Social Psych 3221 EXAM 1

Intention (ch8)

An agent's mental state of committing to perform an action that the agent believes will bring about a desired outcome.

Implicit attitude (ch7)

An attitude that a person cannot verbally or overtly state.

Explicit attitude (ch7)

An attitude that is consciously held and can be reported on by the person holding the attitude.

False-belief test (ch8)

An experimental procedure that assesses whether a perceiver recognizes that another person has a false belief—a belief that contradicts reality.

Functional neuroanatomy:

Classifying how regions within the nervous system relate to psychology and behavior.

The Age 5-to-7 Shift (ch6)

Cognitive and social changes that occur in the early elementary school years that result in the child's developing a more purposeful, planful, and goal-directed approach to life, setting the stage for the emergence of the self as a motivated agent.

Mood-congruent memory is occurring in which of the following scenarios?

b. John is currently sad and can more easily recall a time when he got in trouble for a late assignment.

What does it mean when psychologists say that the "I" is perceiving the "me"?

b. The self as a knower is able to reflect on the self as a known object or target.

It would be most accurate to say that theory of mind is

b. a collection of both concepts and processes.

Development of a mature identity involves an internalized and evolving story of the self that reconstructs the past and anticipates the future in such a way as to provide a person's life with some degree of unity, meaning, and purpose over time. This is also known as ___________.

b. narrative identity

Clara is extremely hungry after having a 3 hour meeting. She wants food as quickly as possible but is unsure of where to eat. Because of her motivation to eat, she makes a quick decision to eat at the coffee shop a few buildings away. Her motivation to make a quick decision is an example of what concept?

b. need for closure

Which of the following components that comprise theory of mind would be considered the "lowest level," or the most simple and automatic?

b. recognizing goals

The well-known researcher Mead believed the reflexive self was a social actor sensitive to information about the self that came from others. This can also be described as which of the following?

d. Other people function like mirrors reflecting ourselves back to us.

The ________ category allows human beings to identify those moving objects in the world that can act on their own.

d. agent

Azalee is developing a theory of mind as she grows up, and this maturation involves several components. Of the following, which would be considered the most complex?

d. projection

When people have conversations online, there are often misunderstandings about how statements are intended. This is because it is difficult to know whether some comments are serious or made as jokes. In the same way, understanding another person's intentions in various situations requires an understanding of _________.

d. theory of mind

heuristics: (ch7)

mental shortcuts that reduce complex problem-solving to more simple, rule-based decisions.

Stereotypes:

social categorization leads to stereotypes. negative assumptions about others.

automatic process:

something that happens with little conscious awareness or control - especially for dimensions like gender, race, and age. "Social Categorization"

When faced with stress:

sympathetic nervous system activity increases in order to prepare our body to respond to the challenge. This produces what Selye (1950) called a fight or flight response. The release of hormones, which act as messengers from one part of an organism (e.g., a cell or gland) to another part of the organism, is part of the stress response.

When Jason goes to a football game, he likes to sit with people who are cheering for the team that he likes. Those who cheer for the other team sit on the opposite side of the stadium. Relative to Jason, the fans of Jason's team would represent a(n) ________, while those who cheer for the opposing team are an example of a(n) ________.

(A). in-group, outgroup

Functional __________ involves classifying how regions within the nervous system relate to psychology and behavior.

(A). neuroanatomy

One proposed aspect of the self is that you reflect on and try to change your own self. This describes the self as __________

a. reflexive

Traits and social roles attributed to an actor is known as:

a. social reputation

The "Me" (ch6)

The self as known, the sense of the self as the object or target of the I's knowledge and work.

Self as autobiographical author (ch6)

The sense of the self as a storyteller who reconstructs the past and imagines the future in order to articulate an integrative narrative that provides life with some measure of temporal continuity and purpose.

Self as social actor (ch6)

The sense of the self as an embodied actor whose social performances may be construed in terms of more or less consistent self-ascribed traits and social roles.

