Social Psych Exam 1

Goal of Psychological Research

To understand and predict behavior

Variables in the Experimental Method

IV: need to have complete control over (Manipulated Variable)

DV: free to vary (Measured)

Confound or Confounding Variable (avoid): they do not allow us to make a statement of causality

3 Necessary Conditions of a “True” Experiment

1. Manipulation of IV

2. Random Assignment: creates probabilistically equivalent groups, larger pop = more RA does its job

3. Control or Comparison Group: need to compare level; placebo

Correlational Method & Advantages/Disadvantages

Relationship between two or more variables

Advantages:

1. Relatively quick and efficient

2. Naturally occurring events/environment

3. Not practical/ethical to manipulate IV

Disadvantages:

1. Correlation does not equal causation; correlation is -1 to 1 and the closer you are to these poles, the stronger it is

2. Bidirectionality: If X → Y, Y → X, two variables influence each other

3. 3rd Variable Problem: Example with ice cream and crime, where temperature/warmer weather is the 3rd variable on how often crime happens

   
   

   
   

States vs Traits

State: unstable/temporary, how we are feeling right now (happy state); body language, nonverbal ques

Trait: enduring characteristics, stable over time, personality (kindness)

Automatic vs Controlled Processing

Automatic: we do this with the more experience we have, it is fast, effortless, happens outside of conscious awareness (catching something thrown at you; phone number, banner ID, banking number, kids asking ‘why’) (2+2=4) This goes hand in hand with attributions

Controlled processing (MOTIVATED): slower, effortful, consciously aware of what is going through your mind, when something is new, unexpected, or negative (friend brings up movie, you remember it, but can’t think of the name) (29+37=66)

• Examples: math, driving

Our Psychological Needs

• Self-esteem: feeling as if we are worthwhile individuals contributing to a meaningful universe; self-enhancement

• Control: normally distributed, but we all have a baseline need of control

• Belongingness: need for feel parts of groups or to identify entities beyond ourselves (family, clubs, group of friends, hometown)

6 Universal Facial Expressions

1. happy

2. sad

3. anger

4. fear

5. disgust

6. surprise (fear/surprise = terror)

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

Feedback loop of Emotion → Facial expression, study with pen in mouth, if they were instructed to smile they would see increased mood and decrease mood for instructed sad face

• Botox freezes muscles that make facial expressions, they found that it can reduce empathy

Eye Contact

Eyes are the window of our soul, some are naturally good at eye contact, some are shifty eyed. One sign of poor eye contact is that they are shy. Can be used as a sign of power or dominance

• Eye contact reduces psychological distance

Touching

Similar to eye contact, we vary as individuals on how much we like this. Those with more power are likely to touch a person with lower power, not vice versa

Detection of Lying

• Slight gender differences (females detection of lying is 60% and males 55%)

• females are usually better at non-verbal communication, more socially adaptable, women are caregivers of nonverbal babies

• How we can tell:

  • change in the standard or normal pattern of eye contact (a good eye contact person will shift gaze; a bad eye contact person will stare); deviation from baseline

  • pupil dilation

  •  increase in blinking

  • microexpressions (fleeting glimpse of true feeling/emotion) adapters (touching yourself like twirling hair, earrings, cracking knuckles)

  • voice pitch (get slightly higher)

  • sentence repairs (fix where their lie was going

  • Interchannel discrepancies (make sure eye contact is consistent, but maybe your adapters get in the way, hard to control everything

Attribution vs Inference

Attribution: inference we make from the cause of behavior

Inference: going beyond what we observe and making an educated guess

Theory of Correspondent Inference (Jones & Davis)

• what are the factors that lead us to make an internal attribution; locus of causality? Is the cause internal or external? They are focusing on internal, starts with action as to was it intentional

• Correspondent Inference: we make an inference saying that a person's behavior corresponds or equals their traits; path we take to make this inference (behavior=traits); behaviors occur with context or external reasons (bad day, blaming, etc)

- P(Cl)=f(DxR)

Kelley’s Theory of Casual Attribution: Internal vs External

1. Internal

   1. Low Consensus theory: what to make sure everyone reacts the same

   2. High Consistency: do they react the same over time

   3. Low Distinctiveness: low means it generalizes more, more stimulant

2. External

   1. High Consensus: everyone does it

   2. High Consistency: people are always doing it

   3. High distinctiveness: only that one thing, focus on one

Discounting vs Augmenting

Discounting: Come from Kelley, when there are multiple facilitative causes (ex: getting an A in the class means intelligence, attending class, studying, etc) 

Augmenting: Come from Kelley, when you have a facilitatory factor and an inhibitory factor (not studying would inhibit getting an A, if they got an A and didn’t study, they are simply super smart)

Self-Handicapping

Jones and Berglas, impression management strategy without even thinking about it (give impression to others that you don’t study but you actually do)

