PSY13 Exam #1

Social psychology

The scientific study of how other people (whether present, imagined, or implied) influence our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

scientific study

empirical, testable questions; scientific method

ABCS of social psychology - affect

feelings

ABCS of social psychology - behavior

actions

ABCS of social psychology - cognition

thoughts

power of the situation

situations can strongly influence our behavior

power of the person

we naturally think about people’s personalities, traits, beliefs, motives

power of human motives

Fundamental needs and goals that influence our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

Evolutionary perspectives

Our behavior is influenced by adaptations that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce; Implication: Behaviors are tied to survival; therefore, they are fixed and cannot change. Society is the way it is meant to be.

Sociocultural perspectives

Our behavior is shaped by the society we live in, social norms and expectations influence how we think and behave
Implication: Behaviors are shaped by socially constructed roles, so they can change. Roles are not fixed, they are malleable, and dismantling roles is often key to eliminating inequality.

availability heuristic

making judgments based on ease with which information comes to mind

Intuition

Some data will confirm intuition - homophily of “birds of a feather flock together”

Bystander effect

less likely to help

Hindsight bias

tendency to see an outcome as having been more predictable after it happens

In scientific study, some data will…

confirm and disconfirm

Research is conducted in scientific study because

common sense isn’t always correct; this helps us view the world with confidence

Scientific method

Identify the topic/problem, form research questions
- inspiration taken from previous research and theories, folk wisdom (birds of a feather, opposites attract), social and policy issues

HOMER

Hypothesize, operationalize, manipulate/measure, evaluate, revise/replicate

Hypothesize

a formal prediction made on the basis of existing empirical evidence
- NOT a theory (which cannot be directly tested); can use theories to generate hypotheses

Operationalize

making a clear hypothesis; taking a conceptual variable and making it more concrete with specificity
- revising the hypothesis with specific terms

Experimental; causality and control

Does x cause y? Manipulating variables; random assignment

Correlational; practical and ethical

Are x and y related? Measuring operational variables

Observational

Does x exist? What is y? Observing and describing operational variable

Random assignment

randomly distributes pre-existing differences between participants

Evaluate

collecting data and testing hypothesis

Correlations range from

0 to 1.0

A correlation of 0 means

the variables are not associated

Magnitude

strength of the association

Direction

positive or negative association

Positive correlation

X increasing; y increasing
X decreasing; y decreasing

Negative correlation

X increasing; y decreasing
X decreasing; y increasing

No/zero correlation

X and y unrelated

Directionality problem

Finds a statistical relationship but cannot prove which variable causes the other

Third variable problem

confounding variable

Nature vs nurture

false dichotomy; do not act as separate, competing forces

Benefits of random assignment

- helps determine whether one variable actually caused a change in another variable
- helps researchers make stronger conclusions about cause and effect

Validity

how well a study supports the conclusions we want to draw from it

Internal validity

extent to which a study can accurately determine whether the independent variable causes changes in the dependent variable

Maintains high internal validity

controlling extraneous variables; randomly assigning people to experimental conditions

External validity

extent to which results can be generalized to other situations and people
- across situations (real life), people, and cultures (beyond those studied)

Increases external validity

Conducting field experiments (natural setting and behavior)

The more realistic an experiment is

the less control over factors there is

Lab study, controlled experiment/setting

Has higher internal validity

Field experiment

Has higher external validity

Scientists can be motivated by

Personal and professional incentives

Representative samples

Match population of interest, participant characteristics are relevant

Convenience samples

Easy to access, participant characteristics less relevant

WEIRD

Western, education, industrialized, rich, democratic

Revise

when results don’t support hypothesis; poor validity or bad hypothesis, research bias; assess and fix study approach, design, or hypothesis

Replicate

When results do support hypothesis; rerun with different measures/samples, more confidence in findings that replicate across multiple (high quality) studies

Replication problem/crisis

many published scientific studies cannot be successfully reproduced or verified when repeated by independent researchers
false-positives from small samples, publication bias, selective reporting, p-hacking
- raised questions on reliability of findings

Open science movement

Pre-register studies, replicate findings, share data and materials, registered report, larger samples

Research ethics

benefits of research outweigh costs to participants; full disclosure, informed consent, and ability to leave study at any time

