Psych Exam 2

outgroup

"them"—those perceived as different or apart from our ingroup.

ingroup

"us"—people with whom we share a common identity.

Discrimination

(1) in classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and similar stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus; in operant conditioning, the ability to distinguish responses that are reinforced from similar responses that are not reinforced. (2) in social psychology, unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group or its members. Ex. This is unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members.

Language Development

4 months- Babbles sounds ("ah-goo") 10 months- Babbling resembling language ("ma-ma") 12 months- One-Word speech ("Kitty") 24 months- Two-word speech ("Get ball.") 24+ months- Rapid development into complete sentences.

optimism

A general tendency to expect good outcomes.

exhaustion

A harmful third phase of the stress response, in which stress exceeds the body's ability to recover.

Milgram's study

Professor Milgram's assistant asks you and another person to draw slips from a hat to see who will be the "teacher" and who will be the "learner." You draw a "teacher" slip (unknown to you, both slips say "teacher"). The supposed learner, a mild and submissive-seeming man, is led to an adjoining room and strapped into a chair. From the chair, wires run through the wall to a shock machine. You sit down in front of the machine and are given your task: Teach and then test the learner on a list of word pairs. If the learner gives a wrong answer, you are to flip a switch to deliver a brief electric shock. When Milgram conducted the experiment with other men aged 20 to 50, he was astonished. More than 60 percent complied fully—right up to the last switch. When he ran a new study, with 40 new "teachers" and a learner who complained of a "slight heart condition," the results were similar. A full 65 percent of the new teachers obeyed the experimenter right up to 450 volts

General Adaptation Syndrome

Seyle's concept that the body responds to stress with alarm, resistance and exhaustion

Universal grammar

built-in predisposition to learn grammar rules

Microaggressions

common, everyday verbal or behavioral indignities and slights that communicate hostile, derogatory, and negative messages about someone's race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion Ex. race-related traffic stops

learned response

conditioned response

aphasia

impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke's area (impairing understanding). Ex. Even more curious, some people with aphasia can speak fluently but cannot read (despite good vision). Others can comprehend what they read but cannot speak. (Vice versa)

social facilitation

improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others

fluid intelligence

our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood

crystallized intelligence

our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age

Accultrative stress

stressors associated with being an immigrant or ethnic minority and going through the acculturation process.

analytical intelligence

the ability to break problems down into component parts, or analysis, for problem solving

emotional intelligence

the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions

creativity

the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas

The g factor

the ability to reason and solve problems, or general intelligence

process simulation

the act of reproducing the behavior of a process, using a model that describes each step Ex. The second group spent five minutes each day visualizing themselves effectively studying—reading their text, going over notes, eliminating distractions, declining an offer to go out. This daily process simulation paid off: The group began studying sooner, spent more time at it, and beat the others' average score by 8 points.

companionate love

the deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined. Ex. Like a passing storm, the flood of passion-facilitating hormones (testosterone, dopamine, adrenaline) subsides. But another hormone, oxytocin, remains, supporting feelings of trust, calmness, and bonding with the mate.

telegraphic speech

the early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram—" go car"—using mostly nouns and verbs.

alarm

the first phase of the stress response, in which the person faces a challenge and starts paying attention to it.

learned helplessness

the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events

Deindividuation

the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity. Ex. The students at a university charged the field after the basketball game in response to their team's loss. They vandalized the opposing team's field, and the police had to be called in.

Groupthink

the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Ex. To preserve the good feeling, group members suppressed or self-censored their dissenting views, especially after President Kennedy voiced his enthusiasm for the scheme. Since no one spoke strongly against the idea, everyone assumed the support was unanimous.

external locus of control

the perception that chance or outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate. Ex. Failing a test and blaming it on a teacher failing you or bad luck.

internal locus of control

the perception that we control our own fate.

mere exposure effect

the phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them Ex. By age 3 months, infants prefer photos of the race they most often see—usually their own race

social control w/ personal control

the power of the situation the power of the individual Ex. Much as water dissolves salt but not sand, so rotten situations turn some people into bad apples while others resist

Stress

the process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors , that we appraise as threatening or challenging.

