Exam 1
Describe the covariation model of Kelley and the process it attempts to describe. Define and be able to give an example of the three kinds of information Kelley claims we use to make attributions. Identify the types of attributions we make when these kinds of information are used together.
- Covariation model: you will examine multiple instances of behavior, occurring at different times and in different situations, to answer the question. (1. Consensus: how other people behave to the same situation.. 2. Distinctiveness: how does the actor respond to other stimuli... 3. Consistency: frequency the observed behavior between the same actor and the same stimulus occurs across time and circumstances.) IF... Consensus= Low Distinctiveness= low Consistency= High CONCLUSION= Internal IF... Consensus= high Distinctiveness= high Consistency= high CONCLUSION= External
Define and discuss the origins, functions, and drawbacks of implicit personality theories. Discuss cross-cultural differences in the content of implicit personality theories.
- Implicit personality Theory: a type of schema people use to group carious kinds of personality traits together -Drawbacks: people don't always possess all personality traits that go together
4.5 List examples of some cross-cultural differences in nonverbal communication.
-Men are not supposed to display emotions as much as women in American culture. -In Japan, women should not display big smiles -Eye contact is different across cultures
social psychology
-The scientific study of the way individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of others. Interest...
Social influence
-occurs when one's emotions, opinions, or behaviors are affected by others. -social psychology is the scientific study of social influence. -Construal: how people perceive, comprehend and interpret the social world
3.11 Describe how goals can be activated unconsciously and influence behavior and provide examples.
A goal can be activated unconsciously by priming certain thoughts before doing an actions. For example, you can give people sentences to unscramble that have to do with God or that are neutral. The participants that had sentences to do with God activated their kindness and altruism goal and will make people more likely to give or want to be kind to people subconsciously.
2.20 Explain how meta-analysis can help average across the results of multiple studies to find a general conclusion.
A meta analysis can see if the independent variable is reliable throughout two or more studies. It averages the results of many different studies. This helps us tell if the Ind. variable really has an influence on the dependent variable.
3.4 Define accessibility and describe three ways in which schemas become accessible. Discuss the effects of accessibility on our interpretations of ambiguous stimuli. Describe research on priming effects.
Accessibility is the extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people's minds and are therefore likely to be used when making judgements about the social world. They can be made accessible by: past experience 2. retaliated to a current goal: like if studying for a particular test 3. recent experiences; primed by an event you'd been thinking about or doing before an encounter. All of these will contribute to how we see ambiguous stimuli, like an old man begging for change.
3.13 Define analytical and holistic thinking. Discuss which cultures tend to use each and one potential reason why.
Analytic Thinking Style: A type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context: this type of thinking is common in Western cultures. Holistic Thinking: 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.
3.8 Define the availability heuristic. Discuss reasons why the availability heuristic may result in faulty judgments. Identify conditions that increase the availability of information in memory.
Availability Heuristic is a mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgement on the ease with which they can bring to something to mind.
2.21 Contrast the goals of basic and applied research. Discuss the relationship between these types of research.
Basic research: These studies are designed to find the best answer to the question of why people behave as they do and that are conducted purely for reasons of intellectual curiosity. Applied research: These studies are designed to solve a social problem. These both rely on each other. To solve a social problem, researchers need to understand why it is happening, why people are behaving as they are. But to be curious about why people are behaving as they are, there sometimes needs to be an social issues that begs the question.
Explain why social psychological results sometimes appear obvious.
Because Social Psychology concerns topics of which we are all intimately familiar.
3.6 Explain how physical sensations may influence our judgments based on common metaphors.
Certain sensations can influence you to be more likely to be generous or cold depending on what metaphors your situation brings up. For example, holding hot coffee can bring up the associations with warm and trusting feelings. You will be more likely to give money to a stranger because of this. When you smell cleaning solution, you are more likely to feel safe and good, more likely to be trusting. If you are holding cold coffee or smell dirty things, the opposite is true. These metaphors show that it isn't just schemas that can be primed.
