Final Part of PSYC112 Internal Test

How do McKnight & Sutton (1994) define social psychology?

A discipline that tries to understand, explain and predict how individuals' thoughts, feelings and actions are influenced by the perceived, imagined or implied thoughts, feelings and actions of others

What was Rousseau's view of human nature?

Man is by nature good and only institutions make him bad

What was Hobbes's view of human nature?

Man is by nature solitary, poor, nasty and brutish

What are the five approaches to social psychology covered in the lecture?

Cognitive, learning, motivational, biological, cultural

What does the cognitive perspective emphasise?

How perception affects behaviour: if you see noxious behaviour as accidental you're unlikely to respond aggressively, but if you see it as deliberate you may

What does the learning perspective emphasise?

Reinforcement and imitation

What does the motivational perspective emphasise?

Basic human needs: just as we have biological needs, we have psychological needs

What does the biological perspective emphasis?

Evolutionary past and genetic disposition

What are the four levels of explanation in social psychology?

Intra-personal, inter-personal, inter-group, societal

What does the Intra-personal level focus on?

What goes on inside the person.

What three things was Freud the first to draw attention to?

The unconscious, the developmental aspects of personality, and talking cures

In what way was Freud a 'modern Hobbesian?’

Like Hobbes, he saw the basic human condition as a seething cauldron of pleasure-seeking instincts

What is the ID?

The most primitive part of the psyche, containing basic urges and the need for sexual pleasure. It works on the pleasure principle, demanding satisfaction now regardless of consequences

What is the EGO?

The part that works on the reality principle and tries to satisfy the id pragmatically, in accordance with societal norms

What is the SUPEREGO?

A moral policeman representing the internalized rules of parents and society.

What is the displacement defence mechanism?

Impulses redirected into a safer course.

What are Freud's five psychosexual stages and their ages?

Oral (0-2), Anal (2-4), Phallic (4-6), Latency (6-12), Genital (12+)

What is the Oedipus complex?

The boy wants to possess his mother and hates his father, fears castration, and resolves it by giving up his desire and identifying with his father.

What are the three main problems with Freud's theory?

He never actually studied children, his ideas are not falsifiable, and there is little experimental evidence to support them

Why is the experimental evidence for Freud weak? Cover Bandura (1965) and Bruner and Postman.

Bandura's Bobo doll study showed that aggression is better explained by imitation and observational learning than by redirected repressed impulses. Bruner and Postman found threatening words took longer to report (seeming to support repression), but this is problematic because people may feel embarrassed or want to recheck their eyes

What is an attitude?

A positive or negative reaction towards a stimulus such as a person, action, object or concept.

What is a Likert scale?

Respondents rate agreement with a statement on a numbered scale.

What is the bogus pipeline technique?

Participants are hooked up to an impressive-looking apparatus and told it measures minute changes in their muscles

How does electromyography (EMG) measure attitudes?

Electromyography measures activity of facial muscles.

What did LaPiere (1934) do, and why is it a source of controversy?

He toured with a Chinese couple and stopped at over 50 hotels and 200 restaurants; only one hotel refused service. He then wrote to each establishment asking if a Chinese couple would be accommodated and 92% said no, so stated attitudes did not match behaviour

According to the Theory of Planned Behaviour, when do attitudes predict behaviour

Attitudes predict behaviour when (1) we have a positive attitude towards the behaviour, (2) norms support our attitudes, and (3) the behaviour is under our control

Are attitudes stable or changeable?

On the whole attitudes are relatively stable

What is cognitive dissonance?

Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort from inconsistency between attitudes and behaviour. Since behaviour can't be undone, we change our attitude.

When do fear appeals work?

when the message evokes moderate to strong fear and offers a feasible, low-cost way to reduce the threat

What is one way to resist attitude change?

Rehearsing counter arguments.

What is the central proposition of attribution research?

People's perception of the causes of an event affects what they do and how they feel

What are two consequences of attributions covered in the lecture?

Couples in marital distress tend to attribute their partner's negative behaviour to internal characteristics.

What is the difference between pessimistic and optimistic attributional styles?