Attribution

the process of explaining one's own behavior and the behavior of others (Theory) - the theory that we explain someone's behavior by crediting either the situation or the person's disposition Ex. the theory that we explain someone's behavior by crediting either the situation or the person's disposition

Syntax

the set of rules for ordering words into sentences

mood contagion

the spillover of one's positive or negative moods onto others Ex. just hearing someone reading a neutral text in either a happy or sad sounding voice creates mood contagion in listeners

one-word stage

the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words. Ex. Jenny is starting to use nouns for the first time. She often will point to objects and call them out by name.

social loafing

the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable. Ex. To find out, a University of Massachusetts research team asked blindfolded students "to pull as hard as [they] can" on a rope. When they fooled the students into believing three others were also pulling behind them, students exerted only 82 percent as much effort as when they knew they were pulling alone Also group projects

foot-in-the-door phenomenon

the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request Ex. The captors began with harmless requests, such as copying a trivial statement, but gradually escalated their demands A trivial act makes the next act easier. Telling a small lie paves the way to telling a bigger lie. Succumb to temptation and the next temptation becomes harder to resist.

Overconfidence

the tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.

ingroup bias

the tendency to favor our own group. Across 17 countries, ingroup bias appears more as ingroup favoritism than as harm to the outgroup

social exchange theory

the theory that our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs. Ex.If you are considering donating blood, you may weigh the costs of doing so (time, discomfort, anxiety) against the benefits (reduced guilt, social approval, good feelings). If the rewards exceed the costs, you will help.

Fundmanetal Attribution Error

the theory that we explain someone's behavior by crediting either the situation or the person's disposition Ex. We overestimate the influence of personality and underestimate the influence of situations. In class, Jack may be as quiet as Juliette. Catch Juliette at a party and you may hardly recognize your quiet classmate.

productive language

their ability to produce words, matures

receptive language

their ability to understand what is said to and about them

norms

understood rules for accepted and expected behavior. Norms prescribe "proper" behavior Ex. Dahlia is trying to make partner at one of the city's most prestigious law firms. It is generally understood that associates remain hard at work in the office until at least 8 or 9 each evening.

altruism

unselfish regard for the welfare of others Ex. When the militia came to kill him and his Tutsi servants, Wilkens' Hutu neighbors deterred them. Despite repeated death threats, he spent his days running roadblocks to take food and water to orphanages and to negotiate, plead, and bully his way through the bloodshed, saving lives time and again. "It just seemed the right thing to do," he later explained

Scapegoating

Blaming an innocent person or a group for one's own troubles the theory that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame finding someone to blame can provide a target for our negative emotions

Philip Zimbardo

Conducted Stanford Prison experiment Ex. For a day or two, the volunteers self-consciously played their roles. But then, reports Zimbardo, most guards developed disparaging attitudes and "became tyrannical," devising cruel and degrading routines. One by one, the prisoners broke down, rebelled, or became passively resigned. After only six days, Zimbardo called off the study.

Type A

Friedman and Rosenman's term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people Ex. These reveal that Type A's toxic core is negative emotions—especially the anger associated with an aggressively reactive temperament.

Type B

Friedman and Rosenman's term for easygoing, relaxed people. Ex. the most mellow and laid-back of their group—had suffered a heart attack.

Gardner's Intelligence Theory

Howard Gardner argued that intelligence can best be described as multiple abilities (multiple intelligences). Three of Gardner's multiple intelligences- linguistic, logical-mathematical, and spatial- fall within the bounds of qualities traditionally labeled as intelligences. To that list Gerdner added musical, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and naturalist intelligence.

cognitive dissonance

Inner tension that a consumer experiences after recognizing an inconsistency between behavior and values or opinions the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. Ex. when we become aware that our attitudes and our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes. Ex. A teacher writes a letter of recommendation despite his doubt about the student's competence. He then later takes a greater liking towards this student.

