Social Psychology Exam 1 Study Guide

Definition of social psychology:

The scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other people.

Example: You feel nervous giving a presentation because you know people are watching you.

The real or imagined presence of others

Other people can influence us even when they are not physically present. We may change our behavior because we imagine how others would react or because we follow social rules.

Real: You act differently when your professor is in the room.

Imagined: You avoid wearing something because you worry what your friends might think.

Strong social situations

Situations with clear rules, expectations, or consequences that strongly influence how people behave. Individual personality differences tend to matter less.

Example: Funerals, class, fire drills

Weak social situations

Situations with fewer rules or expectations, allowing personality and individual preferences to influence behavior more.

Example: Playgrounds, parties, amusement parks

Why do we study social psychology?

To understand and predict how social situations influence human behavior, including conformity, prejudice, attraction, helping, aggression, and relationships.

What level does social psychology focus on? 

Social psychology tends to focus on group interactions (e.g., how being in a group influences behavior and how it manifests)

Theory

An organized set of explanations that describes why a phenomenon occurs and helps generate predictions.

Example: A theory explaining why people conform to group opinions.

Hypothesis

A specific, testable prediction about what will happen in a study.

Example: People will conform more when everyone else in a group agrees.

Observational method

Researchers observe and record behavior without manipulating variables.

Example: Watching how often people help strangers in a public place.

Limitation: Observation alone generally cannot establish cause and effect.

Correlational method

Measures the relationship between two or more variables.

Example: Examining whether social media use is associated with loneliness.

Limitation: Correlation does not equal causation. A third variable may explain the relationship, or the direction of influence may be unclear.

Experimental method

Researchers manipulate an independent variable and measure its effect on a dependent variable while controlling other factors as much as possible.

Example: Randomly assigning participants to study alone or in a group, then comparing their test scores.

Experimental group

The group that receives the treatment or condition being tested.

Example: Participants who study in a group.

Control group

The comparison group that does not receive the experimental treatment or receives a baseline or alternative condition.

Example: Participants who study alone.

Independent variable (IV)

The variable the researcher manipulates or uses to define the conditions being compared.

Example: Whether participants study alone or in a group.

Dependent variable (DV)

The outcome the researcher measures to determine whether the independent variable had an effect.

Example: Participants’ test scores.

Random assignment

Placing participants into experimental conditions by chance. This helps make groups comparable and reduces systematic differences between them.

Sampling

The process of selecting people from a population to participate in a study.

Representative sampling

Selecting a sample that reflects important characteristics of the population.

Random sampling

Giving members of the target population a known chance of being selected. This can help produce a representative sample, but does not guarantee one.

Internal validity

The extent to which a study supports the conclusion that the independent variable caused changes in the dependent variable, rather than other factors.

Example: Making sure that differences in test scores were caused by the study condition rather than different instructors.

External validity

The extent to which findings apply beyond the particular study, including to other people, settings, or situations.

Construct validity

The extent to which a study's measures and manipulations actually represent the psychological concepts the researcher intends to study.

Example: Does a questionnaire truly measure self-esteem?

Generalizability

The extent to which findings can be applied to other people, populations, situations, or contexts. It is closely related to external validity.

Mundane realism

The extent to which a study resembles events and activities in everyday life.

Example: Participants completing an ordinary conversation task.

Psychological/experimental realism

The extent to which a study psychologically engages participants and makes the situation meaningful to them, even if it does not resemble everyday life.

Example: A laboratory task that makes participants genuinely feel social pressure.

HOMER

a mnemonic for the 5 steps of research:

Hypothesize

Operationalize

Measure

Evaluate

Revise/Replicate.

Variables

Characteristics or conditions that can vary and be measured or manipulated.

Conceptual definition

An abstract explanation of what a concept means.

Example: Self-esteem is a person's overall evaluation of their worth.

Operational definition

The specific procedure used to measure or manipulate a concept in a study.

Example: Measuring self-esteem using a standardized self-esteem questionnaire.

‘I’ vs. ‘Me’

distinction associated with philosopher and psychologist William James.