3.14 Identify the characteristics of controlled processing. Discuss the conditions under which we are more likely to engage in controlled, as opposed to automatic, processing.
Controlled thinking is thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful. We can turn it off and on at will.
2.9 Distinguish between correlation and causation. Identify three possible causal relationships between variables that are correlated.
Correlation: The two variables are present Causation: One variable directly influenced the other to the state it's in Three possible causal relationships between two variables: Variable A can cause variable B, variable B can cause A, or there can be some third influential variable C that effects both.
3.16 Define counterfactual thinking. Give an example of a statement that is indicative of this type of thinking. Describe the effects of counterfactual thinking on people's emotional reactions to events.
Counterfactual thinking: Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been. Ex: if only I had studied Scott's review sheet, I could have passed the exam. It actually can distress people more: undoing a stressful event and directing events that could have been avoided, causes more distress. Lesson: come to peace with it. It happened.
2.22 Identify the benefits and goals of cross-cultural research. Discuss precautions researchers should take when doing cross-cultural research.
Cross cultural research helps psychologists identify what social findings are socially dependent. It helps identify characteristics of people in different cultures like whether they are emphasize personal indolence or social interdependence and what kind of cultures values are reflected.
4.4 Explain Darwin's theory of universal facial expressions of emotion. Define encoding and decoding of nonverbal behavior. Describe research that supports the theory of universality of emotional expression. Discuss factors that decrease decoding accuracy.
Darwin believes that all humans encode, or express, these emotions in the same way and that all humans can decode them, or interpret them with comparable accuracy. Encoding: To express or emit nonverbal behavior, such as smiling or patting someone on the back Decoding: To interpret the meaning of the nonverbal behavior, such as deciding that a pat on the back was an expression of condescension and not kindness Research that supports this: the people that did the tests Scott talks about in Papua New Guine. The tribal people could almost perfectly mimic the expressions that captured the essence of the stories told to them, and identify the expressions of college students (through pictures) that matched each story.
2.26 Identify a deception experiment. Explain the necessity and functions of a debriefing session. Discuss the effects on participants of being deceived.
Deception Experiment: this misleads participants about the true purpose of a study or the events that will actually transpire. Debriefing: is necessary to explain to participants, at the end of the experiment, the true purpose of the study and exactly what transpired. The effects of participants being deceived can be discomfort and at the end of the experiment the researchers will attempt to alleviate it.
Describe the procedures used in the observational method, ethnographic research and archival analysis. Give examples of types research questions that could be answered by each method and how. Define interjudge reliability. Explain why interjudge reliability is important.
Ethnography: the method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside, without imposing and preconceived notions they may have. Archival Analysis: where researchers examine documents or archives, such as looking at photos in magazines to see how women and men are portrayed. Interjudge Reliability: The level of agreement between two or more people who independently observe and code a set of data; by showing that two or more judges independently come up with the same observations, research ensure that the observation are not the subjective, distorted impressions of one individual. This is important because it shows that observations are objective rather than subjective.
2.23 Describe the evolutionary approach to psychology and what it says are the causes of human affect, cognition, and behavior. Define natural selection. Identify the main critique of evolutionary psychology.
Evolutionary Psychology: The attempt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time according to the principals of natural selection : examples aggression and helping behaviors. Natural Selection: The process by which heritable traits that promote survival in a particular environment are passed along to future generations: organisms with those traits are more likely to produce offspring.
2.14 Define external validity. Identify the two kinds of generalizability that concern researchers.
External Validity: The extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other situations and other people. Researchers are concerned with being able to make generalizations across situations and people. How close they are to real life.
4.2 Identify the different channels of nonverbal communication.
Eye contact, body language: paralanguage(voice pitch, loudness, rhythm, inflection, hesitation...etc)
Explain how social psychology is influenced by Gestalt psychology.
Gestalt Psychology lays out how the whole is seen as more than the sum of it's parts. It stresses the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people's minds rather than the objective physical attributes.
