PSYCHOLOGY 201 MIDTERM 1

What are the three dimensions?

-Internal/external (internal cause vs. external cause) -Stable/unstable (things will never change vs. things may improve) -Global/specific (affects many areas of life vs. applies to only a few)

What are explanatory styles?

A person's habitual way of explaining events

What is emotional intelligence?

Ability to accurately perceive emotions and understand ones own emotions.

What are the components of attitude?

Affect (Emotion), Behavior (Knowledge), Cognition (Thoughts)

What are the components of emotions?

Appraisal processes initiate emotions. Physiological responses. Expressive Behavior. Subjective Feelings. Action Tendencies.

What is the role of specificity when it comes to predicting behavior from attitudes?

Behavior and Attitude cause each other

What is the covariation principle?

Behavior should be attributed to potential causes that co-occur with the behavior

Under what conditions, does attitude-behavior inconsistency cause dissonance?

By your choice, insufficient justification, threat and negative consequences.

What does cognitive dissonance teach us about induced (forced) compliance?

Cognitive Dissonance occurs when you are forced to engage in a behavior that does not match your attitude (induced (forced) compliance)

What is the difference between a correlational and experimental study?

Correlation is when you see if there is a relationship. Experimental is when you assign people to different conditions.

What is emotional amplification?

Emotional reactions to counterfactual thinking increase depending on how easy it is to imagine the alternative. What if I missed my plane by 2 minutes instead of 2 hours?

What are emotions and how are they different from moods and emotional disorders?

Emotions are brief psychological and physiological responses. Moods last for an hour, emotional disorders last for weeks.

What is a pessimistic explanatory style?

Explain negative events in terms of internal, stable, and global causes

How are attitudes measured?

Explicit Measures: Surveys Implicit Measures: Response Latency: Amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus

What is the difference between automatic and controlled processing?

Fast, effortless thoughts. Slow, effortful thoughts.

What is the self-validation hypothesis?

Feelings of confidence about our thoughts

What are schemas?

Generalized knowledge about the world and how to behave with certain people.

What is a construal? How do construal's impact our thoughts & behavior?

Go to assumptions of the world. They impact our behavior.

What are the six universal emotions? What does it mean that they are universal? What are Darwin's 3 hypotheses?

Happiness, Fear, Disgust, Sadness, Surprise Anger. Everyone feels this way because of facial muscles. We have similar expressions to primates/mammals.

What are the 5 dimensions of moral foundations theory?

Harm/Care, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Purity/Degradation

What is temporal framing?

How actions and events are framed within a particular time perspective

What is state self-esteem?

How you are in different situations which changes based on the context

What are some ethical concerns in social psychology? What is the IRB? What is informed consent? What is deception research?

If a procedure is harmful, it must be changed. IRB is the institutional review board which is a committee that examines research proposal.

Example, what is the augmentation principle?

If an individual is being tortured because of a specific opinion but refuses to change, this person probably strongly believes in that opinion

What are the three components of the self?

Individual, Relational, Collective

Individualistic vs. Collectivistic

Individualistic cultures focus on individual freedom, autonomy, choice, personal goals, attributes, preferences Collectivistic cultures focus on group memberships, social roles, conformity to group norms, obligations to other people

What is the sleeper effect?

Info from unreliable sources tend to be rejected initially, but overtime become accepted.

What are primacy effects?

Information presented first has an overly strong influence on later judgments

What are recency effects?

Information presented last has an overly strong influence on later judgments

What is the role of introspection when it comes to predicting behavior from attitudes?

Introspection is misleading

What is important about experiments?

It's a good standard of psychological research

Example, what is the discounting principle?

Job interview: Is the interviewee being pleasant because of who s/he is, or because it's a job interview?

What is the availability heuristic?

Judgments of frequency or probability made based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind

What is an example consistency?

Maria got an A+ on a recent biology test. Everyone else got a B or C on the same test.

What is an example consensus?

Maria got an A+ on a recent biology test. She also got an A+ on the last two biology tests.

What is an example distinctiveness?

Maria got an A+ on a recent biology test. She also got an A on a recent engineering test and an A on a recent math test.

Under what conditions is fear an effective method of persuasion? Under what conditions is it not effective?

Moderate Fear: Effective, increases persuasion Extreme Fear: Not Effective, decreases persuasion

What makes people happy?

Money, up to a certain point and social relationships.

What is the role of attractiveness, certainty, and credibility in persuasion?

More attractiveness, certainty, and credibility means higher persuasion.

What is the better-than-average effect?

Most Westerners think they are better than average on most personality traits

How effective is the media in persuading us?

Not persuasive at changing specific behaviors

What are the differences between observational, archival, survey, & experimental research?

Observational is when you observe in a semiformal way. Archival is when you analyze social behaviors documented in the past. Survey is when you give them surveys. Experimental is when you randomly assign people to a condition.

What is cognitive dissonance theory?

People are motivated to maintain consistency between their thoughts, feelings and behaviors to reduce discomfort.

What is the bad news bias? Negativity bias?

People believe they are more likely to be victimized than they really are. We pay more attention to negative information than positive information

What is self-perception theory?

People come to know their own attitude by looking at their behavior. "If I chose this, I must like it!"

What is social comparison theory?

People compare themselves to others to evaluate their own opinions, abilities, and internal states

What does the social intuitionist model of moral judgment say about how we make moral judgments?