“I” (the knower): The part of the self that experiences, observes, and thinks (self-awareness). 

“Me” (the known): The part of the self that we can reflect on and describe, including our traits, roles, and identity (self-concept).

Example: “I notice that I feel nervous” (I) versus “I am a shy person” (Me).

Self-concept

The collection of beliefs and knowledge a person has about who they are, including their personality, abilities, roles, and group memberships.

Example: Thinking of yourself as a student, a friend, an athlete, or a creative person.

Managerial self-concept

tells of relationship to physical & social world, organizes behavior, plans for future. What I do and plan.

Example: You see yourself as a hardworking student, so you create a study schedule and prioritize assignments to reach your goal of getting into graduate school.

Organizational self-concept

Helps organize, interpret, and recall information about the self and the world. How I understand and remember.

Example: You see yourself as shy, so you remember times when you felt nervous meeting new people and interpret similar situations as challenging.

Emotional self-concept

helps determine emotional responses. How I feel.

Example: If you see yourself as a good student, receiving a low grade might make you feel disappointed or anxious because it conflicts with your self-image.

Red-Dot Study (mirror self-recognition)

A classic study by Gordon Gallup involved placing a mark on an animal where it could see it only in a mirror. Researchers observed whether the animal used the mirror to investigate the mark on its own body. In human developmental research, a similar test places a mark on a child's face and observes whether the child touches the mark on their own face when seeing their reflection.

Main idea: Recognizing that the reflection is oneself is evidence of mirror self-recognition and a developing sense of self.

Independent self-construal

Viewing yourself primarily as a unique individual with personal traits, goals, preferences, and achievements. Being yourself and being consistent is highly important.

Often associated with more individualistic cultural contexts.

Interdependent self-construal

Viewing yourself primarily through your relationships, social roles, and responsibilities to others. Group and other needs are most important and maintaining group harmony is paramount. 

Often associated with more collectivistic cultural contexts.

Introspection

Looking inward to examine your own thoughts, feelings, motives, and experiences.

Example: Asking yourself why you feel jealous.

Limitation: We are not always aware of the real causes of our behavior.

Self-perception theory

When our internal feelings or attitudes are unclear, we infer them by observing our own behavior, much as we infer other people's attitudes.

Example: You realize you enjoy volunteering because you repeatedly choose to do it.

Social Comparison Theory

The idea, associated with Leon Festinger, that people evaluate their abilities and opinions by comparing themselves with others.

• Upward comparison: Comparing yourself with someone who performs better than you

• Downward comparison: Comparing yourself with someone who performs worse than you.

Counterfactual thinking

Imagining alternatives to something that has already happened—thinking about what could have happened differently.

• Upward counterfactual: Imagining a better outcome. “If I had studied one more hour, I could have gotten an A.”

• Downward counterfactual: Imagining a worse outcome. “At least I passed; I could have failed.”

Self-esteem

A person's overall evaluation of their own worth. Can be high/low and stable/unstable. According to sociometer theory, we use self-esteem as a meter for how well we’re doing socially because we rely on others.

• People with high stability base their self-esteem on relatively constant internal factors. 

• People with low stability base their self-esteem on ever-changing situational factors.

Self-serving cognitions

Ways of thinking that protect or enhance our view of ourselves, such as taking credit for success while blaming outside circumstances for failure.

Example: “I got an A because I'm smart, but I got a C because the professor made the test unfair.”

Rationalizing

Thinking about things in a way that reflects positively (or less negatively) on you. 

Example: making excuses for your own behavior and blaming others

Self serving attributions

explanations for one’s successes that credit internal, dispositional factors, and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors.

False consensus effect

Overestimating the extent to which others agree with our opinions. Makes you feel better about a bad decision.

Better than average effect

people tend to rate themselves as better than average on any given dimension, even though this is impossible.

Implicit egotism

The tendency to automatically prefer things associated with the self. 

Self-handicapping

Creating or claiming obstacles that provide an excuse for possible failure and protect self-esteem.

Problems: We tend to fail more often than not, other people tend not to be fooled, and it’s hard to fool ourselves into thinking the obstacle was the only cause of the problem.

