AP Psychology Unit 2-Social Psychology

Social Psychology

Social Psychology

The scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another

Attribution Theory

A tendency to give casual explanations for someone's behavior, often by crediting either the situation (external factor such as weather) or the persons disposition (internal factor such as intelligence)

Harold Kelly

First person to introduce the attribution theory.

Fundamental attribution error

the tendency to overestimate the impact of personal disposition (behavior) and underestimate the impact of the situation in analyzing behavior.

attitude

a belief and feeling that predisposes a person to respond in a particular way to objects, other people, and events (ex. if we believe a person is mean, we may feel dislike for that person and act unfriendly)

Self-fulfilling prophesy

refers to the socio-psychological phenomenon of someone predicting or expecting something, and this prediction or expectations comes true simply because one believes it will, and their resulting behaviors align to fulfill those beliefs.

Lenore Jacobson

Created a study with Rosenthal that showed that if teachers were led to expect enhanced performance from children, then the children's performance was enhanced.

Robert Rosenthal

Created the study with Jacobson, and argued that the biased expectation could effect reality and create self-fulfilling prophecies.

Foot-in-the-door phenomenon

the tendency for people who have first agreed to something small to later agree to a larger request.

Door-in-the-face phenomenon

the persuader attempts to convince the respondent to comply by making large request that the responder will most likely turn down in order to get something smaller easier. (ex. asking for a hundred dollars and asking for 10 you are more likely to get the money than if you just ask for 10 dollars.

Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment

a study in which college students were randomly assigned to role play in a simulated prison where they were either the prisoner or the guards. For the first few days, people were self-consciously playing their roles. Then, the simulation became too real and people began to become their roles. Point? what we do we gradually become.

Cognitive Dissonance

the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitives) are inconsistent. (ex. when we become aware that our attitudes and our actions clash, we can reduce the dissonance by changing out attitudes)

Conformity

adjusting our behaviors or thinking to conform with a group standard

Chameleon effect

to take on or copy the behaviors of those around you.(ex. another person yawning causing more people in the room to yawn)

Soloman Asch's line test experiment

In this experiment, he asks a group to state, one by one which one of the three comparison lines matches the control line. The first and second time, everyone guesses correctly. But, on the third, everyone besides you says that the answer was one you think is wrong. So, what do you answer? Do you go with what you think is right or what another person did. The point? Proving conformity.

Normative conformity/social influence

influence resulting from a persons desire to gain approval and avoid disapproval.

Informational conformity/ social influence

influence resulting from one's willingness to accept others opinions about reality.

Stanley Milgram's Shock Experiment

The subject is placed into a situation where you are a "randomly assigned" teacher or learner (in reality every subject was a teacher). You are then instructed to give the learner a number of questions to answer. If they answer incorrectly you are to shock them with a certain amount of voltage that increases as they continue to get answers wrong. The 'learner' will eventually start crying out for you to stop. The experimenter, despite the cries from the 'learner', will tell you to keep going. Would you continue to shock the person? The point? To study conformity and obedience.

Central route to persuasion

occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.

Peripheral route to persuasion

occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speakers attractiveness. (like a celebrity talking about climate change)

Social Facilitation

Improved performance on simple or well learned tasks in the presence of others

Social inhibition

Weekend performance in the presence of others on poorly learn tasks or foreign tasks

Social loafing

The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort, when pooling their efforts towards obtaining a common goal than when individually accountable

Deindividuation

The loss of self awareness and self restraint occurring in group situation that foster arousal and anonymity.

Group polarization

The enhancement of a group’s prevailing inclinations through discussions within the group

Group Think

The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony and a decision making group overrides a realistic appraise for alternatives

prejudice

An unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members. Prejudice generally includes stereotype, beliefs, negative feelings, and a predisposition to discriminatory action.

Discrimination

Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members

Scapegoat Theory

The idea that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame

Ingroup

Us. People with whom we share a common identity.

Outgroup

Them. Those perceived as different or apart from are in group.

Ingroup Bias

The tendency to favor our own group

Just-world bias

The tendency for people to believe the world is just and that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

Low-Ball Technique

Used in sales and other styles of persuasion to offer products or services at a bargain price in order to first attract a buyer, but then adds on additional expenses to make the purchase less of a bargain than originally thought

Approach-Avoidance conflict

Occurs when there is one goal or event that has both positive and negative events, or that makes the goal appealing and unappealing simultaneously

Observer effect

Refers to the tendency to attribute one’s own actions to external causes while attributing other people‘s behaviors to internal causes. Tends to be more pronounced in situations where the outcomes are negative.

Stereotype

A generalized sometimes accurate, but often over generalized belief about a group of people

Other race effect

The tendency to recall faces of one’s own race, more accurately than faces of other races

Irving Janis

Studied the decision making process leading to the cuban missile crisis. Coined the term of groupthink.

Terror management theory

a dual-defense model that explains how people protect themselves against concerns about death (mortality salience). According to ___ the specific manner in which people respond is dependent on whether the concerns are conscious or unconscious.

G.R.I.T

Graduated Reciprocation in Tension reduction was proposed by in 1962 and refers to a method of restoring negotiations between two parties who are deadlocked.

