PSYS 130 - Exam 1 Study Guide

Ethical Issues: Informed Consent

-Agreement to participate in experiment after being informed about the risks and benefits -Right to leave at any time

Controlled Processes and Interferences: Wegner, Erber, and Bownan "Don't Be Sexist"

-All participants told to complete pre-written sentences about women, and not be sexist -Half of participants under time pressure, the other half not -Group under time pressure had much higher % of sexist thoughts

Cultural Differences: Analytic VS Holistic Thinking Styles

-Analytic: focus on objects without considering surrounding context (Western/individualistic cultures) -Holistic: focus on overall context and relation between objects (Eastern/collectivist cultures)

Methods for Gathering Data: Non-Participant Observation: Archival Analysis Vs Unobtrusive Measures

-Archival Analysis: going back through existing records, (ex: newspapers) -Unobtrusive (Indirect) Measures: collecting data by doing what you would already be doing (ex: looking at wear and tear of museum tile floors)

Controlled Processing and Free Will

-Association between conscious thought and behavior creates perception of free will -In reality, factors outside of awareness may influence behavior and conscious thoughts -We can over or under estimate our amount of control -Ex: watching TV and you think "a bowl of ice cream would be nice", so you go and get yourself one. Did you really make this decision, or perhaps you were unconsciously primed by a commercial -Ex: people who pick their lotto numbers are more confident that they'll win than those who are assigned, even though probabilities are the same

Belief in a Just World

-Assumption that bad things happen to bad people and goof things happen to good people -"Blaming the victim" -More common in cultures with extreme wealth disparities

Spontaneous Trait Inference

-Automatic inference of a trait after exposure to someone's behavior -A librarian carries an old woman's groceries across the street, so we infer she's helpful

Two Types of Processing: Automatic Vs Controlled

-Automatic: thinking that is non-conscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless (i.e. schemas, heuristics) -Controlled: thinking that's conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful

Spotlight Effect

-Belief that others are paying more attention to our appearance/behavior than they actually are -T-shirt Study Example: Half of participants asked to drop off a document wearing an embarrassing t-shirt, the other half a plain t-shirt. Asked to guess how many people in the room noticed their embarrassing shirt. 50% imagined versus 23% actually noticed

Illusory Correlations

-Believing and seeking evidence for a correlation of two things, even when it may not be true -Ex: slow drivers are always old

Impression Management

-Careful use of presentation strategies to create a certain impression in order to meet the goals of a social situation

Self-Awareness Theory: Halloween Mirror Study

-Children trick-or-treating instructed to take only one piece of candy -Experimenter leaves room -Half the children had a mirror in front, the other half didn't -% of kids taking more than one: much lower in those with mirror -Average # of pieces taken: much lower in those with mirror

Schema Accessibility: Chronic Vs Temporary

-Chronic: constantly active and ready to use to interpret ambiguous situations due to past experience (ex: history of alcoholism in family increases likelihood that you'd make the judgement that someone stumbling is drunk) -Temporary: accessible because it's related to a current goal (ex: you're studying for an abnormal psych exam, so you instead assume the stumbling person has a mental disorder)

Halo Effect

-Cognitive bias by which we tend to assume that one positive trait in a person implies others

Self-Esteem and Narcissism

-Combo of excessive self-love and lack of empathy towards others

Cultural Determinants of Schemas: Cultural Universal VS Cultural Specific

-Cultural Universal: All cultures have schemas -Cultural Specific/Differences: The content of schemas vary across cultures

Heider's Attribution Theory

-Description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and others' behavior

Ethical Issues: Deception

-Ethical only if experiment doesn't obscure or otherwise affect parameters of informed consent

Self-Serving Bias

-Explanations for one's successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one's failures that blame external, situational factors -Exhibited more in Western than Eastern cultures -What does it serve? 1)maintains self esteem 2) it's a self-presentational strategy

Defensive Attributions

-Explanations for situations that defend us from feelings of vulnerability and protect self-esteem

External Validity

-Extent to which the results can be generalized to other situations/people -Does the sample represent most people? -High in field experiments

False Consensus and False Uniqueness

-False Consensus: Overestimate % of people doing the same thing as us that's not socially desirable -False Uniqueness: Underestimate % of people doing the same thing as us that we're proud of

Primacy Effect

-First traits we perceive in others influence how we view information that we learn about them later; "First impressions are lasting" -Ex: Participants in a study were described 2 new people. Keith is described as intelligent-industrious-impulsive-critical-stubborn-envious and Kevin is described as envious-stubborn-critical-impulsive-industrious-intelligent. Keith was received more favorably because order (first impressions) of his characteristics mattered. Keith's positive traits became a filter (schema) for which subsequent traits were viewed.

