PSYC288 Exam 1

Fundamental attribution error

-Tendency to overestimate how much peoples behavior is due to internal dispositional factor and underestimate the role of situational factors -Example: thinking of well if it were me i for sure would have stepped in to help -Example: "The Wall Street Game" vs. "The Community Game"

Good experiment: questions of validity

-Are we manipulating what we meant to -Measuring what we want to measure -Are the results applicable to a wide range of situations

Power of unconscious thinking: Dijksterhuis and VanOlden

-Asking participants which poster they want to take home, if you sleep on it before making a decision they found that you are more likely to sell the poster for a higher price when they called later to see how much they would be willing to sell it for

Schemas

-Automatic, mental structures used to organize knowledge around themes -influences what we notice, think about, and remember non conscious, unintentional, involuntary, effortless -functional: guide attention and memory, helps us interpret ambiguous situations. -many schemas can be applied to each situations; the schema applied determines the construal of the situation

Schemas can get us into trouble

-Can distort what we see -Ex: bias: when you're at a husker game and boo when a penalty is called

Thin slicing

-Draw meaningful conclusions from people based on extremely brief samples of behavior -Ex: showing a 10 second clip of professors, students decide if that professor is good or bad, was actually able to predict student evaluations at the end of the year (Ambady and Rosenthal)

Self-fulfilling prophecy - Step 3: behavioral confirmation

-Expectations lead us to behave in such a way that the target unintentional confirms our expectations -Ex: thinking someone is mean so you aren't very nice to them, in return they are not nice to you

External validity

-Generalize across people and situations -Ex: studies done with college students cannot apply to elementary students -Field situations: actually go out into the field/real world -Cons: really hard to do good field experiments -Mundae-realism: make experiment similar to real life situations -Psych realism: psychological processes in experiment similar to process in everyday life

Construal

-How people perceive, comprehend and interpret a social situation -determined by basic motives: self esteem (maintenance, feeling good about oneself) and social cognition (needing to be accurate)

Gestalt Psychology

-How people think about situational matters -Construals -Ex: giving money to a homeless person: some people see it as helping, some see it as enabling -Ex: asking for time off work and not getting a response: some people might assume their boss is mad or perhaps they assume their boss is okay with it

Representative heuristic

-How similar is A to B -problem: often ignores use rate/ statistical information -Barnum effect: "This seriously describes me perfectly!" --Ex: horoscopes: they're so vague, could really describe anyone but you assume it only fits you

Counterfactual thinking

-Imagine what what have been --Ex: you get an 89% but think about how you could have gotten a 90% --Pros: MLK thinking about how slavery could end

Personality

-Individual focus -Example: media response to Kitty Genovese murder: "uncaring, callous people for not helping her"

Gestures

-Not universal -Ex: the "ok" sign: some places it means the middle finger

Research Methods

-Observational -Correlation -Experimental

Lantane and Darley

-Researchers at NYU who wanted to conduct a study to find out why no one helped Kitty -They conducted an experiment where they had strangers get to know each other over the phone. Some talked in different group sizes. While strangers were getting to know each other an actor would fake a seizer over the phone. They found when in big groups people were less likely to help (call 911) -Bystander Effect

Key parts to the definition of Social Psychology

-Science: Science is more objective -Influence: social psychology is social influence -Other people

Pluralistic ignorance

-Similar to bystander effect -Look to others to see that no one else is doing something, so then you conclude that it isn't really a problem

Social

-Situational focus -Example: neighbor response: "it was dark and scary out there it was dangerous."

Why is Social Psychology unique?

