Psych 360 Exam 1 Study Guide PDF

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Study guide for Exam 1 of Social Psychology ...

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Psych 360 Exam 1 Study Guide Chapter 1: ● What is social psychology and social influence? ○ Social psychology: the scientific study of the way people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by real or imagined presence of others (social situations) ○ Social influence: effect that social situations have on our thoughts ● Compare and contrast social psychology to personality psychology and sociology. ○ They all ask similar questions but have different focuses. Social Psych

Personality Psych

Focuses on situations in society

Focuses on traits, characteristics, and personalities

Focuses on immediate mental mechanisms

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Focuses on broad social spectrums

Levels of Analysis: Personality--------------Social Psych---------------Sociology (traits) (individuals) (society) Know about the power of the situation and research reviewed in class that supports it. ○ Cooperative game: “Community” vs. “Wall Street” game ■ Participants’ competitivity changed when the name of the game changed. People were more focused on personal gain in the Wall Street version of the game. What is meant by the “Person x Situation” approach? ○ Social psychologists appreciate that both the person and the situation are important in order to understand what is occurring. What is construal? Be able to identify examples of construal and how it differs from behaviorism. ○ Construal: the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world ■ Example: (copied from the book) If a person approaches you, slaps you on the back, and asks you how you are feeling, your response will depend not on what that person has done, but on how you interpret that behavior. ● You might construe these actions differently depending on whether they come from a close friend who is concerned about your health, a casual acquaintance who is just passing the time of day, or an automobile salesperson attempting to be ingratiating for the purpose of selling you a used car. ● And your answer will vary also, even if the question about your health were worded the same and asked in the same tone of voice. ○ Behaviorism: a school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment. Know about the two fundamental motives of human behavior (feel good and accuracy) ○ Feel good: maintaining self-esteem ○

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Sociology

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Accuracy: social cognition (the way people think about themselves and the world, and how they use social information to make judgements and decisions); we want to be correct about these perceptions and judgments that we make We want to feel good but also be accurate.

Chapter 2:

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Be able to define and give an example of hindsight bias. ○ Hindsight bias: the tendency for people to exaggerate, after knowing that something already occurred, how much they could have predicted it before it occurred. ○ Example: Political elections- after the political election is over the outcome seems inevitable when looking back. Be able to describe the 3 different research methods reviewed (observational, correlational, experiment), their characteristics, how they differ from one another and pros and cons of each. ○ Observational: Observing/describing a phenomenon without trying to influence it ■ Pros: Easy, Naturalistic ■ Cons: You can’t learn about relationships between variables or causation, prone to bias ○ Correlational: Measures the relation between two or more variables. Looks at records and surveys. ■ Does not indicate the direction of the relationship, just that there is one. ■ Correlation does not prove causation. ■ Pros: allows researchers to collect much more data than experiments, opens up a great deal of further research to other scholars, allows researchers to determine the strength and direction of a relationship so that later studies can narrow the findings down and, if possible, determine causation experimentally. ■ Cons: only uncovers a relationship; it cannot provide a conclusive reason for why there's a relationship, ○ Experiment: Determines whether one variable CAUSES effects on the other variable ■ Three steps: ● 1.Manipulate the independent variable and measure the dependent ● 2. Randomly assign participants to conditions ● 3. Control extraneous variables ■ Pros: allows drawing of conclusions about the causal relationships among variables, a high level of control; experimental research groups, the people conducting the research have a very high level of control over their variables. By isolating and determining what they are looking for, they have a great advantage in finding accurate results. ■ Cons: ● Largely Subject To Human Errors. Just like anything, errors can occur. This is especially true when it comes to research and experiments. Any form of error, whether a systematic (error with the experiment) or random error (uncontrolled or unpredictable), or human errors such as

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revealing who the control group is, they can all completely destroy the validity of the experiment. ● Can Create Artificial Situations. By having such deep control over the variables being tested, it is very possible that the data can be skewed or corrupted to fit whatever outcome the researcher needs. This is especially true if it is being done for a business or market study. Understand what random selection and random assignment are. What are the benefits of each? ○ Random Selection: A way of ensuring that a sample of people is representative of a population by giving everyone in the population an equal chance of being selected for a sample. ■ Benefits: You avoid gathering misleading data. ○ Random Assignment: A  process that ensures that all participants in a study have an equal chance of taking part in any condition of an experiment. ■ Benefits: This makes it so researchers can be relatively certain that differences in the participants personalities or backgrounds are distributed evenly across conditions. Understand the major drawbacks of correlational research. ○ Correlational research only shows that there is a relationship between A and B. not why the relationship is there. Be able to interpret correlations and identify the strength and direction of relationship of a correlation coefficient.

Be able to define, identify and distinguish between independent and dependent variables. ○ Independent Variable: The variable that the researcher changes or varies to see if it has an effect on some other variable. ○ Dependent Variable: The variable a researcher measures to see if it’s influenced by the IV. Know all of the different parts of an experiment and why we can infer causation. ○ Idea, Hypothesis, IV and it’s conditions/levels, and DV What is mundane realism and psychological realism? ○ Mundane realism: The extent to which the materials and procedures involved in an experiment are similar to events that occur in real life.