The pessimist explains negative events through his own enduring qualities, while the optimist explains them through external factors

How are attributions linked to self-esteem?

Attributing success to our own internal qualities lets us achieve and maintain self-esteem, while attributing failure to the same internal qualities can decrease self-esteem

How do attributions relate to control, and what is the downside (victim blame)?

Attributing our successes to internal characteristics can make us believe we are in control. But the control function isn't always positive: it can lead to victim blame, where people derogate victims of negative events such as rape, AIDS and cancer

What three sources of information do we use when making an attribution?

Consistency, consensus, distinctiveness

Define the actor-observer effect

We attribute our own actions to external factors but others' actions to internal causes.

What did Hunter et al. (1991, 1994) find when Catholics and Protestants explained Catholic and Protestant violence?

Each group explained its own side's violence in terms of provocation or fear (e.g. the crowd 'thought they were being attacked'), but the other side's violence in terms of hatred, bloodlust or insanity (e.g. 'obvious psychopath', 'people acted like animals')

What did Miller (1984) find at the societal level about cultural differences in attributions?

Individuals from Western cultures favour dispositional (internal) explanations, while individuals from non-Western cultures tend to favour environmental (external) explanations

What evidence shows that proximity matters in forming relationships (McKnight, 1994; Byrne)?

McKnight (1994) found 83% of people met their 'special partner' in a familiar social setting and 6% in a casual social setting. Byrne found people tended to make friends with those they were seated beside alphabetically

What is the mere exposure effect?

Repeated exposure to any stimulus makes it more appealing

When does proximity fail to produce liking?

Proximity doesn't always work. Personality differences, conflicts of interest, value differences and status differentials can lead to antagonism, and if the initial interaction is negative and reinforced, dislike will occur

How does emotional arousal affect attraction?

Emotionally aroused people rate others as more attractive.

What gender differences in partner preferences does the lecture describe?

Men focus on the physical attractiveness of potential partners, while women tend to focus on psychological characteristics.

What physical features do men and women each tend to prefer?

Men prefer a childlike face (big eyes, small nose and chin), a medium bust with hips, waist and bottom, and younger, smaller women. Women prefer a dominant expression (small eyes, square jaw, thrusting chin), a V-shaped torso with broad shoulders, and older, taller men.

What benefits of physical attractiveness does the lecture list

Adults are less aggressive towards attractive children, attractive people are more likely to be hired for jobs, and attractive students are more likely to be given better grades

What role does similarity play in attraction?

People tend to be attracted to others similar to themselves; the most important determinants are similarity of attitudes, values and activities.

What is social facilitation?

How the physical presence of others influences our behaviour (e.g. we laugh more if others laugh, eat more in a larger crowd, and cockroaches run faster near other cockroaches)

What is the Drive Theory of Facilitation?

The presence of others increases arousal, and arousal strengthens our dominant response. Performance is enhanced if the dominant response is appropriate and impaired if it is inappropriate.

What is diffusion of responsibility?

As group size increases, individual responsibility decreases.

What is deindividuation?

When people are surrounded by others they lose self-awareness and feel anonymous.

How does self-awareness affect anti-social behaviour?

A decrease in self-awareness leads to an increase in anti-social behaviour

Describe Asch's conformity study and its main result.

10-12 people in a lab were shown pairs of cards of different line lengths and asked aloud which lines were equal. Only one person was genuine and the rest were confederates who answered first and consistently gave incorrect answers. 75% went along with the majority, while control participants made no mistakes

What did Newcomb's college study show about influence and beliefs?

Newcomb studied social and political attitudes at a small liberal US college that recruited students from conservative backgrounds. The students were initially very conservative but by the time they left had adapted to the liberal ethos of the college

What happened in Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment?

Students took the roles of guards and prisoners in an experiment planned for 2 weeks. Guards became assertive, dominant and supportive of one another regardless of brutality; prisoners became obedient and cowed, and judged the guards to be larger. The study had to be stopped after 6 days

How was Milgram's obedience study set up?

