EXAM #1 - EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

hey yall! i decided to make my famous quizlet/knowt study set to help us study for our social psych exam coming up so here's all the information we need to know from the studyguide. you're welcome and good luck!! :^D <3

Cognitive Misers

The human tendency to avoid expending effort and cognitive resources when thinking and to prefer seizing on quick and easy answers to questions.

Independent Variable

The characteristic of an experiment that is manipulated or changed by researchers, not by other variables in the experiment.

Dependent Variable

The variable that changes as a result of the independent variable manipulation.

Interaction

The effect of one independent variable on a dependent variable depends on the level/condition of a second independent variable.

Confounds

A variable other than the conceptual variable intended to be manipulated that may be responsible for the effect on the dependent variable, making alternative explanations possible.

Theory

Systems of ideas that can explain certain aspects of human thoughts, behaviors, and emotions.

• Outcome can SUPPORT a theory but not PROVE the theory

• More support makes it a stronger theory but can be disproven

• Has to be falsifiable

Hypothesis

A precise, testable statement of what the researchers predict will be the outcome of the study.

Research Question

A question that a study or research project aims to answer.

Correlational Method

Research in which two continuous variables are measured and compared to determine the extent of their association.

Experimental Method

The researcher…

• manipulates a variable (the independent variable)

• measures possible effects on a second variable (the dependent variable)

• tries to hold all other variables constant.

Quasi-Experimental Method

Groups of participants are compared, but the groups cannot be formed using random assignment.

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to view events and people in ways that fit how we want and expect them to be

A priori causal theories

Preexisting theories acquired from culture or factors that are particularly prominent in conscious attention at the moment.

Dispositions

Recurrent behavioral, cognitive, or affective tendencies that distinguish an individual from others.

Situations

One or more circumstances, conditions, states, or entities in the environment that have the potential to exert causal influences on an individual's behavior.

Stereotype Threat Theory

The risk of confirming negative stereotypes about an individual's racial, ethnic, gender, or cultural group, which can create high cognitive load and reduce academic focus and performance.

• For members of a group stereotypes in a particular situation, performance in that situation is threatening

• Existence of stereotype makes the party act in a way according to stereotype because of so much fear of confirming the stereotype

Major Adaptations (Humanity’s Evolved Adaptations

• 1.​ Sociality

• 2.​ Intelligence

• 3.​ Motivation

• 4.​ Emotion

• 5.​ Culture

Domain-specific adaptations

Attributes that evolved to meet a particular challenge but are not particularly useful when dealing with other types of challenges  (Something very niche)

• EX: Green means go, red means stop (specific to driving)

Domain-general adaptations

Attributes that are useful for dealing with various challenges across different areas of life

• EX: Like avoiding snakes?

Motivation

Expending energy toward achieving/avoiding something

• People stick to goals better if they have an achieving approach

• 2 fundamental psych motives stem from HEDONISM

  • Security

    • Financial, food, shelter, stability, etc. 

  • Growth through individuation

    • We want to be seen as an individual

      • Especially in American culture

    • Independence

Hierarchy of goals

Goals range from concrete to abstract

• Goals range from concrete to abstract

• Rita's shoe diagram

  • The more why something is, the more abstract it is

The more how something is, the more concrete it is

Background Emotions

Combinations of simpler regulatory reactions with drives, motivations, pain, and pleasure as their triggers or constituents.

Social emotions

• Social emotions

• Sympathy

• Embarrassment, shame, guilt

• Pride

• Jealousy, envy

Primary emotions

• Happiness

• Fear

• Sadness

• Surprise

• Anger

• Disgust

Individualistic Culture

A community that prioritizes the individual over the collective group, emphasizing attributes like uniqueness, personal goals, independence, self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and privacy.

Collectivistic Culture

A culture that values the needs of a group or community over the individual, emphasizing kinship, family, and community.

Independent Self-Construal

The tendency of individuals to define themselves by their unique configuration of internal attributes and to focus on discovering and expressing their distinct potential.

• EX: Western: Independent culture (concrete)

Interdependent Self-Construal

The extent to which people construe the self as being fundamentally connected to other people, focusing strongly on their relationships with others and benefiting their social group.

• EX: Eastern: Dependent culture (abstract)

Construal

Abstract vs. concrete concepts

• EX: An apple - picking an apple (concrete) sustenance (abstract)

Terror Management Theory

• a way to measure aggressive behavior in the lab. Participants are asked to give a portion of hot sauce to another person (who they know hates hot sauce) and who will have to eat it all, ostensibly as part of a taste test.

• Giving high doses of hot sauce to give them a bigger punishment when thinking about death

Lay Epistemology Theory - which one of these is NOT a need for the lay theory?

