PSYC 2600 UVA Mazurek Ch. 1-3

social psychology

scientific study of the way in which people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people

Valone, Ross, Lepber - Hostile Media Phenomenon

Pro-Israeli and pro-Arab partisons rated identical peace contracts in terms of how biased they perceived it, and the pro-Israeli saw it as much more biased than the pro-Arab, even though it was created by Israeli

People's beliefs change how they perceive things

analytic thinking

a type of thinking characterized by a focus on objects and their attributes

base rate information

information about the relative frequency of events or of members of different categories in a population

Darly and Latane — Bystander Effect

Kitty Genovese dies, the more people that are present in an emergency, the less likely they are to help, diffusion of responsibility

Fischoff and Bar-Hillel

Two groups of people--one with a majority of lawyers, and one with a majority of engineers--read a description of a man and concluded he was a lawyer

People resort to representativeness heuristics to make judgments, using base rate info.

Ethnography

observing a group or culture from the inside, chief method of studying anthropology

social influence

persuasion, trying to change someone's thoughts or attitude

empirical questions

questions derived from facts and science, not personal, subjective opinion

evolutionary psychology

biological approach to psychology explained by genetic factors evolving due to natural selection that can explain social behaviors, cannot be tested

personality psychology

psychology that studies people's behavior as a result of their traits/individual differences

construal

how people perceive, comprehend, interpret the social world

fundamental attribution error

explaining behavior through the lens of someone's personality rather than the situation and social influence

Gesalt psychology

studying the way an object appears in mind in a subjective way rather than physical, objective attributes, the experience of a phenomenon is more important than the objective reality

naive realism

perceiving things "as they are", underestimating how we are twisting what we see

social cognition

how people select, interpret, remember, and use information to make judgments and decisions, assumption that people try to view the world as accurately as possible

B = f(P, E)

behavior is a function of a person and their environment

Liberman, Samuels, & Ross (2004) — Prisoner’s Dilemma

prisoner's dilemma game, competitive vs cooperative study

social context has high influence, not personality

hindsight bias

after seeing an outcome, exaggerate how much it could have been predicted

observational method

social behavior method of study, observing people and recording their actions, behavior in measurements or impressions, can be difficult to observe rare or subtle behavior

correlational method

social behavior method of study, relationships between two variables

causation

correlation does not equal

extraneous variable

variable that accounts for correlation between variables of interest

experimental method

social behavior of study, researcher controls and facilitates event so subjects experience it in different ways, can make casual inferences

casual inference

A conclusion that when one thing happens, another specific thing will follow

independent variable

variable that changes

dependent variable

the variable that changes because of the independent variable

internal validity

controlling everything from changing in an experiment except the independent variable

external validity

extent to which results of a study can be generalized to other situations and people

field experiments

observing behavior in a natural setting to obtain the most realistic behavior, unaware in experiment

replications

repeating experiments for variable results

meta-analysis

average results of multiple studies

basic research

research that is not trying to solve a problem, just interested in how people behave

applied research

research that is trying to solve a particular social problem

replication study

study that is repeated by other people for support and verification of results

hidden studies

studying natural behavior through direct observation in the form of hidden cameras

archival analysis

analyzing behavior through old documents

cross cultural research

studying how social psychology varies through different cultures, how cultures perceive situations and interact with each other differently

informed consent

permission from psych study participants that makes them fully aware of experience and potential trauma

deception experiment

misleading participants about what occurs during an experiment

institutional review board

reviews ethics of experiment before giving funding

safeguards

support against ethics in studies- colleagues, peer review, APA ethics code

automatic thinking

non-conscious, involuntary thinking, impressions

schemas

mental structures that organize our knowledge of the social world, expectations for how certain people act, how specific events go

accessibility of schemas

the extent to which schemas are accessed and used to make judgments about the social world

priming

recent experience increases accessibility of schemas

personality priming

Self-concept is a chronically accessible schema

self-fulfilling prophecy

expectation of someone, act a certain way around that person, person acts like original expectations

automatic goal pursuit

subconsciously working towards a goal to better self

judgmental heuristic

mental shortcuts to narrow down vast amounts of information

availability heuristic

basing a judgment on what comes to mind first

representativeness heuristic

classifying something according to how similar it is to a certain case, stereotypes, vague statements that can apply to anyone

controlled thinking

conscious reflection about ourselves and the outside world, intentional, voluntary, effortful, can turn on or off at will

illusion of free will

third variable, unconscious intention conscious thought and behavior, can control things more than you realize

holistic thinking style

a type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other; this type of thinking is common in East Asian cultures

facilitated communication

An example of a failed consequence of pseudopsychology involving "facilitators" helping children with autism to communicate through pointing. But the facilitators were consciously and subconsciously creating the messages.

counterfactual thinking

mentally challenging some aspect of the past, imagining what might have been, strong reactions to events

rumination

repetitively focusing on the negative things in life

planning fallacy

overly optimistic about getting something done, even if failed in the past

Hoffman report

Independent investigation finding that APA colluded with the government to support torture in CIA's post-9/11 interrogation program

Higgins, Rholes, & Jones (1977)

experiment on the perception of someone based on positive or negative memory words

-"Memory task" - shown lists of words to memorize for later recall test. either adventurous or reckless

-In "second experiment," read paragraph about "Donald" and rate Donald on positive characteristics

-Results: adventurous prime condition rated Donald more positively than reckless condition

Rosenthal and Jacobson

the "Bloomer" study

teachers treated students better that were labelled "bloomers"

Self fulfilling prophecy affects how we behave in social world