Social Psychology (Chapters 1-6 Myers)

What makes up a good theory?

(a.) effectively summarizes many observations (b.) makes clear predictions that we can use to (c.) confirm or modify the theory (d.) generate new research, and (e.) suggest practical applications.

What are the 3 components of attitudes? And expound them

1. Cognitive - knowledge/beliefs 2. Affect - feelings 3. Behavioral - intention of an action with regards to an object.

What is priming?

Activating particular associations in memory. (prejudgments)

What is narcissism?

An inflated sense of self-worth.

Persistence of one's initial conceptions, such as when the basis for one's belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives.

Belief perserverance (discredit belief = discredited, supports belief = survives/retained)

What are attitudes?

Beliefs and feelings related to an event or person.

One way we assign meaning is to use the information we collected to assign the person to a?

Category

Differentiate the negativity (horn) effect from positivity (halo) effect

Horn effect is when a single negative trait unfairly influences the overall perception of an individual (opposite when it comes to Halo)

Explain what political perception is?

Perceiving opposite party/ies more negatively.

Doing this eliminates extraneous variables and gives everyone an equal chance to be chosen

Random assignment/sampling (?)

The statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to return toward their average.

Regression towards the average

Differentiate Representativeness heuristics and Availability heuristics.

Representativeness = presume that someone belongs to a group of people or they represent a typical member of that group Availability = the first thing that comes to mind is the most common or significant

The tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling (representing) a typical member.

Representativeness heuristic

What are the 3 types of schema?

Role, person, event

This theory assumes that when our attitudes are weak, we simply observe our behavior and its circumstances, then infer our attitudes.

Self Perception Theory

Theory that assumes people, especially those who self-monitor their behavior hoping to create good impressions, will adapt their attitude reports to appear consistent with their actions.

Self Presentation Theory

Beliefs about ourself that help organize and process self-relevant information.

Self-Schema

A person's overall self-evaluation or sense of self-worth.

Self-esteem

Differentiate self-esteem from self-efficacy.

Self-esteem is the evaluation of one's self-worth while self-efficacy is an evaluation of your competency and how effective you are.

Protecting one's self-image with behaviors that create a handy excuse for later failure.

Self-handicapping

What is the actor-observer bias?

Situational attribution when it comes to us, dispositional when others

Study of the process of collecting and assessing information about others so we can make inferences and draw impressions about them.

Social Cognition

Ability to make accurate inferences about other people based on their appearance and behavior

Social Perception

Evaluating one's opinions and ability by comparing it with others

Social comparison

An effortless, automatic inference of a trait after exposure to someone's behavior.

Spontaneous Trait Inference

Automatic or implicit thinking is in what system?

System 1

Controlled or explicit thinking is in what system?

System 2

Explain what defensive pessimism is

The adaptive value of anticipating problems and harnessing one's anxiety to motivate effective action. (anticipating future problems, and using your anxiety to do action)

What is embodied cognition?

The mutual influence of bodily sensations on cognitive preferences and social judgments

What is the Fundamental attribution error?

The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others' behavior

What is the hindsight bias?

The tendency to exaggerate, after learning an outcome, one's ability to have foreseen how something turned out. Also known as the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon.

What is the False uniqueness effect?

The tendency to underestimate the commonality of one's abilities and desirable behaviors.

What are the 3 kinds of variables in research?

controlled, independent, dependent

Define Social Psychology

how people think about, relate, and influence one another.

What are the 7 types of information collected through our sensations?

1. Physical cues 2. Salience (what stands out, center of attraction) 3. Facial expression 4. Personality traits 5. Eye contact 6. Moral character 7. Nonverbal communication

What are the few contexts where attitudes tend to be potent?