People have automatic emotional reactions to moral situations which guide moral reasoning.

What is Gestalt psychology? How does it relate to construal's and schemas?

People perceive objects by active, unconscious interpretation of what the object means to the world.

What is self-verification theory?

People strive for stable, accurate beliefs about the self

What are the results of the Good Samaritan study?

People tend to help others when they have time and not in a hurry.

What are snap judgments?

People tend to make very complex inferences about motives and personality based on very small amounts of information.

What is self-discrepancy theory?

People want to reduce the lack of compatibility between their actual self and possible selves (ought self, ideal self)

What are the two routes to persuasion according to the Elaboration-Likelihood Model (ELM)?

Peripheral Route: Not motivated and not able to think carefully about the message Central Route: Motivated and able to think carefully about the message

What is the Broaden-and-Build Hypothesis?

Positive emotions broaden thoughts and actions while helping people build social resources

When is cognitive dissonance theory in action? When is self-perception theory in action?

Post-decision dissonance, effort justification, and inducted compliance. Facial Feedback and Head Nodding

What are the stages of the Dual-Process Model of Emotional Appraisal?

Primary and Secondary

What is random assignment? Why is random assignment important? How is it different from random sampling?

Random assignment is when you assign participants in experiments to different groups randomly. Random sample is when you pick a few people from a bigger group of people.

What is attitude inoculation?

Resisting "small" attacks on our attitude makes us better able to resist "larger" attacks later on. Ex: Brushing teeth is good. Small Attack: Brushing too often can hurt teeth.

How are we resistant to persuasion?

Selective Attention: We seek out/avoid information that supports/contradictions their pre-existing attitudes.

What does the sociometer hypothesis say about self-esteem?

Self-esteem is an internal, subjective index or marker of the extent to which a person is included or looked on favorably by others

Independent vs. interdependent cultures?

Separate from others vs. Collective group.

What is a channel factor? What are some examples?

Situational circumstances that appear unimportant on the surface, but have a great consequence for behavior. Ex: signs to convince people to stop taking wood in the forest because the forest is dying but people don't realize.

How is social psychology different from personality psychology? How do each of these relate to Kurt Lewin's B=f(P,E)?

Social psychology is the study of feelings, thoughts and behavior. Personality is the emphasis of individual differences in behavior

What leads you to form an external (situational) attribution?

Something about the environment caused the behavior.

What leads you to form an internal (dispositional) attribution?

Something about the person caused the behavior.

What is trait self-esteem?

The "average" version of you that is relatively stable across time and situations

How does the peak, end, and duration of an experience influence our memories of emotional events?

The longer and happier you are, the more likely you'll remember these memories.

What is a dependent variable?

The one that gets measured.

What is a independent variable?

The one that's manipulated.

What is the fundamental attribution error?

The tendency to attribute a person's behavior to personality while ignoring situational causes

What is the self-serving bias? How do we attribute our successes and failures differently?

The tendency to attribute failures to external causes and successes to internal causes

What is the representativeness heuristic?

The tendency to compare things or individuals to the prototypes of their category

What is self-complexity theory?

The tendency to define the self in terms of multiple domains that are relatively distinct from one another. Ex: Honest, rude, loyal, smart.

What is counterfactual thinking?

Thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened "if only" something had been done differently

What is the difference between basic and applied science?

Trying to understand the phenomenon vs. solving real world problems.

What is the difference between upward & downward comparisons?

Upward comparison: when you want to improve something about yourself, you compare with people who are better. Downward comparison: when you want to feel good about yourself, you compare with people who are worse

How do schemas impact memory?

We are more likely to remember stimuli that has caught our attention

How to we maintain positive self-evaluation (think: self-evaluation maintenance model)?

We are motivated to have positive self-esteem, and to achieve that, we engage in various forms of motivated reasoning

What role do attention, motivation, and ability play in persuasion?

Weak/Low attention, motivation and ability correlates with Peripheral Route. Strong/High attention, motivation and ability correlates with Central Route.

What is pluralistic ignorance?

When everyone privately believes A, but seem to publicly believe B, you will continue to act like you believe B.

What is post decision dissonance?

When everything is fair, but you favor one thing after you make a decision to choose it

What is the third person effect?

When people assume that persuasive messages have a strong influence on others, but not themselves.

What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

When someone has an expectation of you, you tend to work harder, which makes that expectation true.

What is the overjustification effect

When you are introduced to a great award, your motivation declines after you get it.

What is "silver medal syndrome"?

When you get second place, but would've been happier with third.

Hindsight Bias

When you know the answer after it was presented. "Oh, I knew that!"

What is affective forecasting? Are people good or bad at it? Why or why not

When you predict future emotions. We are bad at it because of Immune Neglect. We tend to underestimate our resilience during negative life events.

What is effort justification? What is spreading of the alternatives

When you put in effort to something that has turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing.

What is confirmation bias?

When you support something and look for more evidence to support it.

How might the characteristics of the audience affect the persuasive message? Age? Mood? Need for cognition?

Young people are more persuadable. Feeling negative/positive increases persuasion. NFC is how deeply someone thinks of things.

What is the actor-observer difference? What does it say about the fundamental attribution error?

a difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment: The actor (more likely to make situational attributions) The observer (more likely to make dispositional attributions)