Social psych first exam prep

LETS GET THIS DUB FRICK YEAH WE GOT THIS

Social psych is NOT

Common sense (empirical), or sociology (individual vs. group, interpretation), or personality psychology

Social psych is

• study of the thoughts, feelings and behaviors

• study of the individual

• Social context is CRITICAL

• phenomenon of social influence

Limitations of social psych

• People vary tremendously

• Cultural specificity (psych can be very western)

• emphasis on research (need to apply to real world)

• replication crisis

Replication crisis

Many of our classic/cool studies are not being replicated today

Social cognition

How people select, interpret, and use information to make judgments about the social world. How we think about our social world.

Schemas

Cognitive structures that people use to organize their knowledge about the world

Function of schemas

• Keeps our world orderly

• Relates new to old

We use our schemas for—

- expectations and judge others who break them

Kelly's (1950) warm/cold study

Students were given background information about the professor

• Half were told he was COLD/practical/determined

• Half were told he was WARM/practical/determined

IV and DV from Kelly’s warm/cold study

IV: Schema

DV: Perception

Results from Kelly's warm/cold study

Results showed warm people were perceived better/positively

Problems with schemas

Distortion: as a result of the primacy effect

Primacy effect

1st info remembered first

Janes et al. (1968) questions study

• half got all questions RIGHT in the beginning (15/30)

• half got all questions WRONG in the beginning (15/30)

Results from Janes et al. (1968) questions study

Those who got the questions RIGHT at the beginning think they got 20-25 right

Those who got the questions WRONG at the beginning think they got 10-15 right

Belief perseverance theory

Certain beliefs remain even in the face of disconfirming information

Ross, Lepper, and Hubbard (1975)—Suicide note study

Participants were asked to read suicide notes and determine which were fake and real.

• Half were told they did EXCELLENT

• Half were told they did TERRIBLE

Results of Ross, Lepper, and Hubbard (1975)—Suicide note study

Patients were then debriefed and asked how good they were after being debriefed

• Those who were told they did EXCELLENT said that they were good reguardless

Self-fulfilling prophecy

When schemas become true

People have an expectation about what another person is like (schema), which—

-influences how they act with that other person, which causes that person to behave in a way consistent with the original expectation

Snyder, Tanke, and Berscheid (1977)—Schema of 'What is beautiful is good’

IV: beauty (half were beautiful, half were ugly)

DV: goodness, friendliness, warmth, intelligence

Results of 'What is beautiful is good’

Attractive women were seen as friendlier and warmer

Priming

Activating of certain associations, thoughts, or feelings upon exposure to a certain stimuli

Li (2008)

Primed with chocolate chip cookies v natural scent, and wanted to see how many made an unplanned purchase

Results of Li (2008)

67% made unplanned purchases with cookie scent, 17% with natural scent

Priming through physical sensations—

-influences our social judgement

Hot/cold study 1. Social>physical

IV: social consumption, eating alone/with a person

DV: physical sensations/ estimated room temperature

Hot/cold study 1 methods/results.

• Walk up to strangers at a food court who were eating alone/with one other person. Asked them to estimate the room temp

• Those who were eating with someone estimated a higher temp than someone eating alone

Hot/cold study 2. Physical>social

IV: physical, warm vs. cold tea.

DV: robot functions (practical vs. social)

Hot/cold study 2 methods/results

• Half were given hot/cold drinks and were asked to think of functions to give a house robot

• Those who served a cold drink wished for social functions, those served a hot drink wished for practical functions

Judgemental heuristics

Mental judgements that people use to make judgements quickly and efficiently

Availability heuristics

People base a judgement on the ease with which they can bring something to mind

Availability heuristics are examples of-

-Judgemental heuristics

Vivid events are easily recalled and—

-thus bias estimates

Schwarz et al. (1991) assertiveness study

“How assertive are you?”

