Social Psychology Flashcards
(51 cards)
what is social psychology
study of how people think, feel, and behave in social situations
- > i.e. how we explain others behaviour and how others behaviour affects us
2 main areas of study in social psychology
Social Cognition
- > making sense of the social world
Social influence
- > how behaviour is affected by the situation and by other
main areas of discussion
- > person perception
- > attribution
- > attraction and liking
- > attitudes
- > stereotypes
Person perception
process of informing impressions of other
- > either forming an impression or making an impression
- > we often make snap decisions based on expectations/social norms
social schemas
organized clusters of ideas about categories of people
- > sort ppl into “types”
Biases in person perception
- > implicit personality theory
*physical appearance/beautiful is good
- > primacy effects
implicit personality theory
personal beliefs about which traits or physical characteristics belong together
- > when you think hacker you probably think loser in their parents basement
relate physical appearance to person perception
- > a huge message in our culture is “beautiful is good” and attractive people are perceived to be more intelligent, sociable and happier
- > but there is really no difference
- > the beautiful is good stereotype (disney princesses can do no wrong and are good to their core)
Primacy effects
- > we are influenced more by info received earlier than info received later
the tendency to remember the first piece of information we encounter better than information presented later on (FIRST IMPRESSIONS)
ingroup-outgroup biase
Ingroup “us”
- > the group to which we belong
- > be biased towards groups that share similar attributes
Outgroup “them”
- > everyone else (the group which you don’t belong)
Outgroup homogeneily effect
we assume that everyone in the outgroup are “all alike”/very similar to eachother
Sherifs Robbers Cave Study
- > 11-12 boys at camp were divided into 2 groups
- > in created prejudice and hostile interactions between groups (outgroup homogeneity therory)
stereotype
cluster of characteristics associated with all members of a group
- > belief held by members of one group about members of another group
- > overgeneralization (ignore diversity of character in the population)
why do we stereotype
- > limited knowledge about outgroup members
- > humans are lazy (cognitive misers)
confirmation bias
interpret ambiguous info as confirming stereotype
- > dismiss disconfirming evidence
self-fulfilling prophecy
we create the response we expect
- > if I think I’m stupid then I will act stupid, reinforcing that view
prejudice
a negative attitude towards a group
- > usually built on stereotypes
- > blatant prejudice is not acceptable; implicit forms still exist (prejudice
prejudice vs discrimination
prejudice is the attitude, discrimination is the behaviour
- > when it becomes an action it is discrimination
discrimination
negative behaviour towards a group
- > start seeing these “out groups” as threatening
attribution
process of explaining behaviour
- > explanations you make about the causes of others (or own) behaviour
types of attributions
Internal attributions
- > traits, abilities, feelings, ect.
External attributions
- > situation, luck, ect.
Fundamental attribution error
- > behaviuour explained by internal causes (i.e. traits)
- > overestimate importance of personality
- > blind to the situation (left dishes because I was late to work and got home late)
*we do things a certain way because of the situation but others do it because they’re bad, lazy ect.
actor-observer discrepancy
more likely to use external attributions if we are the actor
- > i got the award because I earned but but they got the same one because they cheated/luck/ect.
belief in a just world bias
- > tendency to believe that life is fair (bad things happen to bad ppl)
- > leads to blaming the victim (defensive attribution); their misfortunes are their fault