Social Psychology Exam 2

Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7

Short-term memory

Information and input that is currently activated.

Long-term memory

Information from past experience that may or may not be currently activated.

What’s the first step in memory formation

Encode.

What’s the second step in memory formation

Rehearse.

What’s the third step in memory formation

Consolidate.

What’s the last step in memory formation

Retrieve.

The pervasive use of _______ influences ability to encode experience and retrievable memory tracks.

Social media

Recent research findings suggest that participants using social media showed _____ event memories

Poorer

Memory is a ________ processes.

Reconstructive

What is information retrieval influenced by?

Biases, schemas, motives, and goals.

It is easier to remember ____-consistent information.

Schema

Mood-congruent Memory

People are more likely to remember positive information when in a positive mood and negative information when in a negative mood. This is the general rosy recollection bias.

Dialecticicm

Culturally based differences in ways of thinking influence how memory biases construct schemas of the world and the people in it.

The processes by which cues that are given after an event can plant false information into memory.

Misinformation effect

Availability Heuristic

The tendency to assume information that comes easily to mind is more frequent or common. It has the power to distort many of our judgements.

The __________ occurs only if the person puts considerable cognitive effort into trying to retrieve the requested number of instances of the behavior.

Ease of retrieval effect

People tend to perceive actions in the world in terms of:

Cause and effect.

Entity (fixed) mind-set theorists

Attributes cannot be controlled or changed.

Incremental mind-set theorists

Attributes are malleable.

Make more negative, stable attributions about themselves in response to challenging tasks

People with fixed mind-sets.

Avoid opportunities to change, and perform worse and experience more negative affect in response to challenge.

People with fixed mind-sets.

Recent research suggests trading adolescents in growth mind-sets improved grades among lower-achieving studnets.

People with incremental mind-sets.

Feel challenging situations are opportunities to improve

People with incremental mind-sets.

Causal schema come from two primary sources.

personal experiences and general cultural knowledge

When events don’t readily fit a causal schema.

Top of the head phenomenon and relying on what is salient or highly accessible.

Actor-observer effect

The tendency to make internal attributions for the behavior of others and external attributions for our own behavior.

Dispositional Attribution

Attribution occurs in a temporal sequence of three stages.

People who are cognitively strained are _____ to correct their dispositional judgements of others.

less likely

Covariation principle

The tendency to see a causal relationship between an event and an outcome when they happen at the same time. 

There are three sources of information for arriving at a causal attribution when accuracy is important. 

Consistency, Distinctiveness, consensus.

Consistency

Across time

Distinctiveness

Across situations

Consensus

Across people

An external (situational attribution is more likely when

a behavior is high in distinctiveness, and consensus.

An internal (dispositional) attribution is more likely when

a behavior is low in distinctiveness, and consensus.

Counterfactuals

Alternatives that run counter to what actually happened.

Upward counterfactual

An imagined alternative where the outcome is better than what actually happened

Downward counterfactual

An imagined alternative where the outcome is worse than what actually happened.

Impression from bottom up

Gathering individual observations of a person in order to form an overall impression. Negativity bias, thin slices, and theory of mind.

Mirror Neurons

Certain neurons that are activated both when one performs an action oneself and when one observes another person perform that action.

Impression from top down

Using preconceived ideas and schemas as the basis for impression formation. Transference, false consensus, and implicit personally theories.

Halo effect

The tendency of social perceivers’ assessments of an individual on a given trait ti be biased by the perceivers’ more general impression of the individual.

Representativeness Heuristic

The tendency to overestimate the likelihood that a target is part of a category if the person has features that seem representative of that category.

We are more likely to use bottom-up processing and less reliance on stereotyping when we

are highly motivated to get to know someone, need to work with someone, and feel similar to someone.

Primacy effect

The idea that what we learn early on colors how we judge subsequent information.

Initial expressions can be changed with ______

discomforting evidence

Self-concept

A person’s knowledge about himself or herself, including one’s own traits, social identities, and experiences.

Social identity theory

People define and value themselves largely in terms of the social groups with which they identify.

The independent view of the self

Deriving its identity from inner attributes and has the following characteristics: distinct from their relationships, stable across situations and life span, and fluid between in-groups and out group.

The interdependent view of the self

is a relational entity that is fundamentally connected to important relationships and has the following characteristics: Defined by social relationships and roles, flexible across situations and roles, not bounded or separate from others and context, and clear in-group-outgroup distinction.

Symbolic interactionism

People use their understanding of how significant people in their lives view them as the primary basis for knowing and evaluating themselves.

