social midterm

What is social psychology?

The study of how situations influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

What is the power of context?

The influence of surroundings and social situations on behavior.

What is social cognition?

The processes used to perceive, interpret, remember, and think about people.

What is social perception?

The general process by which people come to understand one another.

What is a hypothesis?

An explicit, testable prediction.

What is a theory?

An organized set of principles used to explain phenomena.

What is basic research?

Research intended to build knowledge and understanding.

What is applied research?

Research intended to address practical problems.

What is an operational definition?

A specific way to measure or manipulate a concept.

What is construct validity?

Whether a measure or manipulation represents the intended concept.

What is the correlational

A method measuring the strength and direction of relationships between variables.

What is a positive correlation?

Two variables tend to increase or decrease together.

What is a negative correlation?

As one variable increases, the other tends to decrease.

Why does correlation not prove causation?

Direction may be unclear, and a third variable may explain the relationship.

What is a confounding variable?

An outside variable that may explain an observed relationship or effect.

What is an experiment?

A study that manipulates a variable to test its effect on an outcome.

What is an independent variable (IV)?

The variable manipulated by the researcher.

What is a dependent variable (DV)?

The outcome measured by the researcher.

What is a control group?

A comparison group that does not receive the key experimental manipulation.

What is random assignment?

Giving participants a chance of assignment to different experimental conditions.

What is random sampling?

Selecting participants from a population using a random process.

Random sampling vs random assignment?

Sampling selects who participates; assignment determines which condition participants enter.

What is a participant variable?

A pre-existing characteristic of a participant, such as height or personality.

What is a laboratory experiment?

An experiment conducted in a controlled research setting.

What is a field experiment?

An experiment conducted in a natural or real-world setting.

What is mundane realism?

The degree to which an experiment's setting and procedures resemble real life.

What is informed consent?

Participants are told relevant information before agreeing to take part.

What is debriefing?

Explaining the study's purpose and procedures to participants afterward.

Why might researchers use deception?

To prevent participants' expectations from changing their behavior when necessary.

What is experimenter expectancy?

The possibility that a researcher's expectations influence participants or results.

What is preregistration?

Recording hypotheses and planned analyses before examining the results.

What is open science?

Making research methods, hypotheses, materials, and data transparent where possible.

delete

ok

What is an institutional review board (IRB)?

A committee that reviews research involving human participants for ethical acceptability.

What is a meta-analysis?

A statistical method that combines findings across multiple studies.

What is a hypothesis test designed to do?

Evaluate whether evidence is consistent with a proposed explanation.

What is physiognomy?

The supposed art of inferring character from facial appearance.

What are social scripts?

Preset expectations about the goals, behaviors, and outcomes of a situation.

Why can scripts affect social perception?

They help us interpret behavior according to what we expect in a setting.

What is mind perception?

Attributing human-like mental states to people and other animate or inanimate things.

What are the main nonverbal channels in your notes?

Facial expressions, gestures, body posture, eye gaze, and voice.

How many primary facial emotions are mentioned in your notes?

Six primary emotions are described as having universal facial expressions.

What is the eye contact effect?

Direct gaze can capture attention, increase arousal, and activate social-processing brain regions.

delete

ok

delete

ok

body vs facial cues

Observers who saw body-focused tapes were better at detecting deception than observers who saw face-focused tapes.

What is the anger superiority effect?

People tend to detect angry faces in a crowd more quickly and look away from them more slowly.

why do we need disgust

It may help people recognize potential dangers such as food contamination.

What brain structure is associated with observing disgust in others in your notes?

The insula

What is impression formation?

Combining information about a person to form a coherent overall impression.

What is the averaging model of impression formation?

The idea that the average value of a person's traits influences the overall impression.

What is information integration theory?

Impressions reflect perceiver characteristics and a weighted average of the target's traits.

What are central traits?

Traits that have a powerful influence on an overall impression.

What is the primacy effect?

Early information has a disproportionate influence on an impression.