Frustration-Aggression Principle

states that aggression is a result of frustration. Frustration is any event or stimulus that prevents an individual from attaining a goal and it's accompanying reinforcement quality

Diffusion of Responsibility

refers to the fact that as the number of bystanders increases, the personal responsibility that an individual bystander feels decreases. As a consequence, so does his or her tendency to help.

Pluralistic Ignorance

is the (incorrect) belief that one's personal attitudes are different from the majorities' attitudes, and thus one goes along with what they think others think

Bystander Effect

the inhibiting influence of the presence of others on a person's willingness to help someone in need. Research has shown that, even in an emergency, a bystander is less likely to extend help when he or she is in the real or imagined presence of others than when he or she is alone.

Social Script

As people are engaged in varieties of day-to-day activities they internalize certain concepts in different situations in their minds. For example, when an individual enters a restaurant they choose a table, order, wait, eat, pay the bill and leave.

ethnocentrism

belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group and they use their perspective to judge others.

Catharsis Hypothesis

the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. For example punching a pillow to get your anger out.

altruism

the quality of unselfish concern for the welfare of others

equity

the quality of being fair and impartial. For example, splitting the house chores 50/50 with your spouse.

social-exchange theory

a person will weigh the cost of a social interaction (negative outcome) against the reward of that social interaction (positive outcome). These costs and rewards can be material, like money, time or a service.

Social desirability bias

the tendency to underreport socially undesirable attitudes and behaviors and to over report more desirable attributes. For example not talking about failing a test, but over flaunting about passing one.

Richard Lapeiere

spent his professional career at Stanford University, researching, writing and teaching sociology from 1929 to 1965. He died of cancer in 1986. was a prolific author of both journal articles and texts on sociology, overlapping with the new, developing field (of the day) in social psychology. Created the attitude-behavior problem.

Pygmalion effect

The work of Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968), among others, shows that teacher expectations influence student performance. Positive expectations influence performance positively, and negative expectations influence performance negatively.

Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith's cognitive dissonance experiment

performed an experiment regarding cognitive dissonance in 1959. They asked the participants to execute boring tasks, such as repeatedly turning pegs in a peg board for an hour. Half of the participants were paid $1 and the other half was paid $20.the participants experienced dissonance between the conflicting cognitions of telling someone that a particular task is interesting when the truth is, they found it rather uninteresting and boring.

Robber's Cave experiment

a famous psychology study that looked at how conflict develops between groups. The researchers divided boys at a summer camp into two groups, and they studied how conflict developed between them. They also investigated what did and didn't work to reduce group conflict. demonstrated that an attempt to simply bring hostile groups together is not enough to reduce intergroup prejudice. Rather, this experiment confirmed that groups must cooperate and have common goals to truly build peace.

Muzafer Sherif

was a Turkish-American social psychologist. He helped develop social judgment theory and realistic conflict theory. was a founder of modern social psychology who developed several unique and powerful techniques for understanding social processes, particularly social norms and social conflict

Bibb Latane

an American social psychologist. He worked with John M. Darley on bystander intervention in emergencies. He has also published many articles on social attraction in animals, social loafing in groups, and the spread of social influence in populations

Outgroup homogeneity

is the tendency for members of a group to see themselves as more diverse and heterogeneous than they are seen by an outgroup. Thus, for example, whereas Italians see themselves as quite diverse and different from one another, Americans view Italians as more similar to each other, or more alike.

False Concensus effect

describe the tendency to “see one's own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances while viewing alternative responses as uncommon, deviant, or inappropriate”

Self-serving Bias

s the common habit of a person taking credit for positive events or outcomes, but blaming outside factors for negative events

Social trap

are a phenomenon in Social Psychology that describes a situation in which an individual or group of individuals act or operate for short-term gains or reinforcement, but have a tendency to over-exploit a resource that in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole and to society.

Mere exposure effect

s a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things or people that are more familiar to them than others. Repeated exposure increases familiarity. This effect is therefore also known as the familiarity effect.

Passionate Love

a type of love in which emotional arousal and usually sexual passion are prominent features;

Companionate love

a type of love characterized by strong feelings of intimacy and affection for another person rather than strong emotional arousal in the other's presence.

Reciprocity Norm

requires that we repay in kind what another has done for us. It can be understood as the expectation that people will respond favorably to each other by returning benefits for benefits, and responding with either indifference or hostility to harms.

Social responsibility Norm

tells us that we should try to help others who need assistance, even without any expectation of future paybacks. involves a sense of duty and obligation, in which people are expected to respond to others by giving help to those in need of assistance.

superordinate goals

are goals that are worth completing but require two or more social groups to cooperatively achieve.

Collectivist Culture

emphasize the needs and goals of the group as a whole over the needs and desires of each individual. In such cultures, relationships with other members of the group and the interconnectedness between people play a central role in each person's identity.

Individualistic Culture

those that stress the needs of the individual over the needs of the group as a whole. In this type of culture, people are seen as independent and autonomous. Social behavior tends to be dictated by the attitudes and preferences of individuals.