Identify the goals of sociology compared to those of social psychology
Goals of sociology: rather than focus on the individual, it focuses on social class, social structure, and social institutions. Goals of social psychology: Focuses on identifying the process of the individual that make them susceptible to social influence.
3.18 Explain what it means to say that human beings are "flawed scientists".
Humans are very sophisticated social thinkers who have amazing cognitive abilities. But we are also capable of consequential mistakes, such as self-fulfilling prophesies. People are like "flawed scientists" - brilliant think who attempt to discover the nature of the social world in a logical manor but do so imperfectly.
Identify the origins of hypotheses.
Hypotheses often come from previous research findings or from observations from everyday life.
2.10 Identify the goal and components of the experimental method and the unique conclusions that can be made when using the experimental method.
In the experimental method, researchers randomly assign participants to different conditions and ensures that these conditions are identical except for the ind. variable. The goal is to show causation.
3.15 Describe how unconscious influences may challenge the theory that humans have free will and the consequences of believing that we have free will.
It challenges the theory because we tend to not be aware of the subconscious thoughts and desires they are acting off of. We can also give too much credit to the influence we have over external situations. Using the confirmation bias, we can be led to believe a lot of things. There is a disconnection between our conscious mind sense of how much we are causing our own actions and how much we really could be causing them. All in all, it is better for us to believe we have the freedom to choose.
2.16 Explain why randomly selected samples are rarely used in social psychological research.
It is impractical and too expensive to conduct these kinds of studies - taking people from all over the country (or world), from each group needed to represent a population. Usually the people in a survey share some common traits, unavoidably.
2.6 Describe the limitations of the observational method in general and a limitation unique to archival analysis.
It is informative but it is quite limited in what it can tell us. It doesn't give how the data will affect attitudes or behaviors in the archival method * Pornography rates example*
3.7 Define judgmental heuristics and explain the advantages and limitations of using these heuristics.
Judgmental Heuristics are mental shortcuts that people use to make quick and effective decisions. The advantages of this is being able to save time and energy on the process of decision making. A limitation of it is that it is not always the most available thought that is correct.
2.17 Compare and contrast lab experiments and field experiments. Describe the relationship between internal and external validity and each type of experimental setting.
Lab experiments: Lab experiments have a very high internal validity because most all conditions that would affect the dependent variable can be controlled. However you loose some external validity because they will not seem as life like being staged in a lab and knowing you're in an experiment. Field experiments: Study people in a natural setting. Increases external validity a ton. Participants in the study are unaware that it is actually a study. It is a trade off though for a higher external validity and a lower internal validity because though it is more life like, it is harder to control all the conditions that could influence the dependent variable somehow.
4.3 Identify the various functions of nonverbal behavior.
Non verbal Communication: The way people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words. Nonverbal cues include facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position and movement
Distinguish among three research methods that are used to test hypotheses.
Observational: Description(finds out the nature of the phenomenon) Correlational: Prediction (From knowing X, can we predict Y?) Experimental: Causality (Is variable X a cause of variable Y)
Identify the goal of the observational method and distinguish between everyday observations and systematic observations
Observations of human behavior: observes people, records and takes measurements or impressions of their behavior,
Understand and apply the self-esteem approach.
People have a strong need to see themselves as good, competent, and decent. People often distort their perception of the world to preserve their self- esteem. It causes people to justify their actions rather than learn from them. Even going through suffering (like hazing from a frat house) one is more likely to see those actions against them as trials and go back to them in their memories, justifying them as "worth it" and dismisses the bad parts.
Compare and contrast how sociology, personality psychology, and social psychology attempt to understand and predict human behavior.
Personality and Social share interest in the psychology of the individual. Social Psych and Sociology share the interest for the society at large. Sociology looks big picture, institutions, culture as a whole, etc.
2.15 Define psychological realism. Discuss the role of the cover story in making experiments realistic.
Psychological realism is the extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment are similar to psychological processes that occur in ever day like. A cover story is the description of the purpose of a study, given to participants, that is different from its true purpose and is used to maintain psychological realism (basically disguises the true purpose)
2.19 Explain why conducting replications is necessary in social psychological research.
Repeating a study in different settings with different subjects of the population is the ultimate test to an experiment's external validity. This is how we can determine how generalizable the results are.
