PSY104 Midterm 1 (Ch 1, 2, 11, 3, 4)

cover story

A description of the purpose of a study, given to participants, that is different from its true purpose and is used to maintain psychological realism

institutional review board (IRB)

A group made up of at least one scientist, one nonscientist, and one member not affiliated with the institution that reviews all psychological research at that institution and decides whether it meets ethical guidelines; all research must be approved by the IRB before it is conducted

covariation model

Harold Kelley's theory that to form an attribution about what caused a person's behavior, we systematically note the pattern between the presence or absence of possible causal factors and whether the behavior occurs

probability level (p-value)

A number calculated with statistical techniques that tells researchers how likely it is that the results of their experiment occurred by chance and not because of the independent variable or variables; the convention in science, including social psychology, is to consider results significant (trustworthy) if the probability level is less than 5 in 100 that the results might be due to chance factors and not the independent variables studied

random assignment to condition

A process ensuring that all participants have an equal chance of taking part in any condition of an experiment; through random assignment, researchers can be relatively certain that differences in the participants' personalities or backgrounds are distributed evenly across conditions

analytic

A type of thinking style in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context; this type of thinking is common in Western cultures

informed consent

Agreement to participate in an experiment, granted in full awareness of the nature of the experiment, which has been explained in advance. obtained by researchers when they explain the experiment to participants and ask for their permission to participate

empathy altruism

Batson's ___-___ hypothesis is the idea that when we feel empathy for a person, we'll attempt to help that person for purely altruistic reasons, regardless of what we have to gain

surveys

Correlational method is often used to analyze the results of ___, research in which a representative sample of people are asked (often anonymously) questions about their attitudes or behavior

internal validity

keeping everything but the independent variable the same in an experiment; Making sure that nothing besides the independent variable can affect the dependent variable; this is accomplished by controlling all extraneous variables and by randomly assigning people to different experimental conditions

judgmental heuristics

mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently

schemas

mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember; it's a general term that encompasses other people, ourselves, social roles, and specific events

counterfactual thinking

mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been

self-esteem

people's evaluations of their own self-worth--the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent, and decent

personality

social and environmental situations are usually more powerful than ___ differences in determining an individual's behavior

emblems

Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture; they usually have direct verbal translations, such as the OK sign

replications, external

Repeating a study, often with different subject populations or in different settings; ultimate test of an experiment's ___ validity

volunteerism

Similar to empathy and helping, ___ is a case where there are benefits to both the helper and those receiving help

personality

Social psychology and ___ psychology share an interest in the psychology of the individual

sociology

Social psychology and ___ share an interest in the way the situation and the larger society influence behavior.

social

The goal of ___ psychology is to identify psychological properties that make almost everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of social class or culture

universal

The goal of the science of social psychology is to discover ___ laws of human behavior, which is why cross-cultural research is often essential.

nonverbal communication

The way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words. Cues include facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position and movement, the use of touch, and gaze

conditions

social psychologists try to understand the ___ under which one behavior or another is most likely to take place

observational

the ___ method is the research technique whereby a researcher observes people and systematically records measurements or impressions of their behavior

correlational

the ___ method is the research technique whereby two or more variables are systematically measured and the relationship between them (ie how much one can be predicted from the other) is assessed

empathy

the ability to put oneself in the shoes of another person and to experience events and emotions that way that person experiences them

evolutionary psychology

the attempt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection; says evolution occurs slowly, causing past adaptations to result in modern social behaviors like aggression and helping can't involve hypotheses or experiments but can introduce novel hypotheses because events happened so long ago

pluralistic ignorance

the case in which people think everyone else is interpreting a situation in a given way, when in fact they are not

naive realism

the conviction that we perceive things as they really are, underestimating how much we are interpreting what we see (ex: people with opposite political views)

altruism

the desire to help another person even if it involves a cost to the helper

overjustification effect

the effect created when people see their behavior as caused by compelling extrinsic reasons (eg being required to do volunteer work,) making them underestimate the extent to which their behavior was caused by intrinsic reasons (eg liking to do volunteer work)

social influence

the effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior; these can conflict with one another

norm of reciprocity

the expectation that helping others will increase the likelihood that they will help us in the future

external validity

the extent to which results of a study can be generalized to other situations and to other people

accessibility

the extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people's minds and are therefore likely to be used when making judgments about the social world

psychological realism

the extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment are similar to psychological processes that occur in everyday life. Heightened if people feel involved in a real event, which researchers often create using a cover story

bystander effect

the finding that the greater the number of bystanders who witness an emergency, the less likely any one of them is to help

evolutionary

the major theory of biology that social psychologists use to generate hypotheses about social behavior it's used to explain how different species acquired physical traits, including social behaviors like prosociality

priming

the process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept

debriefing

the process of explaining to study participants, at the end of an experiment, the true purpose of the study and exactly what transpired

altruistic

the qualities that cause an individual to help others in a wide variety of situations give them an ___ personality (eg Beyonce)

experimental

the research method in which the researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions and ensures that these conditions are identical except for the independent variable (the one thought to have a causal effect on people's responses)

social psychology

the scientific study of the way in which people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people

perceptual salience

the seeming importance of information that is the focus of people's attention; for humans, it's people, not the situation, which can lead us to commit the FAE

social cognition

the study of how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions

personality psychology

the study of the characteristics that make individuals unique and different from one another

sociology

the systematic study of human social class, structure, and institutions, rather than individuals; therefore the level of analysis is the group, institution, or society at large

planning fallacy

the tendency for people to be overly optimistic about how soon they will complete a project, even when they have failed to get similar projects done on time in the past

hindsight bias

the tendency for people to exaggerate, after knowing that something occurred, how much they could have predicted it before it occurred; occurs often when reading social psychology findings because the phenomena are so familiar