The Gambler's Fallacy, The Hot Hand, and the Representativeness Heuristic

-Gambler's Fallacy: belief that if something happens more frequently than normal, it will happen less often in the future -The Hot Hand: a good luck (hot) streak will continue

Implicit Personality Theories

-General expectations that we build about a person after we know something about their central traits -Essentially stereotypes, vary with cultures -Ex: Shi Gu VS Artistic Type: Easterners have a shi gu (worldly, devoted to family) implicit personality, but Westerners don't. Westerners have artistic type (creative, unconventional), but Easterners don't

Types of Attributions: Global VS Specific

-Global: Behavior is likely to effect your life in other ways -Specific: Behavior isn't going to effect all aspects of your life; situational

Unrealistic Optimism

-Good things are more likely to happen to us, and bad things are less likely to happen to us compared to our peers

Construal: Wall Street Vs Community Game Study

-Half the participants in a study were told they were playing "The Wall Street Game", other half told "The Community Game"; everything aside from the name was identical -Wall Street Game: some participants were identified as cooperative, others as competitive -Community Game: some identified as cooperative, others as competitive -Playing habits coincided with the game's name, NOT personality traits -The game's title conveyed social norms that trumped personalities and shaped players' behavior

Self-Esteem and the Terror Management Theory

-Holds that self-esteem serves as a buffer, protecting people from terrifying thoughts about death -People with high self-esteem are less troubled by these thoughts

Automatic Processing: Availability Heuristic

-How easily does it come to mind? -Caution! Sometimes what is easiest to remember isn't typical of the overall picture -Ex: Your friend receives the wrong meal at a restaurant but says he'll eat it anyways. Some friends say he's not assertive enough, so your friend asks, "Am I assertive?" If the last thing you recall is your friend standing up to someone cutting him in line, you may say he's assertive. But if you last recall him being coerced into buying something he didn't want, you may say otherwise. -Ex: disease diagnoses. Symptoms may be for various diseases, and doctors sometimes diagnose symptoms as the disease they most recently saw

Chapter 2: Hypothesis Vs Theory

-Hypothesis: testable prediction about and when a specific event will occur -Theory: organized set of principles constructed to explain a series of events

Social Comparison Theory: Upward VS Downward

-Idea that we lear about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to others -Downward: comparing ourself to people who are doing worse; can help us feel better -Upward: comparing ourselves to people doing better; can help us set goals

Overjustification Effect

-In seeking to explain one's behavior, overemphasizing the role of extrinsic reasons -Tends to occur: 1) for activities where interest is high to begin with (thus can cause loss of intrinsic motivation that was once there) 2) as a result of task-contingent rewards (rewarded regardless of quality) rather than performance-contingent -Ex: Reading Reward Study: kids originally read because they enjoyed it (intrinsic motivation). Then, given rewards for reading. Now children assume they're reading for the prize (extrinsic), not for enjoyment

Independent VS Interdependent Self-Concepts

-Independent: defining oneself based on your own unique qualities; more common in Western/Individualist Cultures -Interdependent: defining oneself in terms of relationships with other people; more common in Eastern/Collectivist Cultures -Ex: Kim and Markus, 1999: showed images of pens and asked participants to pick one. Westerners picked the only pen that was a different color. Easterners picked pens that blended in -Ex: Nisbett, 2003: showed picture of aquarium and asked participants to describe what they saw. Westerners focused on a particular fish. Easterners focused on interactions b/t fish and other elements

Culture and the Fundamental Attribution Error

-Individualist/Western Cultures: tend to prefer internal, dispositional attributions; more likely to exhibit self-serving bias -Collectivist/Eastern Cultures: prefer external, situational explanations; more likely to go onto "second step" of the two part process

Base Rate Information and the Representativeness Heuristic

-Information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population -Representativeness heuristic often ignores/under-uses base rate info -Ex: new student in a state school where base rate info is 90% in-state students. The new student fits your schema of a west coaster, so you use this information and conclude that they're from California, rather than using base rate info.

