UIUC Psych 201 Quiz 2

social cognition

the encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing of information in the brain which relates to members of same species

construals

impact how people process and remember social information differently, schemas influence our interpretation (construal) of information

snap judgments research

people tend to make very complex inferences about motives and personality based on very small amounts of information

pluralistic ignorance

misperception of a group norm that results from observing people who are acting at variance with their private beliefs out of a concern for the social consequences- actions that reinforce the erroneous group norm

Ash conformity study

people change their answers about which line is the longest to go along with what everyone else in the group says

self-fulfilling prophecy

a situation in which people have an expectation about what another person is like-->influences how they act toward that person, which --> causes the person to behave consistently with the original expectation, thus making the expectation come true!

ideological distortions

we want to foster certain beliefs or behaviors in others --> emphasis on some parts of a story, suppression or other parts, sometimes not so innocent (no well-written villain thinks they're the villain)

bad news bias

people believe that they are more likely to become victimized than they really are

negativity bias

we pay more attention to negative information than positive

primacy effect

info presented first has an overly strong influence on later judgments

recency effect

info presented last has an overly strong influence on later judgments

framing effect

the influence on judgment resulting from the way that information is presented

spin framing

changing the way something is phased/framed so that it looks more favorable or unfavorable

construal level theory

psychologically distant actions are thought about abstractly, whereas close actions are thought about concretely

confirmation bias

the tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that would support it

Lord experiment

pro and anti-death penalty Ps read one of the following: crime rates are not lower in states with the death penalty, but crime rates fell shortly after some states adopted the death penalty crime rates are lower in states with the death penalty, but crime rates did not fall shortly after some states adopted the death penalty

attention

schemas direct us to what is important and we ignore the rest

memory

we are more likely to remember the stimuli that caught our attention

schema

affect encoding of information- how information is filed away in memory, also affect the retrieval of info- how info is extracted from memory

behaviors

certain types of behavior elicited when participants are exposed to stimuli that bring to mind a certain schema, example = elderly priming study, timed how long it took participants to walk from the lab to the elevator, compared diff times

the one that is most strongly activated

which schema will be applied?

intuition

quick, automatic, based on associations, performs many operations simultaneously (in parallel)

reason

slower, more controlled, based on rules and deductions, performs one operation at a time (serial)

availability heuristic

judgments of frequency or probability made based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind

fluency

the feeling of ease associated with processing information

biased assessment of risk

if something comes to mind easily, people think its common

representative heuristic

the tendency to compare things or individuals to the prototypes of their category

base-rate information

Info about relative frequency of events or members of different groups

planning fallacy

We tend to be overly optimistic about how quickly we can complete a project

self-serving attributional bias

the tendency to attribute failures to external causes and successes to internal causes, -this usually occurs because people want to maintain a positive image of themselves

-->bad grade on a test means the test was hard, good grade means you are soups smart

fundamental attribution error

the tendency to attribute a person's behavior to personality while ignoring situational causes, it is not so surprising that people would want to look at personality first; we often want to learn more about the people around us Jones and Harris experiment participants were given an essay to read (either pro-castro or anti-castro)

top down processing

theory driven, filter and interpret new data based on what you already know, base your judgments/decisions on pre-existing expectations and knowledge (schemas)

bottom up processing

data driven, put together pieces of info to see what you get, base your judgments/decisions on the stimuli you encounter

just world hypothesis

a belief that people get what they deserve in life

-victims of natural disasters, rape, domestic abuse often blamed for their problems

-in some cultures, children who are sexually abused are thought to be sexual abusers in past lives

perceptual salience

other people are usually more much more attention-grabbing than the context or the situation --> we pay more attention to people than other objects -->when looking for obvious explanations of our behavior, we immediately go to the things that capture our attention

dual process model

we make an initial, automatic dispositional attribution, we characterize the person based on the behavior--> upon reflection, we take what we know about the situation and adjust the dispositional inference

actor-observer difference

a difference in attribution based on who is making the casual assessment--> the actor (more likely to make situational attributions), the observer (more likely to make dispositional attributions)

attribution theory

The general term for theories about how people explain the causes of the events that they observe

Emotional amplification

Emotional reactions to counterfactual thinking increase depending on how easy it is to imagine the alternative

casual attributions

Linking an instance of a behavior to a cause -->Attempts to figure out why someone or yourself did something

Kurt Lewin

The behavior of people is a function of the field of forces in which they find themselves-->Internal attributions(dispositional), External attributions (situational)

covariation principle

Behavior should be attributed to potential causes that co-occur with the behavior (Kelley, 1973)

discounting principle

Less weight is given to a particular cause of behavior if there are alternative causes present

augmentation principle

Greater weight is given to a particular cause of behavior if there are other potential causes that would normally produce the opposite outcome

If an individual is being tortured because of a specific opinion but refuses to change, this person probably strongly believes in that opinion

augmentation

Zooming into the individual because there are obstacles to performance. The principle that if someone performs an action when there are obstacles, his of her contribution is strong.