1. Relevance to the situation 2. Personal investment 3. Emotional investment 4. Accessibility of attitudes 5. Consistency with social norms 6. Consistency with behavior 7. Persuasion and community (haha ambot bagan irrelevant mani)

When does our behavior affect our attitudes? (6)

1. Role playing 2. Saying becomes believing 3. The Foot in the Door Phenomenon 4. Evil and Moral acts 5. Interracial behavior and Racial Attitudes 6. Social Movements

What are the 3 theories on why does our behavior affect our attitudes?

1. Self Presentation Theory 2. Cognitive Dissonance Theory 3. Self-Perception Theory

Explain the step-by-step (5 steps) process of communication in our nervous system.

1. Sensation through receptor cells (senses) called transduction. 2. Input is sent to the afferent (sensory) neurons to the brain. 3. Brain processes the input (called perception) 4. Command is sent out via the efferent (motor) neurons 5. Body responds (behavior) AFFERENT = TO THE BRAIN EFFERENT = FROM THE BRAIN (BEHAVIOR)

What are the 7 big ideas in social psychology?

1. We construct our social reality 2. Our social intuitions are powerful, sometimes perilous 3. Attitudes shape and are shaped by behavior 4. Social influences shape our behavior 5. Dispositions shape our behavior 6. Social behavior is also biological behavior 7. Feelings and actions towards others may sometimes be negative or positive

Explain what self-fulfilling prophecy is.

A belief that leads to its own fulfillment (ideas that lead us to act in ways to produce apparent confirmation)

What are heuristics?

A thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments (different from schema, heuristics if for making decisions with lacking or without prior info ?)

When do attitudes predict our behavior?

Attitudes are our feelings, thoughts, and beliefs about something. They can be positive, negative, or neutral. Behavior is our actions or how we act (when our attitude is positive or negative towards a subject, or behavior is most likely aligned with it)

Why are emotions important when attending to information?

Because emotions affect how we transcribe or view the information.

A type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people's social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations.

Behavioral confirmation (your expectation of another person can bring about that behavior in the other person.)

Explain what self-monitoring is

Being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting one's performance to create the desired impression. (looking at behavior and adjusting to create the desired impression of others)

Explain collectivism

COLLECTIVISM - Giving priority to the goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly. (goals are group/society-directed and identity is based on one's group)

Explain what is the availability heuristic?

Cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory. If instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace (what first comes to mind is the common occurence)

A tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions.

Confirmation bias

What is the difference between correlational and experimental researches?

Correlational - naturally occurring variables without manipulation Experimental - finds cause-and-effect relationship by manipulating a/the variable/s.

Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn't. (What could have been)

Counterfactual thinking (more prevalent when you are closer to the desired goal)

Cues in an experiment that tell the participant what behavior is expected.

Demand characteristics

What is the difference between Dispositional attribution and Situational attribution?

Dispositional = traits Situational = events/circumstances (more prevalent ang situational for empaths)

Differentiating implicit and explicit attitudes towards the same subject

Dual Attitude System

Overestimating the commonality (consensus) of one's opinion.

False consensus effect

The way in which choices are presented to us is called?

Framing

Perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists.

Illusory Correlation

Is a computer driven assessment of implicit actudes. The test ures reaction times to meas people's automatic associations between attitude objects and evaluative words

Implicit Association Test (IAT) - Implicit because it serves as our unconscious attitude towards something.

One's identity as an autonomous self

Independent self

An ethical principle requiring that research participants be told enough to enable them to choose whether they wish to participate

Informed consent

Explain the Attribution theory

It is attributing the behavior of others either to traits or events to understand it in a social context

Why are schemas important?

It makes cognitive processing move quicker (efficient)

What are intuitive judgments?

Knowing something without reasoning or analysis (gut feeling)

Who is the father of social psychology?

Kurt Tsadek Lewin (1980)

A study of the same person or group of people over an extended amount of time.

Longitudinal study

Mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source.

Misattribution

What role does motivation play in behavior?

Motivation, intrinsic or extrinsic gives us incentives in doing a behavior. (reward)

What is the Cognitive dissonance theory?