Conscious Strategies for Self-Preservation

-Ingratiation: Using compliments on others so they like us -Self-Promotion: Bragging in order to get respect -Exemplification: Picking certain things to share so you feel morally superior -Intimidation: Putting up a front when wanting to feel tough -Supplication: Putting yourself down so others build you up

Strategies for Self-Preservation: Self-Handicapping

-Intentionally creating obstacles and excuses when we're not confident in our ability to complete a goal -Behavioral: people act in ways that will reduce likelihood of success; more extreme -Reported: people devise ready-made excuses in case they fail

Types of Attributions: Internal VS External

-Internal: explanation for behavior is about you (attitude, character, personality) -External: explanation for behavior is outside of you (situation)

Ironic Processing (Two Parts: Monitoring and Operating Processes)

-Ironic Processing: the harder you try not to think about something, the more the thought will come to mind -Monitoring Process (automatic): unconsciously and automatically monitoring for occurrences of the unwanted thought -Operating Process (controlled): actively thinking of a different thought -Ex: "The White Bear" If you're told not to think about a white bear, the harder it is to actually do so

Types of Experimental Design: True Experiment (Laboratory or Field)

-Laboratory: researcher controls independent variable to see its effect on dependent variable in an artificial setting -Field: experiments conducted in natural, real-life settings rather than in the lab (participants are unaware that the events they experience are an experiment) [ex: bystander intervention]

Interjudge (Inter-rater) Reliability

-Level of agreement b/t two or more people who independently observe and code a set of data -Shows that two or more judges independently come up with the same observations (gets rid of subjectiveness)

Internal Validity

-Making sure that ONLY the independent variable influences the dependent variable -Accomplished by controlling all other variables and random assignment

Ethical Issues: Coercion

-May involve mental or physical pain in order to enhance the credibility of an experiment

Test-retest Reliability

-Measure of reliability obtained by administering the same test/experiment to the same group of people over a period of time

Representativeness Heuristic

-Mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case (i.e. how similar it fits into your schema)

Automatic Processing II: Heuristics

-Mental shortcuts ("rules of thumb") used in decision making -Used in unfamiliar situations or quick decision-making

Controlled Processing: Counterfactual Reasoning

-Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might've been; "if only..." -Engages controlled processing; emotional reaction influenced by proximity to goal, ease with which we can mentally "undo" outcome -Ex: Olympic medalist getting a bronze is happier than the one who got the silver, b/c silver medalist can more easily imagine getting gold -Upward: things could've been better -Downward: things could've been worse

Research Designs: Experimental

-Method in which researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions where only the independent variable differs -Only method that can make statement about causality -Is variable X a cause of variable Y?

Chapter 4: Nonverbal Behavior

-Nonverbal cues include facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position, touch, and gaze -Decode nonverbal behavior by applying schemas (implicit personality theories) and coming up with explanations for behavior (attributions)

Chapter 5: Self-Concept

-Overall set of beliefs that people have about their personal attributes

Fundamental Attribution Error: "Quizmaster" Example

-Participants assigned as either questioner or contestant -Questioner allowed to come up with their own questions to ask based on their own knowledge -Questioners rated as more knowledgable compared to the contestants who didn't correctly answer the Qs

Analytic VS Holistic Thinking Styles: Picture Analysis Study Example

-Participants in US and Japan presented with cartoon drawings of people in groups; one person was the central figure shown in the foreground -Central figure expressed happy, sad, angry, or neutral; surrounding figures either had same expression or different -Participants asked to judge central figures' emotion on 10 point scale -Expression of surrounding figures had little effect of rating by US participants, but significant effect on Japanese ratings

Priming: "Describe Donald" Study:

-Participants read paragraph about Donald and then gave their impression of him -First group previously memorized words like "adventurous", "self-confident" and later formed positive impressions ---> rated Donald as likable -Second group previously memorized words like "conceited", "aloof" and later formed negative impressions ---> rated Donald as stuck-up -Interpretation of Donald's behavior depended on whether positive or negative traits were primed and accessible

Affective Forecasts

-People's predictions about how they'll feel in response to a future emotional event -Ex: Speed Dating Study: Group A of woman looked at a man's profile and Group B was only told about how much another woman enjoyed her date with him. Both groups asked to predict how much they'd enjoy a speed date. All Had a date and rated it. Group B's ratings were closer to their predictions because they had another woman's opinion to base it off of.