Example: If you fail after not studying, you can blame the lack of preparation instead of your ability

Person perception

The process of forming impressions and judgments about other people based on their appearance, behavior, expressions, and available information (reciprocal).

Example: Deciding that someone is friendly because they smile and initiate conversation.

Accuracy in evaluating others

The extent to which our impressions of another person match their actual characteristics or behavior. Accuracy can be difficult to establish because we cannot directly observe another person's internal traits.

Self-judgments

A person's own assessment of themselves.

Example: Does someone who describes themselves as outgoing also appear outgoing to others?

Consensus

The degree to which different observers agree about a person's characteristics.

Example: Several classmates independently describe the same student as talkative.

Behavior

Comparing impressions with the person's actual behavior or an objective behavioral measure.

Example: Testing whether someone judged to be sociable actually initiates conversations frequently.

Zero-Acquaintance Paradigm

A research approach in which people judge someone they have never met, often using a photograph, a brief video, or a short behavioral sample.

Main idea: Researchers test whether people can form impressions without prior interaction.

Extroversion Study:

Research using zero-acquaintance methods has examined whether observers can accurately judge extroversion from brief exposure to a person.

Main idea: People can sometimes make reasonably accurate judgments about extroversion from visible cues, such as facial expressions, movement, and speaking behavior.

Example: Observers watch a short video of someone and estimate how outgoing that person is.

Passini & Goldberg:

2 groups with 6-9 members rated one another “without any information” across a set of personality variables. Given that perceivers did not know each other, expectation was that they would be inaccurate.

• In actuality: Found consensus among perceivers.  Target’s self-ratings agreed with perceivers’ ratings

• First study to show accuracy at zero-acquaintance

Thin slices

Brief samples of a person's behavior that people use to form impressions or make judgments. Sometimes the information given is degraded (ex: audio tape with a content filter and characteristics of a video removed).

• Example: Judging a person's confidence from a 30-second video.

• Study: Participants were asked to make judgments about which candidate looks more competent just from their face. The results predicted election outcomes.

• Results: Thin-slice information can be accurate if judgments are fast/automatic, but if people think about the judgments too much, accuracy goes down. Thin slices are also situationally bound. 

Attribution Theory

The study of how people explain the causes of behavior.

• Internal (dispositional) attribution: Explaining behavior through personality, attitudes, or traits.

  • Example: “She was late because she is irresponsible.”

• External (situational) attribution: Explaining behavior through circumstances or environmental factors.

  • Example: “She was late because the bus broke down.”

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

The tendency to overemphasize personality or internal causes and underestimate situational influences when explaining other people's behavior.

• Example: Assuming a student is lazy because they fall asleep in class without considering that they worked a night shift.

• Key point: The bias is especially associated with judgments of other people, not necessarily judgments of ourselves.

Castro Study

Refers to the classic Castro speech experiment associated with Lee Ross, participants read or heard a speech supporting or opposing Fidel Castro and were told that the speaker had either freely chosen their position or had been assigned it.

• Observers still tended to infer the speaker's genuine attitude even when they knew the position had been assigned.

• Main idea: People may underestimate situational constraints and overestimate personal attitudes when explaining behavior.

Actor-Observer Effect

 The tendency to explain our own behavior in terms of situations but other people's behavior in terms of their personal traits.

• Example: “I snapped because I was stressed,” but “They snapped because they're rude.”

• Distinction from FAE: The actor-observer effect specifically compares explanations of our own behavior with explanations of others' behavior.

Bias Blind Spot:

The tendency to recognize biases in other people more readily than in ourselves.

• Example: Believing that other people are influenced by stereotypes while assuming your own judgments are completely objective.

Naïve Realism

The belief that we see the world objectively as it really is, that reasonable people should agree with us, and that people who disagree must be uninformed, irrational, or biased.

• Example: Assuming someone who disagrees with your political opinion must not understand the facts.

• Main idea: We often mistake our own interpretation of reality for reality itself.

Schemas

 Mental frameworks that organize knowledge and expectations about people, objects, roles, or situations.

• Example: A restaurant schema tells you to expect a menu, ordering food, eating, and paying a bill.

