PSY Ch 10 Review (3)

Actor-Observer Bias: Phenomenon of explaining other people’s behaviors as due to internal factors and our own behaviors as due to situational forces.

  Ageism: Prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based solely on their age.

  Aggression: Seeking to cause harm or pain to another person.

  Altruism: Humans’ desire to help others even if the costs outweigh the benefits of helping.

  Asch Effect: Group majority influences an individual’s judgment, even when that judgment is inaccurate.

  Attitude: Evaluations of or feelings toward a person, idea, or object that are typically positive or negative.

  Attribution: Explanation for the behavior of other people.

  Bullying: A person, often an adolescent, being treated negatively repeatedly and over time.

  Bystander Effect: Situation in which a witness or bystander does not volunteer to help a victim or person in distress.

  Central Route Persuasion: Logic-driven arguments using data and facts to convince people of an argument’s worthiness.

  Cognitive Dissonance: Psychological discomfort that arises from a conflict in a person’s behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs that runs counter to one’s positive self-perception.

  Collectivist Culture: Culture that focuses on communal relationships with others such as family, friends, and community.

  Companionate Love: Type of love consisting of intimacy and commitment, but not passion; associated with close friendships and family relationships.

  Confederate: Person who works for a researcher and is aware of the experiment, but who acts as a participant; used to manipulate social situations as part of the research design.

  Confirmation Bias: Seeking out information that supports our stereotypes while ignoring information that is inconsistent with our stereotypes.

  Conformity: When individuals change their behavior to go along with the group even if they do not agree with the group.

  Consummate Love: Type of love occurring when intimacy, passion, and commitment are all present.

  Cyberbullying: Repeated behavior that is intended to cause psychological or emotional harm to another person and that takes place online.

  Diffusion of Responsibility: Tendency for no one in a group to help because the responsibility to help is spread throughout the group.

  Discrimination: Negative actions toward individuals as a result of their membership in a particular group.

  Dispositionism: Perspective common to personality psychologists, which asserts that our behavior is determined by internal factors, such as personality traits and temperament.

  Empathy: Capacity to understand another person’s perspective—to feel what they feel.

  Foot-in-the-Door Technique: Persuasion of one person by another, encouraging them to agree to a small favor, only to later request a larger favor.

  Fundamental Attribution Error: Tendency to overemphasize internal factors as attributions for behavior and underestimate the power of the situation.

  Group Polarization: Strengthening of the original group attitude after discussing views within the group.

  Groupthink: Group members modify their opinions to match what they believe is the group consensus.

  Homophily: Tendency for people to form social networks, including friendships and relationships, with others who are similar.

  Homophobia: Prejudice and discrimination against individuals based solely on their sexual orientation.

  Hostile Aggression: Aggression motivated by feelings of anger with intent to cause pain.

  In-Group: Group that we identify with or see ourselves as belonging to.

  In-Group Bias: Preference for our own group over other groups.

  Individualistic Culture: Culture that focuses on individual achievement and autonomy.

  Informational Social Influence: Conformity to a group norm prompted by the belief that the group is correct.

  Instrumental Aggression: Aggression motivated by achieving a goal and does not necessarily involve intent to cause pain.

  Internal Factor: Internal attribute of a person, such as personality traits or temperament.

  Just-World Hypothesis: Ideology common in the United States that people get the outcomes they deserve.

  Justification of Effort: Theory that people value goals and achievements more when they have put more effort into them.

  Normative Social Influence: Conformity to a group norm to fit in, feel good, and be accepted by the group.

  Obedience: Change of behavior to please an authority figure or to avoid aversive consequences.

  Out-Group: Group that we don’t belong to—one that we view as fundamentally different from us.

  Peripheral Route Persuasion: One person persuades another person; an indirect route that relies on association of peripheral cues (such as positive emotions and celebrity endorsement) to associate positivity with a message.

  Persuasion: Process of changing our attitude toward something based on some form of communication.

