PSCH 312: Social Psychology - Exam 1 High-Yield Deck

High-yield vocabulary and core concepts for Exam 1 covering Weeks 1 through 7 of Professor Rebecca Littman's PSCH 312 Social Psychology course.

Social Psychology

The scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people (via direct influence, mere physical presence, or thinking of others).

Social Psychology vs. Related Fields (Level of Analysis)

Social Psychology focuses on the individual within a social situation; Personality Psychology focuses on internal trait patterns across a person's life; Clinical Psychology focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders; Sociology focuses on macro-level group and societal variables.

Strong vs. Weak Social Situations

A Strong Situation has clear social norms where almost everyone behaves the same way (e.g., sitting in a lecture), whereas a Weak Situation has few behavioral constraints where people act in many different ways (e.g., on a playground).

Hindsight Bias

The "I knew it all along" phenomenon—believing, after learning an outcome, that one could have predicted it beforehand using common sense.

Week 1 Intuition Quiz: False Myths

Research shows five common beliefs are FALSE: (1) Opposites attract (similarity actually attracts), (2) Subliminal ads make us buy things, (3) Larger rewards increase intrinsic enjoyment, (4) Attractive people are seen as less intelligent, and (5) Punching a pillow reduces aggression.

Week 1 Intuition Quiz: True Findings

Research shows three surprising findings are TRUE: (1) Bronze medalists (3rd) are happier than silver medalists (2nd), (2) Good friends help prevent catching colds, and (3) People pull harder alone in tug-of-war than in a group.

H.O.M.E.R. (Scientific Method Steps)

1. Hypothesize (make a testable prediction) → 2. Operationalize (define variables concretely) → 3. Measure (collect data) → 4. Evaluate (test statistical/experimental validity) → 5. Revise (if disconfirmed) or Replicate (if confirmed).

Conceptual Variable vs. Operational Definition

A Conceptual Variable is the abstract theoretical concept being studied (e.g., "happiness" or "helping"), while an Operational Definition is the specific, measurable way that concept is manipulated or measured in a study (e.g., mood scale; picking up dropped items).

Correlation Coefficient ($r$)

A number from $-1.00$ to $+1.00$ indicating the strength (size) and direction of the relationship between two variables (+ = move together; − = move in opposite directions; 0 = no relationship).

Third Variable Problem

The explanation for why correlation does not equal causation: Two variables ($X$ and $Y$) may be correlated only because both are caused by an unmeasured third variable ($Z$) (e.g., temperature causes both ice cream sales and crime; risk-taking causes both tattoos and motorcycle accidents).

Statistical Validity ($p < .05$)

Confidence that an observed result is not due to random chance (conventionally $95\%$ sure, or $p < .05$). Significance increases with a larger effect size and a larger sample size (more participants).

Demand Characteristics

Cues in an experimental setting that inadvertently signal the researcher's hypothesis to participants, causing them to alter their natural behavior.

Deception & Research Ethics Safeguards

Deception is used when necessary to simulate real-world situations and prevent demand characteristics. The 6 Ethical Safeguards are: IRB approval, minimize undue stress, informed consent, confidentiality, right to withdraw anytime, and post-study debriefing.

Week 2 Key Studies: Brady et al. (2017), Voigt et al. (2017), & Wu & Paluck (2020)

Brady et al. (Correlational): Moral-emotional words on social media increase message diffusion ("moral contagion") by $20\%$ per word. Voigt et al. (Correlational): Police body-cam transcripts show officers speak with less respect to Black vs. white drivers. Wu & Paluck (Field Experiment): Participatory workplace practices causally improve workers' attitudes toward authority.

William James's "I" vs. "Me"

The "I" represents the self as active thinker and knower (self-awareness), whereas the "Me" represents the known self—our beliefs and thoughts about who we are (self-concept).

Self-Concept & Self-Schemas (3 Functions)

Self-Concept is the sum total of a person's beliefs about their own attributes, made up of self-schemas (beliefs about oneself that guide processing of self-relevant info). Its 3 Functions are: Managerial (plans behavior), Organizational (interprets/recalls info), and Emotional (shapes feelings).

Gallup's (1977) Red Dot Mirror Study

Tested self-recognition (which develops in humans at $18\text{--}24\text{ months}$). Chimps raised in social groups touched a red dot painted on their brow when looking in a mirror; chimps raised alone in isolation did not. Takeaway: The self requires a social environment to develop.

Introspection

Looking inward to examine one's own thoughts and feelings; used when attitudes are clear and readily available (often biased by a desire to view ourselves positively).

Self-Perception Theory (Bem, 1972)

Inferring our own internal attitudes and feelings by observing our outward behavior—used only when our initial thoughts or attitudes are uncertain or ambiguous.

Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954)

Evaluating our own abilities, opinions, and emotions by comparing ourselves to similar others in domains relevant to our self-concept.