3.9 Define the representativeness heuristic. Define base rate information. Discuss why the use of the representativeness heuristic results in the under-use of base rate information.
Representative Heuristic: A mental short cut whereby pole classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case. Ex: how similar Brian is to a typical Californian Base Rate information: Information about the frequency of members of a different categories. Example: like the relative frequency of different categories of the population.
3.2 Define schemas. Discuss their effects on attention, interpretation, and memory.
Schemas are mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember. It is a very general word that encompasses other people, ourselves, social roles, and specific events. This kind of information stored helps with figuring out new situations - it helps us interpret our surrounding as experiencing them by relating them to things we are already familiar with. They can create their own reality of sorts. They are difficult to disconfirm Confirmation Bias : we seek information that is constant with our bias
3.5 Explain how the self-fulfilling prophecy makes schemas resistant to change. Outline the steps involved in the self-perpetuating cycle of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Self fulfilling prophesy is when people have an expectation about what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person which causes that person to behave consistently with the person's original expectations, making the expectations come true. Step 1. You have an expectancy or social theory about the target person 2. You behave towards the tater in a way that is constant with your theory expectancy 3. The target responds to your behavior in a similar manner 4. You see the target's behavior as PROOF that your expectancy was right. You didn't realize the role you played in causing the target's response
Identify some social problems that social psychologists research and attempt to remedy.
Self fulfilling prophesy: When you have the expectation that you or another person will bah in a certain way, you act in ways that make your prediction come true. Violence, prejudice, and wanting to help endure people ti be healthier, practice safe sex, conserve water...
3.1 Define social cognition and distinguish between the characteristics of automatic and controlled thinking.
Social Cognition is how people think about themselves in a social world, more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember and use social information to make judgements and decisions. Automatic thinking: The not conscious, unintentional, involuntary and effortless thinking Controlled thinking: More effortful and deliberate thinking Often the automatic and controlled thought work together to make sense of situations.
Understand and apply the social cognition approach.
Social Cognition is the way people select, interpret, remember and use information to make judgements and decisions. We have expectations of the social world that may not be accurate and don't have all the information to make good decisions all the time. You could even influence outcomes by what you have decided, or rated will happen and then by you acting differently, it happens. *School teacher example*
4.1 Define social perception.
Social Perception is the study of how we form and make inferences about other people.
2.13 Define the term probability value and explain what a p-value tells us. Explain why probability levels are associated with statistics in experimental science. Describe the conditions under which results are considered statistically significant.
The P value is calculated to determine how likely it is that the results of the experiment occurred by chance and not because of the independent variables. If the probability is less than 5 in 100 the results might be due to chance. If the results of the experiment are much different than what we would expect to happen by chance, then we can assume the difference was caused by the ind. variable.
3.12 Provide examples of how the content of our schemas is determined by culture.
The content of our Schemas are determined by what is important in our culture. Like cattle herding in Swaziland. It is many people's livelihood. The Bantu people have such a good memory for taking care of cattle, that they don't even have to brand the animals. They just know which are theirs and can distinguish
2.18 Describe the basic dilemma of the social psychologist. Identify a solution to this dilemma.
The dilemma is that it is almost always a choice between conducting experiments with high internal validity and external : hard to do one experiment that is both high in internal validity and generalizable to other situations and people.
3.3 Identify the functions of schemas. Describe conditions when schemas are very important in determining our perceptions.
The function of a schema is to help make sense of a surrounding. If everything you encountered was inexplicable, confusing, and unlike anything you know, you'd have a pretty stressful day to day. These are very helping in confusing situations. They help us make sense of what is going on.
2.24 Describe the goal of social neuroscience research and the methods used.
The goal is to see and understand the connection between biological processes and social behavior. Electrodes are often placed on the scalp to measure changes in blood flow in their brains: this is called electroencephalography.
