Social Psychology Final Exam

Aggression

Actions with the goal of harming another who would want to avoid such treatment. Whether aggressive behavior is intentional or unintentional, and whether we act with or without conscious thought, highlights the complex nature of aggression.

Social psychology embraces ____ as core scientific values

Accuracy, objectivity, skepticism and open-mindedness

Excitation Transfer Theory

Arousal stemming from one situation can remain and strengthens an emotional reaction in another situation.

Input variables

Factors that are related to the situation (e.g., seeing someone act aggressively, hot temperatures) and to the people involved (e.g., personality traits such as irritability, sensing hostile intentions on the part of another person).

Darkness

Feelings of anonymity reduce the tendency to help others

Descriptive norms ________.

Indicate what most people do in a particular situation

Type B's are more likely to use ___ Aggression

Instrumental

Does correlation imply causation

No

General Aggression Model

Proposes that aggressiveness is produced by a number of "input variables" that impact upon arousal, emotions, and our cognitive processes.

Inclusive fitness (kin selection)

Refers to the idea that natural selection applies to behaviors that help others with whom we share genetic material.

Whistle-blowers generally "blow the whistle" on corporate misbehavior because of what three attributes?

Their attitude is extreme, certain, and derives from personal experience.

Mark was eating a wonderful dinner one evening when Jeannine came into the restaurant and sat down next to him while he was finishing this dinner. Later, Mark found that he was attracted to Jeannine. This situation illustrates the operation of a(n) ________ effect on attraction.

associated

The process by which individuals seek to understand why others behave as they do is known as ________.

attribution

The frequency with which a given event or pattern occurs in the population is its ________.

base rate

The ways we think about other people and the things we remember about them may have an effect on our behavior. These thoughts and memories are examples of ________.

cognitive processes

The extent to which different people react to a given situation in the same general way is known as ________.

consensus

Retrieval of information from memory is involved in social thought. When tested to see what information is more readily available from memory, individuals are more likely to respond with ________.

depending on the situation, either schema-incongruent or schema-congruent

Prosocial behavior

describes any helpful action that will benefit another person. The helping person may not necessarily receive any actual benefits for their help, and it may even pose a risk to them if they do help.

Type B behavior pattern

describes someone who is exactly the opposite (not competitive, not hostile, and not always in a rush).

Type A behavior pattern

describes someone who is highly competitive, hostile, and always in a rush.

The extent to which a person's reaction to a particular event differs from their reaction to similar other events is an indication of ________.

distinctiveness

Introspection is an effective means of understanding ourselves when the ________.

focus is on a conscious decision-making process

Research indicates that if we think about our future possible selves we can be inspired to

forego current activities that do not help us to achieve an improved future self.

Defensive helping

help given to members of out-groups to reduce the threat they pose to the status or distinctiveness of one's ingroup. (These acts of help are performed not primarily to help the recipients, but rather to "put them down" in subtle ways and so reduce the threat to the ingroup)

A Type A person is more likely to display

hostile aggression

Chris describes himself as liberal when thinking of himself as an American, but conservative when compared to other college students. These are ________ comparisons.

intragroup

People tend to prefer situations that allow them to ________.

maintain a match between their attitudes and behavior

Based on his estimate of how long it would take him to complete his mid-term essay, Armando told his instructor he would turn in the paper on Tuesday, but was late turning it in, causing his instructor to deduct a letter grade from the paper. Next time Armando makes such a promise based on a plan, he will likely ________.

make the same planning error and be late again

A practical implication of research on cultural differences in conformity is that there tends to be ________.

more conformity in countries with collectivistic cultures

The observation of behavior as it occurs in natural settings is known as ________.

naturalistic observation

Attitudes are ________.

our evaluations of different aspects of the social world

According to the theory of planned behavior, our behavioral intentions are partially determined by our attitudes toward a particular behavior, our perceptions of our ability to perform the behavior, and ________.

our perceptions of whether others will approve or disapprove of the behavior

Drive theories (of aggression)

propose that aggression stems from external conditions that arouse the motive to harm or injure others; the most famous of these is the frustration-aggression hypothesis.

Pluralistic ignorance

refers to our tendency to use social comparison to figure out what to do in a given situation, even though typically, no one is completely sure as to what is happening. More often than not, bystanders do nothing, as they use the behavior of the people around them as justification for failing to act

In meeting a new roommate, David stresses his studious qualities, an aspect of himself he wishes others to agree with, while being willing to underplay other potentially important aspects of himself. David is practicing a ________ approach in presenting himself to others.

self-verification

The idea that part of our self-esteem stems from identifying with the social groups to which we belong is part of ________.

social identity theory

The process whereby we seek to know and understand others is called ________, and frequently makes use of ________.

social perception; nonverbal communication

Injunctive norms ________.

specify the approval of behavior in particular situation

We are MOST likely to believe that the behaviors of others are suggestive of their ________ when it is seen to ________.

stable traits; be socially undesirable

Empathy-altruism hypothesis

suggests that at least some prosocial acts are motivated solely by the desire to help someone in need.

Empathic joy hypothesis

suggests that prosocial acts are motivated by our need for accomplishment, and helping another person is an accomplishment that is rewarding. We need to know that our actions had a beneficial effect on the person in need.

Negative-state relief model

suggests that prosocial behavior occurs because helping reduces our own negative, unpleasant emotions.

Our tendency to believe that our own behavior reflects external causes and that other people's behavior reflects internal causes is known as ________.

the actor-observer effect

When making judgments that involve factual information, we tend to rely on ________.

the amount of relevant information we can recall

Research indicates that people's online identities often reflect ____________

the ideal self

Hostile Agression

the main goal is to cause harm to another person

Certain facial expressions are recognized as representing ________ underlying emotions in ________ different cultures.

the same basic; many

National surveys, in asking about how much progress there has been in moving toward racial equality, consistently find that White respondents perceive that ________.

there has been a lot of progress

Competitive altruism

The competitive altruism hypothesis suggests that one important reason why people help others is that doing so boosts their own status and reputation and in this way ultimately brings them large benefits, ones that more than offset the costs of engaging in prosocial actions

The tendency to use a particular number or value as a starting point to which changes are made is known as ________.

the anchoring and adjustment heuristic

Empathy

the capacity to be able to experience others' emotional states, feeling sympathetic toward them, and taking their perspective (One explanation for prosocial behavior)

When making judgments that involve emotions or feelings, we tend to rely on ________.

the ease with which we can recall relevant information

Heuristics exert a strong influence on our thinking in large measure because ________.

they reduce the mental effort needed to make judgments and decisions

Frustration-Aggression hypothesis

which stated that frustration is quite a powerful influence on aggression. The idea is that frustration arouses a drive that causes us to want to harm the object of our frustration. Although this hypothesis has not been given a lot of support (e.g., frustration is only one of many possible causes of aggressive behavior), many people, especially outside social psychology, still view it as valid.

Suppose we are trying to discern whether an individual is lying based on his or her verbal and nonverbal information and cues. Which of the following statements BEST describes how well we will be able to judge whether this individual is lying?

We will probably pay more attention to her or his verbal cues and, in doing so, will have difficulty determining any deception.