Soc Psych Exam 1 Flashcards
(92 cards)
1
Q
Social Psychology
A
A science that studies the influences of our own situations and how we view and affect one another.
The study of how people think about, influence and relate to others.
2
Q
Social Psych vs. Sociology
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Soc Psych: Focuses on how individuals view and affect one another. Uses more experimentation.
Sociology: The study of people in groups and societies.
3
Q
Hindsight Bias
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The “I-knew-it-all-along” phenomenon. The tendency to exaggerate our ability to have foreseen the outcome of an event, ONLY after the outcome is known.
4
Q
Theory
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An integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events/ideas that summarize and explain facts.
A general, abstract statement about the social world. Very broad and general- too abstract to be tested.
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Q
Hypothesis
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A testable statement that describes a relationship that may exist between two events.
More specific indication of a theory.
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Q
Variable
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Any property of a phenomenon that can differ in quality or quantity.
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Q
Independent Variable
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The experimental factor that a researcher manipulates.
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Q
Dependent Variable
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The variable being measured, that may depend on manipulation of the independent variable.
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Q
Correlation
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Indicates a relationship that is not necessarily due to cause and effect (does not imply causality). Allows us to predict if one variable will change another.
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Q
Experiment
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Manipulating a factor to see its affect on another. Seeks clues to cause-effect relationships.
11
Q
Experimental Control
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Holding all variables constant except for the one being studied. (“Control” not equal to “control group”).
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Q
Scientific Method
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A systematic series of steps used to produce a truth.
13
Q
Steps of the Scientific Method
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1) Hypothesis
2) Design Study
3) Observation
4) Data Analysis
5) Draw Conclusion
6) Communicate Results/Peer Review
14
Q
Random Sample
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Survey Procedure in which every person in the population has an equal chance of inclusion.
Helps generalize the population and infer cause & effect.
15
Q
Deception
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In research, any effect by which participants are misled or misinformed about the study methods or purposes used to achieve experimental realism (i.e. “‘someone’ is in the next room”).
Misinformation effect- incorporating inaccurate info one’s memory
16
Q
Confound
A
Occurs when a third variable accidentally gets mixed up in the manipulation. Affects the variables being studied, so the results might not accurately represent their relationship.
Examples: time slots affect availability, windows in one study room and not the other.
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Q
Social Representation
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A society’s widely held ideas and values that help us to make sense of the world.
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Human Values
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Personal Convictions about what is desirable and how people ought to behave.
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Importance of Theory (Lewin)
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Said people needed “theory”- a reason for their research. Helped develop laws of human behavior.
“Law applies to 70% of the people 70% of the time.”
20
Q
Attitude Questionnaire
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Used by Thurstone for research.
21
Q
Sumner (1906)
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“Folkways”- norms. No codes, unwritten.
Norms that survive are the best fit forms of behavior.
(i.e. Ethnocentrism- The belief that 1 cultures norms are superior to those of other cultures.–basis for prejudice– are actually just different “folkways)”.
22
Q
Cooley (1916)
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Looking Glass Self- we get our identities from others. (What they say to/ how they look at us.)
Others are a mirror for perceiving ourselves.
23
Q
McDougall (1918)
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- Creator of Social Psych (wrote first book). Used experimental psychology to study learning, motivation, basic psychological processes, etc.
- Said “all behavior is instinctual/universal.” (cc: Ekman study of universal emotion portrayal.)
- Said the primary emotion is pride (self esteem).
- Found most people have very high S.E.
- Social desirability
- Self inflation
24
Q
Bogardus (1924)
A
Sociologist.
- Social Distance Scale (SDS)- first questionnaire to measure a social attitude (prejudice).
- Level of prejudice depends on group being studied.
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Thurstone (1930)
Used "attitude questionnaire" to asses attitudes. Led to big boom in social psych (big increase in PhD programs).
