Final Social Psych

social psychology

• scientific study how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real/imagined presence of other people

evolutionary psychology

• genetic factors that have evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection

power of the social situation

• people’s behaviors are influenced by the social environment, but many people don’t wanna believe this

fundamental attribution error

• tendency to explain our own and other people’s behavior entirely in terms of personality traits

• this underestimates power of social influence

how does social psychology differ from personality psychology

• personality → explains behavior from character traits

• social → power of the social situation

what is construal

• the ways people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world

• social psychologists say that this is more influential that the situation itself

what are the two basic human motives that shape how we construe a situation?

• self-esteem motive: the need to feel good about ourselves

• social cognition motive: need to be more accurate

what’s self-esteem motive

• need to see ourselves as good

social cognition motive

• need to gain accurate understanding of the world to make effective decisions

what are two main reasons social psychologists want to understand social influence

• curiosity: want to understand human social behavior

• social application: many want to contribute to the solution of social problems

sigmund freud

• influential towards how people perceived psychology

• focus on the individual

BF skinner

• behavior

• focus on the environment

• external factors; reward/punishment

kurt lewin

• behavior is a function of both a person and their environment

• B = f(PE)

gesalt psychology

• the subjective experience of a phenomenon is more important than the objective reality of it

naive realism

• the belief that one’s perception (construal) reflects reality

Vallone, Ross, and Lepper (Hostile Media Phenomenon)

• biased perception of media bias in the arab-israeli conflict

• both watched the same new reports and perceived it as bias against their own side

Liberman, Samuels, and Ross (Prisoner’s Dilemma)

• people have to make a choice — whether they are cooperating or competing (defect) with a partner

• told them it was either called wall street vs. community

  • wall street — not as cooperative

  • community — cooperative

• evidence of construal can affect people’s behavior

external validity

• how well a result generalize to other situations/people

psychological realism

• extent to which the experiment is similar to how you would react to the situation in the real world

field experiment

• an experiment conducted in a natural setting rather than a lab

• this is done to increase external validity (how well it generalizes to people/situations)

replication

• repeating a study in different settings/populations to see if the results are legit

what are the three research designs

• observational method — describe social behavior

• correlational method — predict social behavior

• experimental method — answer causal questions

observational method (describing social behavior)

• observe people and record their behavior

• includes ethnography

  • observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions)

• archival analysis

  • examine archives

correlational method

• two variables are measured to see the relationship between them

• a limit is that correlation does not equal causation

experimental method

• researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions to make sure it’s similar except for the IV

• internal validity

  • conditions are same

• external validity

  • increase realism

• also accomplished by replicating

  • different populations/people

difference between IV and DV

• IV → researchers vary to see if it has a causal effect

  • ex: how much TV kids watch

• DV → what researchers measure to see if its affected

  • ex: how aggressive the kids are

cross cultural research

• research with different cultures to see whether the interests are present in both cultures or specific to the culture they were raised in

how do social psychologists ensure safety of their participants while testing social behavior?

• having the IRB approve their studies in advance

• consent forms

• debrief after about the purpose of the study

applied research

• studies designed to solve a particular social problem

basic dilemma of the social psychologist

• trade off between internal and external validity

• difficult to do both at once

correlation coefficient

• statistical technique to see how well you can predict one variable from another

deception

• misleading participants about the true purpose of the study or the events that’ll happen

hindsight bias

• tendency for people to exaggerate after knowing that something happen, how much they could’ve predicted it before it happen

• ex: “I just knew they were bad news”

meta-analysis

• statistical technique that averages the result of the two or more studies to see if the IV is reliable

p-value

• how likely the results of their experiment happened by chance, not bc of the IV

• if the P is low, then she’s a Ho

  • ex: if it’s lower — the factors are due to chance, not the actual variable being studied

confirmation bias

• searching for/processing info in ways consistent with pre-existing beliefs

• ex: republicans are always gonna read fox-news

theory vs. hypothesis

• theory: set of principles that explain or predict observed events

• hypothesis: testing relationships that might exist between events

limits of observational method

• observational method doesn’t say “why”

• ex: watching people in public — you don’t rlly understand why they’re doing it

internal validity

• the only thing affecting the DV is the IV

• ex: if you didn’t get at least 7 hrs of sleep, we need to reschedule

random selection vs. assignment

• selection: random sample from the population

• assignment: randomly sorting this sample into groups

social cognition

• the way people think about themselves and the social world

  • how they select, remember and use social info

automatic thinking (automaticity)

• nonconscious, effortless, unintentional

types of automatic thinking

• schemas

• priming

• self-fulfilling prophecy

• heuristics

what does “people are cognitive misers” mean

• humans hoard mental resources

  • we want to spend little mental power

schemas

• mental structures for organizing our knowledge about the social world around themes in what they notice, think about, and remember

  • useful for reducing ambiguity about social world

which schemas do we use

• accessibility → forefront of our minds bc they relate to our current goals

• priming → recent experiences increase accessibility of schema

why could schemas be problematic

• cause self-fulfilling prophecies

  • an expectation about a person influences how we act towards them

how are schemas accessible (even when they’re not always appropriate)

• expertise shapes the way people interpret something

• goal state — the goal you’re trying to achieve

• very recent experiences

• past experiences

types of heuristics

• judgmental → mental shortcuts people use to make judgements quicker

• availability → base a judgement on how easy it can come to mind

• representativeness → classify something according to how similar it is to another case

