Social Psychology Exam 1 (Ch.1-3)

Inheritance

some traits are passed down through genes (the genetic info we get from our parents)

Explain how we reason using metaphors

-Relate or compare two unrelated concepts -Abstract concept: meaning to concrete event -Affect our reasoning and judgment -Good is up, bad is down ex: you're on the right track he has a bubbly personality

Attention

-Process of consciously focusing on aspects of one's environment or oneself -It's a limited resource! -People can pay attention to only a tiny fraction of the information available to them -Depending on goals, people may more attention to some people and to some aspects of their behavior than others

Status-quo heuristic

-"what is...is good" -high school musical stick to the status quo -what is easily accessible in memory is good

Provide an overview of evolutionary psychology

-(candy example, root beer barrels were the only thing left in the bowl during class)

Explain the four main considerations of social psychology

-Actions and characteristics of other people -Cognitive processes -Environmental variables -Biological factors

Imagine you need to ask your friend for a favor. According to the research about how moods affect behaviors, when would be the best time to ask her?

-After she was just offered her dream job

List and describe each of the current trends in social psychology

-Cognition and behavior -emotion -social relationships -social neuroscience -implicit processes -social diversity

Describe the risks and benefits of using deception in psychological research

-Deception: concealing certain aspects of a study from participants Need to have a happy medium when experimenting, can't lie too much but can't tell them too much -we could seriously harm a participant if we lie too much -IRB monitors experiment and monitors deception tactics

Self-relevant judgments

-Ease affects judgments about ourselves -When we have less information, making judgments seems difficult -We aren't concerned with ease of processing -When we have more information, making judgments seems easy -We rely on ease of retrieval

What is schema persistence?

-Helpful - help us make sense of large amounts of social information -Downside - distort our perceptions of the world Perseverance effect -schemas both REFLECT and SHAPE our social world

Explain the aspects of the individual that social psychology considers

-How groups influence social behavior people behave differently in a group than by themselves -How culture becomes internalized and affects the individual -How emotions and moods affect decision making

The focus of social cognition

-How we think about the social world -How we make sense of complex issues -Why we aren't always rational

Schemas and encoding

-Information we pay attention to is stored in memory -More likely to encode schema-consistent information -But also likely to encode information that's very inconsistent with schemas -Store this in different memory location in the brain

Schemas and retrieval

-Information we retrieve from memory -Remember schema-consistent information better than schema-inconsistent information -But might be that we remember both and just report consistent information more often

What is the name of the committee that ensures that research is being conducted ethically?

-Institutional review board

Which of the following is NOT a necessary component of an experiment?

-Mediating variable

Memory/knowledge

-Memories can directly contribute to new judgments through active recall of a previous situation. -Memories can indirectly influence impressions and decisions by affecting attention and interpretation processes. -Memories are especially influential if they are accessible - either chronically or primed

Meta-analysis

-One study isn't enough to get a good sense of an effect -Take all the studies on a topic and find the average effect size -Tells us how small or large an effect is overall Useful for making sense of conflicting findings and making sure effects are replicable

Other people

-Others' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors affect our own (if you're roommate is in a bad mood and is around you, it might put you in a bad mood) -We behave differently depending on who we're with

Environmental factors

-Our environment affects our thoughts, feelings and behaviors

Describe what is meant by Person x Situation interaction

-people act different in a different setting/environment and when around different people

Representativeness Heuristic

-Shortcut used to make decision about a person's category membership -Based on the extent to which the person shares characteristics with typical members of that category -Often accurate -Sometimes inaccurate -Ignore base rates

Which of the following dimensions of causal attribution is used to evaluate if behavior is likely to change?

-Stable-unstable dimension

Anchoring and adjustment heuristic

-Tendency to use (usually numeric) values we are given as a starting point that we adjust to Example - starting selling price

Availability heuristic

-The easier it is to think of something, the more likely it is to come to mind, and the more likely it is that we'll use it to make judgments -Often works -Sometimes doesn't work

Which of the following terms refers to a framework that explains certain events or processes?

-Theory

Limitations of experimental research

-Typically the "best" methodology overall, but isn't perfect External validity: can we apply these findings to other settings? -Sometimes unethical to manipulate certain things (causing someone pain on purpose)

What does research on impression formation suggests about our ability to form impressions of other people?

