see it as symbol of poor self-regard and ignorance
- EX: The symbolic meaning of marijuana usage, developed through social interactions, explains why individuals become sustained marijuana users.
Cognitive Biases
- ways in which our perceptions and judgements systematically differ from reality
- thought to be unavoidable freatures of our cognitive system, and may even be adaptive in some cases
Fundamental Attributional Theory
is when an individual interprets another’s actions incorrectly by overemphasizing internal characteristics instead of external events
attrition bias
occurs when participants drop out of a long-term experiement or study
Coercive Power
- power exerted through the threat of force/punishment—»most direct form of power
- effective form of power for all types of individuals regardless of knowledge/motivation
Internal Validity
- the degree to which causal conclusions can be drawn from a study (can include accounting for confounding variables)
Freud’s Id, Ego, & Superego in terms of consciousness

Would an external locus of control mentality have a positive or negative effect on self-efficacy?
- it would have a negative efect—»it might increase an individual’s self-esteem, but not their self-efficacy
Discrimination
- a change in behavior (i.e. speaking/questions asked) based on race and gender
- EX: profesors speaking w/minority females are more likely to use shorter sentances w/more instructions, and asked questions that assumed a lack of skill