  Prejudice: Negative attitudes and feelings toward individuals based solely on their membership in a particular group.

  Prosocial Behavior: Voluntary behavior with the intent to help other people.

  Racism: Prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based solely on their race.

  Reciprocity: Give and take in relationships.

  Romantic Love: Type of love consisting of intimacy and passion, but no commitment.

  Scapegoating: Act of blaming an out-group when the in-group experiences frustration or is blocked from obtaining a goal.

  Script: Person’s knowledge about the sequence of events in a specific setting.

  Self-Disclosure: Sharing personal information in relationships.

  Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Treating stereotyped group members according to our biased expectations, leading the individual to act according to our stereotypes.

  Self-Serving Bias: Tendency for individuals to take credit for positive outcomes with internal attributions and blame negative outcomes on external factors.

  Sexism: Prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based on their sex.

  Situationism: Perspective that behavior and actions are determined by the immediate environment and surroundings, a view promoted by social psychologists.

  Social Exchange Theory: Theory that humans act as naïve economists, keeping a tally of costs and benefits in relationships to maximize benefits and minimize costs.

  Social Loafing: Exertion of less effort by a person working in a group, as individual performance cannot be evaluated separately, causing performance decline on easy tasks.

  Social Norm: Group’s expectations regarding what is appropriate and acceptable for the thoughts and behavior of its members.

  Social Psychology: Field of psychology that examines how people impact or affect each other, with particular focus on the power of the situation.

  Social Role: Socially defined pattern of behavior expected of a person in a given setting or group.

  Stanford Prison Experiment: Stanford University experiment in a mock prison that demonstrated the power of social roles, social norms, and scripts.

  Stereotype: Specific beliefs or assumptions about individuals based solely on their membership in a group, regardless of their individual characteristics.

  Triangular Theory of Love: Model of love based on three components—intimacy, passion, and commitment; several types of love exist depending on the presence or absence of each component.

1. What is social psychology? Social cognition? Social influence?

• Social psychology is the study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in social contexts. It examines the influence of other people on our thoughts, emotions, and actions.

• Social cognition refers to how people perceive, interpret, and categorize their own and others’ social behavior, including forming impressions and making judgments.

• Social influence encompasses the ways people are affected by the real or imagined presence of others, including conformity, obedience, and persuasion.

2. What is the difference between situationism and dispositionism?

• Situationism is the perspective that behavior is primarily determined by the immediate environment or situation.

• Dispositionism argues that behavior is determined by internal factors, such as personality traits and characteristics. Social psychologists often emphasize situationism, while personality psychologists focus on dispositionism.

3. What is conformity? What did Solomon Asch find in his study? Why do people conform?

• Conformity is the act of adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to align with a group standard.

• Asch’s study found that people often conform to group opinion even when they know it’s incorrect. In a line-judgment task, many participants agreed with an incorrect majority to avoid being the odd one out.

• People conform due to normative social influence (the desire to be liked or accepted by others) and informational social influence (the belief that others have more accurate information).

4. What is obedience? What factors increase or decrease obedience? What are the findings of Milgram’s studies?

• Obedience is following orders from an authority figure.

• Factors that increase obedience include a legitimate authority, close proximity to the authority figure, and a lack of personal responsibility. Factors that decrease obedience include seeing others disobey and having a greater distance from the authority.

• Milgram’s studies revealed that many people are willing to obey authority figures to the point of harming others, demonstrating the powerful influence of authority on behavior.

5. What did Zimbardo demonstrate in his study of prison life? What are the pros/cons of that study?

• Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment demonstrated that social roles and situational factors can strongly influence behavior, leading ordinary people to act in extreme ways.

• Pros: The study highlighted the impact of social roles on behavior.

• Cons: Ethical concerns include harm to participants, lack of fully informed consent, and psychological distress.

6. What are norms?

• Norms are accepted standards of behavior within a group or society, dictating what is considered appropriate or inappropriate in specific situations.

