Social Psychology

What is social psychology

The study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another.
Social thinking, social influence, Social relations

Self-handicapping

A defense mechanism where individuals intentionally create obstacles to their own success to protect their self esteem.

False consensus effect

The tendency to overestimate the commonality of one’s opinions, attributes, and behaviors even the undesirable ones.

Social loafing

The tendency for individuals when in groups to work less hard than if they were working alone

WEIRD

Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.

This acronym describes a demographic that is often overrepresented in psychological research, potentially leading to biases in understanding human behavior.

5 Ethical rules

Informed consent

Honesty (unless deception is absolutely necessary for results).

Protect the participants and bystanders from physical and psychological harm

confidentiality

debriefing after the study.

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency for observers to overestimate dispositional influences on other’s behavior and underestimate situational influences on behavior.

False uniqueness effect

Tendency to underestimate the commonality of one’s abilities and one’s desirable or successful behaviors. Highlight how were unique

Self-efficacy

People’s beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives.

A sense that one is competent and effective

Self-esteem

Our overall self-evaluation our sense of self worth. Some domains include: academic, social, and vocational

Dual attitudes

Implicit: change slowly with practice that forms new habits

Explicit: may change with education

Immune effect

Tendency to neglect the speed and strength of the “psychological immune system” which enables emotional recovery and resilience after bad things happen.

Predicting feelings error

People have difficulty predicting the intensity and duration of future emotions

Planning fallacy

Tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task

Illusion of transparency

Tendency to believe that our concealed emotions will leak out and will be easily read by others (especially shame and guilt).

Narcissism

An inflated sense of self, including overconfidence.

Self serving bias

The tendency to view oneself favorably.
attribute success to internal factors “i worked hard”, and attribute failure to external factors “the prof is a hard grader”.

We all believe we are above average.

Self-schema

Beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information. the way you see the world is through you colored glasses.

Self-reference effect

Improved memory for information that has been processed with reference to the self, due to deeper organized encoding.

Self-influencing memory

We don’t remember yesterday accurately we remember it as it was self-related. what was important to us is remembered.

Hazel Markus-self

Modern self theory

that emphasizes the role of social contexts and cultural influences in shaping individual identity and self-concept. independent vs. interdependent.

We are at the center of our social worlds. we have improved memory for things that relate to us.

George Mead -Self

The Generalized other

internalized sense of the broader society, norms, values, and expectations that guide our behavior and shape our self-concept.

Imagine being in the middle of a huddle surrounded by people whose opinions matter to you.

Charles Cooley. Self

The looking glass self

We create our image (self-concept) based on how we imagine others see us.

William James. Self

The social self.

We cannot focus on everything at once so we split the universe into “me” and “not me”; then focus on the me related aspects.

people discriminate between their different selves. Myself as a student, myself as a friend, myself as a daughter, myself as other people see me.