PSYC140- Exam 1

What is Social Psychology

• how people and groups interact and why they are behaving the way they do

Who is Gordon Allport?

• Found that people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by prescence

  • Think of social media influencers and the influence they provide even digitally

Social Influence

• behavior affected by others

• changing yourself in order to accomodate to them

Social Cognition

• People think about other people

• Changing yourself based on how you interpret people percieving you

Social Interaction

• how are you interacting and why?

What is adjusting to Comfority?

• accept and shift to others opinions

  • adjusting behavior to concide with group consensus

What is Normative Social Influence?

• individuals desire to feel accepted to avoid rejection

What is Informational Social Influence?

• Social network that provides resources

  • not liking your peers but socializing with them for the benefit of answers 

What did the Milgram study consist of? 

• a shock based test 

• participants were told they were being shocked when they answered incorrectly but weren’t actually 

• they were psychologically inducing pain

• found that when an authoritative figure was near, the participants would comply more 

What is the scientific method?

• attempt to uncover lawful relationships amongst things

What are the steps to the scientific method?

1. Observe

2. Hypothesize why did this happen?

3. Create something that could be tested

4. Experiment

What did the Arson Mills experiment find?

• experiment approached to colleged aged women

• Cognitive Dissonance and Effort Justification:

  The study illustrated the principle of effort justification, a form of cognitive dissonance.

  • When people expend significant effort (like in a severe initiation) to achieve a goal and the goal turns out to be less desirable than expected (a boring discussion group), they experience cognitive dissonance.

  • To reduce this discomfort, they change their attitude to believe the goal is actually more valuable, thereby justifying the effort they put in

What is an independent variable?

factor that is changed and manipulated 

Why is random assignment in an experiment important?

• equal chance of any situation 

  • avoids biases 

What is social thinking?

How we perceive ourselves and others

Judgments we make, attitudes, and what we believe

• What is social inluencE?

Culture biology

• pressures to conform

• Persuation

• Groups of people

What is social relations ?

• prejudice

• Aggression

• Attraction

• Helping

What is correlational methods ?

• measure two results and if they are associated

• Is alcohol in aggressive behavior related

• Only testing what is associating and not manipulating data

What is longitudinal study?

Testing two or more variables measured over a long period of time

What is correlation coefficient?

Positive/negative or strong/weak

What is a third variable?

• two variables can be associated without any casual relationship

• Never perfect relationship because there’s always a third variable I can come into place

• Third variable is responsible for both variables being measured

What is an independent variable?

Manipulated variable

What is a dependent variable

Research measures affected by independent variable

What is internal validity?

• confidence that results were caused by manipulated variables, or independent variable

What are cofounds

Cofounder, third-party variables, in which anything in the data can be potentially affecting the control data

What is external validity?

• The degree that can generalized to other contacts, for example generalizing from communities

• One prime example could be the SONA studies conducted during freshman year. Would it make sense to generalize the results to an entire population?

What is an operational study?

Specific ways researches manipulate the variable

• providing questionaires, rating systems

What is a study contract?

How will researchers measure manipulate what they intend to consider

• the big five personality quiz surveys online test

What is Mundane realism?

• the extent in where real-life situations

• the degree of which the study can be generalized to other populations

What is experimental realism?

• focuses on the subjective experience and involvement of the participants '

• Stanford prison experiment

What is construct validity?

• How well researchers measure or manipulate the intended variable

• where the test actually assesses what its supposed to study

• ex- measuring this scale to a pre-exsisting one

What are key ethical concerns in social psych?

• harm to participants 

• comfort of patients 

What is institutional review board?

• committee that reveiws university research to make sure it is ethical

Informed consent

• must be provided to participants about the risks and benefits of the study

Debriefing

• informing participants about all aspects of the study AFTER the study is over

Replication

• if you re-do the study, will you get the same results? 

What is the red dot test?

• Apes were put to sleep and researchers placed a red dot to test if they were able to distinguish themselves (they did)

  • an ability of self 

What is self concept?

• beliefs on roles, traits, abilities, and experiences

What is an example of working self-concept?

• ability to shift yourself based on specific moments

  • changing your personality in a work environment

self complexity

• self aspects that intertwine and define you: being latina, passionate, an educator

  • unique, intersectionality

self concept clarity

• define who you are and values 

  • ex- you remain hopeful and happy in every situation

Self-verification

• others console and confirm in who you are as a person

• ex- you are extroverted

upward social comparison

• evaluating yourself by comparing yourself to others that seem better than you

• can be a source of motivation or self improvement

downward social comparison

• comparing yourself to someone less fortunate to boost your self esteem and feel better about your situation

better than average effect 

• people compare their abilities to the average person and see themselves as better 

What influence can culture have on our sense of self?

• inderdependent self concept- people identify themselves through relationships, social roles, and group memberships

• independent self concept- unique abilities, thoughts, and feelings

self esteem

• overall evalution one has on themselves

trait vs state self esteem

• trait is what you feel about yourself and self worth

• state is how you feel about yourself in the given moment; fluctuates over time

contingencies of self worth 

• sources of self esteem which differ from person to person overtime 

• ex- physical attractiveness, approvals, fitness, intelligence 

Sociometer theory

• Leary

• evolutionary metric for how we are doing socially

• self esteem is based by social interactions and desire to belong with acceptance