7. What is prosocial behavior? What is altruism?

• Prosocial behavior is voluntary behavior intended to benefit others, such as helping, sharing, or comforting.

• Altruism is a form of prosocial behavior motivated by the desire to help others without expecting any benefit in return.

8. When do people help others? What factors increase or decrease the likelihood that we will help others? What is Latane & Darley’s Decision Model for Helping?

• People are more likely to help when they feel empathy, are in a good mood, or perceive the situation as safe.

• Factors that decrease helping include the presence of other people (bystander effect), ambiguity, and personal costs.

• Latane & Darley’s Decision Model for Helping involves five steps: noticing the event, interpreting it as an emergency, assuming responsibility, knowing how to help, and deciding to help.

9. What is deindividuation? Social facilitation? Social loafing? Groupthink?

• Deindividuation is the loss of self-awareness in groups, leading to behavior that may go against personal values.

• Social facilitation is improved performance on simple tasks in the presence of others.

• Social loafing is reduced effort by individuals working in a group compared to working alone.

• Groupthink is a mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a group leads to poor decision-making.

10. How do we perceive other people and form impressions of them? What are the four basic principles?

• We form impressions by interpreting observable cues, like appearance and behavior, and drawing inferences.

• The four basic principles are: perception is selective, is interpretive, is influenced by the person’s motivations, and occurs quickly and automatically.

11. What is attribution? What errors do we make when using attribution? How does attribution vary between individualistic and collectivistic cultures?

• Attribution is the process of explaining the causes of behavior.

• Common errors include the fundamental attribution error (overemphasizing personality over the situation), the just-world hypothesis (believing people get what they deserve), self-serving bias (taking credit for successes but blaming failures on external factors), and the actor-observer discrepancy (viewing our actions as situational but others’ as dispositional).

• Individualistic cultures tend to make more dispositional attributions, while collectivistic cultures focus more on situational factors.

12. What is an attitude?

• An attitude is a positive or negative evaluation of a person, object, or idea that can influence behavior.

13. What is Cognitive Dissonance? How can it change attitudes or behaviors? What is justification of effort and how is it related to people’s behavior?

• Cognitive Dissonance is the discomfort from holding conflicting thoughts or beliefs, leading people to change their attitudes or behaviors to reduce discomfort.

• Justification of effort is the tendency to value outcomes more if one has invested significant effort, often leading to stronger commitment.

14. What is prejudice? What are cognitive, emotional, and behavioral expressions of prejudice? How do we prevent or stop prejudice? What causes prejudice? What are some common sources of prejudice?

• Prejudice is a preconceived opinion toward a group without factual basis.

• Cognitive expressions include stereotypes; emotional expressions include dislike or fear; behavioral expressions include discrimination.

• To reduce prejudice, interventions can include intergroup contact and perspective-taking.

• Prejudice often arises from socialization, in-group/out-group dynamics, and scapegoating.

15. What is a stereotype? Why is it resistant to change? How is a self-fulfilling prophecy related?

• A stereotype is a generalized belief about a group.

• It’s resistant to change due to confirmation bias and selective attention.

• Self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when stereotypes lead to behaviors that reinforce the stereotype.

16. How do we think about in-group/out-group? How does in-group/out-group explain biases? Ethnocentrism? Out-group homogeneity effect?

• In-group/out-group thinking categorizes people into “us” vs. “them.”

• This often leads to in-group bias (favoring one’s group), ethnocentrism (seeing one’s culture as superior), and the out-group homogeneity effect (seeing members of out-groups as more similar).

17. How can we use persuasion to change attitudes? What are some persuasion techniques? What is the elaboration likelihood model?

• Persuasion can change attitudes through messages that are either central (logic-focused) or peripheral (emotion-focused).

• Techniques include the foot-in-the-door (small requests followed by larger ones), low-balling, and door-in-the-face (large request followed by smaller).

• The elaboration likelihood model proposes two routes for persuasion: the central route for thoughtful consideration and the peripheral route for indirect influence based on cues.