Psychological realism: The extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment are similar to psychological processes that occur in everyday life What is internal validity, and why is it so important? What helps to ensure internal validity? ○ Internal Validity: Making sure that nothing besides the independent variable can affect the dependent variable ○ This is accomplished by controlling all extraneous variables and by randomly assigning people to different experimental conditions. ○ Random Assignment to conditions helps to ensure internal validity. What is external validity, and why is it so important? What helps to ensure external validity? ○ External Validity: The extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other situations and to other people. ○ Across situations, psychologists must have heightened psychological realism in their studies. To do this they usually use cover stories that disguise the true purpose of the study. ○ Field Experiments are a way to help ensure external validity. How are internal and external validity related? ○ There is a trade-off between the two. It is often hard to be able to randomly assign people to conditions and have enough control over the situation to ensure no extraneous variables are influencing the results. ○

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Chapter 3: ● What is social cognition, and how does it relate to social perception? ○ Social cognition: How people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgements and decisions ○ Relationship with social perception: ■ Social perception: how we form impressions and make inferences about people ■ We have a need to understand people based on behavior and a fundamental fascination with explaining other people’s behavior ● What are the 4 characteristics of automatic thought processes, and the 4 characteristics of controlled thought processes? How do the two processes differ? Give examples of each one. ○ 4 characteristics of automatic thought processes ■ Unaware ■ Unintentional ■ Effortless ■ Uncontrollability: You can’t stop your unconscious thoughts ■ Any one or combination of these indicates that it’s automatic in some way ○ 4 characteristics of controlled thought processes ■ Aware ■ Intentional ■ Effortful ■ Stoppable: You can stop what you’re consciously thinking about

Differences ■ Automatic happens without us having to think about it and controlled takes conscious effort and we have to want to do it; controlled can be stopped while automatic cannot be stopped (The characteristics above are opposites) ○ Example of automatic ■ Schemas are automatic thought processes ○ Example of controlled ■ Counterfactual thinking is an example of controlled What is the relationship between automatic thinking and controlled thinking, and how can we avoid automatic influences? ○ Automatic thinking happens all the time and without thought or effort while controlled thinking takes effort and happens less often. We avoid automatic influences by consciously recognizing stereotypes/understanding schemas/heuristics we may have and trying to combat them ○

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○ The Mode model: Know characteristics of a schema, how they help us function, when they are applied, and the different types (i.e. person, event, role). ○ Definition: an organized collection of beliefs and feelings associated with a person, object, or event ○ Characteristics ■ Schematic/map/plan of what to do in familiar situations ○ Schemas influence what information we remember ■ Cohen (1981): investigated the effects of schemas on memory ■ Participants saw a husband and wife having dinner; she is with a waitress or a librarian ■ Participants remember different things about the woman: the waitress drinking beer or the librarian was wearing glasses and listening to classical music ■ Schemas have a big influence on attention and memory; we remember schema consistent data and not schema inconsistent data ○ Schemas influence how we interpret information ■ Duncan (1976): investigated the effects of schemas on interpretation ■ White participants watched a video of an altercation ■ A black or white person intervene ■ Violent shove when they intervened? ■ People ultimately thought that the black intervener is more violent

Schemas influence how we behave ■ Self-fulfilling prophecy (having an expectation about what someone is like which influences how they act toward that person then that person behaves like the expectation) ○ Types of schemas ■ Person schemas: contain information about the characteristics of people ● Types/clusters of traits ● Ex. people with tattoos, professors, stereotypes ■ Self-schemas: contain info about the self ● Guide processing of self-relevant information ● Dominated by “central” traits ○ Ex. intelligence ● Affect perceptions of others ○ Ex. “I’m smarter than that guy.” ■ Role schemas: contain info on how to act in certain roles ● Contains info on how to act in certain roles ● Ex. student, professor, doctor, patient What problems occur when we use schemas? ○ Schemas are problematic when they cause self-fulfilling prophecies, whereby a schema or expectation about another person influences how we act toward that person, which causes that person to behave consistently with our expectation. Know what the self-fulfilling prophecy is and how it comes to be (including steps involved). ○ Self-fulfilling prophecy ■ When people have an expectation about what another person is like--which influences how they act toward that person--which causes that person to behave consistently with people’s original expectations--making the expectations come true ■ We treat people a certain way and they fulfil that perception and we think we’re right Define accessibility, and describe the 3 different sources of accessible concepts (chronic, goal-driven, temporary). Give examples of each. ○ Accessibility/categorization: the extent to which schemas are at the forefront of people’s minds and are therefore likely to be used when making judgments ○ Not always chronic ○ Chronic: very strong attitudes, strong emotional connection with it, easily accessible ○ Goal-driven: give people tasks/goals and that’s more accessible at that moment in time ○ Temporary: relates to priming; remember class example with filling in the word; not as accessible later in time Know what a heuristic is and provide definitions and examples of the two different types discussed in class. ○ Specific rules and shortcuts that people apply when thinking about the world ○ Schemas are not always available, or it is not clear which one to use ○ In such situations, we use heuristics ○

