Psy 102 Quiz 1

Kurt Lewin

Argued that behavior is a function of both the person (traits) and the environment (norms,

expectations) — the person and situation are interrelated, not separable.

Situationism

The view that situational forces are often more powerful drivers of behavior than

personality. “Often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he

finds himself that determines how he will act” (Milgram, 1974)

Hindsight bias

People exaggerate, after the fact, how much they could have predicted an outcome in

advance (“I knew it all along”).

The Correlational Method

Assesses the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables.

Problem 1 – Bidirectionality

a correlation doesn't tell you which variable caused which. E.g., a positive correlation between happiness and health could mean happiness improves health, OR health improves happiness

Third-variable problem

an unmeasured confound could be causing both variables. E.g., wealth could independently cause both greater happiness and better health

Manipulation

the researcher experimentally manipulates an independent variable (IV) and

measures its effect on a dependent variable (DV)

Random assignment

participants are assigned to conditions independently of any of their own characteristics, which rules out confounds and supports causal conclusions

Independent Variable (IV)

The variable the researcher manipulates

Dependent Variable (DV)

The variable the researcher measures, expected to change as a result of the IV.

Archival data

existing real-world records - e.g., yearbook photos, criminal-offense rates in an area.

Behavioral

directly observed behavior - e.g., choices made, reaction time.

Self-report

participants report on themselves - e.g., self-reported emotions, questionnaires.

Physiological

bodily measures - peripheral (e.g., heart rate, skin conductance) and central/brain (e.g., fMRI, EEG).

External validity

Whether a study's manipulation and findings generalize beyond the lab

Replication crisis

A large-scale reproducibility check found that only about 36% of original psychology studies produced the same significant result when independently replicated, raising concerns about how reliable some published findings are.

Implicit attitudes

Attitudes that operate at an unconscious level -- involuntarily formed, and typically

unknown to the person who holds them.

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Measures implicit attitudes via reaction time -- how quickly a person can pair two concepts together (faster pairing = stronger implicit association).

Theory of Planned Behavior

Attitudes are more likely to predict behavior when these conditions hold:

• People believe others approve of the behavior (subjective norms).

• People perceive control over performing the behavior (perceived behavioral control)

Three Elements of Persuasion

• Who?: the Source

• What?: the Message

• To whom?: the Audience

Source characteristics

Attractiveness, similarity to the audience, credibility (expertise + trustworthiness), and perceived motivation (does the source seem to have an agenda?).

The sleeper effect

A persuasive message from an unreliable/low-credibility source can have a delayed effect - changing attitudes later, after the source is forgotten but the message content remains.

Fear appeals

A strong fear appeal paired with clear instructions for what to do produces the greatest

behavior change; fear alone, without actionable instructions, is far less effective

Door-in-the-Face technique

Making a large request first (expected to be refused), then following with a smaller request -- the smaller request is more likely to be accepted than if asked alone (Cialdini et al., 1975).

Twenty Statements Test (TST)

A measure of self-concept, participants complete “I am ___” twenty times; the most frequent/accessible answers reveal the most central parts of their self-concept.

Self-Referential Processing, Rogers et al. (1977)

Participants were given a list of words to recall. Information related to one's self-schema is

remembered better than information unrelated to the self, the “self-reference effect.”

Independent view of self

emphasis on one's own internal thoughts, feelings, and actions. Associated with individualism. Western cultures and those strongly influenced by them.

Interdependent view of self

emphasis on one's relationships with others; thoughts, feelings, and actions are seen as dependent on other people. Associated with collectivism, common in parts

of Asia, Africa, and Central/South America.

Greater exposure to Western culture is associated with a more independent self-construal.

Nylon stockings study

Classic demonstration that people often don't have real insight into what caused their own behavior. When asked why they chose as they did, they confabulate a plausible-sounding explanation rather than reporting the true (situational) cause

Self-Enhancement Processes

Processes that build or protect self-esteem

Basking in Reflected Glory (BIRG)

associating ourselves with successful others to maintain or enhance our own self-view. (Self-Enhancement Process)

Cutting Off Reflected Failure (CORF)

distancing ourselves from others who fail or have low status, to protect our own self-view. (Self-Enhancement Process)

Self-serving bias

attributing our successes to our own effort and traits, but our failures to the

circumstances (Self-Enhancement Process)

Self-Perception Theory (Bem, 1972)

When our internal states are uncertain, we infer our own attitudes by observing our own behavior, the same way we'd infer someone else's attitude from

watching them

The Spotlight Effect (Gilovich et al., 2000)

Demonstrated with an embarrassing-t-shirt study: people wildly overestimate how much others notice them (spotlight effect).

Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954; Wheeler et al., 1982)

We learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to other people, especially similar others

Basic Emotions Theory

Ekman lived among the Fore, an isolated group in Papua New Guinea with no prior exposure to film, magazines, or cameras. He told them short stories and had them point to the matching Western facial expression. The Fore matched faces to stories well above chance, landmark evidence that certain facial expressions of emotion are universal, not culturally learned.

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

The idea that our facial muscle movements themselves can generate or intensify the corresponding emotional experience: feedback runs from face to feeling, not just feeling to face

“Emotion seeds” effect

Context shapes what emotion we perceive in an otherwise ambiguous face,

the same facial expression can be read differently depending on the surrounding information.

Cross-Cultural Display Rules

When participants watched an emotionally stressful film alone vs. with an authority figure present in the room: Japanese participants masked negative expressions with smiles far more than American

participants did when the authority figure was present
In judging others' emotions, American judgments leaned heavily on the central person's face alone,

while Japanese judgments shifted more toward the emotions of the people surrounding that person -- a

cultural difference in how much context is weighted when reading emotion.