• The need for accurate knowledge

• The need for nonspecific closure (quickly)

• The need for specific closure (confirmation bias)

Experiential System

 IMPLICIT attitudes (not consciously making/aware of)

• Automatic associations

• Ex: racist/prejudice bias - stored somewhere as an association

• Measuring implicit attitudes

  • Goal: measure strength of associations b/w concepts in the mind

    • Ex: measuring rxn time

    • Associated concepts should be easier and quicker

    • Unassociated concepts should be more difficult to pair together

      • Obese & good knee slaps -> CLASS STRUGGLED

Cognitive System

• EXPLICIT attitudes

  • Evaluations that we consciously make

    • Ex: we know what soda/music/ppl you like

  • Explicit attitudes can be measured by directly asking subjects

Schemas

• mental structures stored in memory based on prior knowledge & things associated with a given concept - filling in other blank memories with certain items such as songs or witnesses for example (schemas can create false memories)

• Associative network

• Impressions - schemas about people

  • Can be based on stereotypes about the group that a person belongs to 

  • Self-concept: scheme about ourselves

• Scripts - schemas about events

  • Ex: how to get gas, when to go get gas, etc

Salience

The extent to which a schema is accessible or active in one's mind and influences perceptions and behaviors.

• Happens as the outcome of the priming

Priming

the process through which a stimulus increases the salience of a schema

• Ex: yellow and red makes you more hungry -> mcdonalds

• Ex: coke ad 

• Ex: smelling the popcorn before you even enter the theater

• Makes us more salient, more primed

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that allow for quick and easy decision making.

Availability Heuristic

Assuming that information that comes to mind more readily is more frequent or common.

• Tversky & Kahneman study with the deadly disease threatening a small town

Explicit attitudes

directly asking people what they believe

Implicit Attitudes

evaluations that occur without conscious awareness towards an attitude object or the self. These evaluations are generally either favorable or unfavorable and come about from various influences in the individual experience.

Semantic associations

links between concepts with the same category or meaning (e.g.,“nice” and “kind”;“cat” and “dog”)

Experiential associations

Links between two concepts experienced closely together in time or space (e.g.,“Popcorn” and “Star Wars”)

“Impressions of Hannah Study” (Darley & Gross, 1968)

In the Hannah study, the participants either learned that Hannah was very poor or rather rich. They originally thought her grades were average no matter her social class. Then when they watched her take an aptitude test and succeeded on some hard questions but missed some easier ones. If the participants thought she was "poor" they judged her as performing below average but if she was "rich" they said she performed above average.

Internal Attributions

the process of assuming that personal factors are the cause of an individual's behavior or the cause of an event. Internal attribution, also known as dispositional attribution, directly blames an individual for the cause of an event or behavior

External attribution

interpreting an event or behavior as being caused by the situation that the individual is in. External attribution includes the assumption that given the same or similar circumstances, others would have behaved in the exact same manner.

Fundamental Attribution Error

tendency to attribute behavior to internal/dispositional factors, and underestimate the causal role of situational factors

• Example: Jones & Harris (1967) “Castro Study”

• The tendency to blame something either internal or external that could have caused the scenario

Core Assumptions of Social Psychology

1. Behavior is a product of the person and the situation

2. Behavior depends on a socially constructed reality

3. Understand social behavior using the scientific method

Limitations of Correlational Approaches

• Hypothesis 1: The more a person is conscious of the negative stereotype the worse they will perform in areas related to the stereotype

• Reverse causality problem: It is possible that poor GPA causes stigma consciousness, not the other way around

• Third variable problem: “Anxiety proneness” is a third variable that causes both higher stigma consciousness and lower GPA 

System 1 Thinking for Experiential System

1. instinctive

2. quick

3. automatic

4. little/no effort

5. emotional

6. unconscious*

• Unconscious - not fully unconscious, we are still aware; we are able to pull this info

  • it is NON- conscious (not in our immediate conscious but its something we can bring into conscious)

• Error prone

• But it can be "smart" - mind wandering can help me

• Can help us know when we are hungry, when we need to sleep

• All our instincts fall under this

System 2 Thinking for Cognitive System

1. conscious

2. rational

3. slower

4. complex decisions

5. more logical

6. effortful (ability)

Elaborate Attributional Processes

Representativeness heuristic

Tendency to overestimate the likelihood a target belongs to a category if it has representative features

Upward Counterfactuals

Older adults show more regret in connection with actions they did not take (Gilovich & Medvec, 1994)

• Maybe adaptive by helping avoid similar outcomes in the future

Downward Counterfactuals

Help us feel better about present and past outcomes (Roese, 1994)

Self Fulfilling Prophecy

• Process through which an originally false expectation leads to its own confirmation

• Fear of an outcome leads one to act in ways that inadvertently bring about that same outcome

  • EX: In golf, constantly worrying about hitting in the water may lead you to hyper focus on it or over stress about it and hit a bad shot