SOP3004 Exam 1

Four processes of social cognition

attention, interpretation, judgement, memory

What should the correlation between temperature and irritability be?

positive

Hypothesis

prediction about some aspect of social behaviour or thought

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

prefontal cortex; limbic system

Controlled processing in the

prefrontal cortex

Social psychology is not

sociology or common sense

Inheritance

some traits passed down through genes

One way that schemas influence social thought is by

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

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

attention

Counterfactual thining

"what might have been" tries to imagine the situation not occuring

Which of the following statements best describe evolutionary psychology?

Certain traits are selected for and are passed along to subsequent generations

Benefits of automatic processing

Easier to multitask, quicker, more efficient

Tammy is conducting a study on how exercise is related to decreased stress. She predicts that exercise leads to the release of endorphins, which lead to decreased stress. Which of these variables is a mediator?

Endorphins

Harry was 1 point away from getting an A in his class. Ron was 5 points away from getting an A. Which person is probably more upset with their grade?

Harry

Which of the following is not a focus of social psychology?

How groups function

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

Institutional Review Board

Downsides of automatic processing

Less accurate and less logical

Michael thinks that working hard is related to gray hair, but only among those who experience high levels of stress. What type of variable is stress?

Moderator

How affect influences cognition

Mood congruence effects, and mood-dependent memory

What social psychology is

a science

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

after she was just offered her dream job

Limbic system contains the

amygdala, hypothalamus and hippocampus

Variable

anything that can change

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

as smoking increases, drinking increases

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

Social psychology focuses on the

individual

Which of the following contrasts controlled processing and automatic processing?

controlled processing is systematic and effortful, whereas automatic processing is fast and relatively effortless

Memory

can contribute to new judgments

Moderator variable

changes size or direction of relationship between two variables

Weaker correlation

closer to 0

Stronger correlation

closer to 1 or -1

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

cognition and affect influence each other

Downward counterfactuals

comparing current outcomes with less favourable ones - positive

Upward counterfactuals

comparing current outcomes with more favourable ones - dissatisfaction

Affect

current moods and emotions

Systematic observation

observing behaviour as it occurs

Interpretation

different people may see the same situation, event, or person differently

Positive correlation

direct relationship

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

dispositional; situational

Naturalistic observation

observing behaviour in natural settings

Which type of nonverbal communication is relatively universal?

facial expressions such as smiles and frowns

Automatic processing

fast, intuitive and effortless

Theory

framework for explaining events or processes

Purpose of schemas

help us organise and process information, and guide our actions

Behaviour

how people act in social situations

Thought

how people make sense of the social world

Schemas and Encoding

information we pay attention to is stored in memory

Schemas and Retrieval

information we retrieve from memory

Affect and cognition are

interdependent

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

internal; external

Negative correlation

inverse relationship

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

Automatic processing in the

limbic system

Correlational research

looks to find relationships between two variables

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

mediating variable

Schemas

mental frameworks

Judgment

need to form impressions so people can make decisions relevant to their goals

What should the correlation between stress and happiness be?

negative

Third variable problem

no way to determine whether one variable causes another

What should the correlation between eating popcorn and liking pink be?

none

Variation

organisms differ from each other

Social psychologists focus their attention mainly on individuals because

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

The facial feedback hypothesis suggests that

our facial expressions influence our emotions

Affective forecasts

our predictions about how we would feel about an event we haven't experienced

Survey method

people respond to questions about their attitudes or behaviour

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

Unpriming

primed schemas are no longer as accessible after they've been expressed

Attention

process of focusing on aspects of one's environment or self

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

produces more conclusive evidence than other methods

Heuristics

rules or shortcuts for making decisions

Schemas and Attention

schemas are a filter

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

secret service agents

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

stable-unstable dimension

Controlled processing

systematic, logical and effortful

Meta analysis

takes all the studies on a topic and finds average effect size

Priming

temporary activation of a schema

Anchoring and adjustment heuristic

tendency to use values we're given as a starting point we adjust to

Which statement BEST describes the attribution process?

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

Social psychology

the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another

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

the situations in which we experience these emotions

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

the traits are indicators of good health

How are behaviour and thought related?

the two are linked

Cognition

the ways we think, process, store, remember and use information

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

theory

Which of the following is a downside of schemas?

they can remain unchanged in the face of contradictory information

Selection

those who possess traits that are beneficial in some way have a reproductive advantage

Purpose of heuristics

to minimize information overload

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

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

How cognition influences affect

two-factor theory of emotion

Representativeness heuristic

used to make decision about a person's category membership

Availability heuristic

used to make decision based on how easy it comes to mind

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

using flattering language

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

we are pretty good at forming accurate impressions

Irrationality

we tend to make judgments that lead us to commit errors

Optimistic bias

we tend to overlook risks and expect things to turn out well

Overconfidence bias

we tend to think we know more than we do

Planning fallacy

we think we can get more done in a time period than we actually can

Mediating variable

why or how does one variable affect another?

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