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1) In the first social psychology lead ever written, McDougal argued that human social reactions were mostly a product of?
Instinctual behaviors.
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2) In studying racial attitudes, a social psychologist would be most interested in understanding
How individuals racial attitudes effect their behavior.
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3) How do personal values enter the picture in social psychology?
* Values influence researchers choice of topics
* Values attract the types of people attracted to various disciplines
* Values are frequently the object of social psychological analysis
* Answer: (All of the above)
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4) A researcher wishes to study the Impact of speed of speech on persuasion. To do so, she varies the speed with which an accomplice delivers a prepared speech, so that it is slow, moderate or fast. Inadvertently, the accomplice also adds more expression to his voice when delivering the fast speech that when delivering the slow one. This is an example of:
The confounding of 2 variables.
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5) The Dearborn school system wants to survey the 120,000 area residents. These prospects for sampling the residents are being considered. Based of sampling theory which would you recommend?
Interviewing people in every 50th residence (household) house of every postal address in the city.
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6) Research on the wording of survey questions suggests that?
How questions are framed influence how they are answered.
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7) Social psychologists finds that people who have taken many psychology courses have better mental health than those who have studied little psychology. What explanation would seems to best fit this finding?
Taking psychology courses improves ones mental health.
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8) to ensure equivalence of groups in a study, researchers generally try to employ?
Random Assignment.
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9) The use of deception in social psychological research ensures researchers have _______ in their study.
Behavioral Reality.
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10) We are especially likely to analyze and discuss why things happen as they do when the event in question is?
Negative or Unexpected.
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11) According to the Kelley cube, an internal attribution is most likely to be made when an actor’s behavior has?
High consistency, low consensus, low distinctiveness
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13) Given the same task, success by a male is usually attributed to ______, success by a female is usually attributed to ______?
His ability, her effort.
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12) You noticed that Michael, a classmate has failed a quiz. You may be committing a fundamental attribution error if you conclude that?
Michael is a lazy student who probably did not study.
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16) Approximately half of all marriages end in divorce. Yet research indicate that people applying for marriage licenses typically rate their chance of divorce as zero. This finding illustrates:
Unrealistic Optimism.
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17) According to lecture, people from japan are more likely than Americans to:
Suffer from greater depression & Perceive themselves as average on most socially desirable traits.
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Research indicates that people with high self-esteem tend to?
Exaggerate their superiority over others when facing likely failure.
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19) Which of the following statements about biases cause us to perceive our thinking as true?
We are usually aware of them but deny that they play a significant role in our lives.
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20) In ____ cultures, people are less likely to perceive others in forms of personal dispositions.
Collectivistic
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21) Which of the following is not true regarding our self-knowledge vs. our knowledge about others?
We view ourselves as less variable and more predictable than others.
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22) Those who make internal attributions regarding others ‘ poverty and unemployment tend to adopt political positions that
are unsympathetic towards the poor.
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Social Cognition
Subtopic of Soc Psych that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations.
-Same across cultures
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Schemas
Mental concepts or templates that intuitively guide our perceptions and interpretations.
A network of attributions that we use to organize knowledge about the social world by theme or subject.
-Automatic thinking
-Can be used to recall info
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Assimilation & Accommodation
Assimilation: alter the INFO to make it fit our schema (70%).
Accommodation: alter the SCHEMA to make it fit with the new info (30%).
-impressions tend not to change even when given contradictory info.
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T or F: the more recently you accessed a schema, the more easily it comes to mind.
True. ("Doing Laundry" example)
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Primacy Effect
Things mentioned first are better remembered.
| -Early traits (in example) used to construct schema, later traits are added to schema.
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Illusory Correlation
Perception of a relationship that does not exist or of a stronger relationship than actually exists.
- Happens b/c we pay more attention to things we expect.
- McFarland study (Menstruation and Mood)
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Attribution Theory
The theory of how people explain others behavior by attributing it either to internal dispositions (traits, motives, attitudes) or to external situations.
