Social Psychology Flashcards
(44 cards)
What is anchoring?
The use of a pre-determined number or position as a starting point and then making adjustments from there. (Such as a lawyer setting a settlement figure in mind before beginning negotiation).
Describe a schema and how it works.
A mental framework used to process the information we encounter. They are organized bunches of knowledge gathered from previous experiences that include ideas about specific events/objects. (Penguin example)
Describe counterfactual thinking
“What if things had been different” thinking
What are the 6 basic universal emotions and who argued this?
- Sadness
- Happiness
- Fear
- Anger
- Surprise
- Disgust
Paul Ekman
How did Paul Ekman study human emotion?
He executed cross-cultural studies that show individuals una variety of different cultures were able to recognize facial expressions corresponding to the six identified.
What is FACS coding?
Facial Action Coding System
This can help determine whether a smile is genuine or fake
What is covariation theory and who developed it?
It was developed by Harold Kelley. It’s the best known attribution theory, and it provides a logical model for judging whether a particular action should be attributed to some characteristic of the person or environment.
What did Harold Kelley believe we based our attributions on?
Consistency
Distinctiveness
Consensus
Name the three founding contributors of social psychology
- Norman Triplett
- Kurt Lewin
- Fritz Heider
What is attribution and what are the two ways we attribute behavior?
- Attribution deals with how individuals perceive the causes of everyday experience.
- Dispositional (internal) or Situational (external)
Describe the two different kinds of heuristics.
- Representativeness heuristic - using shortcuts and stereotypes to to guess an answer rather than using logic. Like assuming a tall beautiful woman is a model instead of a lawyer
- Availability heuristic - a process in which think there is a higher proportion of things than there really are in a group, just because they come to mind more readily. Like seeing several celebrity names in a list and just deciding the list was made mostly of celebrities.
What is the difference between automatic and controlled processing?
- Automatic - processing data without concsious awareness.
- Controlled - processing data with thoughtful awareness.
List 6 key concepts in social perception…
Optimism bias
Planning fallacy
Overconfidence bias
Counterfactual thinking
Magial thinking
Terror management
List 5 key concepts around attribution.
- Fundamental attribution error
- Actor-observer attributional divergence
- Self-serving attributional bias
- Self-presentation
- Impression management
List 9 mistakes we make in intepreting the world.
- Illusory correlation
- Slippery slope
- Hindsight bias
- False consensus bias
- Base-rate fallacy
- Halo effect
- Oversimplification
- Illusion of control
- Just world bias
Name four researchers who studied social psychology and specifically the mistakes people make in their interpretation of the world.
- Ross: made subjects believe a false statement and found that even after they were told the truth they made up a logical explanation to continue the lie as truth.
- Nisbett: showed that we lack awareness for why we do what we do.
- Lerner: just world bias, the belief that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.
- Langer: studied the illusion of control or belief that you can control things you have no influence on.
Who developed cognitive dissonance theory and what does it mean?
Leon Festinger
People feel tension or dissonance when they hold to thoughts that do not match. So they try to change their thoughts or behaviour to alleviate the tension.
They often feel they need to change their attitude or beliefs to match actions.
What is Daryl Bem’s self-perception theory?
an alternative explanation to cognitive dissonance, asserting that when people are unsure of their beliefs they take cues from their own behavior.
What is inoculation theory and who created it?
McGuire
people’s beliefs are vulnerable if they have never faced challenge. Once they have experienced challenge to their opinions, they are less vulnerable. A challenge is like a vaccination.
Who are known for their theory of reasoned action? Also known as the Theory of Planned Behavior.
Fischbein and Ajzen
People’s behavior in a given situation is determined by their attitude about the situation
What is reactance?
The refusal to conform which may occur as a result of a blatant attempt to control.
What is the Elaboration Likelihood Model?
Petty and Cacioppo
People who are interested in the strength of an argument can be persuaded through the central route and the likelihood of change is high.
People not interested in the argument or unwilling to listen to it should be approached with a peripheral route for persuasion - make them happy and comfy and hope something sticks.
Outline the relative order of importance for attraction…
- Proximity
- Physial attraction
- Similarity
- Reciprocity
What is excitation-transfer theory?
The idea that we will misplace our excitment. Like if we bungee jump on a first date, the adrenaline and positive experience could lead us to think we are actually excited about the guy, instead of the experience.