Emotional contagion — the Facebook experiment

In a large-scale field experiment, users' subsequent posts shifted to emotionally match the content they'd been shown in their feed, demonstrating that emotional states can spread through a social network

Affective forecasting — dorm assignment study (Dunn, Wilson, & Gilbert, 2003)

People are often inaccurate at predicting their own future emotional reactions; students substantially overestimated how much their long-term happiness would depend on which dorm they were assigned to.

Attribution

How people explain the causes of behavior.

Dispositional (internal) attribution

Attributing behavior to internal characteristics e.g., ability, personality, mood, or effort

Situational (external) attribution

Attributing behavior to external factors e.g. the environment, other

people, luck.

The Rational Scientist

people make attributions based on rational, scientific-like cause-effect analyses (Competing Hypothesis)

The Cognitive Miser

rational and logical thinking is effortful; with limited attention and time, we look for any opportunity to avoid effortful thought (Competing Hypothesis)

Kelley's Covariation Model — The Three Cues

People make attributions based on how a behavior varies across people and situations

Consensus

Do other people do this in this situation? High consensus → situational attribution.

Low consensus → dispositional attribution. (Three Cues)

Distinctiveness

Does the person usually behave similarly across different situations? High distinctiveness → situational attribution. Low distinctiveness → dispositional attribution (Three Cues)

Consistency

Does the person usually do this behavior in this situation? Low consistency →

some combination of situational and dispositional attribution. High consistency → either definitely

situational or definitely dispositional, depending on the other two cues (Three Cues)

The Castro Study, Jones & Harris (1967)

Participants read a pro- or anti-Castro essay supposedly written by a fellow student, who either freely chose their position or was assigned it (no choice). DV: how much participants thought the writer personally supported Castro. Predicted (if Rational Scientist): the two conditions' ratings should converge in the no-choice condition, since everyone knows the writer had no say. Actual result: pro-Castro essay writers were still rated as more genuinely pro-Castro than anti-Castro essay writers, even in the no-choice condition. People under-correct for a known, explicit situational constraint.

The Actor Study

Participants watched the same actress play either a heroic character or a villainous character in one of two films, then all watched the same real public-service ad in which she asked viewers to donate to a children's hospital charity. Participants who'd seen her play the villain generated more negative thoughts about the charity ad than those who'd seen her play the hero, even though everyone knew the roles were fictional

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

The tendency to overestimate dispositional factors and underestimate situational factors in attributions of people's behavior.

Perceptual Salience

People are often the focus of attention, not the situation, we pay more attention to the person than to their surrounding context.

Taylor & Fiske (1975) showed the importance of perceptual salience: two students had a “get

acquainted” conversation while six observers sat in different positions and were asked who led the

conversation. Observers rated whichever person they could see best (faced most directly) as more

causally influential, even though every observer watched the identical conversation.

Exchange and Communal Relationships, Clark & Mills (1979)

• Exchange Relationships: benefits given according to equity, contributions tracked and

balanced, reciprocity is expected; e.g., coworkers and acquaintances.

• Communal Relationships: benefits given according to need, no tracking of who owes what;

e.g., family, friends, romantic partners.

Harlow's Monkey Experiment, Nature of Love (1958)

• Wire mother: bare wire frame, holds the bottle.

• Cloth mother: wire frame wrapped in cloth, no bottle.

Contact comfort beat calories — infant monkeys preferred the cloth mother despite the wire mother

providing food, showing attachment isn't just about feeding

Three Defining Functions of Attachment

• Proximity seeking: you want to be nearby.

• Safe haven: you would turn to this person if things go bad, to seek support.

• Secure base: encourages you to explore and reach your potential.

Strange Situation Task, Mary Ainsworth (1978) — Three Patterns of Reaction

• Secure: Upset at separation, actively seeks contact at reunion, settles, returns to play.

• Anxious: Very distressed, then clingy and angry at reunion, very hard to soothe.

• Avoidant: Little visible distress, ignores or turns away from caregiver at reunion

Relationship Initiation — Three Factors That Increase Interpersonal Attraction

• Propinquity: the tendency for people to form friendships or romantic relationships with those whom they encounter often.

• Physical Attractiveness

• Similarity

The Person Next Door, Festinger, Schachter, & Back (1950)

Classic proximity study — the study most associated with the propinquity effect.

Physical Attractiveness

• Facial Symmetry

• Averageness, Langlois & Roggman (1990): Digitally averaged faces together — the more

faces in the composite, the more attractive it was rated

Determinants of Commitment — The Investment Model of Commitment (Rusbult, 1983)

• Satisfaction: satisfaction with the rewards one expects or receives in a relationship.

• Comparison level for alternatives: the rewards one believes one could attain in an alternative relationship or not being in a relationship at all.

• Investments: level of resources put into that relationship; increases costs of withdrawing from the relationship.

Break-ups: Gottman's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Gottman & Levenson (1992): Four behaviors most detrimental to relationships while resolving a conflict

• Criticism: attacking the partner's character rather than the behavior; global, blaming (e.g.,

“you're just selfish”).

• Defensiveness: self-protection through excuses, righteous indignation, or playing the victim; reverses blame, refuses any share of responsibility.

• Contempt: claiming moral superiority over one's partner; sarcasm, name-calling, mimicking or using body language such as eye-rolling or scoffing.

• Stonewalling: withdrawing from the interaction; silence, looking away, shutting down, leaving; typically arrives late in conflict, after physiological flooding.