Social Psychology Midterm 1 Review

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering key terms, theories, and concepts for Social Psychology Midterm 1.

Soloman Asch experiment

An experiment where participants judged line lengths in a group of confederates (actors) who all gave a wrong answer; 75 percent of people gave the wrong answer to fit in, demonstrating situational pressure.

Construal

How a person interprets or makes sense of a situation; can also refer to looking at a situation from a different person's perspective.

Internal (dispositional) attribution

Explaining behavior by personality traits, such as saying she yelled because she's rude.

External (situational) attribution

Explaining behavior by circumstances, such as saying she yelled because she's stressed.

Fundamental attribution error (FAE)

Our tendency to over explain others' behavior through internal dispositional factors rather than situational ones.

Sociology

A field that focuses on groups, institutions, and social structures, rather than individual minds.

Personality psychology

A field that focuses on stable individual differences (traits) across situations.

Behaviorism

A discipline that focuses on observable behavior shaped by reinforcement and punishment, rather than internal mental states.

Evolutionary psychology

A branch of psychology that explains behavior via evolved adaptations.

I/O psychology

Industrial/Organizational psychology, which applies psychological principles to workplaces.

Behavioral Economics

The study of how psychological factors bias "rational" economic decision making.

WEIRD populations

Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic samples that psychology research overrepresents (often skewed toward college students), limiting global generalizability.

Surveys

Standardized, usually quantitative questions that are good for large samples but rely on self-report accuracy.

Interviews

Open-ended, usually qualitative questions offering depth and nuance, but harder to compare.

Observations

Watching real behavior directly.

Experiments

Research where a variable is manipulated and conditions are controlled; the only method that supports causal claims.

Correlational methods

Descriptive methods like surveys and observations that show relationships between variables but cannot prove causation.

Audit studies

Real-world field experiments designed to test discrimination.

Vignette studies

Studies that present participants with short hypothetical scenarios and measure their reactions.

IRB (Institutional Review Board)

A committee that reviews research proposals to protect human participants' rights and safety.

Deception

A research practice that is sometimes necessary so participants do not alter their behavior by knowing the true purpose of a study.

Debriefing

A required process following research deception to explain the true purpose of the study and address any distress.

Open science

A movement toward research transparency, involving data/material sharing and preregistering hypotheses so findings can be verified and replicated.

Gold open access

An open access publishing tier where articles are published openly by the journal immediately, often requiring an author fee.

Green open access

An open access publishing tier where the author self-archives a version of the work in a repository.

Diamond open access

An open access publishing tier with no fee required from authors or readers.

Black open access

Unauthorized or illegal access to published academic content.

Quasi-experiments

Studies that compare groups that were not randomly assigned; useful when true experiments are impossible, but yield weaker causal claims.

Natural experiments

Naturally occurring events, such as policy changes, that act like experimental manipulations.

Longitudinal designs

Research designs that track the same individuals over time, ideal for studying change and development but costly and subject to dropout.

Content analysis

Systematically coding textual material for specific patterns.

Thematic analysis

Identifying recurring themes within qualitative data.

Narrative analysis

Examining how people structure personal stories about their experiences.

Ethnography

The immersive study of a cultural group from within.

Community engaged research / participatory action research

Research conducted in full partnership with communities rather than on them, aimed at generating practical change.

Mixed methods

Combining both quantitative and qualitative approaches within a single study.

Qualitative paradigm

A research framework that values depth, context, participant meaning-making, and researcher reflexivity over standardized metrics.

Nacirema

A classic anthropology essay by Horace Miner describing American bathroom and health rituals to demonstrate how strange cultural rituals appear without insider context.

Emic

Understanding a culture from within on its own terms.

Etic

Understanding a culture from an outside perspective.

Interdependent orientation

Defining oneself in relation to others or a group.

Independent orientation

Defining oneself as separate and autonomous.

Power distance

A cultural dimension describing how much a culture accepts unequal power distribution.

Uncertainty avoidance

A cultural dimension describing how much a culture tolerates ambiguity and uncertainty.

Individualism vs collectivism

A cultural dimension comparing priority placed on the individual self versus the group.

Masculinity-femininity

A cultural dimension comparing a focus on competitive achievement versus cooperative quality of life.

Indulgence vs restraint

A cultural dimension comparing free gratification of desires against strict social norms that suppress them.

Loose vs tight cultures

Tight cultures have strong norms and low tolerance for deviance; loose cultures have weaker norms and higher tolerance for individual variation.

Ask culture vs guess culture

In ask cultures, people state requests directly; in guess cultures, people hint and wait to be offered to avoid direct asks and prevent awkwardness.

Organizational culture

Shared values, norms, and practices within a workplace or institution.

Observable artifacts

The visible elements in Schein's 3-layer model of organizational culture.

Espoused values

The stated values and mission statements in Schein's model of organizational culture.

Basic assumptions

Deep, unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs driving behavior in Schein's model of organizational culture.

Acculturation

The process of adapting to a new culture.

Assimilation

An acculturation strategy of adopting the new culture and dropping the original culture.

Separation

An acculturation strategy of keeping the original culture and rejecting the new culture.

Integration

An acculturation strategy of maintaining the original culture while adopting the new one (bicultural).

Marginalization

An acculturation strategy of rejecting and disconnecting from both original and new cultures.

Self-handicapping

Creating obstacles to success in advance so potential failure can be attributed to the obstacle rather than a lack of ability.

Behavioral self-handicapping

Actively sabotaging oneself in advance to create an excuse for potential failure.

Reported/claimed self-handicapping

Claiming a handicap exists prior to performance without actually engaging in self-sabotage.

Self-perception theory

The theory that we infer our own attitudes and emotions by observing our own behavior, especially when internal cues are weak.

Two factor theory of emotion (Schachter-singer)

Theory stating that emotion equals physiological arousal plus the cognitive label assigned to explain that arousal based on environmental context.

Intrinsic motivation

Doing an activity for its own inherent satisfaction.

Extrinsic motivation

Doing an activity for external rewards or outcomes.

Cognitive bias

A systematic error in thinking and judgment.

Over justification effect

The phenomenon where adding an external reward for an intrinsically motivated behavior reduces intrinsic motivation because people reattribute their reason for doing it.

Fixed mindset

The belief that abilities are static and unchangeable.

Growth mindset

The belief that abilities can be developed through effort.

Upward comparison

Comparing oneself to someone superior; can motivate or discourage.

Downward comparison

Comparing oneself to someone inferior; can boost self-esteem but may be used defensively.

Implementation intentions

Specific if-then plans that facilitate goal achievement by pre-deciding responses to situational cues.

Cognitive dissonance

Discomfort felt when holding two conflicting beliefs or when behavior conflicts with an attitude, motivating psychological reduction strategies.

Justification of effort

The tendency to value outcomes more when significant effort or suffering was spent to attain them.

External justification

An outside reason (e.g., money or pressure) that explains counter-attitudinal behavior, resulting in minimal dissonance.

Internal justification

Changing one's actual attitude to match counter-attitudinal behavior when strong external reasons are absent.

Self-affirmation theory

The idea that cognitive dissonance can be relieved by affirming an unrelated but important part of self-worth/identity to restore self-integrity.