A in hard class = great student

discounting

Looking for causes outside the individual. If someone performs an action when there are external facilitators, his or her contribution is weak.

A in easy class = average student

Socioeconomic Status (SES, Social Class)

The amount of wealth, education, and occupational prestige that someone has--> low SES is more interdependent

explanatory style

A person's habitual way of explaining events

3 dimensions

Internal/external: was it you or the situation?

Stable/unstable: is it permanent or temporary?

Global/specific: is it every domain of life or just this one?

pessimistic explanatory style

Internal, Stable, Global (for negative events)

"It's my fault, I can't change it, and it happens with everything."

People who regularly see negative events this way tend to be depressed/anxious; they have a weak sense of control, and give up easily

emotions

brief, specific psychological and physiological responses that are very time-limited

moods

can last hours or days, tend to diffuse

-there's usually no clear eliciting event

-they aren't directed at any one thing in particular

mood disorders

depression, mania

emotions are brief

-last for seconds or minutes, not hours or days

-physiological expressions (ex. sweaty palms) last second or minutes

-they are different from moods and emotional disorders because those last way longer

emotions are specific

-they are in response to specific people or events

-moods may not have a clear or specific reason

emotional disorder

these have biological underpinnings that have little to do with a specific target

emotions help us meet social goals

motivate us to act in ways that affect important relationships and help us navigate the social environment

appraisal

we construe situations in our environment according to their relation to our current goals

primary appraisal

unconscious, fast, automatic, initial flash of positive or negative feelings

secondary appraisal

conscious, slower, more deliberate, transforms positive or negative feelings into more specifically labeled emotions

survival and reproduction

Charles Darwin --> principle of serviceable habits: human emotional expressions come from patterns of behavior that were beneficial for our evolutionary predecessors,

universality

all humans have the same facial muscles and express emotions similarly across cultures

six universal emotions

happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, fear

emotional accents

culturally specific ways of expressing emotion

focal emotions

emotions that are especially common in a given culture, mexico = pride, Tibet = kindness, japan = modesty, interdependent cultures = shame and embarrassment

ideal emotions

cultures differ in the emotions they value or idealize- associated with cultural values

-US = value independence, expression: excitement

-east Asian countries = value interdependence, harmony: calmness and contentedness

display rules

cultural rules that govern how, when, and to whom you express emotions

-emotions promote commitment

-signaling (ex. concern)

emotional intelligence

emotions influence perception, emotions influence reason, emotions influence moral judgment

emotions influence perception

we perceive events in ways that are consistent with the emotions we feel Mozart = positive moods, depressing Mahler music = more negative words

emotional regulation

emotion regulation though choosing one of two strategies

reappraisal

actively reinterpreting emotive stimuli in terms that modify emotional impact (=type of cognitive change)--> see everything in neutral terms, emotion relevance is decreased

suppression

The emotion is already activated and try to manipulate the output by suppressing the emotion, Emotion expression is decreased

broaden and build hypothesis

positive emotions broaden thought and action repertories, helping people build social resources

social intuitionist model of moral judgement

people have automatic emotional reaction to moral situations which guide moral reasoning

moral foundations theory

we assess the morality of a behavior based on 5 dimensions:

1. harm/care

2. fairness/cheating

3. loyalty/betrayal

4. authroirty/subversion

5. purity/degradation

happiness

-two components --> life satisfaction- how well you think your life is going

--> well-being - tendency to experience more positive emotions than negative ones

immune neglect

tendency to underestimate our resilience during negative life events -->painful and difficult experiences are often less upsetting than we expect them to be

focalism

tendency to focus on only one aspect of an experience or event when trying to predict future emotions

-even if one "bad thing" or "good thing" happens, there are still plenty of other things going on in your life that influence your happiness

duration neglect

length of emotional experience has very little influence on our overall evaluation of the experience