Upward vs. Downward Social Comparison

Upward Comparison is comparing yourself to someone doing better than you (can trigger counterfactuals or inspire improvement); Downward Comparison is comparing yourself to someone doing worse than you (used to boost self-esteem via the self-enhancement effect).

Self-Evaluation Maintenance (SEM) Model

To protect our self-esteem when a close friend outperforms us, we distance the friend, try to improve our ability, or decide the domain isn't important to us (e.g., "My friend beats me at golf → I don't care about golf!").

Self-Esteem & Self-Esteem Stability

Self-Esteem is the overall positive or negative evaluation of oneself. High Stability means self-esteem is anchored in constant internal factors; Low Stability means self-esteem fluctuates based on changing situational feedback.

Social Cognition

The area of social psychology that focuses on how people perceive, remember, and interpret information about themselves, others, and the social world.

Naïve Realism

The conviction that we perceive the world objectively as it truly is, while failing to recognize that our own perceptions are filtered and biased.

Stroop Task & Visual Context Demonstrations

Stroop Task: Naming ink colors is slow when the word text conflicts with the ink color—proving irrelevant stimuli automatically affect cognition. "13" vs. "B": Demonstrates that context determines how we interpret identical ambiguous information.

Schemas

Mental structures/frameworks that organize our knowledge about the social world (people, roles, events/scripts) and determine what we attend to, interpret, judge, and remember.

Hostile Media Effect

The tendency for partisans on both sides of an issue to perceive a neutral, balanced media report as biased against their own point of view.

Perseverance Effect

The tendency for beliefs and schemas to persist even after the initial evidence that created them has been completely discredited.

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to search for, interpret, and create information in ways that verify our existing beliefs and expectations.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968)

When holding an expectation about a target leads you to behave toward them in ways that cause the target to confirm your expectation (e.g., kids randomly labeled "intellectual bloomers" actually gained higher IQ scores $8\text{ months}$ later because teachers encouraged them more).

Heuristics: Salience vs. Cognitive Accessibility (Priming)

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that allow quick, efficient judgments. Salience refers to how much an external stimulus stands out and grabs attention. Cognitive Accessibility / Behavioral Priming refers to how easily a schema comes to mind due to recent activation, which can unconsciously guide interpretations or behavior.

Representativeness Heuristic

A mental shortcut where we classify something into a category based on how similar it looks to a typical prototype, causing us to ignore base-rate statistics (e.g., assuming "Melissa" is one of $20$ admin staff rather than one of $80$ programmers).

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut where we estimate the likelihood or frequency of an event based on how easily examples come to mind (e.g., fearing plane crashes more than car accidents due to vivid media coverage).

Anchoring & Adjustment Heuristic

A mental shortcut where people start with an initial rough number (an anchor) and adjust insufficiently away from it when making an estimate (e.g., estimating Mt. Everest's height).

Counterfactual Thinking

Mentally simulating "what might have been," especially for close calls (e.g., Bronze medalists are happier than Silver medalists because Silver thinks "I almost won Gold," while Bronze thinks "I almost got nothing").

Cognitive Miser vs. Motivated Tactician

Cognitive Miser is the view that people try to conserve mental effort and avoid thinking whenever possible. Motivated Tactician is the view that people have both effortless and effortful strategies and flexibly choose between them based on motivation and situation.

Automatic vs. Controlled Cognition

Automatic cognition is unconscious, implicit, involuntary, and effortless (e.g., driving on a sunny familiar road, Cocktail Party Effect of hearing your name in a loud room, IAT implicit biases). Controlled cognition is conscious, explicit, deliberate, and effortful (e.g., driving in a blizzard).

Unconscious Social Mimicry

Automatically and unconsciously copying the postures, facial expressions, or movements of people we interact with (e.g., rubbing your face or shaking your foot when a confederate does).

Informational Influence vs. Normative Influence

Informational Influence is conforming because you believe others have accurate information about what is correct (leads to private acceptance). Normative Influence is conforming to be liked and avoid the social disapproval of appearing deviant (leads to public compliance).

Private Acceptance vs. Public Compliance

Private Acceptance is truly believing that what the group says or does is right. Public Compliance is outwardly going along with the group without privately believing they are right.

When & Who Conforms Most?

When: Larger group (up to $\sim 5$), group is important to us, no allies/dissenters are present, and responses are public. Who: Teenagers (vs. adults), people with lower self-esteem, and members of collectivist cultures.

Descriptive Norms vs. Prescriptive Norms

Descriptive Norms are perceptions of what people typically do (how widespread a behavior is). Prescriptive Norms are perceptions of what people think you should do (how approved/desirable a behavior is).

Pluralistic Ignorance (Prentice & Miller Alcohol Study)

When group members privately reject a norm (e.g., feeling uncomfortable with heavy campus binge drinking) but publicly go along with it, falsely assuming everyone else privately supports it.