Self as motivated agent: (Ch6)

The sense of the self as an intentional force that strives to achieve goals, plans, values, projects, and the like.

Mood-congruent memory (ch7)

The tendency to be better able to recall memories that have a mood similar to our current mood.

Social reputation (ch6)

The traits and social roles that others attribute to an actor. Actors also have their own conceptions of what they imagine their respective social reputations indeed are in the eyes of others.

Intersexual selection(ch9)

A process of sexual selection by which evolution (change) occurs as a consequences of the mate preferences of one sex exerting selection pressure on members of the opposite sex.

Intrasexual competition(ch9)

A process of sexual selection by which members of one sex compete with each other, and the victors gain preferential mating access to members of the opposite sex.

Automatic empathy (ch8)

A social perceiver unwittingly taking on the internal state of another person, usually because of mimicking the person's expressive behavior and thereby feeling the expressed emotion.

Projection (ch8)

A social perceiver's assumption that the other person wants, knows, or feels the same as the perceiver wants, know, or feels.

Durability bias: (ch7)

A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates for how long one will feel an emotion (positive or negative) after some event.

Impact bias (ch7)

A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates the strength or intensity of emotion one will experience after some event.

Sympathetic nervous system:

A branch of the autonomic nervous system that controls many of the body's internal organs. Activity of the SNS generally mobilizes the body's fight or flight response.

Big Five: (ch6)

A broad taxonomy of personality trait domains repeatedly derived from studies of trait ratings in adulthood and encompassing the categories of (1) extraversion vs. introversion, (2) neuroticism vs. emotional stability, (3) agreeable vs. disagreeableness, (4) conscientiousness vs. nonconscientiousness, and (5) openness to experience vs. conventionality. By late childhood and early adolescence, people's self-attributions of personality traits, as well as the trait attributions made about them by others, show patterns of intercorrelations that confirm with the five-factor structure obtained in studies of adults.

Planning fallacy (ch7)

A cognitive bias in which one underestimates how long it will take to complete a task.

availability heuristic: (ch7)

A heuristic in which the frequency or likelihood of an event is evaluated based on how easily instances of it come to mind.

representativeness heuristic (ch7)

A heuristic in which the likelihood of an object belonging to a category is evaluated based on the extent to which the object appears similar to one's mental representation of the category.

Cortisol:

A hormone made by the adrenal glands, within the cortex. Cortisol helps the body maintain blood pressure and immune function. Cortisol increases when the body is under stress.

Error management theory (EMT) (ch9)

A theory of selection under conditions of uncertainty in which recurrent cost asymmetries of judgment or inference favor the evolution of adaptive cognitive biases that function to minimize the more costly errors.

Paris has just found out that her company is downsizing their staff and that she is highly likely to lose her job at any moment. Her heartbeat is increasing, she feels warm, and she has to take several deep breaths to try to calm down. The part of her body that is currently 'speeding her up' is called the ________ nervous system.

A. Sympathetic

When considering the ways that people develop and communicate their senses of identity which of the following activities may be the most powerful form of self-transformation that human beings have ever invented.

A. storytelling

Implicit Association Test (ch7)

An implicit attitude task that assesses a person's automatic associations between concepts by measuring the response times in pairing the concepts.

Narrative identity (ch 6)

An internalized and evolving story of the self designed to provide life with some measure of temporal unity and purpose. Beginning in late adolescence, people craft self-defining stories that reconstruct the past and imagine the future to explain how the person came to be the person that he or she is becoming.

Visual perspective taking (ch8)

Can refer to visual perspective taking (perceiving something from another person's spatial vantage point) or more generally to effortful mental state inference (trying to infer the other person's thoughts, desires, emotions).

Evolution(ch9)

Change over time. Is the definition changing?

Mimicry (ch8)

Copying others' behavior, usually without awareness.

electroencephalogram, or EEG:

EEG is a measure of electrical activity generated by the brain's neurons.

Theory of mind (ch6)

Emerging around the age of 4, the child's understanding that other people have minds in which are located desires and beliefs, and that desires and beliefs, thereby, motivate behavior.