-Social psychology focuses on how individuals are influenced by their construals of social situations -Construals are determined by basic motives: self esteem (maintenance, feeling good about oneself) and social cognition (needing to be accurate)

Catherine "Kitty" Genovese (related to what)

-Stabbed in a parking lot multiple times -No one came to help her -*Bystander effect

Personality Psychology

-Studies the characteristics of indicuals that make them unique and different

Surveys

-a Correlation method -ask people about their attitudes or behavior -Potential problems: not everyone is honest -Ex: political pols regarding the 2017 election

Diffusion of responsibility

There is a problem, but someone else will do something about it

Distinctiveness Information

Does actor act similarly toward other stimuli? -Ex: does joe kick other dogs? --low consensus: Joe kicks all dogs -internal

Consistency Information

Does the actor act similarly at different times and in different situations? -Ex: does joe always kick her dog? or just one time? --High consensus: Joe always kicks her dog -internal

T/F: It is difficult to form impressions of other people; we typically need to get to know them quite well before we feel confident forming an impression.

False

Behavioral confirmation

Snyder, Tanke, Bescheid 1977 -told male and female participants they were having a getting to know you over the phone, showed them a photo of a very pretty or ugly person and said that's who they were talking to (perceptual confirmation) -When the man thinks he is talking to an attractive women, he asks her more appealing questions and she is nicer -When talking to an ugly women, the man is rude making the woman act poorly in return (behavioral confirmation)

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Step 1: forming an expectancy Step 2: perceptual confirmation Step 3: behavioral confirmation

Dan Wagner

Successful thought on suppression -Automatic monitoring process: search for evidence of unwanted thought -Controlled operating process: distract self by finding something else to think about -Ex: trying not to think about a white bear

Attribution theory

The all important "why" question -Why do people do what they do; explain the cause of peoples behavior -Why is it important to do so? -Attributions to internal vs. external factors -attributions=explanations

Sociology

The scientific study of society and human behavior

Social Psychology

The scientific study of the way in which peoples thoughts, feeling sand behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people.

Primary effect

What comes first tends to influence us first -Keith and Kevin experiment (Asch 1946): when stubborn comes first not he list we assume Kevin is a bad guy

If you are exposed to an ambiguous situation and there is more than one schema you could apple, the schema you activate will depend on what

accessibility

Imagine that you see your dad get really angry. Research on the mirror neuron system suggests that at a neural level, you will be feeling _____.

angry

Two girls at a football game and fireworks go off. one cheers and one gets scared. they have different _____

construals

What types of nonverbal behavior are universally recognized?

facial expressions

First impressions

first impressions are huge and really stick with people

Social Cognition

process in which people make sense of other people, theirselves, and social situations

Mental structures used to organize information around themes are called ____

schema -For example, you may have a conceptual framework or developed a schema that all homeless people are rude. Because of this schema, you organize your actions around it and more readily look for information that supports this view while discarding information that disagrees with this perspective.

Correlate Observations

-a Correlation method -observe behaviors to see how they relate to variables -Correlation does NOT equal causation: even if variables A and B have positive correlation, that does not mean that A causes B, we cannot determine their casual relationship -Ex: correlation between divorce and butter consumption

Archival analysis

-an Observational method -examine accumulated documents of culture -Ex: magazine covers overtime, Instagram feeds, published diaries

Ethnography

-an Observational method -researcher observed a group within -must try not to influence the groups behavior in any way -ex: joining a cult to observe

Trained observers

-an Observational method -using coding scheme to record behavior -Ex: working with UNL to code child behavior

Research Method: Experiment

-answers the question "causality" -Golden standard in Social Psychology -Question answered: causality (this variable causes another) -Experimenter alters one variable to see how it affects another -Dependent and independent variables -Significance (confidence): results occurred by chance, not effects of IV (5/100 times)

Self-fulfilling prophecy - Step 1: forming an expectancy

-category based -personal experiences, 1st impression -implicit personality theories: theories of what personality traits go together

Argh, Chen, Burrows (1996)

-conducted an experiment where they unobtrusively brought the feeling of being old to mind -primed people with different words and found that when primed with words related to getting older, people would actually walk slower when leaving -BUT, researchers found that when researchers were aware of the primer they would get the results they wanted -- the expectation alone that people would walk slower influenced their behavior --when tested with an infrared light no correlation was found

