Chapter 1 - introducing social psychology

Psychologist

Must understand and predict human behavior

Social psychology

The scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real, or imagined presence of other people

Social influence

Can be described as direct attempts at persuasion, whereby one person deliberately tries to change another person’s behavior or attitude

Social influence

The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior

Empirical questions

The answers to these should be derived from experimentation or measurement rather than by personal opinion

Evolutionary psychology

Attempts to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved overtime according to the principles of natural selection

Individual differences

The aspects of people’s personalities that make them different from others

Personality psychologist

Work on explaining people’s behavior in terms of their traits by generally focusing on the aspects of people’s personalities that make them different from others

Social psychologists

Believe that explaining behavior primarily through personality traits ignores the role of social influence

construal

How people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world

The individual within a group, institution, or society

The level of analysis in the group, institution, or society at large, whereas the level of analysis and social psychology is…

Biology and neuroscience

The study of genes, hormones, or physiological processes in the brain

Personality psychology

The study of the characteristics that make individuals, unique and different from one another

Social psychology

The Study of the psychological processes, people have in common that make them susceptible to social influence

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people‘s behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors.

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to explain our own and other people‘s behavior entirely in terms of personality traits and to underestimate the power of social influence and the immediate situation

Behaviorism

A school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment

Social psychology

The Study of the psychological processes, people have in common that make them susceptible to social influence

Sociology

The study of groups, organizations, and societies, rather than individuals

When behavior is followed by a reward, it is likely to continue; when behavior is followed by a punishment, it is likely to stop, or become extinguished

What does behaviorism say about the reinforcing properties of the environment?

Likely to continue

When behavior is followed by a reward (such as money, attention, praise, or other benefits), it is………

Likely to stop, or become extinguished

When behavior is followed by a punishment (such as pain, loss, or angry shouts), it is……..

Gestalt Psychology

A school of psychology, stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in peoples minds rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object

The Gestalt

Whole

Gestalt psychology

This says that one must focus on the phenomenology of the perceivers on how an object appears to them instead of on its objective components

Naïve realism

The conviction that we perceive things “As they really are“, Underestimating how much we are interpreting or “spinning” what we see.

The need to feel good about ourselves and the need to be accurate

What are the two central motives in steering people’s construals?

Self-esteem

Peoples evaluations of their own self-worth that is the extent to which they view themselves as good competent and decent

Social cognition

The study of how people think about themselves in the social world, and how people select interpret remember and use information to make judgment and decisions.

Those from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic backgrounds

What are weird participants?

cross cultural research

Sharpens theories, either by demonstrating the universality or by demonstrating the ways in which culture influences people’s construals of themselves and the social world