social psych exam 1

social psychology

Scientific study of how we feel about, think, and behave toward people around us… how feelings influence others

External behavior and internal cognition

ABCs of social psychology

Affect - Feelings

Behavior - Interactions

Cognition - Thought

Experimental vs correlational vs observational designs

Experimental

 Manipulation of experience

Independent

o Manipulated

Dependent

o The result of the manipulation

Correlational

• Relationship between 2+ variables

 Common causal variables

• Cause predictor and outcome variables

Observational

 Records observations of behavior

Lewin’s equation for behavior; person in situation approach/person-situation interaction

Social behavior is a product of individual personalities

• Shift situation to change behavior

Behavior is a function of personal characteristics and environmental characteristics

Fundamental motivations

o   Self concern

• Protect self

o   Other concern

• Accepted by others

·       Builds relationships, social groups, help each other

social norms

shared standard of acceptable behavior, group norms

Operationalization of measures; self-report vs behavioral vs observation

Common causal variables

confounding

Third variable that could cause a correlation between two variables

Independent vs dependent variables

independent variables - manipulated

dependent variables - outcome

random assignment

one in treatment one in control

social cognition

Predict behavior of ourselves and others

Mental activity that relates to social activities, meet goal of understanding behavior

Forms of learning

o   Permanent change in knowledge that’s acquired through experience

• Operant

  We learn new info as a result of consequences of our behavior

• Associational

  Object or event comes to be associated with natural response

  Automatic

• Observational

  Through exposure to behavior of others, social worlds, learn without engaging

Schemas; accommodation and assimilation

o   Schemas

§  Contain knowledge of past experiences, database of knowledge, allow us to better understand people

o   Accommodation

§  Change your schema

·       Ex. Dog and cat

o   Assimilation

§  Change info to fit existing schema

·       Ex. Great student, get a D, coming up with excuses, motivated cognition, align with expectations

·       Confirmation bias

o   Tendency for people to favor info that confirms their expectations regardless if it is true

·       Self-fulfilling prophecy

o   Process that occurs when our expectations about others lead us to behave toward those others in ways that make those expectations come true

§  Maintenance of our biased schemas

·       Cognitive heuristics

o   Shortcut

o   Umbrella term

o   Types of processing quirks

·       Automatic vs controlled cognition

o   Auto

§  Thinking that occurs out of our awareness, quickly and without effort

o   Controlled

§  Thoughtful

§  Deliberately size up and think

·       Lot of effort

·       Accessibility and salience

o   Accessibility

§  Extent in which attitude is activated in memory

o   Salient

§  Characteristics that attract our attention

·       Make judgements

affect, mood, emotion

affect - feelings we experience everyday

mood - feelings in the background

emotion - brief and intense

arousal

o   Physiological (and emotion)

§  Ex. Bear running at you, you’re sweating and scared

·       Self and self-concept

o   Sense of personal identity and who we are

o   Knowledge representation that contains knowledge about us

Beliefs about personality values

·       Social vs personal identity

o   Social

§  Membership of social groups (gender, race)

o   Personal

§  Idiosyncratic characteristics and traits, individual

self complexity

o   Extent to which the individual has many different (independent) ways of thinking

§  Ex. Being bad at being a teacher

§  Lower levels of stress

§  Greater tolerance

§  Protects from negative emotions

self reference effect

o   Ability to well remember info that relates to the self

Use in studying, better recalled

·       Self-consciousness and spotlight effect

o   Public self-consciousness: the tendency to focus on our outer public image and to be particularly aware of the extent to which we are meeting the standards set by others.

§  Related to other-concern