Priming: Kuleshov Effect

-Phenomenon that shows that people attribute emotions to images and their perception of these emotions can change when presented with the same images, just in a different order ***Kuleshov edited shots so that one identical shot of an actor was interspersed with differing shots (a bowl of soup, a person in a coffin, a woman on a chair). Although the shot with the actor was the same image every time the audience perceived the actor shot as being different each time. They perceived his identical looks to be different depending on what object was shown.

Temporary Schema Accessibility: Priming

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

Experimental Research Design: Random Assignment

-Process whereby all participants have equal chance of taking part in any condition (either the experimental or control group) -Allows researchers certainty that differences in personalities or backgrounds are distributed evenly across conditions

Social Tuning

-Process whereby people adopt another person's attitudes -Can be intentional (meeting someone for the first time and wanting them to like you) or unconscious

Introspection

-Process whereby people look inward and examine their own thoughts, feelings, and motives -Ex: "Beeper Study": Participants wore a beeper and every time it went off they were asked to write down what they were thinking about. Only 8% reported the self

Misattribution of Arousal

-Process whereby people make mistaken inferences about what is causing them to feel the way they do -Ex: Epinephrine Study: Participants thought they were given a drug that effects vision. Some given control, others epinephrine. Some were told they'd experience side-effects typical of epinephrine (heart racing, etc), others told false side effects (nausea). Someone was sent to act very angry around them, and after participants were asked to rate how they felt. Those told false side effects rated themselves more angry.

Ecological Validity: Psychological and Mundane Realism

-Psychological Realism: extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment are similar to those that occur in everyday life (Milgram's learner/teacher obedience exp.) -Mundane Realism: degree to which the materials/procedures involved in an experiment are similar to real world events

Self-Monitoring and High VS Low Self-Monitors

-Refers to an individual's tendency to engage in self-preservation strategies -High: people who behave in a manner that's highly responsive to social cues and situational context -Low: people who care little about modifying their behavior in response to a social situation. Maintain same opinions/attitudes regardless

Gender Differences in Self-Concept (Relational VS Collective)

-Relational: emphasizes dyadic, relational bonds (one-on-one relationships); more common in women. Ex: mother and daughter -Collective: emphasizes group-based bonds; more common in men. Ex: sports team or fraternity

Types of Experimental Design: Natural/Quasi Experiment

-Researcher isn't manipulating independent variable -No random assignment

Ethical Issues: Institutional Review Board (IRB)

-Reviews all psychological research and decides whether it meets ethical guidelines -Informed consent, debrief participants

Types of Automatic Processing: Schemas

-Schemas: Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects

Behaviorism

-School of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment (BF Skinner) -All behavior could be understood by examining the rewards and punishments in an environment -Overlooked phenomena, emotions, and how people interpret their environment

Schemas: Self Vs Situational

-Self-Schemas: stable set of memories that summarize a person's beliefs about themselves; ideas about ourselves can effect the information we process/pick up on -Schemas About Others & Situations: influence what we notice, think about, and remember (ex: what to expect from a professor, restaurant behavior norms, etc)

Schema Example: War of the Ghosts

-Serial Reproduction method: participants heard the story and were asked to recall it later -Aim was to investigate how previous knowledge (schemas) effect memory of this Native American legend -Results: story was shortened and aspects were changed to fit Western culture -Conclusions: Theory of Reconstructive Memory: memories are reconstructions of our experiences, influenced by schema and culture

Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic

-Shortcut whereby people use a number or value as a starting point and then adjust -Your adjustments depend on what your starting point is -Ex: Participants read a booklet with a description of a "welfare mom". Some told the mom's case is typical, some atypical, and the control didn't read the article. The group that was told this is a typical case rated welfare more negatively. Although the atypical group's ratings didn't significantly differ from the typical, the control group rated welfare more positively (because they didn't have this starting point)

Types of Attributions: Stable VS Unstable

-Stable: behavior is due to a permanent characteristic/trait -Unstable: behavior due to temporary factor, subject to change

