Social Psychology

What is a mediator variable?

a variable the intervenes between an independent variable and changes in social behavior

What is selection in the evolution process?

those who possess traits that are beneficial in some way have a reproductive advantage

What are the main processes involved in social cognition?

-Attention -Interpretation -Judgment -Memory

What is a downside of schemas?

they can remain unchanged in the face of contradictory information

Cognition and behavior (current trend in social psych)

- Behavior: how people act in social situations - Thought: how people make sense of the social world - Two are linked

How do schemas impact social cognition?

- attention: information we notice - encoding: processes used to store info in memory - retrieval: recovering info from memory in order to use it

What is the role of biological factors in social psychology?

- biology and social life affect each other - environment and/or social experiences turn genes on or off (epigenetics) - evolved psychological mechanisms: processes that help us deal with problems related to survival

Emotion (current trend in social psych)

- feelings influence social life - Moods -> behaviors

Implicit processes (current trend in social psych)

- nonconcious psychological processes - some attitudes and behaviors occur automatically which means we are not able to control them and may not be aware of them

Social neuroscience (current trend in social psych)

- use technolgy to study the brain during social thought or behavior - mirror neurons are activated when observing others and important to empathy

What is confactual thinking?

-"What might have been" -Emotional responses depend on how easy it is to imagine the situation not occurring

What are the current trends in social psychology?

-Cognition and behavior -Emotions -Social relationships -Social neuroscience -Implicit attitudes -Social diversity

What is system 1 for the link of affect and cognition?

-Emotion & affect -Not very sensitive to cognitive load

What is the bridge study?

-Male participants approached by an attractive female experimenter on either a rickety or stable suspension bridge -Men on the rickety bridge called experimenter more than men on stable bridge

Memory/knowledge in social cognition?

-Memories can directly contribute to new judgments through active recall of a previous situation. -Memories can indirectly influence impressions and decisions by affecting attention and interpretation processes.

What is system 2 for the link of affect and cognition?

-Reason -Disrupted by cognitive load

What is optimistic bias?

-Tendency to overlook risks and expect things to turn out well -Most people think they're more likely than other people to have positive things happen, and less likely to have negative things happen

What is magical thinking?

-Thinking about things in a way that doesn't rationally make sense -Sometimes we think our thoughts can influence the world in ways that they actually can't -Example: Superstition

What is irrationality?

-We often don't think rationally (even though we sometimes like to think we do!) -We tend to often make judgments that lead us to commit errors

What are some benefits of using automatic processing?

-We try to handle problems while paying attention to other things -Sometimes automatic thought is better for decision making than deliberative thought

What are the four main considerations of social psychology?

1. Actions and characteristics of other people 2. Cognitive processes 3. Environmental variables 4. Biological factors

Imagine you need to ask your friend for a favor. According to the research about how moods affect behaviors, when would be the best time to ask her?

After she was just offered her dream job

What best describes the relationship between affect and cognition?

Cognition and affect influence each other

What is the contrast of controlled processing and automatic processing?

Controlled processing is systematic and effortful, whereas automatic processing is fast and relatively effortless.

What is interpretation?

Different people may interpret the same situation, person, or event differently

Which type of nonverbal communication is relatively universal?

Facial expressions such as smiles and frowns

Harry was 1 point away from getting an A on his transfiguration class. Ron was 5 points away from getting an A in the class. Which person is probably more upset with their grade?

Harry

What is the name of the committee that ensures that research is being conducted ethically?

Institutional Review Board

Josh is having a difficult day. His female friend Maria and male friend Matt both pat him on the arm. His friend Toby smiles at him. Which behavior makes josh feel more secure?

Maria patting his arm

What are the functions of a heuristic?

Meant to minimize information overload and serve as a way to expand our cognitive capacities

What is NOT a necessary component of an experiment?

Mediating variable

What is judgement?

Need to form impressions so that people can make important decisions that may be relevant to their goals

Controlled processing occurs mostly in the __________________, whereas automatic processing occurs mostly in the __________________.

Prefrontal cortex areas; limbic system (amygdala)

Tom just found out he got a promotion. Rachel just found out she lost her job. They're both talking to their friend Mike, who tells them a far-fetched story about what he did the night before. Who is most likely to detect he is lying?

Rachel

How do we reason using metaphors?

Relate or compare two unrelated concepts (Good is up, bad is down)

What is a heuristic?

Rules/shortcuts for making decisions

What is a representativeness heuristic?

Shortcut used to make decision about a person's category membership

Which of the dimensions of causal attribution is used to evaluate if behavior is likely to change?

Stable-unstable dimension

What is a anchoring and adjustment heuristic?

Tendency to use (usually numeric) values we are given as a starting point that we adjust to Example - starting selling price

What is a availability heuristic?

The easier it is to think of something, the more likely it is to come to mind, and the more likely it is that we'll use it to make judgments

What BEST describes the attribution process?

The process by which we seek to understand the causes of the behavior of others and ourselves.

The two-factor theory of emotion proposes that we infer our feelings from _____________.

The situations in which we experience these emotions

According to the evolutionary perspective, why do we find people with traits such as symmetrical features and clear skin attractive?

The traits are indicators of good health

What is a type of other-enhancement?

Using flattering language

What is a moderator variable?

Variables that change the size or direction of the relationship between two variables

What does research on impression formation suggests about our ability to form impressions of other people?

We are pretty good at forming accurate impressions.

What is overconfidence bias?