Resistance

The second phase of the stress response, in which the body mobilizes its resources to withstand the effects of the stress.

social scripts

a culturally modeled guide for how to act in various situations Ex. Thomas enjoys watching violent pornography. When he goes out with a woman, he expects her to be submissive to his sexual demands; when he is turned down he becomes violent.

prototype

a mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin). When something closely matches our prototype of a concept—such as bird or German—we more readily recognize it as an example of the concept.

outcome simulation

a process where we visualize the endpoint of a specific event Ex. The first group spent five minutes each day visualizing themselves scanning the posted grade list, seeing their A, beaming with joy, and feeling proud. This daily outcome simulation had little effect, adding only 2 points to their exam-score average

insight

a sudden realization of a problem's solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions. Ex. Ten-year-old Johnny Appleton had one of these Aha! moments and solved a problem that had stumped construction workers: how to rescue a young robin from a narrow 30-inch-deep hole in a cement-block wall. Johnny's solution: Slowly pour in sand, giving the bird enough time to keep its feet on top of the constantly rising pile

mental set

a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past Ex. Studying the same way for every class because of success in previous classes.

confirmation bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence Ex. A tendency to seek evidence for our ideas more eagerly than against them.

Conformity

adjusting our behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.

passionate love

an aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at the beginning of a love relationship Ex. We intensely desire to be with our partner, and seeing our partner stimulates blood flow to a brain region linked to craving and obsession

critical period

an optimal period shortly after birth when an organism's exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development Ex. Childhood seems to represent a critical (or "sensitive") period for mastering certain aspects of language before the language-learning window closes

prejudice

an unjustifiable and usually negative attitude toward a group and its members. Prejudice generally involves negative emotions, stereotyped beliefs, and a predisposition to discriminatory action. Ex.It is an unjustifiable and usually negative attitude toward a group and its members—who often are people of a particular racial or ethnic group, gender, sexual orientation, or belief system.

situational attribution

attributing behavior to the environment

dispositional attribution

attributing behavior to the person's disposition and traits Ex. James usually does very well on tests, but he was up all night before his psychology midterm cleaning his flooded basement, and he therefore failed his exam. He tried to explain his situation to his teacher, but she thought that James' performance was caused by a tendency to avoid studying and she did not want to hear his excuse.

availability heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common Ex. If people from a particular ethnic or religious group commit a terrorist act, as seen in pictures of innocent people about to be beheaded, our readily available memory of the dramatic event may shape our impression of the whole group.

daily hassles

everyday minor events that annoy and upset people Ex. traffic jams, dropped calls, deadlines

attitudes

feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events.

Catharsis

in psychology, the idea that "releasing" aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges. Expressing anger can indeed be temporarily calming if it does not leave us feeling guilty or anxious However, catharsis usually fails to cleanse our rage. More often, expressing anger breeds more anger. For one thing, it may provoke further retaliation, causing a minor conflict to escalate into a major confrontation.

Ash's study

line test Imagine yourself a participant in a supposed study of visual perception. You arrive in time to take a seat at a table with five other people. The experimenter asks the group to state, one by one, which of three comparison lines is identical to a standard line. You see clearly that the answer is Line 2, and you wait your turn to say so. Your boredom begins to show when the next set of lines proves equally easy. But the first person gives what strikes you as a wrong answer: "Line 3." When the second person and then the third and fourth give the same wrong answer, you sit up straight and squint. When the fifth person agrees with the first four, you feel your heart begin to pound. The experimenter then looks to you for your answer. Torn between the unanimity voiced by the five others and the evidence of your own eyes, you feel tense and suddenly unsure. You hesitate before answering, wondering whether you should suffer the discomfort of being the oddball. Ex. Although most people told the truth even when others did not, Asch was disturbed by his result: More than one-third of the time, these "intelligent and well-meaning" college students were "willing to call white black" by going along with the group.

Patriotism

love of one's country

stereotyping

which are generalized beliefs about a group of people. Our stereotypes sometimes reflect reality. If you presume that young men tend to drive faster than elderly women, you may be right. Stereotypes- a generalized (sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people. Ex. But stereotypes often overgeneralize or exaggerate—as when liberals and conservatives overestimate the extremity of each other's views, or Christians and atheists misperceive each other's values