Looking-glass self

Significant people in our lives reflect back to us who we are by how they behave toward us

Appraisals

what other people think about us

Social Comparison Theory

People come to know themselves partly by comparing themselves with similar others.

Better-than-average effect

On many abilities and traits, most people think they are better than average.

Self perception theory

People form impressions of themselves by observing their own behavior and the situation in which it occurs.

Errors of self-perception

Humans are not good at accurately judging how situations influence thoughts and behaviors.

Two-factor theory of emotion

People’s emotions are the product of both their arousal level and how they interpret that arousal based on contextual cues. Emotion = arousal x cognitive level

Misattribution of arousal

Inadvertent ascription of arousal resulting from one source to a different source.

Excitation Transfer

Physiological arousal created in one context can be a misattributed, intensifying emotional reaction to a subsequently encountered stimulus in an unrelated context.

Self-regulation

A set of processes for guiding one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to reach desired goals.

Self-awareness theory

Duval and wicklund. This highlights the gap between what one is doing and what one should/could be doing.

Self-discrepancy theory

People feel anxiety when they fall short of how they ought to be but feel sad when they fall short of how they ideally want to be. Ought and ideal self.

Affective forecasting

Predicting one’s emotional reactions to potential future events, and these are often inaccurate because they overestimate the impact of a salient factor such as winning the lottery.

Willpower

The capacity to overcome the many temptations, challenges, and obstacles that could impede pursuit of one’s long-term goals.

Hot processes

Driven by strong emotions

Cold processes

rely on level-headed reasoning. This is activated through mindful attention, and by tricking ourselves into thinking we don’t value a temptation.

Cool strategies

Designing environment to avoid temptations.

Goal pursuit

An effortful process

Ego depletion

Mental fatigue from extended use of self-control. behavior regulation is more difficult. Risky behavior may occur.

Elevated ____ use to support self regulation function of prefrontal cortex

Glucose

Cognitive reappraisal

Reframe a situation to minimize one’s emotional reaction to it.

Cognitive dissonance theory

People so dislike inconsistencies in their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that they will bias their attitude and beliefs to deny the inconsistency.

The three ways to reduce dissonance

Change one of the cognitions, add a third cognition that makes the original two cognitions seem less inconsistent, trivialize the cognitions that are inconsistent.

Free choice paradigm

a laboratory situation in which people make a choice between two alternatives, after which attraction to the alternatives is assessed.

spreading the alternatives

After a choice is made, people emphasize the positive characteristics of the chosen alternative and the negative aspects of the rejected alternative.

Induced compliance paradigm

A Laboratory situation in which participants are induced to engage in a behavior that runs counter to their true attitudes.

Induced hypocrisy paradigm

Participants are asked to advocate an opinion they already believe in, but then are reminded about a time when their actions run counter to that opinion, thereby arousing dissonance.

Effort justification

when people chose an action that results in negative consequences, they experience dissonance because of their choice.

Minimal deterrence

Use of the minimal level of external justification necessary to deter unwanted behavior

self-verification

seeking out other people and social situations that support the way one views oneself in order to sustain a consistent and clear-self-concept

self complexity

the extent to which an individual’s self-concept consists of many different aspects.

possible selves

Vivid images of what the self might become In the future. Could be positive or negative, motivate and guide behavior, and school intervention.

Self-esteem

The level of positive feeling one has about oneself

Self-serving attributions

taking credit for successes and blaming situations for failures

self-handicapping

placing obstacles in way of personal success to protect from future failure

better-than-average effect

believing that personal shortcomings are common and strengths are unique

projection

assigning to others those traits that people fear they possess themselves

symbolic self-completion

Compensating when a self-defining aspect is threatened by acquiring and displaying symbols that support their desired self-definition.

compensation

shorting up an overall sense of self-worth by bolstering success in an unrelated domain after a self-esteem blow occurs in one domain.

self-affirmation theory

responding less defensively to threats to an aspect of oneself if one thinks about another valued aspect of oneself

social comparison and identification

comparing self with others who are superior or inferior

basking in reflected glory

affiliating with successful others to bolster self-esteem

individualistic cultures

self-esteem is derived from proving superior skills and abilities

collectivistic cultures

self-esteem is derived from sustaining honor, gracefully performing cultural rituals, and group harmony promotion

Types of self-esteem

extrinsic and intrinsic

Extrinsic self esteem

self esteem is provided by standards dictated by environment and feedback from others.

intrinsic self esteem

self esteem is connected to feelings of enduring inner qualities

self-determination theory

people function best when they feel that their actions stem from their own desires rather than from external forces

locus of control 

the extent to which a person believes that either internal or external factors determine life outcomes