Social Psychology Exam One

Fundamental needs

Belongingness, understanding, control, self-enhancement, and trust

Social influence

The ways people impact each other’s mental states and behaviors (presence of others can be actual, implied, or imagined)

ABCs

Affect, feeling, and behavior

Social artifacts

Human made objects that imply the interests/presence of others

Social cognition

How people select, remember, and use social information to make judgements and decisions

Schema

Knowledge representation that includes info about a person or group, reside primarily in the prefrontal cortex

Attitude

Knowledge representation that involves liking/disliking a person, thing, or group

Mood

Positive or negative feelings in the background

Emotions

Brief and intense mental and physiological feeling states

Reciprocal altruism

Helping with the expectation that you will also receive help at some future time

Kurt Lewin Theory of Social Behavior

Behavior is a function of personal and environmental situations → B=f(P,E)

Situationism

Primary determinant of behavior is social context; situation is often more powerful than personal beliefs → behavior is influenced by social roles (Stanford Prison Experiment)

Social roles

Patterns of behavior expected of people in a specific setting or group

Strong situation hypothesis

Extent to which a situation influences behavior depends on the strength of the situation → weaker situations show more of a person’s personality

Constructivism

Our view of reality is created by our perception and shaped by our cognitive and social processes → we use others reactions as social information

Naïve realism

Belief that we see the world as it ‘really is’

Evolutionary adaption

Human nature and social behavior is determined largely by our evolutionary past, social behavior is adaptive

Self-concern

Motivation to protect and enhance the self and the people who are psychologically close to us

Kin selection

Strategies that favor the reproductive success of ones own relatives, even at the cost of individual survival

Ingroup

Those whom we view as being similar or important to us and with whom we share close social connections

Other-concern

Motivation to affiliate with, accept, and be accepted by others → results in moral behavior

Social norms

Ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members and perceived as appropriate

EEG

Electroencephalogram, measure electric activity of neurons, doesn’t provide a very clear picture

fMRI

Functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic field to create images of brain structure and function

Automatic cognition

Based on past learning, quick, lower conscious awareness

High effort cognition

Slow and deliberate, conscious, based on logic (we think)

Experiential system

Unconscious, intuitive, and automatic way of thinking (vs. cognitive system)

Cognitive system

Conscious, rational, and controlled way of thinking (vs. experiential system)

Learning

Relatively permanent change in knowledge that is acquired through experience

Cognitive heuristics

Information processing rules of thumb that enable us to think in ways that are quick and easy, but may sometimes lead to error

Assimilation

Categorization of memory, placing new experiences into existing categories (schemas)

Schema accessibility

Extent to which a schema is ready for use

Chronic accessibility

Salient due to repeated experiences, schemas are constantly activated and always ready to be used

Temporal accessibility

Schemas are salient due to recent experiences or thoughts

Conditioning

Ability to connect stimuli with responses (operant, associational, and observational)

Confirmation bias

Tendency to favor info that confirms expectations, regardless of the truth

Self-fulfilling prophecies

Expectations lead to behaviors towards others that makes those expectations come true

Salience

Stimuli that are colorful, moving, or unusual grab our attention → more likely to judge based on sex, race, age, etc. because these features are salient

Representativeness heuristic

Base our judgements on information that seems to match what we expect, and ignore more informative statistical information

Availability heuristic

Things that come to mind easily are seen as more common

Anchoring and adjustment

Decisions are overly based on the things that are most highly accessible in memory

Counterfactual thinking

Tendency to think about ‘what might have been’, may ‘replay’ how events might have gone such that they turn out differently

Overconfidence

Tend to have more confidence in our skills, abilities, and judgements than is objectively warranted

False consensus bias

We see people as similar to us and overestimate how much others share our beliefs and opinions

Processing fluency

Ease at which we can process information in our environments

Basic/primary emotions

• Appear during the first six months of life

• Anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise

• Based on the arousal produced by the SNS

Display rules

Social norms that dictate how we should/should not express emotion, socially and culturally influenced

Secondary/self-conscious emotions

• Guilt, embarrassment, shame, jealousy

• Requires self awareness and social awareness (social comparisons + awareness of norms)

Positive mood

Leads to approach, people are more open minded towards other opinions or cultural norms, associated with decreased prejudice, and find others funnier

Negative mood

Leads to avoidance, people are less open minded towards other opinions or cultural norms, associated with increased prejudice

Well-being

Our sense of satisfaction with our every day experience

SNS

Sympathetic nervous system, division of the autonomic nervous system that is involved in preparing the body to respond to threats by activating the endocrine system

PNS

Parasympathetic nervous system, division of the autonomic nervous system that is involved in resting, digesting, relaxing, and recovering

Arousal

Changes in bodily sensations, including increased blood pressure, heart rate perspiration, and respiration; accompanies strong emotions