-We are pretty good at forming accurate impressions

Cognitive Processes

-We spend a lot of time thinking about others' thoughts, feelings and behaviors -We make attributions about other people's behavior (we try to come up with reasons for people's behavior)

Judgment

-Why do we people gather and interpret information about other people? -Need to form impressions so that people can make important decisions that may be relevant to their goals -Social impressions often involve a lot of uncertainty - we don't actually know what others are thinking/feeling -Humans are predisposed to judge and sort others into groups -Not always "accurate" but more of a "best guess"

What is a heuristic?

-a rule/shortcut for making decisions -meant to minimize information overload (when cognitive demands are greater than our cognitive capacity) -heuristic=automatic process: it occurs rapidly

Variable

-anything that can vary

Suppose smoking and drinking alcohol are found to be correlated at +.65. We can conclude that

-as smoking increases

Which process of social cognition refers to the information we notice?

-attention

Explain the main processes involved in social cognition

-attention -interpretation -judgement -memory

How do schemas impact social cognition?

-attention (information we notice) -encoding (processes used to store information in memory) -retrieval (recovering information from memory in order to use it)

Your friend is talking about how murders are very common because he's been seeing reports of them all over the news lately. This is an example of the ___________ heuristic.

-availability heuristic

Biological factors

-biology and social life affect each other

How do schemas influence our social thought?

-by acting as a filter to direct our attention towards some information and away from other information

Which of the following best describes the relationship between affect and cognition?

-cognition and affect influence each other

Moderating variable

-do the same effects emerge for everyone? -variables that change the size or direction of the relationship between two variables ex: playing with dogs only increases happiness for those who like dogs, not for those that don't

Which type of non-verbal communication is relatively universal?

-facial expressions such as smiles and frowns

Automatic processing

-fast -intuitive -effortless -FOUND IN AMYGDALA -limbic system!!!

When do we use heuristics?

-in conditions of uncertainty (when it's difficult to know the right answer) -cognitive load: when our cognitive resources are being directed toward something else

In the study by Proudfoot, Kay, and Koval (2015) on implicit attitudes about gender, the researchers found that when participants were told an architectural design was by a female, they judged it to be ________ creative compared to when they were told the same design was by a male.

-less

Limitations of correlational research

-no way to determine if one variable CAUSES another -CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION -ex: Eating ice cream is correlated with drowning, eating ice cream does not cause drowning but if you're eating ice cream it's probably summer which means that you're in water and that is the correlation •This is the Third variable problem Direction of relationships •Does variable A cause variable B or does variable B cause Variable A

Systematic observation

-observing behavior as it occurs

Naturalistic observation

-observing behavior in natural settings

Interpretation

-okay we notice it...but what does it mean? -Different people may interpret the same situation, person, or event differently

Variation

-organisms differ from one another(ex: people have different eye colors)

Social Diversity

-our culture/background influences our thoughts and behaviors

The facial feedback hypothesis suggests that...

-our facial expressions influence our emotions

Emotion

-our feelings influence our social life; mood affects behavior -bad mood--->bad/rude behavior

Which of the following categories is NOT one of the categories mentioned in the textbook regarding factors affecting social interaction?

-perceptual processes

Believing we can get more accomplished in a certain period of time than we actually can is called the ___________.

-planning fallacy

Hypothesis

-prediction about some aspect of social behavior or social thought

Controlled processing occurs mostly in the __________________, whereas automatic processing occurs mostly in the __________________.

-prefrontal cortex areas; limbic system

"Un-priming schemas"

-primed schemas no longer as accessible after they are expressed

Evolved psychological mechanisms

-processes that help/helped us deal with problems related to survival

One reason that social scientists put their faith in the scientific method is that the scientific method

-produces more conclusive evidence than other methods

What are different types of heuristics?

-representativeness heuristic -availability heuristic -anchoring and adjustment heuristic -status quo heuristic

Schemas and attention

-schemas are a "filter" -we are more likely to notice schema-consistent information -we use schemas especially under cognitive load

What group of professionals is better at detecting lies than the general public?

-secret service agents

What IS social psychology?