Adaptations (ch 9)

Evolved solutions to problems that historically contributed to reproductive success.

Which of the following is an example of the planning fallacy?

Gerard believes he can complete a term paper within a one-week time frame. He is surprised when he cannot complete the project as quickly as he anticipated.

Simulation:

Imaginary or real imitation of other people's behavior or feelings.

Mentalizing:

Judging whether someone is pleased about being photographed requires making an inference about someone's internal feelings

Redemptive narratives (ch6)

Life stories that affirm the transformation from suffering to an enhanced status or state. In American culture, redemptive life stories are highly prized as models for the good self, as in classic narratives of atonement, upward mobility, liberation, and recovery.

Mirror neurons (ch8)

Neurons identified in monkey brains that fire both when the monkey performs a certain action and when it perceives another agent performing that action.

Ego: (6)

Sigmund Freud's conception of an executive self in the personality. Akin to this module's notion of "the I," Freud imagined the ego as observing outside reality, engaging in rational though, and coping with the competing demands of inner desires and moral standards.

Identity: (ch6)

Sometimes used synonymously with the term "self," identity means many different things in psychological science and in other fields (e.g., sociology). In this module, I adopt Erik Erikson's conception of identity as a developmental task for late adolescence and young adulthood. Forming an identity in adolescence and young adulthood involves exploring alternative roles, values, goals, and relationships and eventually committing to a realistic agenda for life that productively situates a person in the adult world of work and love. In addition, identity formation entails commitments to new social roles and reevaluation of old traits, and importantly, it brings with it a sense of temporal continuity in life, achieved though the construction of an integrative life story.

Self-esteem (ch6)

The extent to which a person feels that he or she is worthy and good. The success or failure that the motivated agent experiences in pursuit of valued goals is a strong determinant of self-esteem.

Theory of mind (ch8)

The human capacity to understand minds, a capacity that is made up of a collection of concepts (e.g., agent, intentionality) and processes (e.g., goal detection, imitation, empathy, perspective taking).

Reflexivity: (6)

The idea that the self reflects back upon itself; that the I (the knower, the subject) encounters the Me (the known, the object). Reflexivity is a fundamental property of human selfhood.

Hot cognition (ch7)

The mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings.

Gene Selection Theory(ch9)

The modern theory of evolution by selection by which differential gene replication is the defining process of evolutionary change.

Simulation (ch8)

The process of representing the other person's mental state.

Intentionality (ch8)

The quality of an agent's performing a behavior intentionally—that is, with skill and awareness and executing an intention (which is in turn based on a desire and relevant beliefs).

The "I": (ch6)

The self as knower, the sense of the self as a subject who encounters (knows, works on) itself (the Me).

Joint attention (ch8)

Two people attending to the same object and being aware that they both are attending to it.

Synchrony (ch8)

Two people displaying the same behaviors or having the same internal states (typically because of mutual mimicry).

How is it that schemas help people save time as they have new experiences or encounter new people or objects on a daily basis?

We compare new experiences to previously stored schemas and this allows us to put forth less effort to assess those new encounters.

functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI:

While EEG measures the brain's electrical activity, fMRI measures changes in the oxygenation of blood flowing in the brain. When neurons become more active, blood flow to the area increases to bring more oxygen and glucose to the active cells. fMRI allows us to image these changes in oxygenation by placing people in an fMRI machine or scanner, which consists of large magnets that create strong magnetic fields. The magnets affect the alignment of the oxygen molecules within the blood (i.e., how they are tilted). As the oxygen molecules move in and out of alignment with the magnetic fields, their nuclei produce energy that can be detected with special sensors

A(n) __________ is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a target with a degree of favor or disfavor.

a. attitude

The ________ heuristic is one in which the frequency or likelihood of an event is evaluated based on how easily examples come to mind.

a. availability

The need for ________ refers to the desire to come to a decision that will resolve and conclude an issue.