Limbic system

Controls the experience of emotion

Amygdala

Responsible for regulating our perceptions of and responses to aggression and fear (part of the limbic system)

Misattribution of arousal

People incorrectly label the source of the arousal they’re experiencing - emotion has both an arousal and cognitive factor

Stress

The physical and psychological reactions that occur whenever we believe that the demands of a situation threaten our ability to respond to them

PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder, a medical syndrome that includes symptoms of anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares, and social withdrawal

General adaption syndrome

The three distinct phases of physiological change that occur in response to long-term stress (alarm, resistance, and exhaustion)

Alarm

First phase of general adaption syndrome, first reaction to stress, body releases stress hormones including cortisol

Resistance

Second phase of general adaption syndrome, after a period of chronic stress, the body adapts and attempts to return to normal → glucose and blood pressure increase

Exhaustion

Third phase of general adaption syndrome, body has run out of reserves/energy and immunity, blood sugar decreases → decreased stress tolerance → mental and physical exhaustion, illness and collapse → organ failure and death

HPA axis

Physiological response to stress involving interactions among the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal gland, begins with release of the hormone ACTH

Fight or flight

Emotional and behavioral response to stress that increase readiness for action - men are more likely to display this response, triggered by HPA axis

Tend and befriend

Behavioral reaction to stress that involves activities designed to create a social network that provides protection from threats, women are more likely to display this response, triggered by oxytocin and healthier overall

Depression

Affective disorder in which people experience sadness, low self-esteem, negative thoughts, pessimism, and apapthy

Anxiety

Psychological disorder that may be accompanied by a number of physical symptoms

Emotional contagion

Tendency to adopt other’s emotions through social interaction

• Often automatic and unaware

• Synchronizes emotion within a group or relationship, which allows us to form better group behaviors

• Pro-relationship behavior

Steps to emotional contagion

1. Observe emotion in another person

2. Automatically mimic facial expression, posture, gesture, and tone

3. Feedback from ones own facial expressions creates the emotion

Self-regulation

Process of setting goals and using our cognitive and affective capacities to reach those goals

Optimism

General tendency to expect positive outcomes - optimists are overall happier and less stressed

Self-efficacy

Belief in our ability to carry out actions that produce desired outcomes - people with high self-efficacy respond to threats in a more active/constructive manner

Hardiness

Tendency to be less affected by life’s stressors, related to optimism, self-efficacy, and perceived control

Self-concept

Knowledge/beliefs about ourselves - knowledge that we exist as individuals, traits, characteristics, abilities, values, goals, roles, etc.

Sources of self knowledge

• Appraisals from others = other people’s assessments of us

• Social comparison = how we measure ourselves against other people

• Self-perception = observations we make about our own actions

Red dot/rouge experiment

A red dot is drawn on infants (human and nonhuman) foreheads before they are placed in front of a mirror → if they touch the dot on themselves (instead of on the mirror), we can assume they realize they exist as individuals. Human infants do this by about 18 months.

Self-schemas

Organization of the abstract self-concept into a variety of different cognitive aspects

Social identity

The sense of ourself that involves our memberships in social groups

Personality traits

Specific and stable personality characteristics that describe an individual

Self-complexity

Extent to which individuals have many different and relatively independent ways of thinking about themselves

Self-reference effect

Information processed in relation to the self is particularly well remembered

Self awareness

Extent to which we are currently fixing our attention on our own self concept

Self consciousness

When the self concept becomes highly accessible due to concerns about being perceived/judged by others

Deindividualization

Loss of self-awareness and individual responsibility in groups

Private self-consciousness

Tendency to introspect about our thoughts and feelings

Public self-consciousness

Tendency to focus on our outer public image and to be particularly aware of the extent to which we are meeting the standards set by others

Looking glass self

We use others perceptions of us (implicit or explicit) to determine who we are

Reflected self-appraisals

Our beliefs about what others think of us (not always accurate)

Self-esteem

Positive or negative feelings we have about ourselves - most people regard themselves and things related to themselves positively

Implicit egoism

We prefer things related to ourselves

Social status

Extent to which we are viewed positively and are esteemed by others

Self-presentation

Tendency to present a positive self-image to others with the goal of increasing our social status

Ingratiation

Method of self-presentation, goal is to create liking by using flattery or charm

Intimidation

Method of self-presentation, goal is to create fear by showing that you can be aggressive

Exemplification

Method of self-presentation, goal is to create guilt by showing that you are a better person than the other

Supplication

Method of self-presentation, goal is to create pity by indicating that you are helpless or needy

Self-promotion

Method of self-presentation, goal is to create respect by persuading others that you are competent

Self-monitoring

Tendency to be both motivated and capable of regulating our behavior to meet the demands of a social situation

Narcissism

Personality trait characterized by overly high self-esteem, self-admiration, and self-centeredness