Self-schema

Beliefs and ideas you have about yourself that influence how you process information and behave. Example: Seeing yourself as athletic makes you pay attention to sports-related activities.

Social Role Schemas

Expectations about how people should behave based on their social roles. Example: Expecting a teacher to explain lessons and help students learn.

Personality Schemas

Beliefs about the traits and characteristics associated with a person or personality type. Example: Expecting an outgoing person to enjoy socializing and meeting new people.

Event Schemas/Scripts

Mental frameworks for the typical sequence of events in a familiar situation. Example: Knowing that at a restaurant, you usually order food, eat, and then pay the bill.

Stereotypes

Generalized beliefs about the characteristics of people belonging to a particular social group. Example: Assuming that older adults are bad with technology, even though this is not true of everyone in that group.

Attraction

The positive feelings or interest that draw people toward one another, potentially leading to friendship, romantic relationships, or other social connections.

Proximity

Physical closeness or the likelihood that people will encounter one another frequently.

• Why it matters: Repeated contact creates opportunities for interaction and relationship formation.

• Example: Students who live in the same dorm or attend the same classes may become friends.

Intensification Hypothesis

The idea that proximity and repeated interaction can intensify feelings toward another person, whether positive or negative.

• Example: Spending more time with a friendly classmate may strengthen your liking for them, while frequent conflict with a neighbor may intensify dislike.

Festinger, Schachter, & Back (1950) Study

A classic study of friendship formation among residents of a married-student housing complex at MIT.

• Findings: Friendships were more likely to develop between people who lived physically close to one another. The location of apartments and pathways also influenced who encountered whom.

• Main idea: Physical proximity and opportunities for repeated interaction influence friendship formation

What are the 4 factors that influence attraction?

Familiarity, similarity, reciprocity, social support

Familiarity

Knowing or being exposed to a person, object, or stimulus through previous encounters.

• Example: Recognizing a classmate because you have seen them around campus repeatedly.

Mere Exposure Effect

The tendency to develop a more positive attitude toward something simply because we have encountered it repeatedly.

• Example: A song that initially seems ordinary becomes more enjoyable after repeated listening.

• Key distinction: Familiarity often increases liking, but repeated exposure does not guarantee attraction; negative experiences can produce the opposite effect.

Similarity

The extent to which two people share characteristics, attitudes, values, interests, or backgrounds.

• Example: Two students become friends because they enjoy the same music and share similar goals.

• Main idea: Similarity often encourages attraction because it can create validation, comfort, and easier interaction.

Matching Hypothesis

The idea that people tend to form romantic relationships with others who are similar to them in social desirability, particularly physical attractiveness.

• Example: People may be more likely to pursue relationships with partners they perceive as being in a similar range of attractiveness.

Reciprocity

The tendency to like people who show that they like us.

• Example: You become interested in someone after discovering that they enjoy talking to you.

• Why it matters: Mutual liking can reduce uncertainty and make relationships feel safer.

Social Support

The emotional, informational, or practical assistance people receive or believe they can receive from others.

• Received social support: The actual help or assistance a person receives.

• Perceived social support: A person's belief that support is available if needed.

  • More important than received social support.

Quantity vs. Quality of social support:

Both are important!

Friendship’s impact on mental health

Having a few strong friendships can have a significant impact on protecting one’s mental & physical health.

Love (3 Types)

A common three-part classification in social psychology distinguishes liking (intimacy), infatuation (passion), and empty love (commitment). 

Triangular theory of love:

Intimacy, passion, and commitment on the vertices of the triangle

• Intimacy + passion = romantic love

• Commitment + intimacy = companionate love

• Passion + commitment = fatuous love

Time Course of Romantic Relationships

As time goes on, passionate love lessens, and companionate love increases. 

Predictors of Stable Marriage

• Older when married

• Parents in stable marriages

• Educated & have a stable job/income

• Religious commitment

Predictors of Break-ups: 

Gottman’s “Four Horseman” of the relationship apocalypse:

• Criticism

• Verbal Contempt

• Defensiveness

• Stonewalling