What is the stereotype content model?

The idea that impressions of people often center on warmth and competence.

What is an implicit personality theory?

Assumptions about which traits and behaviors tend to go together.

What is priming?

Recent or frequently activated concepts become easier to access and influence interpretation.

What are the Big Five personality factors

Extraversion, emotional stability, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

What is attribution theory?

Theories describing how people explain the causes of behavior.

What is a personal attribution?

Explaining behavior through internal factors such as personality, ability, mood, or effort.

What is a situational attribution?

Explaining behavior through external factors such as pressure, tasks, other people, or luck.

What is a disposition?

A relatively stable characteristic such as a trait, attitude, or ability.

What is the fundamental attribution error?

Overestimating personal causes and underestimating situational causes when explaining others.

What is the actor-observer effect?

Explaining others' behavior personally but explaining our own behavior situationally.

What is the covariation principle?

People attribute behavior to factors present when it occurs and absent when it does not.

What is consensus information?

Whether other people respond similarly to the same stimulus.

What is distinctiveness information?

Whether the same person responds differently to different stimuli.

What is consistency information?

Whether the same person responds similarly to the same stimulus across occasions.

What is the just-world belief?

The belief that people get what they deserve in life.

just-world phenomenon

It can encourage people to blame victims for their misfortune.

What is confirmation bias?

Seeking, interpreting, or creating information that supports existing beliefs.

What is belief perseverance?

Maintaining an initial belief even after its supporting evidence is discredited.

What is the illusion of objectivity?

Seeing one's own judgments as objective and treating disagreement as evidence that others are wrong.

What is a cognitive heuristic?

A quick rule of thumb that simplifies judgment but can lead to errors.

What is the availability heuristic?

Estimating likelihood based on how easily examples come to mind.

What is the base-rate fallacy?

Insufficiently considering general statistical frequencies when judging a case.

What is the representativeness heuristic?

Judging category membership or likelihood by resemblance to a typical example.

What is the false-consensus effect?

Overestimating how many people share one's opinions, traits, or behaviors.

What is counterfactual thinking?

Imagining alternative outcomes that did not actually happen.

system 1 vs system 2

System 1 is fast and automatic; System 2 is slower, controlled, and effortful.

when is system 2 used

When a situation is difficult, unexpected, or requires deliberate attention.

What is the self-fulfilling prophecy?

Expectations lead to behavior that helps make those expectations come true.

What are the steps in a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Expectation forms, the perceiver acts accordingly, and the target responds in ways that confirm it.

What is the rejection-prophecy example?

Fear of rejection can cause awkward behavior, increasing rejection and reinforcing insecurity.

What did Rosenhan's “On Being Sane in Insane Places” illustrate in your notes?

Expectations and diagnostic assumptions can influence how behavior is interpreted.

What is relational mobility?

How much freedom people have to form new social ties and leave existing ones.

How can social class affect attribution?

Greater choice and control may encourage stronger focus on personal causes.

What is a bicultural identity?

Retaining aspects of an ancestral culture while adopting aspects of a new culture.

What is the availability-related vivid-story problem?

A memorable individual story may outweigh more representative statistical information.

What is social categorization?

Dividing people into social groups, often as “us” and “them.”

What is an ingroup?

A group a person identifies as belonging to.

What is an outgroup?

A group a person sees as outside their own group.

What is social identity?

The part of self-concept derived from membership in social groups.

What is social identity theory?

The theory that favoring ingroups can help people maintain positive social identity and self-esteem.

What is the black sheep effect?

Judging a disliked ingroup member especially harshly because they threaten the group's positive image.

What is social validation?

Seeking others' approval or acceptance to judge whether one's actions and beliefs are appropriate.

What is an external social identity threat?

A threat to group identity coming from outside the group.

What is an internal social identity threat?

A conflict or threat to identity arising within the group.

What is stereotype threat?

Concern about confirming a negative stereotype that can impair performance.

What is bias?

A tendency or preference that can influence judgment.