Our attitudes change because we are motivated to maintain consistency among our cognitions (self-justification)

What is the overconfidence phenomenon?

Overestimating one's abilities

What is impact bias?

Overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events.

Occurs when external rewards are introduced for a behavior that was previously intrinsically motivated, and the intrinsic motivation for that behavior diminishes as a result.

Overjustification effect

It is underestimating how long it takes to finish a task

Planning fallacy

What is affective forecasting?

Predictions on how we will feel about future (emotional) events. (idk if based on past experiences)

______ occurs when a word or idea used in the present affects the evaluation of new information in the future

Priming

Explain what is the Terror Management Theory

Proposes that people exhibit self-protective emotional and cognitive responses (including adhering more strongly to their cultural worldviews and prejudices) when confronted with reminders of their mortality. (When reminded of our death, we adhere to our world views and prejudices to find meaning in our lives)

Differentiate the 2 brain systems: System 1 and System 2

SYSTEM 1 - The intuitive, automatic, unconscious, and fast way of thinking. Also known as automatic processing. SYSTEM 2 - The deliberate, controlled, conscious, and slower way of thinking. Also known as controlled processing (system 1, unconscious and intuition | system 2, conscious and deliberate thinking)

A _____ is a presumption that is applied to that group based on past experiences of people/events on that group

Schema

The act of expressing oneself and behaving in ways designed to create a favorable impression or an impression that corresponds to one's ideals

Self-presentation

A form of self-serving bias; the tendency to attribute positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to other factors.

Self-serving attributions (success = traits or disposition, failure = environment/circumstances or situational)

It is the tendency to perceive oneself favorably

Self-serving bias

What is the difference between social psychology, sociology, and anthropology?

Social psychology focuses on how individuals relate and influence one another (researches focus on quali or expe?) meanwhile in sociology it focuses on how large populations (groups, researches are done quanti) and anthropology is the study of our culture in the past until the present to understand how behaviors came to be.

The belief that others are paying more attention to our appearance and behavior than they really are

Spotlight effect

Explain individualism

The concept of giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications. (personal or self directed goals and identity is based on self perception)

Explain the illusion of transparency.

The illusion that our hidden emotions leak out and are easily easily observed by others.

What is self-concept?

What we know and believe about ourselves

What is moral hypocrisy?

When our behaviors and attitudes are not aligned.

What is the difference between a theory and hypothesis?

a theory is a set of principles that explains and predicts observed events while a hypothesis is the same but is testable (and u can also conduct a hypothesis for the sake of wanting to know even without backed up studies)

Differentiate attitude and behavior

attitude = feelings/beliefs behavior = action

How do our attitudes influence the way we perceive and interact with others in everyday social situations

attitudes are our beliefs and feelings to a person or event, so when our attitudes are negative towards something, we also tend to perceive and behave accordingly and vice-versa.

What is experimental realism?

degree to which an experiment absorbs and involves its participants.

What is mundane realism?

degree to which an experiment is similar to everyday situations

What is framing in research?

how you word/arrange your questions (it may change the meaning or makes one questionable more noticable)

What is the importance in cognitive thinking, emotions, and social influences in how we view the world?

idk depende nimo

Two locations in conducting a social experiment?

lab (controlled), field (everyday locations)

A study of "studies" that summarizes many studies on the same topic

meta-analysis

Incorporating "misinformation" into one's memory of the event after witnessing an event and receiving misleading information about it.

misinformation effect

What is the Insufficient Justification Effect?

people attribute more importance or value to a task or behavior when their initial motivation for doing it is insufficient. (little to no extrinsic value, they add more to the intrinsic value ?)

What is rosy retrospection?

recalling mildly pleasant events more favorably than they experienced them. (the experience was better when recalling them)

Repeating a research study, often with different participants in different settings, to determine whether a finding could be reproduced.

replication

A subset of people that serves as a representative of an entire population.

representative sample