Social Psychology Chapters 1, 3, 5, 6

Social Psych

Norman Triplett

performance difference with or without people (children winding a tool) social facilitation

social facilitation

presence of others enhances performance

Max Ringelmann

tug of war alone/with others - social loafing

social loafing

when the group increases, individual effort decreases

social psychology borrows from

psychodynamic theory, behaviorism, and cognitive theory

social psychology

looks at a broad understanding of how “normal” human beings think, act, and feel

ABC triad

affect, behavior, cognition

affect

how people feel inside

behavior

what people do

cognition

what people think about

contemporary themes in social psychology

social cognition, focus on self, social neuroscience

independent variable

variable of interest that is proposed to create a difference in behavior/experience

dependent variable

any observable behavior a person produces

operational definition

a clear, concise detailed definition of a measure

experiment

researcher controls procedures, participants are randomly assigned, allows for statements of cause and effect

quasi-experiment

no random assignment, may be used when interested in pre-existing differences

internal validity

independent variable caused change in dependent variable

confederate

person pretending to be a participant

experimental realism

being caught up in the experiment, forgetting you are in one

mundane realism

physical environment reflecting reality

field experiments

experiments conducted in a real world setting

external validity

the findings are likely to generalize other people, settings, and other time periods

correlation

no effect to control variables or random assignment, relationship between two variables

reliability

consistent results

validity

a survey measures what it purports to measure

self-knowledge (self-concept)

a set of beliefs about oneself, self-awareness, self-esteem, self-deception

interpersonal self (public self)

self-presentation, member of groups, relationship partner, social roles, reputation

agent self (executive function)

decision making, self-control, taking charge of situations, active responding

factors that influence self

self-knowledge, interpersonal self, agent self

independent self-construal

what makes us different sets us apart from others

interdependent self-construal

what helps connect us to other people and groups

purpose of self

gain social acceptance, play social roles

self-awareness

attention directed at the self

private self-awareness

looking inward on the private aspects of the self, including emotions, thoughts, desires, and traits

public self-awareness

looking outward on the public aspects of the self that others can see and evaluate

standards

ideas of how things might possibly be

looking-glass self

the idea that people learn about themselves by imagining how they appear to others

generalized other

a combination of other people’s views that tells you who and what you are

introspection

the process by which a person examines the contents of his or her mind and mental states

social comparison

examining the difference between oneself and another person

upward social comparison

comparing yourself to people better than you

downward social comparison

comparing yourself to people worse off than you

self-perception theory

the theory that people observe their own behavior to infer what they are thinking and how they are feeling

intrinsic motivation

wanting to preform an activity for our own sake

extrinsic motivation

when you perform an activity because of its result

over justification effect

intrinsic motivation diminishes for activities associated with expected rewards

phenomenal self (working self-concept)

the image of self that is currently active in the person’s thoughts

self-handicapping

failure can be blamed on an obstacle, success assumes higher competence

self-reference effect

information bearing on self is processed more thoroughly and deeply, and remembered better

endowment effect

items gain in value to the person that owns them

self-esteem

how favorably someone evaluates themself

low self esteem

absence of strong positive view of self

self-deception strategies

self serving bias, skeptical of bad feedback, shifting definitions of good traits

high self-esteem

gives initiative, feels good, narcissism, higher prejudice

positive illusions

overestimate good qualities, underestimate faults, overestimate control over events, unrealistically optimistic

social cognition

thinking about people and social relationships

three goals of thinking

discover the right answer, confirm the desired answer, and reach the answer quickly

cognitive miser

people’s reluctance to do much extra thinking

duplex mind

two streams to how we think

automatic thinking

awareness, lacking intention, uncontrolled, effortless, efficiency

deliberate/controlled thinking

relies on conscious control

knowledge structures

organized pockets of information stored in memory

schemas

substantial information about a concept, its attributes, and its relationship to other concepts

assimilation accommodation

learning/shaping schemas

scripts

schemas about certain events

priming

activating a concept in the mind, influences subsequent thinking, may trigger automatic processes

framing

how you present information in a positive or negative fashion (not changing the information)

processes to suppress thought

automatic: scanning environment, controlled: tries to redirect attention

counter regulation

driven by cognition not bodily need (milkshake study)

causal explanations of attributions (Fritz Heider)

internal factors: something about you as a person, external factors: something more situational

self-serving bias

when we succeed, we make internal attributions, when we fail, we blame external factors

actor/observer bias

the tendency for actors to make external attributions and observers to make internal attributions

Fundamental Attribution Error

the tendency for observers to attribute other people’s behavior to internal causes and to downplay situational causes

heuristics

mental shortcuts

representativeness heuristic

judge likelihood by the extent it resembles the typical case

availability heuristic

judge likelihood by ease with which relevant instances come to mind

conjunction fallacy

we assume specific conditions are more probable than general conditions

base rate fallacy

ignoring statistical information in favor of using irrelevant information

simulation heuristic

judge likelihood by ease with which you can imagine it, linked to counterfactual thinking

anchoring and adjustment heuristic

judge likelihood by using a starting point and adjusting from that point (with numbers)

information overload

too much information, contradictions in information, irrelevant information - statistical information and case history

confirmation bias

tendency to notice and search for information that confirms one’s beliefs and ignore information that disconfirms it

“hot hand”

belief that your luck/performance will continue

gambler’s fallacy (Monte Carlo Fallacy)

tendency to believe that a chance event is affected by previous events and will “even out”, related to just world hypothesis

false consensus effect

tendency to overestimate the number of people who share one’s opinions and/or behaviors

false uniqueness effect

tendency to underestimate the number of other people who share one’s prized characteristics

statistical regression/regression to the mean

statistical tendency for extremes to be followed by less extreme or those closer to average

illusion of control

a false belief that one can influence events

counterfactual thinking

thinking of hypotheticals and what if scenarios

upward counterfactual thinking

comparing ourselves to someone better (can cause motivation)

downward counterfactual thinking

comparing ourselves to someone worse (for self-esteem)

first instinct fallacy

the false belief that it is better to not change one’s first answer on a test even if one starts to think that a different answer is correct

to minimize cognitive errors

debiasing (use deliberate instead of automatic processing) and metacognition (reflecting on one’s thought processes)

emotion

conscious, evaluative, linked to an event

mood

feeling state, not clearly linked to an event

affect

automatic response that something is good or bad

conscious emotion

powerful and unified feeling state

automatic affect

quick response of liking or disliking toward something

James-Lange theory of emotion

the proposition that the bodily processes of emotion come first, and then the mind’s perception of these bodily reactions and creates the subjective feeling of emotion

facial feedback hypothesis

the idea that feedback from the face muscles evokes or magnifies emotions