Social Psychology Flashcards
(110 cards)
1
Q
What is the goal of social psychology?
A
To identify problems in our society and rectify those problems.
2
Q
What is the ethnicity most commonly targeted for hate crimes?
A
Black people.
3
Q
What ethnicity is most often victimized?
A
Jewish people.
4
Q
By 2017, it is projected that what percentage of Canadians will be a visible minority?
A
20%
5
Q
What is social psychology?
A
The branch of psychology concerned with the way individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviours influence others.
6
Q
What is one of the most influential factors in the judgement of another person’s qualities?
A
Their appearance, especially their physical attractiveness.
7
Q
Though there is no correlation, what are some personality characteristics often ascribed to attractive people?
A
Sociable, friendly, poised, warm, well adjusted.
8
Q
At what point in our development does an association between “good” and “beautiful” become established?
A
Around ages 3 to 6 and a half.
9
Q
Other than physical appearance, what else do people often use to judge others?
A
How they move, how they speak, and how they gesture.
10
Q
What trait is often associated with honesty and trustworthiness?
A
Baby faces.
i.e., big eyes, big cheeks, smooth skin, round chin.
11
Q
What is a schema?
A
A cognitive structure that guides information processing.
12
Q
What are social schemas?
A
Organized clusters of ideas about categories of social events and people.
13
Q
What is a negative side to the categorization of people included in social schemas?
A
Stereotyping and subjective biases.
14
Q
What are stereotypes?
A
Widely held beliefs that people have certain characteristics because of their membership to a particular group
15
Q
What did the Word, Zanna, and Cooper experiment find?
A
When applicants were black, interviewers tended to sit farther away from them; their body language was also more closed off. When applicants were white, the interviewer would often adopt an immediate style (sitting closer, being more engaged).
When someone is interviewed in a non-immediate style, they can become anxious and not perform as well.
16
Q
What did Bargh (1996) discover in his experiment about elderly stereotypes as it relates to speed?
A
When people were primed with words that were stereotypical of the elderly, they would begin to walk slower than those who were not primed with elderly stereotypes.
17
Q
What is illusory correlation?
A
When people estimate that they have encountered more confirmations of an association between social traits than they have actually seen.
18
Q
How accurate are people with disconfirmations of social trait associations?
A
Not very accurate. Most people tend to underestimate the number of disconfirmations they encounter.
e.g., never met an honest lawyer.
19
Q
What is the evolutionary reasoning for why we have biases?
A
Stereotypes are an easy way to separate in-group from out-group member.
20
Q
What are attributions?
A
Inferences that people draw about the causes of events, others’ behaviour, and their own behaviour.
21
Q
What are the two types of attributions?
A
Internal and external.
22
Q
What are internal attributions?
A
Ascribing causes of behaviour to personal dispositions, traits, abilities, and feelings.
23
Q
What are external attributions?
A
Ascribing causes of behaviour to situational demands and environmental constraints.
24
Q
What are the two types of bias in attribution?
A
Actor-observer bias and defensive attribution.
25
What is the fundamental attribution error? And what bias of attribution does it belong to?
It is a type of actor-observer bias. It is when the observer is biased in favour of internal attributions in explaining other's behaviour.
26
What are actors more likely to attribute their behaviour to?
Actors are biased to associate the cause of their behaviour with external factors.
27
What is the overall rule for actor-observer bias?
Actors favour external attributions for their own behaviour, whereas observers are more likely to explain the same behaviour with internal attribution.
28
What is defence attribution?
The tendency to blame the victims for their misfortune, this way one feels less likely to be victimized in this certain way.
29
Why does defence attribution occur?
Because if we attribute such events to just "bad luck," they could have happened to use, and no one wants to think that. Hindsight bias and belief in a just world also play a role.
30
What are the differences in bias between collectivist and individualist cultures?
Collectivist cultures are less prone to the fundamental attribution error.
31
What is self-serving attribution bias? And what type of culture is it most prevalent in?
It is the tendency to attribute one's successes to personal factors, and failures to situational factors. It is most prevalent in individualist cultures.
32
What is self-effacing bias?
The tendency for one to attribute their success to the help they received from others, or the ease of the task, while downplaying the importance of their ability.
33
What is interpersonal attraction?
Positive feelings towards one another. It is a broadly used term.
34
What did Sprechner and Duck determine to be the most important factor in attraction?
Physical attractiveness.
35
What is the matching hypothesis?
The theory that males and females of approximately equal physical attractiveness are likely to select each other as partners.
36
What is the similarity effect?
Married and dating couples tend to be similar in age, race, religion, social class, personality, education, intelligence, physical attractiveness, and attitude.