Kelley's Covarian Model

-States that to form an attribution about the cause of a person's behavior, we note the presence or absence of causal factors 1) Consistency: Do they do the behavior all the time? (If yes, high consistency) 2) Distinctiveness: Do they do the behavior in other situations, or just this one? (If other situations, low distinctiveness) 3) Consensus: Are other people doing the same behavior? (If yes, high consensus) -**info about all three factors may not always be available -** consistency and distinctiveness used more often

Research Designs: Correlation Coefficient

-Statistic that assesses how well you can predict one variable from another -Can be -1, 0, or 1 (closer to -1 or 1, the stronger the relationship) -Negative: one variable goes up, the other down -Positive: both variables travel in same direction (up or down)

Ethical Issues: Debriefing

-Steps taken at end of experiment to ensure no lasting negative effects from participation

Priming: Kelley, "Guest Lecturer", 1950:

-Students given description of a guest lecturer, half received a description that ended with he was a "very warm person", the other half with a "rather cold person" -All students heard the same talk -"warm" description: rated him more favorably and asked more questions (56% compared to 32%)

Reasons-Generated Attitude Change: Poster Choice Study Example

-Students shown 2 types of posters: classic paintings VS cute/humorous and asked to pick which one they found more pleasing -Half the participants asked to write down what they liked and disliked about each, the other half not asked -Most students chose the art painting, and those that analyzed their reasons then changed their minds and chose the humorous -Those not asked to analyze ended up happier with decision

Construal: Pygmalion in the Classroom

-Study in which teachers were told that some students scored so well on a test, they were expected to bloom (in reality they scored no better than their classmates) -Set expectations up for the teachers -End of the year, the bloomers scored significantly higher on IQ tests -Teacher's expectations had become reality (self-fulfilling prophecy)

Sociology

-Study of groups, organizations, and societies rather than individuals -Level of analysis is the group, institution, or society at large -Focuses on topics such as social class, structure, and institutions

Personality Psychology

-Study of the characteristics that make individuals unique from one another -Level of analysis is on the individual -Focuses on individual differences- aspects of personalities that make people different from others -Different from Social Psych because it ignores social influence

Chapter 1: Social Psychology

-Study of the way in which people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people -Goal: identify properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of class or culture

Research Designs: Observational

-Technique whereby a researcher observes people and records measurements or impressions of their behavior -"What is the nature of the phenomenon?" -Ex: ethnography: method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions

Research Designs: Correlational

-Technique whereby two or more variables are measured & the relationship b/t them -From knowing X, can we predict Y?

Reasons-Generated Attitude Change

-Temporary attitude change resulting from considering the concrete reasons for one's attitudes ("pro-con" list) -Occurs because when analyzing reasons, people: 1) bring to mind reasons that don't reflect how they feel 2) talk themselves into believing this is how they feel

Hindsight Bias

-Tendency for people to exaggerate, after knowing that something occurred, how much they could've predicted it before it occurred -"I knew it all along"

Belief Perseverance

-Tendency to cling to one's belief even after receiving information that disproves said belief -Ex: why jurors have a hard time disregarding evidence later ruled as inadmissible -Ex: why scientists are slow to discount published research conclusions that turn out to be made up

Automatic Processing: Simulation Heuristic

-Tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which you can imagine (mentally simulate it) -Can affect our emotional reactions -Ex: deciding b/t two answers on MC test. You had the correct answer at first, but then changed it at the last minute. This is much more upsetting than having the incorrect answer the whole time because you can easily imagine getting the question right if you didn't change it

Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias)

-Tendency to overestimate the extent to which people's behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of external, situational factors -Occurs because we tend to focus attention on the person, not the surrounding situation

Confirmation Bias

-Tendency to search for/interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing perceptions -"Exactly what I expected"

Bias Blind Spot

-Tendency to think that others are more susceptible to using attributional biases than we are -Recognize that these biases exist

Perceptual Salience

-The seeming importance of information that's the focus of people's attention -People, not their situation, tend to have perceptual salience for us ---> we pay attention to them, and think that they alone cause their behavior