fundamental attribution error

the tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people's behavior is as a result of internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors

belief perseverance

the tendency to stick with an initial judgment even in the face of new information that should prompt us to reconsider; one of three contributors to the lingering influence of first impressions

bias blind spot

the tendency to think that other people are more susceptible to attributional biases in their thinking than we are

urban overload hypothesis

the theory that people living in cities are constantly bombarded with stimulation and that they keep to themselves to avoid being overwhelmed by it; posited by Stanley Milgram to explain why people help less in urban environments

self-esteem, accurate

the two major motives in shaping people's construals are ___-___ and the need to be ___

independent variable

the variable a researcher changes or varies to see if it has some effect on some other variable; it's manipulated

dependent variable

the variable a researcher measures to see if it is influenced by the independent variable; the researcher hypothesizes that the dependent variable will depend on the level of the independent variable; it's measured

construal

the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world; conveys the importance of understanding how social context impacts perception

primacy effect

there's a ___ ___ in social perception: when it comes to forming impressions, the first traits we perceive in others influence how we view information that we learn about them later

automatic thinking

thought that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless

applicable

thoughts have to be both accessible and ___ to the scene at hand before they act as primes, exerting an influence on our impressions of the social world

encode

to express or emit nonverbal behavior, such as smiling or patting someone on the back

decode

to interpret the meaning of the nonverbal behavior other people express, such as deciding that a pat on the back was an expression of condescension and not kindness

basic dilemma

___ ___ of the social psychologist is the trade-off between internal and external validity in conducting research; it is very difficult to do one experiment that is both high in internal validity and generalizable to other situations and people

prosocial

___ behavior: any act performed with the goal of benefiting another person; can have self-interested motives

consistency

___ information is information about the extent to which the behavior between one actor and one stimulus is the same across time and circumstances

distinctiveness

___ information: information about the extent to which one particular actor behaves in the same way to different stimuli

consensus

___ information: information about the extent to which other people behave the same way toward the same stimulus as the actor does

Gestalt

___ psychology is a school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people's minds rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object

applied

___ research: studies designed to solve a particular social problem

basic

___ research: studies that are designed to find the best answer to the question of why people behave as they do and that are conducted purely for reasons of intellectual curiosity; researchers aren't trying to solve a specific social or psychological problem

kin

___ selection: the idea that behaviors that help a genetic relative are favored by natural selection

affiliative

___ smile features pressed lips and no visible teeth, and is used to convey approachability and tolerance

controlled

___ thinking is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful

two step

___-___ attribution process: analyzing another person's behavior first by making an automatic internal attribution and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behavior, after which one may adjust the original internal attribution

cross-cultural

___-___ research is conducted with members of different cultures, to see whether the psychological processes of interest are present in both cultures or whether they are specific to the culture in which people were raised

reward smile

a broad, full-faced expression that is displayed during pleasant sensory experiences and often elicits a reciprocal smile from others in the vacinity

attribution theory

a description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people's behavior; the study of how we infer the causes of other people's behavior

thin slicing

a form of social perception where one draws meaningful conclusions about another person's personality or skills based on an extremely brief sample of behavior; termed by Nalini Ambady

archival analysis

a form of the observational method in which the researcher examines the accumulated documents, or archives, of a culture (eg diaries, novels, newspapers, magazines)

electroencephalography (EEG)

a medical technology used for social neuroscientific study in which electrodes are placed on the scalp to measure electrical activity in the brain

functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

a medical technology used for social neuroscientific study in which people are placed in scanners that measure changes in blood flow in their brains

availability heuristic

a mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind

representativeness heuristic

a mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case

behaviorism, construal

a school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment; roots with B.F. Skinner; social psychologists think this approach overlooks people's ___ of their environments

meta-analysis

a statistical technique that averages the results of 2 or more studies to see if the effect of an independent variable is reliable

correlational coefficient

a statistical technique used in correlational studies that assesses how well you can predict one variable from another, such as someone's weight from their height; it can range from -1 to +1

holistic

a type of thinking style typical in East Asian cultures in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other

random selection

a way of ensuring that a sample of people is representative of a population by giving everyone in the population an equal chance of being selected for the sample; it's an advantage of surveys

dominance smile

an asymmetrical sneer, which unlike the other two types of smiles elicits negative feelings in observers

ethnography

an example of observational learning; it's the method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions they might have. Its goal is to understand richness and complexity of the group by observing it in action. It's the chief method of cultural anthropology (study of human cultures and societies)

just world

belief in a ___ ___ is Melvin Lerner's term for a form of defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people

individual

biologists and neuroscientists, the level of analysis might be genes, hormones, or physiological processes in the brain, whereas for social and clinical psychologists, it's the ___

impression management

conscious and unconscious efforts to control how people see you, given the motivation to make good first impressions

display rules

culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display

field experiment

experiments conducted in natural settings rather than in the laboratory; conducting them is one of the best ways to improve external validity

personality psychologists

explain people's behavior in terms of their traits and focus on individual differences. their research increases understanding of human behavior, but ignores the role played by social influence

self-serving attributions

explanations for one's success that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one's failures that blame external, situational factors

affect blends

facial expressions in which one part of the face registers one emotion while another part of the face registers a different emotion

deception

in social psychological research, ___ involves misleading participants about the true purpose of a study or the events that will actually transpire

behavior, name

in the Community Game, students' alleged personality traits made no measurable difference in their ___; those labeled competitive were no more likely to adopt the competitive strategy than those who were labeled cooperative; it all depended upon the ___ of the game

currently

In order to predict whether someone will help, it's more important to know whether people are ___ in a rural or urban area than it is to know where they grew up