Social Psychology Exam 1

Social psychology is the study of how people’s ___, ___ and ___ are influenced ___ ____ and ___ ___. 

thoughts, feelings, behaviors, their environment, other people

Intuition is

snapshot thoughts or judgements of others or situations

Intuition can shape ___ ___

our fears

Intuition can be ___

dangerous

Stanford prison experiment is an… 

example of social influences on behavior

social neuroscience is the study of…

how the brain, nervous system, and biology influence social processes

Social Neuroscientist question: What ___ ___enable our experiences of ___ and ___, ___and ___, and ___ and ___?

brain areas, love, contempt, helping, aggression, perception, belief

Social Neuroscientist question about being shy and friendly face.

Do people who are shy (versus more socially secure) react differently seeing a friendly face?

Social Neuroscientist question: How do ___, ___, and ___function together as ___ ___ ___?

brain, mind, behavior, one coordinated system

Social Neuroscientist question: What does the ___ of ___ ___ reveal about how we ___ ___?

timing, brain events, process information

hindsight bias

“I knew it all along,” Claiming to have predicted an outcome only after learning the results

Experimental research involves…

the manipulation of one variable to see it’s effect on the second variable

Correlation research is asking…

whether 2+ factors are naturally associated

what is the main difference between experimental and correlational research?

Whether researcher manipulation is present or not

Ethics of research: informed consent is important because…

they need to be able to say no

Ethics of research: debrief is…

telling participants afterwards how they were deceived.

Spotlight effect

Belief that people are paying more attention to us that they actually are

The illusion of transparency

Believing our internal feelings are more obvious to others than they actually are

difference between spotlight effect and illusion of transparency

spotlight is external, transparency is internal

What is a schema?

The specific beliefs by which you define yourself

Social comparison

Defining ourselves in reference to others

Individualism: 

identity is self-contained

Collectivism:

respecting and identifying with the group

Impact bias

Belief that emotions will last longer than they actually will following an event

We are most prone to impact bias after ___ ___

negative events

Self-esteem

How positively or negatively you feel about yourself

“Bottom-up” theory

If we see ourselves as attractive, athletic, smart, etc. we will have high self-esteem

“Top-down” theory

Those with high self-esteem will believe they are attractive, athletic, smart, etc.

Narcissism characteristics

High self esteem, Belief that they are better than everyone else, Belief that they are more worthy than everyone else, Seeking for praise, Lack of empathy

Narcissism is linked to ___

aggression

Self-efficacy

How competent we feel on a task

Attribution of success

Tendency to attribute success to one’s ability and effort, but failure to external factors

Unrealistic optimism

Cognitive bias that you are less likely to experience negative events and more likely to experience positive ones

The false consensus effect

Overestimating the extent to which others agree with us on matters of opinion

The false uniqueness effect

Serving our self-image by believing ourselves unusually talented, moral, etc. on matters of ability

Self-handicapping

Self-sabotaging one’s own chances for success

Why might someone self-handicap?

Fear of failure, To protect self-esteem and public image by allowing us to attribute failure to an temporary or external source

Priming

The awakening or activating of associations in our memory

Embodied cognition

Theory that cognitive processes are rooted in the body’s interactions with the world

System 1:

thinking fast

System 2:

thinking carefully and thoughtfully

Overconfidence

When our System 1 intuitions are wrong, typically in favor of the individual

Availability Heuristic:

Likelihood of an event happening (due to how available other examples of that event are in your mind)

Representativeness Heuristic:

Judging how similar something is to the “typical” appearance

Counterfactual thinking

Imagining alternative outcomes to a past event

Illusory correlation

Misperceiving random events as confirmation of your beliefs

Why does illusory correlation happen?

Coincidences, Prejudice, Stereotyping, Hindsight bias

Belief perseverance

Tendency to hold onto initial beliefs or perspectives despite strong evidence contrary

Misinformation effect

The incorporation of misinformation into memories

Attribution theory

How we explain people’s behavior and what we infer from it

Dispositional vs situational attribution

Attributing the someone’s actions to internal vs external causes

Fundamental attribution error

Discounting/underestimating the role of the situation in someone’s actions while overestimating the extent to which it reflects their traits/attitudes

Behavioral confirmation

When someone’s expectations about an individual lead them to act in ways that result in that individual to behave in ways consistent with those expectations

ABCs of Attitudes

Affect, Behavior tendency, and Cognition

Self-Presentation Theory

Theory assumes that for strategic reasons, we express attitudes that make us appear more consistent with our actions

Cognitive Dissonance

To reduce discomfort, we justify actions to ourselves

Behavior-attitude Chain

Behavior shapes attitudes which in turn shapes behavior

Self-Perception Theory

Our actions are self revealing. When we’re uncertain about our beliefs/feelings, we look at our behavior for answers

Expressions and Attitudes

Our attitude will be relatively consistent with our facial expression

Overjustification

Tendency for people to lose interest in a once (intrinsically) liked activity when that activity is later tied to external rewards

Intrinsic Motivation tends to decrease when… 

an external reward is repeatedly offered

Subjective Norms

A person’s perception of social pressure to perform/not perform a particular behavior

Theory of Reasoned Action

An individual’s subjective norms and attitude towards the behavior predict their behavior.

Principle of Compatibility

Measuring attitudes and behaviors at the same level of specificity

Correspondent Inference Theory - Free choice: 

unconstrained by other’s choices or the situation

Correspondent Inference Theory - Expectedness of action:

how surprising the behavior was

Correspondent Inference Theory - Distinctive effects: 

limited number of alternative options