Psyc 212

dependent variable

The outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable.

Jones and Davis' Correspondent Theory

- The challenge of attribution is to determine whether a person's behavior corresponds to underlying, stable qualities in the person. - People use various cues to draw correspondent inferences - Freely chosen - non common effects - impact of social desirability

Major causes of Social Behavior

-Actions and characteristics of others -Cognitive processes -Environmental variables -Biological factors

Implicit Processes

-Automatic reactions to people, stimuli -Requiring no conscious thought, intentions

Debriefing used to help decrease dangers of deception

-Avoid persuading participants for involvement -Informed consent

Actions and Characteristics of others

-Effect of others' emotions -Effect of others' appearance

Biological factors

-Genetics -Biology and social experience -Evolved psychological mechanisms -Evolutionary psychology perspective

Environmental variables

-Influence of physical environment -Effect of feelings, thoughts, behavior

Cognitive Processes

-Memories and reactions -Social cognition

Advantages of the survey method

-collect data from large numbers -easily administrated -sensitive information -shape products

Kelly's Covariation Theory

-whether a certain behavior is caused by internal and external factors - answers "why" using these 3 factors 1. Consensus 2. Consistency 3. Distinctiveness

2 key requirements for success

1) Random assignment 2) Factors held constant across conditions

Basic steps in conducting experiment

1. Variable systematically changed 2. Effects of change measured

How Asch's research on central and peripheral trains support his view that impression formation involves more than simply adding together individual traits

A single word charge makes huge difference, unequal weight for traits

Factors Held Constant

All factors which remain the same for each repeated trial and level

Fields of social psychology that focus on the behavior and thoughts of individuals

Area of study Emphasis Research

Theory

Framework of explanation. Never proven and research is not undertaken

Ethical issues raised by the use of deception

Harm to deceived persons, Resentment

representativeness heuristic

Judging by resemblance (past actions), leads us to commit the base-rate fallacy

why social scientist favor the scientific method

Produces more conclusive evidence than other methods

Multicultural Perspective

Recognizes social group dimensions, effect on category membership and social thought

Priming

Temporarily increases schema accessibility

independent variable

The experimental factor that is manipulated; the variable whose effect is being studied.

Social Neuroscience

The intersection of Social Psychology and Brain Research

deception

Withholding/concealing information from participants

Relationship between social thought and social behavior

You cannot understand one without the other/two sides of the same coin

ease of recall

a cognitive bias in which information that is easy to recall from memory is relied on too much in making a decision

how priming influences social cognition

affects perception, makes you unaware

random assignment

assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups

Magical thinking

assumptions don't meet rational scrutiny, still compelling

attributional errors

correspondence bias actor-observer effect self-serving bias

The relationship between the accuracy in the first impression and confidence in the first impression

curved linear line

Automatic processing in social thought

efficient, may be superior to conscious thought

availability heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

5 key channels for nonverbal communication

facial expressions, eye contact, body movement, body language, body posture

Mediating Variables

factors that are positioned between the independent and dependent variables but do not affect the relationship between them

six basic emotions expressed in unique facial expressions

happy, anger, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise

social cognition

how we think about the social world

Consistency

is the extent to which a person always behaves this way toward the stimulus

Distinctiveness

is the extent to which a person responds in the same way toward different stimulus

Consensus

is the extent to which others behave in the same way toward the stimulus

How attribution theory has been applied to the study of depression

lacking of necessary self-serving bias

other-enhancement

make others look at you good

Self-enchancement

make your self look good to others

what do schemas influence?

memory, attention, encoding, and retrieval of inmofrmation

schemas

mental frameworks for organizing social information, centered on a specific theme

Heuristics

mental shortcuts (benefits over weigh costs)

Cues which help identify deception

microexpressions interchannel discrepancies exaggerated facial expressions linguistic style

schema consistant

more likely to record/notice

Self-fulfilling prophecy

people's tendency to behave in ways that confirm their own expectations or other people's expectations

counterfactual

relating to or expressing what has not happened or is not the case Frequent but not with disappointment automatic

social perception

seeking to understand others

Implicit personality theory

similar to schema, we think certain traits go together

2 dimensions for classifying attributes

stable and unstable controllable and uncontrollable

Why we tend to show a negative bias

survival tendency to more likely notice negative thing

social psychology

the branch of psychology that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behavior and thought in social situations

amount of information

the quantity of information retrieved while recalling an episodic event

Correspondence bias

the tendency to make a dispositional attribution even when a person's behavior was caused by the situation

actor-observer effect

the tendency to make situational attributions for our own behaviors while making dispositional attributions for the identical behavior of others

self-serving bias

the tendency to perceive oneself favorably

planning fallacy

the tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task

How correspondence bias occurs

two-step process for understanding behavior, automatic reaction and slow correction

concept of attribution

understanding the cause of behavior, why people behave the way they do

Correlation method

used to establish the degree of the relationship between two characteristics, events, or behaviors. Direction: Positive and Negative correlation. When x goes up, y goes up and vice versa

base-rate fallacy

using prototypical or stereotypical factors while ignoring actual numerical information

Cultural differences in committing attribution errors

we no longer use the term fundamental attribution fundamental=universal

Examine the research findings concerning the effect of touching behavior

when touching is considered appropriate it causes positive feelings