Construals

-The ways we perceive, understand, and interpret social events and social cues

Causal Theories

-Theories about the causes of one's own feelings and behaviors -Ex: "I need 2 cups of coffee or else I'll be grouchy" -Power Saw Example: Participants asked to rate how much they enjoyed a film. Half heard power tools going off throughout the movie, other half had no interruptions. Power tool group thought their ratings would be much lower than the control, but ratings were actually virtually the same

Self-Perception Theory

-Theory that when our attitudes/feelings are ambiguous and uncertain, we infer these states by observing our behavior and the situation in which it occurs -Two parts: 1) infer our inner feelings from our behavior ONLY when we aren't sure how we feel 2) judge whether this behavior really reflects how we feel or whether it was the situation that made us act this way

Controlled Processing and Gilbert's Theory of Automatic Believing

-Thinking that's conscious, voluntary, effortful ---> occurs when FREE of distractions/high cognitive load -Gilbert's Theory: Initial acceptance of info ---> assess truthfulness ---> Do not accept if necessary -**If you're not paying attention, you may just automatically accept the info (i.e. controlled processing doesn't occur)

What Can Be A Prime?

-Thoughts have to be ACCESSIBLE and APPLICABLE before they will act as a prime -Ex: when Donald's story was primed with words like "neat", "disrespectful", it didn't influence participants' impressions because the words didn't apply to Donald's behavior in the story -DON'T have to be words; can be smells, visuals, temperatures

What Can Interfere with Controlled Processing?

-Time pressure -High cognitive load (distractions, tiredness, preoccupations)

Attributional Biases: Actor/Observer Difference

-We see our own behaviors as caused by situational factors, while others' behaviors are seen as dispositionally caused

Overconfidence Phenomenon

-When an individual has excessive confidence in their ability to do something accurately -"It's all common sense- no need to study"

Egocentric Bias

-When participating in a group, we exaggerate the amount and importance of our own contributions with respect to others

Self-Awareness Theory

-When we focus attention on ourselves, we evaluate and compare our behavior to our own internal standards -If our behavior doesn't "match up", we either: 1) change behavior 2) minimize self awareness (focus attention on someone else, avoid things that make us self-aware)

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

-When you believe in something so strongly you ultimately make it true -Ex "Clever Hans": horse appeared to understand human language and tap his foot to respond to math questions. Rather, Hans was responding to subtle physical cues by his trainer: postural adjustment to begin tapping and head movement to stop. Despite this, dozens of people including scientists were convinced there was no trickery

Illusion of Control

-When you believe that somehow one of your actions has an impact on an unrelated thing -Ex: superstitions

Methods for Gathering Data: Participant Observation

-Without Manipulation: allows observers to see how individuals act in a natural setting -With Manipulation: observer causes an event that normally occurs infrequently in order to see how participants react

Cultural Differences in Social Cognition: fMRI Study of Picture Analysis

-fMRI used to examine where in the brain cultural experience predicts perceptual processing -More brain activity/effort used for the unfamiliar style of thinking

Causal Theories and the Serial Position Effect: Example

-pairs of stockings hanging up in the mall, and people asked "which is the best quality and why?" -FOUR IDENTICAL pairs- A, B, C, and D (order switched so same pair wasn't always in same spot) -Pair D always rated the highest -People attributed their ratings to: knit, weave, sheerness...NOT the position

Two Factor Theory of Emotion

1) First experience physiological arousal 2) Seek appropriate explanation or label it -We infer reasons for our physiological arousal (emotional label) from cues in the environment

Two Step Process of Attributions

1) Make automatic, internal attribution (assume person's behavior was due to personality trait) 2) Make controlled adjustment: adjust original attribution after considering the situation -**controlled adjustment requires effort and conscious attention -**often don't adjust enough

Ethical Issues Arise When...

1. To have high internal/external validity, experiments must be well controlled, but also resemble "real world" as much as possible 2. Experiments must avoid undue and unnecessary stress, discomfort, etc ***Ethical issues arise when these 2 goals conflict

Operationalized Variables

Defining variables as measurable, quantifiable factors

Chapter 3: Social Cognition

How we think about, select, interpret, and remember social information to make judgements and decisions

Self Reference Effect

Information related to the self is processed more efficiently than other information

Methods for Gathering Data: Self Report

Survey, questionnaire or interview

Social Influence

The effect that words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behaviors