2.11 Distinguish between independent and dependent variables.
The ind. variable is predetermined to be different inside off the experiment, as the condition that is changed between groups, and should directly influence the dependent variable inside of the experiment.
2.27 Describe the purpose of an Institutional Review Board.
The institutional review board will review a study before it is conducted. The board must include one scientist, one non-scientist, and one person member who is not affiliated with the institution that reviews all psychological research at that institution and decides weather it meets all ethical guidelines.
3.17 Define the overconfidence barrier. Describe how this barrier can be overcome. Discuss the effectiveness of teaching people basic statistical and methodological reasoning principles.
The overconfidence barrier is that people often have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgements. This is helped when people are asked to think about the possibility that they might be wrong and to consider the opposite perspective. When they examined the opposite end of the issue, they realized that there are other ways to construe the world.
Define fundamental attribution error
The tendency to overestimate that a person;s behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors instead of the environmental factors
Define Fundamental attribution error and the consequences of making this error and underestimating the power of social influence
The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people's behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors, and to underestimate the role of situational factors.
Define construals. Indicate why social psychologists study construals rather than simply the objective environments of people.
The way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world. The interpretation they have of their surroundings determine behavior. The objective environment is only half of the picture - how people interpret it individually is the other half.
Identify the approaches associated with the two basic human motives. Describe the assumptions of each approach.
There are two approaches to these two movies that were seen in several presidential decisions. During times of war, there is the option to withdraw, seeing that it has gone on longer than expected, lives are being thrown away, and money gone, and be one of the first presidents to lose a war. The second option was to keep throwing money and men in, dragging out the war in hope of being a president who won a war. In cases like Lyndon Johnson and George Bush, they chose to hold fast to saving their name and have a 'justification' for the human and monetary loss.
2.25 Describe the ethical dilemma faced by social psychologists and the role of informed consent in resolving this dilemma.
There is a middle ground called for between ensuring the safety and wellbeing of participants but having the experiments still resemble the real world. Informed consent is the agreement to participate in an experiment, granted in full awareness of the nature of the experiment, which has been explained in advance.
2.7 Identify the goal of the correlational method. Discuss and define the characteristics of a correlation. Describe what it means to say that two variables are positively correlated, negatively correlated, and not correlated.
Two or more variables are systematically measured and the relationship between them assessed. Research is applied to surveys taken from a group of people and tries to connect attitudes and behaviors. Limitation: CORRELATION DOES NOT EQAUL CAUSATION
2.8 Identify the role of surveys and samples in conducting correlational research. Explain the importance of selecting samples randomly. Identify potential threats to obtaining accurate survey results. Define a representative sample.
Used frequently by the correlational method. Surveys are used to represent a group of people's attitude or behavior towards Sampling randomly ensures that a sample of people represents the population by giving everyone in the population an equal chance of being selected for the sample. A representative sample ideally, the researcher would have participants with characteristics that closely match the characteristics of the whole population.
2.12 Define internal validity. Identify factors that threaten the internal validity of an experiment. Define random assignment to conditions and explain why it is necessary to internal validity.
We can claim internal validity if all factors are the same within the experiment except for the independent variable. It is basically the extent to which the researcher can claim cause. Random Assignment: A process ensuring that all participants have an equal chance of taking part in any condition of an experiment: makes it so researchers can be relatively certain that differences in the participants' personalities or backgrounds are distributed evenly.
Identify the two basic motives that underlie the origins of people's construals. Describe what happens when the two basic human motives conflict.
We have a need to feel good and a need to be accurate. Sometimes these notices pull you in the same direction, but when they conflict they can pull away - you'll have to admit you have been foolish to be accurate.
Personalty vs. Social
personality: study the characterists that make the individual different from one another Social: Focus on identifying the process of individuals and what makes them susceptible to influence
individual differences
the aspects of people's personality that differ from other people
Discuss the two-step process involved in making attributions.
we make an internal attribution and then attempt to adjust the attribution by considering the situation the person was in. We often don't make enough adjustment