Intro to Psych - Big Question #3 Exam Prep

Flashcards for Intro to Psychology Exam Prep covering Attribution Theory, Attitudes, Culture, Norms, Conditioning, and Emotions.

Situational Causes

Attributing behavior to external factors.

Dispositional Causes

Attributing behavior to internal characteristics.

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

Overemphasizing dispositional factors and underemphasizing situational factors when explaining others' behavior.

Attitudes

Beliefs about people, groups, things, or ideas.

Familiarity Effect

Holding more positive attitudes toward familiar entities.

Better-than-Average Effect

Thinking we are better than average.

Just-World Hypothesis

The belief that the world is fair.

Cognitive Dissonance

Discomfort when holding conflicting attitudes or when attitudes and behavior are dissonant.

Culture

A set of shared values, beliefs, and customs that determine behavior within a community.

Social Identity

Self-concept based on religion, ethnicity, gender, nation, etc.

Norms

Rules about how we are supposed to act in society.

Conformity

Acting and thinking like the people around us.

Normative Influence

Going along with the crowd due to concern about what others think.

Informational Influence

Going along with the crowd because others' actions provide information.

Descriptive Norms

Acting like those around you.

Obedience

Compliance with an order from an authority figure.

Groupthink

Tendency for group members to think alike for the sake of harmony.

Bystander Effect

Diffusion of responsibility in a group setting.

Stereotypes

A summary impression that members of a certain group share common characteristics.

Prejudice

A strong, unreasonable dislike of a group and its members, often coinciding with negative stereotypes.

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

A stimulus that already elicits a certain response without learning.

Unconditioned Response (UR)

A response that is elicited by an unconditioned stimulus.

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

A previously neutral stimulus that comes to elicit a conditioned response after being associated with the US.

Conditioned Response (CR)

A response that is elicited by a conditioned stimulus.

Acquisition

Learning: a relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience.

Extinction

The weakening and eventual disappearance of a learned response.

Classical Conditioning

Occurs when two or more things are paired together in time and/or space.

Reflex Behaviors

In classical conditioning, an unconditioned stimulus reflexively produces an unconditioned response without requiring previous training.

Stimulus generalization

The tendency to respond to a stimulus that resembles the one involved in the original conditioning.

Stimulus discrimination

The tendency to respond differently to two or more stimuli that are similar but different on some dimension.

Higher-order conditioning

Occurs when a neutral stimulus becomes a CS due to its association with an already-established CS.

Positive reinforcement

Pleasant consequence is added

Negative reinforcement

A negative consequence is removed

Emotion

A state of arousal involving facial and bodily changes, brain activation, cognitive appraisals, subjective feelings, and tendencies toward action

Universalist View

All cultures share common primordial ancestor; emotions are the same.

Constructivist View

Humans have adapted to different environments; emotions evolved too.