1. A person creates a barrier or impediment to their success, gives them a built-in excuse for failure, not willing to put their competence image on the line because they have self-doubt

2.  Precarious competent image; at the heart of it (self-doubt) due to → non-contingent success (if then statements, maybe people don’t study, but do well enough; can you replicate the same success from HS to college; getting drunk a night before an exam)

3. If fail: discounting of lack of ability (ex: intelligence), person didn’t give full effort

   1. Failure is nondiagnostic of ability

4. If succeed: augmenting of ability (ex: intelligence)

   1. Success is highly diagnostic of ability

Correspondent Inference Bias/Fundamental Attribution Error

Tendency for perceivers to make dispositional (trait) attributions about the causes of another person’s behavior even in the face of strong situational constraints on the other person’s behavior (ex: if Dr. Yost fell over someone’s feet who was relaxing, we may not see that he tripped over someone’s feet)

Victim Blame

Our need for control; blaming for the victim for something negative that happened to them (ex: person who is a victim of a sexual assault; what was she wearing, was she drunk?) implying that the victim had some control over the situation

Actor-Observer Bias

• Actor-Observer Bias: observers making internal attributions about actors, what happens here when actors make external attributions about themselves

  • Expect more consistency from others vs self: its ok for ourselves to be in a bad mood but not for a friend who has one or someone else

Self-Serving Bias

Will trump other biases because it is directly related to our self-esteem needs; help enhancement strategy of the view that we have of ourselves and others who view us. ***Tendencies to make internal attributions following success and external attributions following failure*** (love success, deny failure) 

1. Example of this: if we get an A, we take credit for being smart, working hard, and studying, but if someone gets a D, they typically blame it on the professor, saying the tests were hard, etc. 

2. Group work is another example

Depressogenic Attrbutional Style

Making internal stable global attributions following failure (I failed because I am stupid: nothing you can do to help yourself)

Learned Helplessness

Where organisms learn to be helpless, conducted a study with shocking a dog, told us a lot about human depression. Experience of non-contingency between responses and outcomes

1. helpless and hopeless, no hope of improving, no control over outcomes

Difference between cognitive or motivation, he will give an example and we have to say it

• Cognitive: Heidez → “behavior engulfs the perceptual field”; way we process information “cold”, the void of emotion, the impact on what we attend to to what we process

• Motivational: Psychological needs, emotions, drives, these things are relatively high

Principles of Social Cognition

1. We have limited information processing capacity (controlled processing resource); we automotive things (cognitive shortcuts: schemas and heuristics) as much as possible, deal with the possibility of information overload

2. We may not always have access to our higher order cognitive processing; we don’t always know what decisions we make or actions; recency effort for nylon stocking example

Schemas

highly organized, highly interconnected collection of beliefs and feelings about something (i.e., a network of knowledge)

1. Built through experience

2. Provide order, structure, and organization to incoming information: process information more quickly because of this structure  

3. Example: ice hockey who has a favorite pro team and who doesn’t know anything about ice hockey; take two different spectrums to the game, take a quiz after, right off the bat who is going to do better = people with experience; people who don’t know what's going on are going to put in my cognitive energy

5 Types of Schemas

1. Person schema: if I was asked to describe someone, part of what we are given them is parts of their schema 

2. Stereotype (schema for groups of people): based on gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, lumping a group of people together and processing information about these people at this level

3. Script (schema for events): have an expectation of what is going to happen at a birthday party or baby shower, etc. You know to bring gifts, there will be food, cake/candles. Another example is waiting to be seated at a fancy restaurant, you know the script

4. Role schema: we are in the student role currently, then work role, you already know how to behave, we know to take notes, pay attention, work hard

5. Self schema: most well developed schemas, we have more experience with ourselves than anything else in the world 

Advantages/Disadvantages of Schemas

1. Advantages

   1. Simplify a complex world: we lump things together, seek patterns

   2. Eliminates repetitive processing: don’t have to relearn it, make inferences from there 

   3. Provides expectations: predict how it is going to bed, even before you arrive to an event per say

   4. Allows for fast, efficient (i.e., automatic) processing: If familiar, can process very fast 

2. Disadvantage

   1. Gap-Filling Function/Memory Distortion: go back on what we have seen in the past, our schemas might affect what we actually saw 

      1. Example: German people stereotype (aggressive, loud)and observe kids at a playground. One is german and one is british, something happens and you may see the german boy as being the aggressor bc of your stereotype; mandela effect?; humans suck at eye witness testimony

Impact on Information Processing

1. Subcategorization: still preserve schema, but we create subcategories about someone; schemas help us to process info, navigate reality = we become unconsciously invested in them, they have to be stable. Once schemas are well formed, they are extremely resilient

   1. EX: Steve is happy, go lucky, but at each end of a party you go to each semester, he acts like a jerk, what is going on here? 

Self-Reference Effect

Schemas help us process information more efficiently when it involved ourself, self schema is our most well developed schema