a. closure

"Oh I know that I'll just be sad forever," Monique cries, after her first boyfriend broke up with her. "I'm never going to love again. My life is RUINED!" Given that she is unlikely to be sad forever, Monique is demonstrating the __________ bias.

a. durability

When a person unwittingly mimics another person's expressions and feels the other person's emotions they are engaged in automatic ________.

a. empathy

Calvin is interested in measuring his school's willingness to do volunteer work around the community. He sends out a self-report survey that asks students to directly fill out their _________ attitudes on the topic.

a. explicit

The Implicit Association Task (IAT) used in research, which records participants' reaction times to categorizing objects, is measuring what type of attitude?

a. implicit attitude

When a person commits to perform an action that she believes will bring about a specific, desired outcome this is called ________.

a. intention

At what point in life does one begin to construct a narrative identity?

a. late adolescence

Research has repeatedly supported the notion that adult personality exists as a combination of the "big five" personality traits. Which of the following is NOT a big five personality trait?

a. psychoticism

A __________ narrative is a life story that affirms one's transformation from suffering to an elevated status or state.

a. redemptive

When a person makes an assumption that all members of a specific group of people must share some common attribute, ability, or feature, (s)he is engaging in ________.

a. a stereotype

Which type of instrument would be useful for measuring the electrical activity that is generated by the brain's neurons?

a. electroencephalogram (EEG)

Which type of brain imaging technique measures changes in the oxygenation of blood flowing in the brain?

a. functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

Jaden is at the end of his first semester of college. He has four exams, three papers, and one major project due all within a 5-day period. He is feeling a lot of stress, and as a result his body is producing higher-than-usual levels of cortisol. Which of the following is not a likely result of this hormonal increase?

a. increased sleepiness

The field of social neuroscience is best thought of as a combination of a _______ approach (using measures of the brain and body to study social processes) and a ________ orientation (seeing how the field can benefit the study of social psychology).

a. methodological; theoretical

The field of ________ emphasizes methods that focus on the brain to understand how we think and act toward other people.

a. social neuroscience

On their first date, Brendan and Jonathan are sitting at a table getting to know each other. When Brendan leans in and rests his elbows on the table, Jonathan does the same thing without even realizing it. When Jonathan scratches his face, Brendan reaches up and adjusts his glasses without recognizing how he is copying the behaviors. These are examples of _________.

b. synchrony

One explanation of how people with autism regard others is that the autistic individual perceives others in a very ________ fashion

c. analytical

When an individual reflects on her sense of self as an embodied actor whose social performances may be construed in terms of more or less consistent self, upon which aspect of the self is she reflecting?

c. the "social actor"

Martyn is seated at a chair, and sees his father standing by a box with a ball in front of it. His dad leaves the room, and another person comes in and puts the ball into the box, and closes the lid. Martyn is then asked where his father will look for the ball when he returns. This is an example of the ________ test.

false belief

social cognition: (ch7)

focuses on how people think about others and about the social world

schema: (ch7)

is a mental model, or representation, of any of the various things we come across in our daily lives. A schema (related to the word schematic) is kind of like a mental blueprint for how we expect something to be or behave. It is an organized body of general information or beliefs we develop from direct encounters, as well as from secondhand sources. Rather than spending copious amounts of time learning about each new individual object (e. g., each new dog we see), we rely on our schemas to tell us that a newly encountered dog probably barks, likes to fetch, and enjoys treats. In this way, our schemas greatly reduce the amount of cognitive work we need to do and allow us to "go beyond the information given" (Bruner, 1957).

medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC):

located in the middle of the frontal lobe - is active when people think about themselves. This conclusion comes from studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI.

Social Categorization:

the act of mentally classifying someone as belonging in a group. Why do we do this? It is an effective mental shortcut. Rather than effortfully thinking about every detail of every person we encounter, social categorization allows us to rely on information we already know about the person's group.

Social Psychology:

the branch of psychological science mainly concerned with understanding how the presence of others affects our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

neuroendocrinology:

the study of how the brain and hormones act in concert to coordinate the physiology of the body.