- Example: "is someone angry because they are bad-tempered or because something bad happened?"
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Perseverance of Attribution
Persistance of ones first impression/conception, as when the basis for ones belief is discredited but the reason the belief might be true survives.
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Illusion of Control
Perception of uncontrollable events as subject to one's control or as more controllable than they are.
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Overconfidence Phenomenon
The tendency to be more confident than correct when estimating accuracy of one's beliefs.
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Kelley Cube
Attribution is a function of the 3 factors Distinctiveness, Consensus, and Consistency.
- Distinctiveness: is their response distinctive to one event or does it always happen? (Hi-ext. Lo-Int.)
- Consensus: is everyone else responding the same way? (Hi-ext. Lo-Int.)
- Consistency: Does one behave the same to the same stimulus each time? (Hi- ext or int. Lo-neither-unsure which behavior is "real").
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Mcfarland et al. (1989, 1996, 1998)
(ILLUSORY CORRELATION)
Studied correlation between menstrual cycle and mood as recorded by a "Daily Diary."
- Asked 2,000 women to fill out survey in diary each day with questions about mood, situations, and time in cycle.
- Found there is NO correlation between mood and cycle.
- Bad mood is perceived as due to their period because its EXPECTED.
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Vallone et al. (1989)
Answered "Do our schemas bias agreement with certain issues?" by studying pro-Arab/Israeli subjects.
-Showed subjects neutral news clips on Israeli/arab conflict. --Asked students to complete questionnaire on videos
-Pro Arabs: "All videos favored Israelis"
Pro Israelis: "All videos favored Arabs"
(Hostile Media Effect- people with strong biases toward an issue perceive media coverage as biased against their opinions)
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Jones and Harris (1967)
(FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR)
- Had subjects read pro/anti-Castro essays (during era of Cold War & Cuban Missile Crisis)
- Specified to subjects that writers were or were not given a choice of what to write about.
- Subjects ignored the fact some writers didn't have a choice and still viewed them as pro or anti Castro based on the essay.
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Ross et al. (1977)
(FALSE CONSENSUS BIAS)
- Asked subjects to walk around AA wearing a sandwich board.
- Half agree, half refused.
- Those who agreed thought 62% of others also agreed
- Those who refused thought 77% of others also refused.
- Those who agreed thought it said more about the personality of the person who refused (and vice versa).
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Snyder & Uranowitz (1978)
(BASE RATE FALLACY)
- Participants learned about a woman named Betty, described as living a gay/straight lifestyle.
- Later, subjects recognized incorrect "facts" about Betty based on her gay/straight Description.
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Representativeness Heuristic/Base Rate Fallacy
The tendency to pay more attention to the individual (i.e. "Brian") than the base rate info (info pertaining to the general environment).
Representativeness- the tendency to assume that, despite the odds, someone/thing belongs to a particular group.
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Fundamental Attribution Error
The overemphasis of the role of internal factors (personality) as the explanation for the behavior of others. The tendency to underestimate situational influences upon others behavior (aka correspondence bias).
*See Jones & Harris "Castro" study.*
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Actor-Observer Effect
The tendency for people to see their own behavior as variable
- Individualistic view (Western world): assume PEOPLE, not situations cause behavior.
- Collectivistic view: assume SITUATIONS cause behavior.
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False Consensus Bias
The tendency to overestimate the commonality of one's opinions and one's undesirable behaviors. We expect 70-80% of others to do/act as we do.
*See Ross "Sandwich Board" study*
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T or F: If someone does the opposite of you, you tent to believe their decision says more about their personality.
True. (FCB)
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Sexist Bias
The tendency to believe males' success is due to "ability" & if they fail "effort" is blamed. Females' success is attributed to "luck" and "easiness" & if they fail "ability" is blamed.