• Half listed 6 times they were assertive

• Half listed 12 times they were assertive

Schwarz et al. (1991) results

Those who listed 12 instances said that they were less assertive than those who listed 6, because even though they listed more, they struggled towards the end

Counterfactual thinking

Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what may have been (especially if it's negative)

Social perception

The study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people

We use lots of information when—

-forming impressions (physical attractiveness, nonverbal behavior, verbal expressions)

Implicit personality theory

Schema that consists of our ideas about what kinds of personality traits go togethern (kind:friendly and generous)

Attribution theory:

A description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and others' behavior

Attribution

An inference about why the behavior happened/other peoples/own behavior

Dispositional

The behavior means something about the person (they failed because they are lazy)

Situational

The behavior happened because of the situation out of their control (they failed because they didn’t have the textbook/were sick)

Kelleys' covariation model

Person as a calculator

Behavior may be attributed to 3 factors

Dispositional (internal), situational (external), entity (external)

Dispositional (internal)

Decide that the person doing the behavior is the reason the behavior happened (aggressor aggressed because he is known for being aggressive)

Situational (external)

The situation or the social setting is the reason for their behavior (at a bar, the aggressor was drinking along with everyone)

Entity (external)

The recipient of the behavior is the cause of the behavior (Christian kills me because i ragebaited)

3 kinds of information

Distinctiveness, consistency, consensus

Distinctiveness

How distinct is it? Does this person act this way only with regard to this stimulus?

Consistency

Does the person act this way toward the same stimulus at other times or in other situations?

Consensus

Does everyone act this way toward the stimulus?

Fundamental attribution error

Tendency to overestimate the extent to which people's behavior is due to internal dispositional factors, and to underestimate the role of situational factors

Perceptual salience

The person is the focus; situation is “invisible”

Jones and Harris (1967) speaker experiment

• half were told the speaker chose to take a pro/anti castro stance

• half were assigned against their will

What is the speakers view?

Jones and Harris (1967) results

Even though the participants knew the speaker had no choice, they still thought it reflected their personal beliefs

Actor/oberver bias

Seeing others' behavior as dispositionally caused, while blaming situational factors for one's own behavior

Storms (1973)

Can reverse the effect (video tape of reverse perspective)

Self-serving attributions

Explanations for one's success being internal and dispositional while failures being external and situational

People with depression do not use—

-situaitonal senses (maldaptive)

Discounting principle

If other causes are present, they reduce importance of disposition (sprinting with wind on back)

Augmenting principle

If something is in the situation that should inhibit you but doesn't, increased importance of disposition (tennis with a sprained ankle)

Sigall and Michela

IV: attractiveness

IV2: visability

Every participant wrote an essay, looked at images of attractive/unattractive people, and either said judge was seen/unseen by them

Sigall and Michela's results

• All were told they wrote a strong essay

  • Measurement: ratings of credibility of evaluator

  • “I got a good grade only because I am attractive” (discounting)/”good grade despite my looks” (augmenting)

Self-concept

An organized collection of beliefs and feelings about the self

Two key components of the self:

• Self-concept (this is who I am)

• Self-esteem

Possible selves

Thought of what we might become in the future

Independent

A self-concept that is seperate from other people

Interdependent

A self-concept that highlights connections and relationships with others

Individualism

Cultural orientation where personal goals truce over group alliances

Collectivism

Cultural orientation in which cooperation and group harmony take over individual goals

Best way to measure self-concept

Complete “I am __” 20 times

Self-esteem

An individual's evaluation of attitude towards the self

Low self-esteem:

Negative view of the self often leads to noticing and remembering things that are consistent with that image

High self-esteem

Is it always good? When does it become narcissistic?

Continginess of self-worth

Represent the domains in which self-esteem is threatened by successes and failures

Acceptance (Crocker et al., 2003) not ability

Acceptance of what you want to do

5 ways to know the self

• Introspection

• Self-perception

• Emotions

• Self-schemas

• Social interaction

Introspection

Process whereby people look inward and examine their own thoughts, feelings, and motives

Higgins' self-discrepancy theory

• Actual self (one who is),

• Ideal self (who one wants to be),

• Ought self (what one should do)

Differences between actual and ideal self cause

Depression

Differences between actual and ought self cause

Anxiety

Ben's self-perception theory

We find out how we feel by observing what we do (our behavior)

Knowing ourselves based on our-

-Behaviors

Occurs when our inital feeling are-

-weak or unclear

We think about why we behaved the way-

-we have and decide that it was our free choice

The looking-glass self

Knowing the self through others' eyes

Social tuning

People adopting others' attitudes

Sinclair et al. (2005)

• ½ ERACISM shirt

• ½ likeable or dislikeable

Participants who felt a connection to an experimenter wearing an "Eracism" t-shirt exhibited lower implicit racial prejudice,