Social psyc exam 1

Flashcard deck covering core vocabulary and key concepts from Chapters 1 through 4 of Social Psychology, including research methodology, social cognition, and social perception.

Social Psychology

The scientific study of how an individual's thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behaviors are shaped by the presence of others, real or imagined.

Social Situation

The real or imagined presence of other people.

Social Influence

The effect that social situations have on an individual's thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behaviors.

Personality Psychology

A subfield of psychology focusing on how individual differences in traits or characteristics predict thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behaviors.

Sociology

A social science discipline that studies broader, complex social structures such as organizations, institutions, and nations.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people's behavior is due to internal traits and to underestimate the role of situational or social factors.

Construal

The subjective way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world, driven primarily by the need to feel good about oneself and the need to be accurate.

Self-Esteem

The degree to which we see ourselves as good, competent, and decent human beings.

Self-Justification

A cognitive bias driven by a motivation to maintain high self-esteem.

Social Cognition

The way people think about themselves and the social world; specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions.

Hypothesis

An explanation based on limited evidence which serves as a guiding idea for further investigation.

Observational Studies

Research designs where phenomena are observed and described without any attempt to influence or manipulate them.

Correlational Designs

Research methods that measure the systematic relationship or covariation between two or more variables to determine if they change together predictably.

Covariation

A systematic and coherent variation between two variables.

Third Variable Problem

A limitation in correlational research where an unmeasured factor ($Z$) influences both measured variables ($X$ and $Y$), creating a non-causal association.

Experimental Designs

Research methods that test causality by manipulating an independent variable, randomly assigning participants to conditions, and controlling extraneous variables.

Independent Variable (IV)

The variable that a researcher systematically manipulates to determine its causal effect on an outcome.

Dependent Variable (DV)

The outcome variable measured by researchers to determine if it is affected by changes in the independent variable.

Random Assignment

A procedure ensuring that every participant has an equal likelihood of being placed into any condition of the independent variable, balancing individual differences across conditions.

Extraneous Variable

Any outside factor other than the independent variable that could potentially affect the dependent variable.

Institutional Review Board (IRB)

An independent group of scientists and community members that reviews research plans to evaluate potential risks and benefits before a study begins.

Informed Consent

Agreement provided by participants prior to a study, confirming that they have been informed of the tasks and potential risks involved.

Debriefing

A post-experimental explanation given to participants detailing the true purpose of the study and why any deception was necessary.

Internal Validity

The extent to which a study avoids confounds and ensures that only the independent variable causes the observed change in the dependent variable.

External Validity

The degree to which study results can be generalized to other situations (ecological validity) or other populations of people (population validity).

Demand Characteristics

Cues in an experiment that lead participants to guess the hypothesis and alter their behavior as a 'good' or 'negative' subject.

Socially Desirable Responding

An alteration in participant behavior driven by apprehension about being observed, leading them to act in a socially acceptable manner.

Replication Crisis

An ongoing methodological crisis across scientific fields where the results of many published studies are difficult or impossible to reproduce.

Registered Reports

A publishing format where a study's proposal and design undergo Stage 1 peer review prior to data collection, helping prevent questionable research practices.

Basic Research

Research designed to answer fundamental questions about why humans behave the way they do.

Applied Research

Research aimed at solving specific societal problems using insights gained from basic research.

WEIRD Sampling

A sampling limitation resulting from relying predominantly on participants from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies.

Mediator

A psychological process variable through which an independent variable causally exerts an effect on a dependent variable, explaining the 'why' of a behavior.

Moderator

A variable that modifies the magnitude or direction of the relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable.

Automatic Cognition

Cognitive processing that is low-effort, unintentional, involuntary/uncontrollable, and typically nonconscious.

Controlled Cognition

Cognitive processing that is high-effort, intentional, voluntary/controllable, and conscious.

Four Horsemen of Automaticity (AICE)

The four primary criteria used to evaluate cognitive automaticity: Awareness, Intentionality, Controllability, and Effortfulness.

Schemas

Connected networks of knowledge, beliefs, and feelings associated with a person, object, or event that serve as mental representations to guide processing.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

A cycle where an initial expectation about a person influences behavior toward them, causing that person to act in a way that confirms the expectation.