We tend to have more confidence in our beliefs and judgments than we should

What is skepticism?

a commitment to accepting findings as accurate only to the extent they have been verified over and over again

What is open-mindness?

a commitment to changing one's views if evidence suggests that these views are inaccurate

What is accuracy?

a commitment to gathering and evaluating info about the world in a precise, error-free manner

What is objectivity?

a commitment to obtaining and evaluating such information in a manner that is free from bias

What is meta-analysis?

a highly useful statistical technique that permits an assessment of how well findings replicate and point to gaps in existing research

Social psychology's "is"?

a science that uses accuracy, objectivity, skepticism and open-mindness

One way that schemas influence social thought is by ________.

acting as a filter to direct our attention towards some information and away from other information

Suppose smoking and drinking alcohol are found to be correlated at +.65. We can conclude that ________.

as smoking increases, drinking increases

Which aspect of social cognition involves consciously focusing on aspects of the environment?

attention

Which process of social cognition refers to the information we notice?

attention

Mood congruence effects occur during ______, whereas mood dependent memory effects during ________.

attention and encoding; retrieval

Your friend is talking about how murders are very common because he's been seeing reports of them all over the news lately. This is an example of the ___________ heuristic.

availability

Social psychologists focus their attention mainly on individuals because?

our actions are performed by and thoughts occur in the minds of individuals

What do we mean by schemas as "mental frameworks"?

because schemas help us organize social info, guide our actions and process information relevant information

What is evolutionary psychology?

branch of psychology that seeks to investigate the potential role of genetic factors in various aspects of human behavior; says that evolution involves 3 major components: variation, inheritance and selection

How would you best describe evolutionary psychology?

certain traits are selected for and passed along to subsequent generations

The two-factor theory of emotion is based on the principle that?

cognition influences affect

Which categories are mentioned in the textbook regarding factors affecting social interaction?

cognitive processes, environmental variables and biological factors

What is the difference between correlational and experimental methods?

correlational research looks to find relationships between two variables whereas experiemental methods look to explain how one variable causes the other

Social diversity (current trend in social psych)

culture influences social thought and behavior

The fundamental attribution error states that we tend to make _________________ attributions for others' behavior rather than ______________ attributions.

dispositional; situational

Tara is a cashier at a grocery store, and a customer snaps at her for not bagging quickly enough. Tara is likely to make an ________________ attribution that _________.

dispositional; that the woman is rude

Tammy is concluding a study on how exercise is related to decreased stress. She predicts that exercise leads to the release of endorphins, which leads to decreased stress. Which of these variables is a mediator?

endorphins

Luis hears some gossip that his new neighbor slit a mans throat. He now has a negative impression of the neighbor. What would change Luis's impression of his neighbor to become more positive?

finding out the neighbor slit the mans throat to perform a tracheotomy because the man couldn't breathe

Which of the following emotions is mostly expressed similarly across cultures?

happiness

What types of information are we most likely to notice?

information that is consistent with our schemas

Sam is trying to make plans with his friend Nicole, but she keeps cancelling on him. He notices that his other friends don't cancel on him, that Nicole cancels on him and her other friends frequently. Based on these factors, Sam is likely to make an ____________ attribution that __________.

internal; Nicole is flaky

Because of the self-serving bias, we tend to attribute our successes to ______________ causes and our failures to ________________ causes.

internal; external

In the study by Proudfoot, Kay, and Koval (2015) on implicit attitudes about gender, the researchers found that when participants were told an architectural design was by a female, they judged it to be ________ creative compared to when they were told the same design was by a male.

less

What are the risks of using deception is psychological research?

may result in harm to the person exposed, true purpose of research is not revealed (passive deception) and misleading info

Micheal thinks that working hard is related to gray hair, but only among those who experience high levels of stress. What type of variable is stress?

moderator

What is variation in the evolution process?

organisms vary in many ways

What is the role of the actions and characteristics of other people in social psychology?

other's thoughts, feelings and behaviors affect our own; we also behave differently depending on who we are interacting with

The facial feedback hypothesis suggests that _________________________.

our facial expressions influence our emotions

What is schema persistence?

our schema is unchanged even when there's contradictory evidence

Believing we can get more accomplished in a certain period of time than we actually can is called the ___________.

planning fallacy

One reason that social scientists put their faith in the scientific method is that the scientific method ________.

produces more conclusive evidence than other methods

Social relationships (current trend in social psych)

relationships affect our life like mental heath and emotions

You see a woman wearing a red shirt and khaki pants and assume she is a target employee. What heuristic did you use?

representativeness

What types of schemas drive our thought?

schemas that are strong and primed

What group of professionals is better at detecting lies than the general population?

secret service agents

Social psychology's "is not"?

sociology and common sense

What is inheritance in the evolution process?

some traits are passed down through genes

What is the role of environmental factors in social psychology?

the physical environment affects our thoughts, feelings and behaviors

What are the limitations of correlational research?

there's no way to determine whether one variable causes the other or the direction of the variables

What is social psychology?

the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behavior, feelings, and thoughts in social situations and how they are influenced by social situations.

What term refers to a framework that explains certain events or processes?

theory

What are limitations of experimental research?

there's no external validity and sometimes its unethical to manipulate certain things

Early research conducted by Solomon Asch suggests the presence of central traits, which are ________.

traits that strongly color the way we interpret other aspects of another person

What is the role of cognitive processes in social psychology?

we think about other people's thoughts, behaviors and feelings; we make attributions about other people's behaviors to something about them or something about the circumstances

What are the focuses of social psychology?

what causes individual behavior, how social environments influence thoughts, and how emotions influences social life

What is a status quo heuristic?

whats easily accessible in the memory is good

People often forecast that they will feel ________ when reading about a large-scale tragedy compared to a smaller tragedy. However, findings indicate that people who actually read about such tragedies ________.

worse; feel the same regardless of the size of the tragedy