Controlled thinking

-conscious, intentional, voluntary, takes effort -Ex: alphabetizing numbers 1-10

Research Method: Observational

-description -trying to describe the nature of the phenomenon they're interested in -Ethnography, Trained observers, Archival analysis -Pros: cheap, easy -Cons: some behaviors are very hard to observe and the observer cannot always be unobtrusive, consistency in coding is difficult to get

Accessibility of Schemas

-extent to which a schema is at the forefront of our minds -depends on past experiences, current goals, priming -priming: recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, concept -Ex: Payne study

Nonverbal behavior

-facial expressions, emblems (gestures) --universally recognized: anger, fear, surprise, sad, disgust, joy

External attributions

-high consensus -high distinctiveness -high consistency

Availability heuristic

-judgment based on the ease at which something comes to mind -useful, but there are errors that com along with this -Ex: medical student syndrome (medical students think they have a disease due to symptoms they are studying)

Internal validity

-keep all variables constant but change IV -Ex: lecture vs. discussion based classes -Random assignment: participants of a study were put into the study at random- NOT random selection -Ex: flipping a coin

Harold Kelley's Covariation Model

-look at features of a particular behavior at a particular time and compare with previous examples -then make attributions to internal or external attributions -information: consensus, distinctiveness, consistency -kicking dog example --Problems with this theory: we don't always have all of this information; but we can still come up with internal or external attributions

Internal attributions

-low consensus -low distinctiveness -high consistency

Automatic thinking

-non conscious, unintentional, involuntary, effortless -Ex: walking or counting to 10

Research Method: Correlation

-prediction -systematically measuring variables -systematically measuring the relationship between two or more variables -Surveys, Correlate observations

Improving our odds

-replicate -effect sizes (how big is the effect) -Meta-analysis: look at a bunch of studies and combine results -Ex: look at all studies regarding group behavior

Schemas: Keith Payne 2001

-studying flashing photos of black or white faces on the computer then showing either a tool or a weapon -found that when shown a back face before people were more likely to choose that it was a weapon even when it was really a tool (hammer)

Ways to improv human thinking

-teach basic statistics to overcome error from heuristics -use self-fulfilling prophecy's in your favor -sleep on tough decisions

Heider Simpel demonstration

-the cartoon with the big triangle, small triangle, and circle -We assume that the big triangle is a bully but its really just shapes

Anchoring and adjustment heuristic

-using a numerical value as a starting point and then adjusting ones answer from this anchor

Other kinds of automatic thinking

-using mental shortcuts for decisions -heuristics (guidelines) : availability, representative, anchoring/adjustment

Self-fulfilling prophecy - Step 2: perceptual confirmation

-we see what we expect to see -we are NOT aware of this process

Amadou Diallo (Feb. 4 1999)

-when a Serial rapist was on the lose and police were looking for him, Police mistook Diallo for the rapist -when Diallo was reaching in his pocket for identification, police shot him 41 times killing him instantly -Related to schema

Three types of Heuristics

1. Availability 2. Representative 3. anchoring/adjustment

Making internal attributions: Jones and Harris (1967)

Brought participants into a lab and told them they were going to read other graduate students essays -The anti- or pro-castor essays example from class

Consensus Information

Do other people act similar? -Ex: do other people kick my dog?? or is it just joe? --low consensus: internal attributions -joe sucks

A mental shortcut

Heuristic

Critical consumers of science

Researcher error/ issues in all of science: -jobs often depend on publication -peer review -questionable research practices -lack of replications and fail to update findings -"fake" news; taking science out of context

Cognition

Thinking

Major assumption of social psychology

We are science, we can study social behavior scientifically -is this even possible? people used to not think so -benefits of this assumption: science is much more objective and more validity -drawbacks of this assumption: it is hard to be totally objective when dealing with people and their behavior and it is difficult to measure human behavior

Bystander Effect

When multiple people are around you assume someone else will help

Mirror neurons

When we see a non-verbal behavior of another, same neurons fire as if we did the behavior

Social perception

how we form impressions and make inferences about others

Independent variable

manipulated variable

Dependent variable

the variable that changes (what you're measuring)