Social psych exam 2

What are the key sources of self knowledge?

1. our own thoughts and beliefs 2. our behavior 3. other's reactions to us 4. social comparison

What three goals motivate many of the behaviors that are related to the self?

1. self improvement 2.self verification 3, accuracy

What are self serving cognitions?

1. self serving bias- blame failures externally 2. false consensus effect- overestimating how much people agree with your opinions 3. unrealistic positive views- most people thinking they're above average

What is the general adaptation syndrome?

A model of the body's stress response, consisting of three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion

Describe one of the studies from Wood, Perunovic, and Lee. What do their results suggest about the effects of positive self statements? How are their results connected to self verification and self discrepancies?

A survey study confirmed that people often use positive self-statements and believe them to be effective. Two experiments showed that among participants with low self-esteem, those who repeated a positive self-statement ("I'm a lovable person") or who focused on how that statement was true felt worse than those who did not repeat the statement or who focused on how it was both true and not true. Among participants with high self-esteem, those who repeated the statement or focused on how it was true felt better than those who did not, but to a limited degree. Repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people, but backfire for the very people who "need" them the most.

What are characteristics of automatic processes and controlled processes? Under what circumstances do ppl rely on each?

Automatic- involuntary, effortless, unconscious (rely on when were not motivated to think carefully). Controlled- Conscious, intentional, effortful (rely on when we are motivated to think carefully).

What are basic and secondary emotions and what are the characteristics?

Basic- Anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. (based around SNS) Secondary- many possible- guilt, pride, shame, embarrassment (more complex)

what is self handicapping? what are some problems with it?

Creating performance obstacles to ourselves which can then be used to explain away failures. problems: we tend to fail more, other people tend to not be fooled, and ought self and ideal self are not fooled

What is introspection? Discuss problems using introspection to gain knowledge about self concept.

Defining yourself with your own thoughts. Problem: can be biased

Discuss two benefits and two drawbacks on relying schemas to process the social world

Drawbacks: they can persist when discredited and sometimes we make schemas true by changing our own behavior. Benefit: increased speed of understanding people and events and allow us to sift through info for key features

What is self cognition? discuss two differences between perceiving people and perceiving inanimate objects

How we perceive, remember and interpret info. People perceive back and people react to being perceived.

Zhong & DeVoe (2010). What was the method of priming and specifically how were primes presented. How can fast food images affect our behavior?

Images of fast food logos were flashed on a screen in front of pt. Fast food images increase a persons preference for time saving options and reduced a persons willingness to save and prefer short term gain over long term reward.

How do moods and emotions act as primes when influencing our thought and behavior

Influence what we attend to, how we interpret experience and thus our behavior

What is a schema? what are three types of schemas we discussed in class

Mental representations of objects or categories of objects. 1. stereotyping 2. social role schemas 3. self schema

What is a heuristic? What is the availablility heuristic? what are representative heuristics?

Mental shortcuts. Availability- Basing judgements on how relevant examples can be generated. Representative- Classifying things based on how similar they are to the typical case

What are the components of affect. what are the characteristics of those components?

Moods and emotions in our social lives. Moods are longer, less intense, may be untriggered. Emotions- brief, intense, often triggered feelings

what is self esteem? how can we increase it?

Our attitude toward ourself. May increase by setting attainable goals, seek self enhancing info, reduce self awareness

Describe the theory that explains how peoples behaviors influence their self concept

Self perception theory- when feelings are ambiguous, we can infer them by using previous behavior as evidence of self concept

How do social psychologists define stress

The physiological and psychological reactions that occur whenever we believe that the demands of a situation threaten our ability to respond to the threat.

what are interdependent self construals and why is it important?

The self is connected and defined in terms of other people. (Group needs are more important). Allows us to be selfless, liked, creates harmony

What are independent self construals and why is it important?

The self is seen as separate, distinct, autonomous entity. (individual needs are most important). allows for feelings of uniqueness, our own harmony, leadership.

What is priming? How does priming have its effect in the case of accessibility

The tendency for recently used words or ideas that come to mind easily and influence our subsequent thoughts, judgements, or behaviors. Accessibility- how easily info comes to our mind

What is thought suppression? What are two processes at work when we try to suppress our thoughts and why does suppression often have the effect of making thoughts more accessible?

Trying to not think about certain things. Automatic and controlled processing. Thoughts persist even when we are trying to control them and based on our culture.

What are some problems with overusing heuristics? What is a way to check our heuristic thinking?

We overestimate how much we think people agree with us. Fix by increasing self awareness and validity of info

what is self image bias?

We tend to judge others on the traits on which we look good

What is the theory of the looking glass self? Who is particularly susceptible to learn about themselves in this way?

When we tend to see ourselves through the eyes of other people and adopt those views. People who lack firm self concept, such as children, use this.

What are self fulfilling prophecies? discuss the steps

When you act based on a schema in such a way that the object of the schema is likely to confirm your expectations. 1. persons behavior toward the target 2. targets behavior toward perceiver 3. perceivers expectations

What is self concept? What functions does it serve?

a schema about yourself that contains self knowledge. The 3 functions are managerial (organizes our future behavior), organizational (helps interpret and recall info), and emotional (determines emotional responses).

what is ego depletion?

a temporary reduction in the self's capacity to engage in self-control caused by the depletion of our self-control abilities

what is self presentation?

how we attempt to convey info and images to ourselves and others. 2 motives- 1. instrumental- we want to influence others to gain rewards 2.-expressive- we construct an image of ourselves to claim personal identity

What is the HPA axis? and physiologically how does it work?

hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Brain (hypothalamus)- pituitary- other glands- hormones.

How does priming have its effect in the case of spreading activation? research

spreading activation- when activation of one thought activates related thoughts. Research: Iv: scrambles sentence task with conditions- 1. rudeness 2. politeness 3. control. They're asked to get the experimenter when they're done, but the experimenter is talking to another participant. DV- how long they will wait before they interrupt. Rude prime interrupted faster and polite waited longer

What is the two factor theory of emotion?

the theory that the experience of emotion is based on two factors: physiological arousal and a cognitive interpretation of that arousal