Chapters 1-3 Review Notes for Final Exam Myers & Twenge

• Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology

  • What is social psychology?

    • Define social psychology and explain what it does.

  • What are social psychology’s big ideas?

    • Identify and describe the central concepts behind social psychology.

  • How do human values influence social psychology?

    • Identify the ways that values penetrate the work of social psychologists.

  • I knew it all along: Is social psychology simply common sense?

    • Explore how social psychology’s theories provide new insight into the human condition.

  • Research methods: How do we do social psychology?

    • Examine the methods that make social psychology a science

  • Key Terms:

    • social psychology**

    • culture*

    • social representations

    • hindsight bias**

    • Theory**

    • Hypothesis**

    • random sampling*

    • framing*

    • field research*

    • correlational research***

    • experimental research***

    • random assignment*

    • independent variable**

    • dependent variable**

    • replication*

    • mundane realism

    • experimental realism*

    • deception **

    • demand characteristics

    • informed consent *

    • debriefing**

• Chapter 2 The Self in a Social World Chapter Overview

  • Spotlights and Illusions: What Do They Teach Us About Ourselves?

    • Describe the spotlight effect and its relation to the illusion of transparency.

  • Self-Concept: Who Am I?

    • Understand how, and how accurately, we know ourselves and what determines our self- concept.

  • What Is the Nature and Motivating Power of Self-Esteem?

    • Understand self-esteem and its implications for behavior and cognition.

  • What Is Self-Serving Bias?

    • Explain self-serving bias and its adaptive and maladaptive aspects.

  • How Do People Manage Their Self-Presentation?

    • Define self-presentation and understand how impression management can explain behavior.

  • What Does It Mean to Have “Self-Control”?

    • Understand self-control through examination of the self in action

  • Key Terms:

    • spotlight effect

    • illusion of transparency

    • self-concept

    • self-schema

    • social comparison

    • individualism

    • independent self

    • collectivism

    • planning fallacy

    • impact bias

    • dual attitude system

    • self-esteem

    • terror management theory

    • longitudinal study

    • self-efficacy

    • self-serving bias

    • self-serving attributions

    • defensive pessimism

    • false consensus effect

    • false uniqueness effect

    • self-handicapping

    • self-presentation

    • self-monitoring

• Chapter 3 Social Beliefs and Judgments

  • How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds, Consciously and Unconsciously?

    • Understand how judgments are influenced by both unconscious and conscious systems.

    • System 1 functioning — intuitive, automatic, unconscious, & fast way of thinking. “Intuition” or “gut feeling”

      • automatic processing — “implicit” thinking that is effortless, habitual, and without awareness, like intuition

        • schemas; emos; problem solving & recognition of ppls voices; snap judgements of other’s character/traits

      • priming — activating particular associations in memory

        • John Bargh (2006); priming counterparts in mundane life. Mood, entertainment, psych students

      • embodied cognition — mutual influences of bodily sensations on cognitive preferences and social judgments

        • a cold person makes room colder, same with warm ppl; & going on a walk increases conflict resolution.

    • System 2 — deliberate, controlled, conscious, & slower way of thinking

      • controlled processing — “explicit” thinking that is deliberate, reflective, and conscious.

    • overconfidence phenomenon — tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs

      • Incompetence feeds overconfidence (Dunning-Kruger Effect)

      • confirmation bias — tendency to search for information that confirms one’s perceptions

        • “ideological echo chambers” ppl choosing news sources/friends that align with their beliefs

    • heuristic — thinking strategies that enables quick, efficient judgements

      • representativeness heuristic — tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone/something belongs to a particular group if resembling (representing) a typical member

        • may lead to ppl discounting other import info

      • availability heuristic — cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory. If instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace.

    • counterfactual thinking — imagining alternate scenarios & outcomes that might have happened, but didn’t

      • reasons: feel better, preparation

      • occurs when we can easily see alternative outcomes; < significant & unlikely the event, <counterfactual thinking

    • illusory correlation — perception of a relationship where none exists, or the perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists.

      • Ward & Jenkins (1965); Cloud-Seeding Experiment

      • Gambling

      • regression toward the average — statistical tendency for extreme scores/behavior to return toward the average

        • fantastic test score is later more likely to go down; fail a test, more likely to go up

  • How Do We Perceive Our Social Worlds?

    • Understand how our assumptions and prejudgments guide our perceptions, interpretations, and recall.

      • perceptions guide how we perceive and interpret stuff

    • belief perseverance — persistence of one’s initial conceptions, such as when the basis if one’s belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives

    • misinformation effect —

      • rosy retrospection —

  • How Do We Explain Our Social Worlds?

    • Recognize how—and how accurately—we explain others’ behavior.

    • attribution theory

      • dispositional attribution

      • situational attribution

      • misattribution

        • spontaneous trait inference

    • fundamental attribution error

      • view ourselves differently than others; we act & our attention is on the environment, while others are the center of our attention when they act poorly. We therefore attribute it to disposition rather than situation

      • camera perspective bias — opinions about a police officer interrogating someone change depending on who the camera is focusing

      • Culturally: collectivistic cultures, ppl attribute behavior more to the situation than the person compared to individualistic cultures

  • How Do Our Social Beliefs Matter?

    • Gain insight into how our expectations of our social worlds matter.

    • self-fulfilling prophecy

    • behavioral confirmation

  • What Can We Conclude About Social Beliefs and Judgements?

    • View human nature through cognitive social psychology.

      • we are not unfeeling logical machines; these theories teach us not to judge so quickly and remember we are fallible too.

Chapter 4 Behavior and Attitudes

• How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior?

  • State the extent to which, and under what conditions, our inner attitudes drive our outward actions.

• When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?

  • Summarize evidence that we can act ourselves into a way of thinking.

• Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?

  • State the theories that seek to explain the attitudes-follow-behavior phenomenon.

  • Discuss hos the contest between these competing theories illustrates the process of scientific explanation.

• Postscript: Changing Ourselves Through Action

• Key Terms
   Attitude
   implicit association test (IAT)
   role
   cognitive dissonance ***
   insufficient justification**
   self-perception theory**
   facial feedback effect
   overjustification effect**
   self-affirmation theory *

Chapter 5