37
What are the two types of love (that are studied)?
Passionate love and companionate love.
38
What is passionate love?
The complete absorption in another that includes tender sexual feelings and the agony and ecstasy of intense emotion.
39
What is companionate love?
Warm, trusting, tolerant affection for another whose life is deeply intertwined with one's own.
40
Which of the two types of love is more strongly related with relationship satisfaction?
Companionate love.
41
Companionate love can be further subdivided, what are the two subcategories?
Intimacy and commitment.
42
What is intimacy (in terms of companionate love)?
Warmth, closeness, and sharing in a relationship
43
What is commitment (in terms of companionate love)?
An intent to maintain a relationship in spite of its difficulties and costs that may arise.
44
What did Hazan and Shaver discover about love?
Romantic love is an attachment process, and people's intimate relationships in adulthood follow the same form as their attachments in infancy.
45
What are some shared relationship factors that Buss discovered in 37 divergent cultures?
Mutual attraction, kindness, intelligence, emotional stability, dependability, and good health.
46
Gender differences in mating priorities were universal, what were they?
Males prioritize physical attractiveness, females put high priority on social status and financial resources.
47
What is thought to be the ultimate expression of individualism?
Marriage for love. It was developed in the 18th century.
48
What does evolutionary theory have to say about physical attraction?
It is an indicator of good health, good genes, and high fertility.
49
What is a key determinant of physical attractiveness in many cultures?
Facial symmetry.
50
What is a factor of men's preference in women specifically that transcends culture? Why?
A waist to hip ratio of around 0.7-0.8, which corresponds to an hourglass figure is what men seem to universally prefer. It signals that a woman is healthy, young, and not pregnant.
51
What are attitudes?
Positive or negative evaluations of objects of thought.
52
What are objects of thought?
Things like social issues, groups, institutions, consumer products, and people.
53
What are the three types of components of attitude?
Cognitive, affective, and behavioural components.
54
What are cognitive components?
Beliefs that people hold about the object of thought.
e.g., "gun owners shoot themselves more often than others"
55
What are affective components?
Emotional feelings stimulated by an object of thought?
e.g., "guns make me sick"
56
What are behavioural components?
Predispositions to act in certain ways towards an object of thought.
e.g., "I vote for gun-control advocates whenever possible"
57
What are the three dimensions of attitudes?
Strength, accessibility, and ambivalence.
58
What is strength, as a dimension of attitudes?
Strong attitudes are firmly held, durable over time, and have a powerful effect on behaviour.
59
What is accessibility, as a dimension of attitudes?
How one thinks about an attitude and how quickly it comes to mind.
60
What is ambivalence, as a dimension of attitudes?
Conflicting evaluations that include both positive and negative feelings about the attitude of thought.
61
What did LePiere (1934) find out about those who voice discriminatory opinions?
People who voice prejudicial attitudes may not behave in discriminatory ways.
62
What are explicit attitudes?
Attitudes we hold consciously and can readily describe.
63
What are implicit attitudes?
Covert attitudes that are expressed in subtle automatic responses over which we have little conscious control.
64
How are implicit attitudes measured?
Using Implicit Association Tests (IAT)
65
What does the Implicit Association Test do?
It tests how quickly people associate carefully chosen pairs of concepts.
66
What are the four basic elements of persuasion?
Source, receiver, message, and channel.
67
What is the source element of persuasion? When is it most successful?
The person who sends a communication. It's most successful when the source has high credibility.
68
What is the receiver element of persuasion?
The person to whom the message is sent.
69
What is the message element of persuasion?
The information transmitted from the source.
70
What is the channel element of persuasion?
The medium through which the message is sent.
71
What makes for a persuasive source?
Displays of expertise of trustworthiness. Like-ability makes for an effective source (attraction). Sources who share similarities with us are also effective.
72
What makes for a persuasive message?
Arguments that take multiple views into account, messages that arouse fear, as well as repetitive messages.
73
What is the truth/validity effect?
Simply repeating a statement causes it to be perceived as more valid or true.
74
What does the truth effect depend on?
The mere exposure effect.
75
What is the mere exposure effect?
The finding that repeated exposures to a stimulus promotes greater liking of the stimulus.
76
Are some people more easily convinced?
Yes, but there are no personality traits associated with susceptibility.
77
What is the learning theory of attitude formation?
That attitudes can be learned from parents, peers the media, cultural traditions, and social influences. Classical and operant conditioning, as well as observational learning also play a role.
78
What is the dissonance theory of attitude formation?
Assumes it is inconsistency among attitudes that propels people in the direction of attitude change.