Deception

Sometimes it is necessary to not tell everything in a study

Debrief

reveal the true purpose and give time to alleviate distress and discomfort

cognitive psychology

helps us understand how the mind processes information

Social psychology helps us

understand what happens when processed information involves other people

Social cognition

helps us understand how our minds make sense of the social world; the way people perceive, interpret, remember, and make judgments about other people and social situations

Duplex mind

miser and scientist

The miser

System 1: automatic
reaches conclusions quickly, fast, unconscious, automatic decisions, error prone

The scientist

System 2: controlled
discover the right answer; slow, conscious, effortful, complex decisions, reliable

System 1: automatic thinking, cognitive miser

often reluctant to do extra thinking, “good enough” answers are fine

schemas

mental structures people use to organize their knowledge of the social world

person schemas

mental knowledge and expectations about particular kinds of people or individual people

self-schemas

mental ideas about ourselves

group schemas

knowledge and expectations about social groups

attention

what we notice

interpretation

same behavior can mean different things

System 1 relies on

schemas, guide attention and interpretation, fill in info and make fast judgments

scripts

schema specifically about how an event/situation typically unfolds; what normally happens

priming

an individual’s exposure to one stimulus influences their response to a subsequent stimulus; when a concept is activated, related concepts become more accessible

self-fulfilling prophecy

our actions impact others’ beliefs, causing others’ actions to reinforce our beliefs and influence our actions; we create the behaviors we expect in others; sometimes our expectations create the social world we perceive

confirmation bias

we tend to selectively seek out and interpret information in ways that support what we think
- actively seeking information that confirms our beliefs while ignoring info that challenges them
- interpreting information based on whether or not it confirms our beliefs

heuristics

mental shortcuts that allow us to make judgments quickly and efficiently

availability heuristics

mental shortcut where you judge the likelihood, frequency, or safety of an event based entirely on how easily examples of it come to mind
- comes to mind easy → must be more common

anchoring

cognitive bias where you rely too heavily on the very first piece of information you encounter when making a decision, even if information is completely irrelevant/inaccurate

representative heuristics

a mental shortcut where we decide what someone or something is like based on how closely they match an example we already have in our mind

base rate information

information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population; how probable something is; we tend to ignore them when we have extra information
- only when the information is relevant to our judgment

System 2 is important when

we encounter something novel, complex, or when our automatic expectations are violated

Counterfactual thinking

“What could’ve been”

Upward counterfactuals

Imagining how things could’ve been better, “if only” → silver medal

Downward counterfactuals

Imagining how things could have been worse, “at least,” → bronze medal

For trivial decisions

use heuristics

For important decisions

use effortful thinking

Planning fallacy

a cognitive bias where people underestimate the time, costs, and risks of future actions while overestimating their benefits

Why does research focus so much on automatic thinking?

Explains behavior, belief-behavior gaps; helps explain prejudice and conformity, shows how behavior can occur without conscious intent, provide new insights

Social (relating to self and others) + cognition (mental activity of processing and using information)

How people perceive, process, understand and use information about themselves and others; helps people understand/predict behavior of themselves and others

Social perception

cognitive process of gathering, interpreting and organizing info about other people to make judgments about their thoughts, feelings and intentions

Nonverbal cues/communication

facial expressions and features, clothing and physical position, gestures, movement, physical appearance, voice/paralingual, interpersonal characteristics

Social interpretation involves interpreting

the information provided by nonverbal communication

Continuum model of social perception

the more info we have about someone, the more motivated we are to think about them, the more we tend to move toward an individualized impression

first impressions

formed quickly, without intention

categorization

I perceive this person as a ______

stereotype

students are smart, professional, avid readers

thin slicing

drawing meaningful conclusions about another person’s personality/skills based on brief sample of behavior → can result in self-fulfilling prophecy

influence is hard to shake from first impressions

we categorize people quickly and automatically, we are expert face processors; categories are sticky, we minimize differences within categories and exaggerated differences between categories

categories are attached to schemas

expectation about people; what we expect to see shapes what we see

confirmation bias

the tendency to interpret, seek, and even create info that verifies existing beliefs; we seek out information that fits our expectations and ignore information that doesn’t fit

Making attributions

inferences we make about the cause of behavior

attribution theory

group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of behavior