Mass Hysteria

Collective delusions and panic that spread rapidly through a group via informational influence when others are wrong (e.g., 1938 War of the Worlds radio panic).

Milgram Electric Shock Study (Baseline Result)

Tested whether ordinary people would obey an experimenter's orders to shock a learner with heart problems. Baseline Result: $65\%$ of participants obeyed all the way to the maximum $450\text{ volts}$ (identical for men and women).

6 Factors That Decrease Obedience in Milgram's Study

Obedience drops when: (1) Authority is physically distant, (2) Victim is in the same room/touched, (3) Authority has lower legitimacy, (4) Confederates rebel/disobey, (5) Authorities give conflicting orders, or (6) Authority gives an explicit, controlling command ("You have no other choice; you must go on").

Characteristics of Norm Deviants (Gomila & Paluck)

People who deviate report a prior history of deviance, lower group identification/belonging, and lower self-monitoring—but do not differ in Big 5 personality traits or rebelliousness. Deviating once makes future deviance more likely.

Persuasion

The process by which a message induces a change in attitudes or behaviors.

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM): Central vs. Peripheral Route

Central Route (High Elaboration): Motivated listeners carefully evaluate the quality of arguments. Peripheral Route (Low Elaboration): Unmotivated/distracted listeners rely on superficial incidental cues (attractiveness, celebrity, packaging, price).

Why Central Route Attitude Change is Stronger

Attitudes formed via the central route are: (1) more durable over time, (2) more predictive of actual behavior, and (3) more resistant to counter-persuasion.

The Triad of Trust (Communicator Credibility)

The 3 source characteristics that make a speaker persuasive: Authority (expertise), Likability (warmth/attractiveness), and Honesty (trustworthiness).

Definition of a "Group"

Two or more people who, for longer than a few moments, interact with and influence one another and perceive one another as "us" (e.g., plane crash survivors, not random passengers on a flight).

Why People Join Groups (3 Theories) & Social Exclusion

Sociometer Model: Group inclusion boosts self-esteem. Terror Management Theory: Groups buffer fear of death. Uncertainty-Identity Theory: Identifying with a group reduces uncertainty about who we are and how we should behave. Social Exclusion: Activates the same brain regions as physical pain.

Social Facilitation (Triplett, 1898; Michaels et al., 1982)

The presence of others strengthens dominant responses, causing people to perform simple or well-learned tasks better (e.g., April running faster with friends; expert pool players shooting $80\%$ vs. $71\%$), but complex or unlearned tasks worse (novice pool players dropping from $36\%$ to $25\%$).

Social Loafing & 3 Ways to Reduce It

Definition: Exerting less effort when pooling efforts toward a common group goal than when individually accountable. 3 Fixes: (1) Make individual effort identifiable, (2) foster friendships among members, and (3) make the task challenging/interesting.

Process Loss & Common Knowledge Effect

Process Loss: Any aspect of group interaction that inhibits good problem-solving. Common Knowledge Effect: When groups spend their time discussing information everyone already knows instead of sharing unique information known only to individuals.

Group Polarization & Its 2 Causes

Definition: When group discussion causes members to shift toward a more extreme position in the direction they already favored. 2 Causes: (1) Social Comparison (adopting extreme views to look good to peers) and (2) Mutual Persuasion (hearing repeated arguments favoring the group's leaning).

Groupthink (Definition, Causes, & 5 Prevention Steps)

Definition: A mode of thinking where maintaining group cohesiveness and harmony becomes more important than evaluating facts realistically. Causes: High cohesion, directive leader, illusion of morality/infallibility. 5 Leader Fixes: Be impartial, invite outside experts, form subgroups, take anonymous votes, and assign a devil's advocate.

Culture & Its 4 Features

A learned pattern of shared meaning and behavior passed across generations. It is: (1) Versatile (changes/adapts by situation), (2) Shared, (3) Cumulative (builds across generations), and (4) Patterned (predictable).

Ethnographic vs. Cross-Cultural Research

Ethnographic Study: Observes one culture in its natural setting (Pro: culturally sensitive; Con: hard to compare groups). Cross-Cultural Study: Compares multiple cultures directly (Pro: allows group comparisons; Con: vulnerable to ethnocentric bias).

Kenya vs. Nigeria Coin-Flip Dishonesty Study

Participants flipped a coin $20\text{ times}$ for money ($50\%$ heads = honest). Both countries showed dishonesty, but framing reduced lying best in Kenya while rotation worked best in Nigeria—showing behavioral interventions must fit the specific cultural context.

Individualism (Independent Self) vs. Collectivism (Interdependent Self)

Individualism (USA, Germany) leads to an Independent Self where the self is separate, unique, and stable, and personal traits guide behavior. Collectivism (Japan, Korea) leads to an Interdependent Self where the self is connected to the group and social context.