Person Schemas

Knowledge structures containing information about characteristics of people, organized around trait clusters.

Self Schemas

Knowledge structures about the self organized around central traits that guide self-relevant processing and judgments of others.

Role Schemas

Knowledge structures regarding how individuals filling specific social roles are expected to behave.

Event Schemas

Knowledge structures describing typical behaviors, attire, and sequences expected in specific social situations.

Accessibility

The extent to which a schema is active and at the forefront of someone's mind, making it more likely to influence judgment and behavior.

Priming

The process by which prior information processing temporarily activates a particular schema or concept, increasing its accessibility.

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts or rules of thumb applied to solve problems and make decisions efficiently in complex or novel situations.

Availability Heuristic

A mental rule of thumb where people base judgments on the ease with which relevant examples can be brought to mind.

Negativity Bias

The evolutionary tendency for negative experiences to be noticed faster, felt more strongly, and remembered longer than equally extreme positive events.

Representativeness Heuristic

A mental shortcut where people classify something based on how similar it is to a typical or prototype case.

Holistic Thinking

A cognitive style focused on the overall context and how objects or individuals relate to each other, predominant in interdependent/collectivist cultures.

Analytic Thinking

A cognitive style focused on the specific properties of objects or individuals in isolation from surrounding context, predominant in independent/individualist cultures.

Counterfactual Thinking

Mentally changing an aspect of the past to imagine alternative outcomes ('what might have been'), which strongly shapes emotional reactions.

Dual-Process Model (DPM)

A framework stating that automatic processes occur first, followed by controlled processes that can update, correct, or modify the initial output.

MODE Model

Motivation and Opportunity as Determinants; a framework proposing that controlled thinking overrides automatic outcomes only when motivation and opportunity exist.

Social Perception

The study of how people form impressions of and make inferences about other individuals, including how they explain others' behavior.

Nonverbal Communication

Communication without words, including tone of voice, gestures, posture, facial expressions, gaze, touch, and physical cues.

Encoding

The act of expressing or emitting a nonverbal behavior, such as smiling or patting someone on the back.

Decoding

The act of interpreting or deciphering the meaning of nonverbal behaviors expressed by others.

Facial Action Coding System (FACS)

A taxonomy system that measures human facial displays by coding movements of individual facial muscle Action Units (AUs).

Affect Blend

A facial expression in which different parts of the face register different emotions simultaneously.

Display Rules

Culturally determined rules specifying which nonverbal behaviors are socially appropriate to display.

Emblems

Nonverbal gestures that carry specific, well-understood direct definitions within a given culture.

Thin Slicing

The ability to rapidly draw meaningful conclusions about an individual's characteristics based on brief samples of behavior.

Primacy Effect

The cognitive tendency for first-observed traits to color and influence how subsequent information about a person is interpreted.

Belief Perseverance

The tendency to stick with an initial belief even after receiving new information that disconfirms or invalidates it.

Implicit Personality Theory (IPT)

A type of schema used to group personality traits together, leading observers to infer that a person with one trait possesses related traits.

Internal Attribution

Deciding that an individual's behavior is caused by something within the person, such as their attitude, character, or personality traits.

External Attribution

Deciding that an individual's behavior is caused by situational or environmental factors outside the person.

Actor-Observer Effect

The tendency to attribute one's own behavior to situational (external) factors while attributing others' identical behaviors to dispositional (internal) factors.

Perceptual Salience

The perceived importance of information that is the primary focus of an observer's visual attention, making people more salient than their situation.

Gilbert's Two-Stage Model of Attribution

A dual-process model proposing that internal attributions occur automatically in Stage 1, while situational correction occurs in Stage 2 only if cognitive resources, motivation, and time are available.

Self-Serving Attributions

Explanations for behavior that attribute personal successes to internal dispositional factors and personal failures to external situational factors.

Belief in a Just World

A defensive attribution where individuals assume that bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people.

Bias Blind Spot

The tendency to acknowledge that attributional biases exist in other people while believing oneself to be immune to them.