social psyc exam 1 chap. 1

what is social psychology

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

What is the problem w relying on common sense or folk wisdom to understand social behavior? 

They often disagree w each other—ex: birds of a feather flock together (this makes sense—I normally gravatate to other girls that look like me) buttttt we’re also told that oppisistes attract, which can also be true. 

Another example: ‘distance makes the heart grow fonder’ and ‘out of sight out of mind’ 

How does social psychology differ from personality psychology? 

Personality psychology explains peoples behavior in terms of their traits and generally focuses on peoples individual differences  

How does social psychology differ from sociology?  

In sociology, the level of analysis is the group, institution, or society at large, whereas the level of analysis in social psychology is the individual within  the group, institution, or society 

What is the fundamental attribution error (FAE)? Give an example. 

The tendency to explain our own or other people’s behavior entirely in terms of personality traits and to underestimate the power of social influence and the immediate situation (instead of looking at the situations people are in or thinking about what else they may have going on, we only focus on their behavior in the moment) 

Describe the methodology and results of the study conducted by Liberman et al. How do their results illustrate the power of the situation? 

Researchers took people labled as either competitive or cooperative and split them into two mized groups, then had them participate in the same game, but changed the name of it. In the first group, the game was called ‘the wall street game’ and the second group it was called ‘the community game’.  

The results showed that 2/3 of participants in the wall street game responsed competively, whereas only 1/3 of participants in the community game responsed competitvely.  

Their results show that student’s alleged personality traits made  no measurable difference in the students behavior—the name of the game had the main effect.  

What is behaviorism? 

A kind of psychology trying to understand human behavior, only considering the reinforcing properites of the enviornment  

How might a behaviorist explain why most students choose to compete their homework assignments? 

A behaviorist might say that students choose to complete their homework because it is followed by a reward (a good grade lets them stay in good graces w their teachers, parents are proud of you and let you have sleep overs, etc...) so they’re likely to continue to keep doing their homework 

Why is behaviorism inadequate for fully understanding to social world? 

Because it does not concern cognition, thinking, and feeling --> they overlooked things thhat are vital to human experience. Most importantly, they overlooked the importance of how poeple interpret their enviornments  

What does constural mean?  

The way in which people percieve, comprehend, and interpret the social world  

What is naiive realism?  

We believe that our perception of the world is accurate, but it’s not! We perceive the world through the filter of our experience and beliefs (people can look at the same exact image or situation and see two completly different things)