Participants thought they were in an experiment on learning. One participant was the 'teacher' and the other, an experimental confederate, was the 'pupil', who was strapped into a chair in another room. Each time the pupil made a mistake the teacher gave him a bogus electric shock, increasing by 15 volts each time, using a generator with dials from SLIGHT SHOCK to DANGER XXX

What happened as Milgram's study progressed, and what were the results?

As the study progressed the pupil grunted and screamed, then complained of a heart condition, and eventually became silent. 66% of participants went all the way to the DANGER XXX level, indicating that people will hurt others if ordered to do so

Who ran the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE)?

Philip Zimbardo

What was the Stanford Prison Experiment’s aim?

He wanted to examine how social roles affect individual behaviour.

Why was the SPE stopped after 6 days?

It was stopped 6 days after starting because what the researchers saw was frightening: guards treated prisoners as despicable animals and took pleasure in cruelty, prisoners became servile, and one had an emotional breakdown.

What proportion of SPE guards actually became sadistic?

Only about a third of guards became sadistic; a third were kind, a third were fair, and one resigned because he couldn't go through with it.

Who ran the obedience experiments?

Stanley Milgram.

What percentage of participants went to 450 volts?

65% went to 450 volts

How do Brown & Lepore (1996) define prejudice?

Holding derogatory attitudes or beliefs, expressing negative affect, or displaying hostile or discriminatory behaviour toward members of a group because of their membership in that group (Brown & Lepore, 1996). Someone with negative beliefs about a group (e.g. 'they're all wild and irresponsible') who dislikes dealing with its members is prejudiced

What is the Authoritarian Personality?

A personality type that is overly deferential to those in authority but hostile towards those seen as inferior.

According to Adorno et al., where does the authoritarian personality come from?

Working from a Freudian perspective, they claimed it comes from childhood: harsh, demanding parents stifled the child's basic instincts, the child's aggression was then displaced onto others such as ethnic minorities, and the end result was people who were over-deferential to authority and hostile to minorities

What is Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT)

Attitudes reflect the objective interests of the ingroup.

What are its two implicit assumptions of the Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT)?

If the interests of two groups coincide, relations between the groups will be harmonious; and if there is a conflict of interests between two groups, relations between the groups will be hostile

What happened in Stage 1 and Stage 2 of Sherif's study

Stage 1: the boys were split into two groups, did normal camp activities (swimming, canoeing, bushwalking) and cooperative tasks, and developed their own norms, names, leaders and status hierarchies. Stage 2: the groups were put in competition (e.g. tug of war, softball) with prizes for winners and nothing for losers

What were the results of Sherif’s Study?

Harmony in stage 1, hostility in stage 2, with name-calling ('cowards', 'bums', 'sneaky and smart alecks'), verbal abuse, fights and raids on each other's cabins

According to Hobbes, what would happen without society's constraints?

Without civilizing constraints there would be a 'war of all against all'

What is the learning perspectives typical limitation?

It tends to focus on observable behaviour and ignore cognition, with responses based on prior learning

What does the cultural perspective emphasis?

How culture affects social behaviour

What does the interpersonal level focus on?

Interactions between two people.

What does the Inter-group level focus on?

Group-level behaviour.

What does the societal level focus on?

Cultural effects on behaviour

How did Freud differ from Hobbes?

Hobbes thought baser instincts were curbed by external sanctions, whereas Freud thought society's restraints are internalized during childhood.

What happens when the SUPEREGO it is defied?

If rules are broken it punishes, leading to intense anxiety, guilt and self-reproach

What is the reaction formation defence mechanism?

The original wish is replaced by its opposite.

What is the projection defence mechanism?

Urges are projected onto others

What is the isolation defence mechanism?

Awareness of memories but not emotions

What is the Electra complex?

The girl sees she has no penis (penis envy), turns her attention to her father and hates her mother, and resolves it by identifying with her mother

What are the three components of attitude?

Cognitive, affective and behavioural

Why does the bogus pipeline technique work?

If people believe it reveals their true opinions, there is little point in lying or giving socially desirable answers

Define the self-serving bias.

We take credit for our successes but not for our failures