-social psychology is a SCIENCE -accuracy -objectivity -skepticism -open-mindedness

What social psychology is NOT

-sociology --> sociology is focused on groups while psychology is focused on individuals -social psychology is NOT common sense

"Priming" schemas

-temporary activation of a schema

The role of theory

-the framework for explaining events or processes 1. Propose theory 2. Organize existing info. 3. Develop hypotheses (predictions) 4. Collect data 5. Reject or accept theory IN SCIENCE WE DON'T USE THE WORD PROVE. WE SAY THINGS CAUSE OR RELATE TO ONE ANOTHER BUT WE NEVER SAY PROVE

What is the attribution process?

-the process by which we seek to understand the causes of the behavior of others and ourselves

Social Psychology

-the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behavior, feelings and thoughts in social situations

The two factor theory of emotion proposes that we infer our feelings from...

-the situations in which we experience these emotions

Dependent variable

-the variable that is measured

Which of the following is a downside of schemas?

-they can remain unchanged in the face of contradictory information

According to the evolutionary perspective, why do we find people with traits such as symmetrical features and clear skin more attractive?

-those traits are indicators of good health

Selection

-those who possess traits that are beneficial in some way have a reproductive advantage (the traits that help us survive are most likely to be passed to the next generation)

Early research conducted by Solomon Asch suggests the presence of central traits, which are ________.

-traits that strongly color the way we interpret other aspects of another person

Which of the following is a type of other-enhancement?

-using flattering language (flattering others)

How schemas impact thoughts

-we have many schemas, which ones guide our thoughts? -strong ones -primed ones

Skepticism

-we shouldn't just accept something, we should questions everything and find as much research on the topic as possible

Objectivity

-we want to be as unbiased as possible when doing research, and not let our feelings influence our judgement

Open-mindedness

-we want to be open to the idea that what we "know" could be false and be willing to accept new information

Accuracy

-we want to carefully find an exact answer

Perseverance effect

-when a schema is unchanged even when there is contradictory information

Mediating variable

-why/how does one variable affect another variable? -the variable that is affected by the independent variable, then affects dependent variable

Cognition and behavior

Behavior: how people act in a social situation Thought: how people make sense of the social world ---the two are linked

Which of the following contrasts controlled processing and automatic processing?

Controlled processing is systematic and effortful, whereas automatic processing is fast and relatively effortless.

Epigenetics

Environment and/or social experiences turn genes on or off

Experimental research

Experimentation: we get to manipulate variables We can conclude that one variable causes another

Social neuroscience

How are neurological processes connected to different aspects of social life Use technology to study the brain •Including social thought and behavior Mirror neurons •Activated when observing others •Important to empathy

Correlational research

Looking to find relationships between two variables Stronger correlations=more accurate predictions -1 to 1 If you have a correlation of one that means as one variable goes up one unit so does the other one •Positive correlation •Negative correlation No correlation Strength: •Closeness to -/+1 (absolute value of 1) •Closer to 1 stronger relationship •Closer to 0, weaker relationship Direction: •Negative or positive •Negative, X increases, Y decreases •Positive, X increases, Y increases or X decreases Y decreases

Implicit processes (READ IN BOOK)

Non-conscious psychological processes •Not necessarily "unconscious" Some attitudes and behaviors occur automatically •Unable to control them •May not even be aware of them Above the iceberg: implicit Below the iceberg: explicit

The fundamental attribution error states that we tend to make _________________ attributions for others' behavior rather than ______________ attributions.

dispositional; situational

Because of the self-serving bias, we tend to attribute our successes to ______________ causes and our failures to ________________ causes.

internal; external

Social psychologists focus their attention mainly on individuals because...

our actions are performed by and thoughts occur in the minds of individuals

Survey method

people respond to questions about their attitudes or behavior •not that accurate, people want to make it seem like they're better so they lie or they get bored and put random answers

What function do schemas serve?

schemas help us: -organize social information -guide our actions -process relevant information

Independent variable

the variable that is being manipulated/changed

People often forecast that they will feel ________ when reading about a large-scale tragedy compared to a smaller tragedy. However, findings indicate that people who actually read about such tragedies ________.

worse; feel the same regardless of the size of the tragedy