79
What famous experiment is linked with dissonance theory?
Festinger and Carlsmith's peg-turning experiment. People paid $1 to tell someone it was interesting don't think they said it's interesting because they got paid lots of money, this tension is solved when they decide it must have been interesting.
80
What is the self-perception theory of attitude formation?
The idea that the effects of dissonance were instead the result of a self-perception process. People infer their attitudes from their behaviour.
"A dollar is not a enough for me to lie, therefore the task must have been enjoyable"
81
What is the elaboration-likelihood theory of attitude formation?
Asserts that there are two basic routes to persuasion: central and peripheral.
82
What is the central route in the elaboration-likelihood theory?
When people carefully ponder the content and logic of persuasive messages. The longer they take to elaborate on their attitude is what changes the durability of that attitude.
83
What is the peripheral route in the elaboration-likelihood theory?
Taken when persuasion depends on message factors, such as the attractiveness and credibility of the source, or on conditioned emotional responses.
84
What is a social role?
A widely shared expectation about how people in certain positions are supposed to behave.
85
What was the Stanford Prison experiment?
An experiment in obedience and conformity that had undergrad students role play guard and prisoner. Zimbardo (1971)
86
What did Asch (1955) find in his line-length conformity experiment?
Averaging across 50 participants, Asch found that young men conformed on 37% of the trials.
87
What were shown by Asch to be key determinants of conformity?
Group size and group unanimity. The larger the group and the more unanimous, the more pressure and the more conformity.
88
What is a normative influence?
An influence that operates when people conform to social norms for fear of negative consequences; all about being liked.
89
What is an informational influence?
An influence that operates when people look to others for guidance about how t behave in ambiguous situations; all about being right.
90
What is obedience?
A form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct commands, usually from someone in a position of authority.
91
What is a classic set of experiments on obedience?
Stanley Milgram's shock test.
92
What were the results of Milgram's study?
65% (26/40) of the subjects administered all levels of shock.
93
Which countries exhibited the highest obedience rates for studies like Milgram's?
Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, and the Netherlands all had obedience rates over 80%.
94
What did studies such as Asch's done around the world show?
Collectivist cultures show a much higher level of conformity to group opinions than individualist cultures.
95
What is a group, as defined by a social psychologist?
A group consists of two or more individuals who interact and are interdependent?
96
What are four aspects that most groups share?
- Roles that allocate special responsibilities to some members.
- Norms about suitable behaviour
- A communication structure that reflects who talks to whom
- A power structure that determines which members wield the most influence.
97
What is the bystander effect?
People are less likely to provide needed help when they are in groups compared to when they are alone.
98
What accounts for the bystander effect?
People seem to look around to see what others are doing in an emergency. If everyone hesitates, their inaction suggests there is no real need for help. Diffusion of responsibility is also important.
99
What is diffusion of responsibility?
If you are alone, helping is completely on your shoulders. If you are in a group "someone else will do it."
100
What is the effect of individual productivity in larger groups?
It declines due to two factors: reduced efficiency and social loafing.
101
What is reduced efficiency?
Decrease in productivity resulting from loss of coordination among workers' efforts.
102
What is social loafing?
A reduction in the effort of individuals when they work in groups compared to when they work by themselves.
103
What reduces social loafing?
- When people's contributions are readily identifiable,
- When group norms encourage productivity and personal involvement,
- When groups are more cohesive and smaller,
- When the people involved have high achievement motivations, as well as high agreeableness and conscientiousness.
104
What is group polarization?
When group discussion strengthens a group's dominant point of view and produces a shift toward a more extreme decision in that direction.
105
Who makes more cautious decisions? Groups or individuals?
It depends on how the group is leaning to begin with. They will generally end up on one end of the spectrum (very risk of very cautious) due to group polarization.
106
Why does group polarization occur?
Group discussions expose members to arguments they had not thought about before.
107
What is groupthink? And how does it contrast with group polarization?
Groupthink occurs when members of a cohesive group emphasize concurrence at the expense of critical thinking in arriving at a decision.
Whereas group polarization is a natural process is group dynamics, groupthink is more of a "disease" that infects group decision making.
108
Why is groupthink a bad thing?
Members begin to suspend their critical judgement and begin censoring dissent. It then devolves into "us vs. them," where out-groups are viewed as the enemy.
109
What causes groupthink?
The key determinant is high group cohesiveness. It is also more likely when groups work in isolation, or where power is directed by a strong, directive leader.
*Note it does not cause groupthink, but makes it more likely.
110
What is group cohesiveness?
The strength of the liking relationships linking group members to each other and to the group itself.
