Social Psychology: Chapter 1-3 Review

Social Psychology

Social Psychology

Scientific study of how people think about, influence and relate to one another

Social Thinking

Self perception, Perception of others, What we believe, Judgements we make, Our Attitudes

Social Influence

Culture, Pressures to conform, Persuasion, Groups of people

Social Relations

Prejudice, Aggression, Attraction & Intimacy, Helping

Beliefs and Values

Lens through which we view the objective world

Intuition

"Fast and Frugal" judgements; unconscious information processing; the act or faculty of knowing/sensing without the use of rational processes

External factors that shape behavior

Social context, Culture, Personal attitudes/dispositions

Social Neuroscience

interdisciplinary field that explores the neural bases of social and emotional processes and behaviors and how these processes and behaviors affect our brains and biology

Bystander Apathy

the more people who ignores a helpee, the less likely someone is to actually help that person

Sociology

Different from social psych because it studies people in groups not group pressures on the individual

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to judge other's negative behavior as due to internal causes but our own negative behavior as due to external forces

Hindsight Bias

The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it

Correlational

Naturally occurring relationships among variables, typically with no IV or DV, that provides direction and magnitude of reliable predictions not causality

Experimental

Searches for cause and effect using random assignment, the elimination of extraneous variables and the control of IV to prove causality

Survey Research

Researchers can use the sample data to make inferences about the population

Stratified Random Sampling

Using grouping/strata, researchers get a sample that reflects the percentage of specific groups in the population as a whole

Problems with Survey Research

Sample is often unrepresentative of the population, the question order influences responses, phrasing of questions and response options influences responses

Mundane Realism

The extent to which an experiment is similar to real-life situations

Experimental Realism

The degree to which an experiment absorbs and involves its participants

Deception

A last resort strategy used for socially based research

Demand Characteristics

Cues as to what is expected; tips on what the study is about

Institutional Review Board (IRB)

Group made of different professors and community members to evaluate research proposals involving students

Spotlight Effect

The belief that others are paying more attention to our appearance and behavior than they actually are

Self Image

How you see yourself

Self Concept

Comprehensive evaluation of self and how a person sees, evaluates and feels about themselves

Self Schema

Set of beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information

Self Reference Effect

The tendency for people to better remember information when it has been encoded in reference to the self

Development of the Social Self

The roles we play, the social identities we form, the comparisons we make with others, how other people judge us, & the surrounding culture

Independent Self

Individualistic Cultures; priority given to individual goals

Interdependent Self

Collectivist Cultures; priority given to group goals

When predicting our behavior, we are

Overly Optimistic

Impact Bias

Overestimate the impact of emotion-causing events

Immune Neglect

Underestimate the speed and strength of our psychological immune system

Dual Cognitive Processing

Theory of human cognition that studies interaction between conscious and unconscious thought

Self Esteem

Our sense of self worth, can be based in different socially dependent domains

Bottom-up Self Esteem

Success in specific domains leads to high global self esteem

Top-down Self Esteem

Use general evaluation of self to develop specific view of self

Threats to Self Esteem

Failure, social rejection, upward comparisons, labelling

Terror Management Theory

When people are reminded of their eventual death, it negatively impacts Self Esteem

Narcissism

Inflated sense of self worth, arrogant and often have headline intelligence, attention seeking, low empathy, likely to retaliate if criticized

Headline Intelligence

Intellect that is only skin-deep, not content specific

Self Efficacy

Sense of confidence in our ability to complete a task

Locus of Control

Extent to which we perceive life outcomes as externally or internally controlled

Learned Helplessness

Perceived sense of no control after repeated failures

Characteristics of Learned Helplessness

Constant exposure to failure, modelling, labelling

Self Serving Bias

Tendency to perceive yourself favorably

Better than Average Bias

Type of Self Serving Bias that leads to perception that you are better than the mean

Unrealistic Optimism

Type of Self Serving Bias that has elevated sense of future accomplishments

Defensive Pessimism

Type of Self Serving Bias that anticipates problems and uses one's anxieties to motivate effective action

False Consensus Effect

Type of Self Serving Bias that overestimates how common our opinions and undesirable behaviors are

False Uniqueness Effect

Type of Self Serving Bias that underestimates how common our abilities and successful behaviors are

Self Handicapping

Protecting one's self-image with behaviors that create a handy excuse for later failure

Impression Management

The attempt by people to get others to see them as they want to be seen

High Self Monitors

People who pay close attention to their own behavior and to others' reactions, adjusting their communication to create the desired impression

Low Self Monitors

People who pay little attention to responses others have to their behavior and act the same across situations

Priming

The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory

Embodied Cognition

Bodily sensations prime cognitive preferences and social judgements

Automatic Processing

System 1- Implicit, unconscious, fast, effortless, impulsive

Controlled Processing

System 2: Explicit, conscious, slow, deliberate

Overconfidence Phenomenon

The tendency to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs

Planning Fallacy

The tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task

Confirmation Bias

Tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Techniques to reduce Overconfidence Phenomena

Obtaining prompt feedback, listing at least one good reason why you're wrong

Heuristic

A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms

Representativeness Heuristic

Presumption that since something belongs to a certain group that it is resemblance of a typical member of that group

Availability Heuristic

Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory

Counterfactual Thinking

Imagining alternative scenarios/outcomes that might have happened but didn't

Illusory Thinking

Search for order in random events (ex full moon causing crime)

Illusory Correlation

Perception of a relationship where none exists

Illusion of Control

Perception that chance events are under our control (ex gambling, superstitions)

Mood

Colors interpretations of current experiences

Perception is influenced by

Beliefs, attitudes, values, preconceptions and expectations

Belief Perseverance

When beliefs remain after discrediting information is present (ex stereotyping and making exceptions)

Misinformation Effect

Erroneous information incorporated into memory (ex did you see the yield sign? versus did you see a sign?)

Backwards Reasoning

When a fact is based on what we now know/believe/feel

Past Attitudes

With attitude change, people say they "felt that way all along" BEFORE the change

Past Behaviors

Recalling more good versus bad past behaviors

Attribution Theory

How people explain behavior of themselves/others

Dispositional Attribution

Spontaneous trait inference is intrinsic to the person

Situational Attribution

Spontaneous inference of behavior is extrinsic of the person

Misattribution

Mistakenly attributing behavior to wrong source (ex they're into me versus they're just being polite)

Actor-observer Perspective

Attribution focus changes based on role: focusing on the individual or the environment

Self Fulfilling

Belief that lends to its own fulfilment

Behavioral Confirmation

Type of self fulfilling prophecy where expectations lead people to behave in ways that confirm existing expectations