• this can be misused because it can make faulty judgments

controlled thinking

• not automatic

• conscious, intention, voluntary, effortful

free will

• the more people believe in free will, the more willing they are to help others in need and less likely to engage in immoral actions

counterfactual reasoning

• a type of controlled thinking

  • people mentally change some aspects of the past as a way of imaging “what could’ve been”

planning fallacy

• producing faulty judgements and errors in prediction

analytic thinking style

• type of thinking to focus on objects without considering their surrounding context

• common in western cultures

base rate information

• info about the frequency of members of different categories in the population

holistic thinking style

• people focus on the overall context, specifically how they relate to each other

• common in east asian cultures

priming

• recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, concept, or goal

three main functions of a schema

• organize info

• direct attention

• influence memory/processing

Higgins, Rhloes, Jones Study (Priming & Self-fullfilling prophecies)

• participants formed positive/negative impressions of an ambigous person based on whether they had been primed with positive words (adventurous) or negative (reckless)

how do mind and body metaphors influence judgment (ex: clean room study)

• physical sensations can prime metaphors

• ex: smelling a clean room increase trust and willingness to donate to charity

  • clean is associated with morality

Rosenthal and Jacobson (Bloomer Study)

• teachers treated students labeled as bloomers:

  • more warmly

  • gave them more feedback

  • taught them more material

  • more chances to respond

what happens when ppl are given both base rate info and representativeness info

• people tend to overlook the base rate info and focus entirely on how representative a description is of a specific category

• ex: more lawyers than engineers

achoring/adjustment

• a judgment strategy where one adjusts their answer based on a starting value/example

• ex: using context from a question to help answer the question

cognitive dissonance

• the discomfort ppl feel when they hold two or more conflicting beliefs, attitudes, behaviors at the same time

two types of attributions

• internal attribution → behavior is a result of an internal characteristic (personal)

• external attribution → behavior is a result of an external factor (situational)

(causal) attribution

• how people explain the causes of behavior

nonverbal communication

• how to express emotions, attuides, and communicate personality traits

facial expression of emotion (type of nonverbal communication)

• affect blends → when one part of the face registers one emotion and another part registers a different emotion

• helps us develop empathy

culture (nonverbal communication)

• display rules → different to each culture and what emotions each person is suppose to show

• emblems → gestures that are culturally determined

first impressions

• form impressions of others based on face structure, possessions, attire, etc.

• they also pick up on meaningful info with long exposure to the targe in question

how do first impressions linger

• primacy effect — the first trait we see in someone influence our interpretation of later info

• belief perservance — clinging to conclusions even if there’s evidence that we should change our mind

covariation model

• observations of behavior across time, place, actors, and targets of their behavior

• how we choose either an internal or external attribution

• make choices by using consensus, distinctiveness info

fundamental attribution error

• tendency to believe that people’s behavior matches their dispositions

• people’s behavior has greater perceptual salience

two-step attribution process

• initial and automatic attribution tends to be dispositional but it can be altered by situational info

self-serving attributions

• when people make internal attrbutions for their own successes and external for their failures

bias blind spot

• we think other ppl are more sus to attributional biases in their thinking than we are

belief in a just world

• defensive attribution where people assume bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good ppl

belief perseverance

• sticking with an initial judgment even when there’s new info that we should reconsider

consensus information

• extent to which other people behave the same way towards the same stimulus as the actor does

decode

• interpret meaning of a nonverbal behavior other ppl express

• ex: patting someone on the back was condescending, not kind

display rules

• culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are good to display

distinctiveness information

• extent to which one particular actor behaves in the same way to different stimuli

emblems

• nonverbal gestures that have well definitions within a given culture

• having direct verbal translations

• ex: thumbs up sign

encode

• express nonverbal behavior

• ex: smiling

external attribtion

• someone acts a certain way bc of the situation and assuming others will act the same

internal attribution

• someone is acting a certain way bc of their personality, character, etc

attributional patterns

• if consistency, consensus, and distinctiveness is high then we make external attributions

• if consistency is high, but the rest are low — internal attributions

Jones and Harris (Castro Essay)

• participants read essays (pro/anti castro) and had to judge the writer’s true personality/attitude

• showed fundamental attribution error

  • participants disregarded the external attribution (being forced to write it) and assumed the behavior reflected the writer’s internal attitude

self concept

• overall set of beliefs we have about our own personal attributes

independent self vs. interdepedent self

• independent self → self defined in terms of one’s own internal thoughts/feelings (western)

• interdependent self → self defined in terms of one’s relationships to others (asia)

introspection

• looking inward and examining our thoughts, feelings, and motives

  • valuable but won’t tell us everything about ourselves

self perception

• when attitudes, feelings, and other aspects of self-concept are uncertain, we infer their states by observing our own behaviors

• from attribution theory (how we explain others’ behavior)

• ex: i keep ordering salads, maybe im vegan

Fazio, Efferin, and Falender (Introversion/extraversion study)

• p’s answered questions that tapped into either introversion or extraversion

  • extroverted → how would you make a party more fun

  • introverted → what do you dislike about parties

• people infer their own personality traits based on the thoughts made accessible (self-perception)

intrinsic motivation

• engaging in an activity for enjoyment — no pressure

external motiviation

• engaging in an activity to gain external rewards or avoid punishment

over justification effect

• people see their behavior driven by extrinsic reasons and underestimate intrinsic reasons

fixed vs. growth mindset

• fixed — ablities are set/stable

• growth — abilities are malleable

  • always potential to improve

misattribution of arousal

• people’s inference about the origin of their emotional response is faulty

  • talks about how we understand our emotional state

social comparison

• the idea we learn about our own ability by comparing ourselves to other people

downward, lateral, and upward social comparison

• downward → want to feel better about ourselves ab people who are worse

• lateral → compare to ppl that are similar to you

• upward → motivated to improve by comparing ourselves to ppl who are better