Social Psych Exam 1 (Ch. 1, 2 & 3)

social psychology

scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people

social influence

the effect that words, actions, or presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, or behaviors

evolutionary psychology

explains social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved according to natural selection

personality psychology

study of the characteristics that make individuals unique from one another. different from social psych because it focuses on individual differences and ignores social influence

sociology

study of groups, organizations, and societies rather than the individual. different from social psych because it focuses on the group, not the individual

construal

how people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world

fundamental attribution error

the tendency to explain people’s behavior in terms of personality traits, underestimating the power of social influence and the situation.

behaviorism

says that to understand human behavior, we need to reconsider the reinforcing properties of the environment (when behavior is followed by a reward, we will do it more and vice versa)

Gestalt psychology

says that we should study the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s mind rather than its objective attributes

naive realism

false conviction that we perceive things as they really are, underestimating how much we ‘spin’ things we see

two central motives of construal

1) the need to feel good about ourselves and 2) the need to be accurate

self-esteem

the need to feel good about ourselves; people need to maintain high self-esteem to see themselves as good or competent

given the choice between distorting the world to feel good about ourselves and seeing the world accurately, people will…

distort the world

social cognition

study of how people select, interpret, remember, and use information to make judgments and decisions.

social cognition researchers assume that…

people try to view the world as accurately as possible (or are amateur sleuths trying to understand their social world)

WEIRD participants

Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic people tend to be overrepresented in psychological studies

hindsight bias

after something occurred, people exaggerate how well they could have predicted it beforehand

hypothesis

foundation for research that is testable. hypotheses are often generated from previous theories/research or personal observations

observational method

technique where a researchers observes people and records measurements or impressions of their behavior. this method is limited because it cannot reveal cause and effect or predict behavior and certain behaviors are hard to observe

ethnography

method of observational learning where researchers attempt to understand a group by observing it from the inside, without imposing preconceived notions

archival analysis

observational method of examining accumulated documents or archives of a culture such as diaries, novels, music, etc.

correlational method

method where two variables are measured and the relationship between them is assessed. it can prove correlation, but is limited because it can’t show causation

correlation coefficient

statistic that assesses how well you can predict one variable based on another given variable

survey

correlational method where a representative sample of people are asked questions about attitudes/behaviors

random selection

random selection from a large population is a way of ensuring that a sample of people actually represents the intended population

correlation does not prove…

causation

experimental method

method where researcher orchestrates an event so people experience it in one way or another. it allows the researcher to make causal inferences.

independent variable

variable that is manipulated by researcher to see if it has an effect

dependent variable

variable that a researcher measures to see how much it is affected by independent variable

internal validity

making sure that the independent variable and no other variable affected the results of the experiment

random assignment to condition

when all participants have an equal chance in taking part in any condition of an experiment, giving experiment more validity

probability level (p-value)

number calculated statistically that tells researchers how likely the results of their experiment occurred by chance rather than by the independent variable. if the p-value is less than 5/100, the results are trustworthy

external validity

extent to which the results of an experiment can be generalized to other situations (real life) and to other people (non-participants)

psychological realism

extent to which the psychological processes in an experiment are the same as they are in everyday life. more psychologically realistic experiments are more generalizable to everyday life.

cover story

disguised version of the study’s true purpose in order to improve psychological realism

field experiment

where study takes place outside a laboratory in its natural setting, and participants are unaware that the events are an experiment. the external validity of a field experiment is higher

basic dilemma of the social psychologist

the tradeoff between internal validity and external validity (it is hard to achieve both). social psychologists usually do one experiment with high internal validity in a laboratory setting and then another field experiment with high external validity in a natural setting

replication

the ultimate test of external validity. if we can conduct the same study with the same results among different populations, then the results are highly generalizable

meta-analysis

statistical technique that averages the results of two or more studies to see if the effect of an independent variable is reliable (averaging the results of many different studies rather than p-value which does just one)

basic research

goal is to answer the question of why people behave the way they do, not trying to solve a specific psychological problem

applied research

research geared towards answering a specific social problem

cross-cultural research

research conducted with members of different cultures to see if results are the same or different across studies

social neuroscience

social psychologists are interested in the relation between biological processes and social behavior

open science movement

movement focused on making scientific processes more open to other scientists and the public (researchers should have public databases)

informed consent

makes deception less problematic by explaining nature of the experiment to the participant before they complete it

deception

misleading participants about the true purpose of the study in order to have participants experience manufactured events as if they were real. they must be debriefed after the study about the deception and allowed to not have their results recorded.

institutional review board

reviews research before it is conducted to make sure it meets ethical guidelines

automatic thinking

thought that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless

schemas

mental structures that organize our knowledge of the social world and encompasses or knowledge about things. they can either mislead or help you navigate social situations

accessibility

extent to which schemas and concepts are likely to be used because they are at the forefront of the mind

priming

process where recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema/concept

self-fulfilling prophecy

when people have an expectation of someone, people will behave in a way that makes it more likely that their original expectation will come true

automatic goal pursuit

when people have competing goals, they tend to pursue the goal that is more accessible in their minds

judgmental heuristics

shortcuts that people use to make judgments quickly and as accurately as possible

availability heuristic

basing a judgment on the ease with which you can bring something to mind (ex. if you remember a lot of times where someone acted arrogant, you will assume they are an arrogant person)

representativeness heuristic

mental shortcut to classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case (ex. if we see a student at UVA, we could assume they are from Virginia because the majority of students here are Virginians)

base rate information

information about the relative frequency of members of different categories in the population

cultural determinants of schemas

the extent to which the content of our schemas is affected by the culture we live in

analytic thinking style

type of thinking typical to Western cultures where people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context

holistic thinking

type of thinking typical to East Asian cultures where people focus on overall contexts and the ways objects or backgrounds relate to one another

controlled thinking

thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful. this kind of thinking is believed to be undervalued in social psychology. people can either be less in control or more in control of their thoughts and actions than they realize, depending on the situation

counterfactual thinking

mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been (ex. “if i answered differently in the interview, i would’ve got hired”). this type of thinking is conscious and effortful (controlled thinking)

planning fallacy

tendency for people to be overly optimistic about how soon they will complete a project, even if they have failed to get similar projects in on time before

fMRI

social psychologists use this to correlate brain activity with social information processing

anchoring and adjustment heuristic

making a judgment based on a starting value (or anchor). judgments will change based on the anchor or starting value that is given.