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Shortcuts (heuristics) not maps (schemas) Efficient decisions that are pre-programmed—no effort to decide If schema is available, heuristic can still be used, but not likely because you’d already have that plan in place Ex=good dog food is not a lot of corn products, but I’m lazy and don’t want to look at the ingredients, I use a heuristic that name brand is better and buy that instead Two types of heuristics ■ Availability: mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the

ease with which they can bring something to mind ● Because it’s available, it’s something that you choose to use ● What information is available? Recent, salient, repeated things ■ Representativeness: classifying objects according to how representative they are of the typical case ● Examples ○ Tan blond surfer at UT--they’re probably from CA or FL ○ Ignoring base rates of programmers at Microsoft ■ Man or woman more likely to be a programming? Man would be the choice—this is based on fact that there are more men than women in STEM fields, but this doesn’t have to be true every time ● Doesn’t have to be accurate, but it will be accurate to your mind based on what you believe is true ●

What is a prime/priming? Be able to recall study examples related to priming “rude/polite,” “elderly,” “adventurous/reckless,” and “smiling” concepts. ○ Priming: a ctivated by previous information processing; recent experiences increase

the accessibility of a schema (ex. sick, medicine, doctor, __RS_ (nurse/horse); activated the schema of something). ■ Higgins et al. (1977): ■ Reckless primes: reckless, book, rabbit, careless, etc. ■ Adventurous primes: adventurous, book, rabbit, self-confident, etc. ●

Know the differences in eastern and western culture in terms of types of thinking (i.e. analytic and holistic). ○ Eastern: collectivism ○ Western: individualistic ○ Analytic thinking style: a type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context; this type of thinking is common in Western cultures ○ Holistic thinking style: a type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other; this type of thinking is common in East Asian cultures

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What is counterfactual thinking? ○ Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been ○ Very bad to do this because you’re dwelling on it ○ Have a big influence on our emotional reactions to events ○ Remember the Olympic winner example (gold, silver, bronze)

Chapter 4: ● Know what physical features are automatically encoded when we perceive someone and why. ○ Social Perceptions: ■ Snap judgments- imagine you were given as much time as you needed to look at a photo of a person and judge their character (we need 1/10th of a second). ■ Physical cues: easy to observe things that we can see and hear are crucial to first impressions. ● Physical features: gender, race, age, height, weight, SES, etc. ● Low motivation or opportunity: person schemas guide impressions. ● High motivation and opportunity: person schemas become one of many pieces of info. Artifacts: peoples stuff, clothes, shoes, 90% of a person’s characteristics just by looking at their shoes (clean shoes=conscientious, practical= agreeable, ankle boots=aggressive, flashy=extroverts). ● What is nonverbal communication? What are common examples?

○ how people communicate, either intentionally or unintentionally, without words (facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position, use of touch, gaze, etc.). ●

What are the universal human emotions, and how good are we at detecting them? When does detecting emotion become more difficult? ○ Darwin- the primary emotions conveyed by the face are universal: the argument that all humans encode (express) these emotions in the same way and that all humans can decode (interpret) them, with comparable accuracy. ○ Nonverbal communication is species specific, not culturally specific. ○ 6 universal human expressions of emotion: happy, surprised, scared, sad, anger, and disgust. ○ Decoding becomes complicated: ■ People frequently display affect blends- facial expressions in with one part of the face registers one emotion while another part of the face registers a different emotion. ■ A second complication is that aspects of the same facial expression can have different implications based on the context and other cues (ex. Decoding facial expressions varies depending on eye gaze like if someone was mad & looked at you then you’d know they’re mad at you). ■ A third complication has to do with culture.

Display rules: culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display (ex. American men are discouraged to show grief or cry). ● In America it’s important to look at someone in the eye when they’re talking to you, but in other cultures direct eye gaze is disrespectful. ● Emblems: nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture; they usually have direct verbal translations, such as the OK sign. What is encoding and decoding? ○ Encoding: expression of nonverbal behavior (ex. smiling, touch, etc.) ○ Decoding: interpreting meaning of nonverbal behavior expressed by others (ex. Was that smile an example of genuine kindness or all for show? Can sometimes be hard to decode. Define “implicit personality theories” and be able to identify examples of them. ○ We use things like Implicit Personality Theories and make Attributions: a type of schema people use to group various personality traits together (ex. If Danny is warm, then he is probably also kind). ○ Ex. holding the door for a woman (polite or sexist?) ○ Ex. partying all weekend (fun-loving or irresponsible?) ○ Perception drives differences in cognition. ○ Advantage: we can form impressions quickly. ○ Disadvantages: make incorrect assumptions; stereotypical thinking. What are emblems and display rules? Give examples of each. ○ Already defined. Define internal attribution and external attribution, and given an example of each. Do we tend to favor making one kind of attribution? ○ Attribution Theory: how we explain the causes of other...