Social Psychology Exam 1

Social psychology

The scientific study of the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of individuals in social situations

4 themes that permeate social psychology

-The Power of the Situation

-The Role of Construal

-Automatic vs. Controlled Processing

-Nature vs. Nurture

What should scientific research be?

-Empirical

-Objective

-Cumulative

-Possible to replicate

What are two different goals of social psychology?

-Knowledge and understanding (basic research)

-Solutions (applied research)

Theory

overarching framework (how and why)

Hypothesis

specific, testable research question

Experiment

manipulates variables to prove cause and effect

Correlation

measures existing relationships without manipulation

Positive correlation

both variables increase or decrease together

Negative correlation

variables go in opposite directions

Stronger correlations are indicated by

numbers closer to 1 or -1

Observer bias

experimenter has preconceived ideas

Subject bias

participants may develop preconceived ideas

Social-Desirability Bias

participants want to present themselves in a favorable light

3 ways to ensure that deception does not cause unnecessary distress to our participants

-Institutional Review Board approval

-Informed consent

-Debriefing

Self-fulfilling prophecy

tendency for people to act in ways that cause their expectations to be confirmed

Confirmation bias

People more readily, and robustly seek out evidence that would support the proposition rather than evidence that would contradict the proposition

Overconfidence bias

tendency for individuals to have greater confidence in their judgments and decisions than their actual accuracy merits

Order effects

tendency to remember first items on a list or last items on a list

Spin framing

information is “spun” or altered to be more appealing

Positive/Negative framing

presenting either the positive or negative aspects of the same item

Schemas

mental structures to organize knowledge about the world (ex: expectations and scripts)

Top-down processing

brain uses schema to fill in missing details

Bargh, Chen, & Burrows (1996) study

showed that non-conscious activation of traits and stereotypes can automatically trigger matching social behaviors without a person’s awareness or intent

Heuristics

automatic mental shortcuts to make quick and efficient judgments

Representativeness heuristic

classifying something according to how similar it is to a typical case

Anchoring/adjustement heuristic

anchoring judgements off a starting point, then adjusting one’s answer from there

Availability heuristic

judgement based on ease of bringing something to mind

Internal attribution

person is cause of behavior

External attribution

situation is cause of behavior

3 targets of attribution

-Actor

-Entity

-Circumstance

3 determinants of attributions

-Consensus

-Consistency

-Distinctiveness

Stable attributional factor

unchanging over time

Unstable attributional factor

temporary

Global attributional factor

affects wide variety of different situations

Specific attributional factor

affects specific, isolated event

Fundamental attribution error

overestimate internal attribution for other's’ behavior even when there is situational evidence

Actor-observer effect

when comparing our own vs. others’ behavior, we believe our behavior is due to external attributions and others to internal attributions

Self-serving bias

people are inclined to attribute failures to external circumstances and successes to themselves

5 components of emotion

-Appraisal process (primary and secondary)

-Physiological responses

-Expressive behavior

-Subjective feelings

-Action tendencies

Appraisal process

patterns of construal in relation to goals

How do we express emotions?

-Facial expressions

-Emblems

-Body position

-Eye gaze

-Tone of voice

Macro facial expressions

½ to 4 sec

Micro facial expressions

1/15 to 1/25 of a sec

False expressions

deliberate stimulation of an emotion not actually being felt (ex: masked expressions)

Emblems

nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions (ex: thumbs up)

Universal emotions

-Anger

-Disgust

-Fear

-Happiness

-Sadness

-Surprise

-Contempt

3 components of Darwin’s evolution hypothesis

-Universality of expression

-Similar expression in other species

-Emotional expression among the blind

Cultural differences in emotion

-Anger more focal in honor-based cultures

-Shame more focal in interdependent cultures

-Emotional accents

-Emblems

How do emotions affect our social cognition?

-Perceive and construe events in ways consistent with current emotion

-Positive emotions = more flexible thinking

-Morality

3 components of attitudes

-Affective

-Cognitive

-Behavioral

Implicit Associations Test (IAT)

way of measuring implicit attitudes; how strongly someone associates positive or negative things with certain attitude objects

Why aren’t attitudes always great predictors of behavior?

-Attitudes also involve other conflicting attitudes, social norms, consequences, and individual factors such as mental energy

Attitudes can be inconsistent

-Attitudes can be general or specific

Conditions for attitudes that are most likely to predict behavior:

-Attitude should be same level of specificity as behavior

-Accurate measure

-Attitude is strong

Cognitive dissonance

tensions when attitudes and behaviors are inconsistent

3 ways to reduce cognitive dissonance

-Change the behavior

-Change the attitude

-Justify the behavior by adding a new attitude

Conditions when cognitive dissonance is likely:

-Behavior was freely chosen

-Behavior was not sufficiently justified

-Behavior had negative consequences

ELM model

-High EL - central route - stronger change

-Low EL - peripheral route - weaker change

HSM model

-Systematic - stronger change

-Heuristic - weaker change

Source characteristics that affect persuasiveness

-Attractiveness

-Credibility

-Certainty

Message characteristics that affect persuasiveness

-Quality

-Vividness

-Fear

Target characteristics that affect persuasiveness

-Need for cognition

-Mood

-Age

-Audience size/diversity