*Deaux "Spacecraft Model Building" study*
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Self-fulfilling Prophecy
A belief that leads to its own fulfillment. Behavioral confirmations that confirm expectations of others.
*See Rosenthal & Jacobson "Teacher Expectation/Student Performance" study*
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Confirmation Bias
A tendency to search for info that confirms one's preconceptions/stereotypes (a form of self-fulfilling prophecy)
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Heuristics
A thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgements. A shortcut in information processing that tells us what to pay attention to & how to use info.
-stereotypes become "facts", shape the way we perceive people. Enable us to make routine decisions with little effort.
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Availability Heuristic
A cognitive rule that causes us to think something will be more likely/common if it readily comes to mind.
The more easily recalled something the more likely it seems.
-Example: After reading headlines about crime, South Africans estimated violence had doubled from 1998-2004, but it actually had decreased significantly.
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Accessibility
The more recently things have been accessed, the easier they are accessed again.
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Self Serving Biases
Tendency to perceive one's self favorably.
| -Credit taking: take more credit for our successes but less for our failures ("b/c of something else").
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Self-Inflation
People tend to perceive themselves as above average (top 1-10%).
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Unrealistic Optimism
People believe common statistics don't apply to them (less at risk in the future).
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Depression/Depressive Realism
Feelings of worthlessness.
Depressive realism: "Sadder but wiser" form of thinking, the tendency of mildly depressed people to make accurate rather than self-serving judgements, attributions & predictions (perceive things more as they are).
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Self Handicapping
Protecting one's self image with behaviors that create an excuse for later failure. We create conditions that will cause us to fail.
-Example: procrastination.
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False Uniqueness
The tendency to underestimate the commonality of one's abilities and desirable behaviors.
- Occurs when we do well (serves self-image)
- We tend to see our own failings as totally normal & our virtues as relatively exceptional.
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Self-esteem
A person's overall sense of self worth.
| -High S.E. can buffer anxiety & help sustain hope.
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Self-efficacy
A sense that one is competent and effective.
- A sharpshooter in the military may feel high self-efficacy but low self-esteem.
- Both SEs grow with hard won achievements.
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Locus of Control
The extent to which people perceive outcomes as internally controllable by their own efforts or as externally controlled by chance or outside forces.
-Those who see themselves in control tend to be more successful.
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Possible Selves
Images of what we dream of or dread becoming in the future.
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Learned Helplessness
The sense of hopelessness and resignation learned when one perceives no control over an event.
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Self Presentation
The act of presenting one self & behaving in ways believed to be favorable.
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Social Comparison
Evaluating one's abilities and opinions by comparing one self with others.
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Individualism
The concept of giving priority to one's own foals over group goals and defining ones identity in terms of PERSONAL attributes (as opposed to a group they're a par of's attributes).
-Predominant in Western culture
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Collectivism
Giving priority to the goals of one's group (extended family, work group, etc.) and defining one's identity accordingly.
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Just World Theorizing
The tendency to believe that the world is just and people therefore get what they deserve/deserve what they get.
-Used when blaming the victim
Defense Attribution- "One's failure is their own fault."
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Berglas & Jones (1981)
Study showed self-handicappers are primarily male.
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Snyder et al. (1977)
They found that our initial impressions of other people can become self-fulfilling prophecies.
- male participants were led to believe that another female participant they would talk to on the phone was either attractive or unattractive.
- When male participants believed their conversation partner was attractive (instead of unattractive), these partners were more likely to behave in ways consistent with stereotypes about attractive people (friendly, likeable, sociable, etc.).
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Hymes & Akiyama (1992)
In Japan, there's no self-inflation at all-- in fact they rate themselves in the bottom % of [objective] measures; Japanese psychologists help you accept your depression
This study determined that the relationship between self-serving bias and depression is cross-cultural (individualistic vs. collectivistic societies)
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Self Reference
The tendency to elaborate on and recall information that is integrated into our self-knowledge
