Social Psych EXAM 1 - Study Guide PDF

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Social Psych EXAM 1 Monday, January 28, 2019

8:40 PM

THEORY & METHODS Define social psychology. What are common topics that social psychologists study? • Social psychology is the scientific study of how people think about, influence, a relate to one another. Social psychologists might study gender, interpersonal relationships, group behavior, etc. Be able to distinguish between facts and theories. • A theory is a system of ideas that can be used to describe, predict, and explain behavior from a certain point of view. Theories answer the WHY question, they guide your interpretation of the FACTS, and they determine what kinds of questions we ask • Facts are known and proved to be true. Identify correlational studies, experimental studies, laboratory studies, field resear • Correlational: helps us PREDICT how people will behave, describes the strength between two or more events or characteristics; asks whether two or more fact are naturally associated; correlation does not equal causation. Keywords associated with correlation are, ASSOCIATED, CORRELATED, RELATED • Experimental: the cause is the factor that is manipulated and the effect is chan as a result of the manipulation; IV is manipulated, DV is measured • Laboratory: great control, subjects know they are being observed, subject may be a representation of the population, unnatural environment may lead to unnatural behavior • Field research: research done in natural, real-life settings outside the laborator Know what a correlation is; what the numbers/signs mean; what you can state wit

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Know what a correlation is; what the numbers/signs mean; what you can state wit correlational data. • A correlation shows some kind of relationship; +1 is a positive correlation (aggression^ vs. video games^), -1 is a negative correlation (alcohol^ vs. grades decrease), 0 is no correlations; you can state what type of relationship two variables have (inverse, direct, etc.) Be able to identify independent and dependent variables (and experimental and control groups) in an experimental design. • IV: researcher changes or manipulates • DV: factor that is measured based off of the IV change • Control: group with no change; constant • Experimental group: group used to make observations and collect data Understand random assignment and random sampling. • Random sampling: survey procedure in which every person in the population b studied has an equal chance of inclusion (survey); helps us generalize to a population • Random assignment: process of assigning participants to the conditions in an experiment such that all persons have the same chance of being in a given condition (experiment); help us infer cause and effect Know the difficulties of constructing good surveys. • Difficulties: hard to write clear, unbiased questions; subject can easily like What are the ethical principles that must be followed for conducting research? • 1/3 of all psych studied use deception; okay when: consent form, cannot cause harm/significant discomfort, deemed "essential" and "justified", follows with debriefing SELF Be able to define: Self schemas self concept self esteem sense of agency self

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Be able to define: Self-schemas, self-concept, self-esteem, sense of agency, selfrecognition, self-reference, possible self, social self, self-efficacy • Self-schemas: cognitive representation about self-relevant info; • Self-concept: what we know and believe about ourselves • Self-esteem: how an individual feels about him or herself; a persons overall sel evaluation or sense of self-worth • Sense of agency: we initiate, execute, and control our own actions in the world • Self-recognition: Rouge Test-- understanding who you are and recognizing you (mirror); baby playing in mirror and mom wipes red lipstick on baby's face, doe the baby wipe own face or the mirror? ~9-24m/o, baby realizes that self is uniq and that the red dot is them in the mirror • Self-reference: refer to yourself; construing ones identity as an autonomous se • Possible self: the idea of who you want to be or can become • Social self: who a person is through their thoughts, desires, needs, etc. • Self-efficacy: how competent you feel about yourself (academic success, accomplishing more, etc.); ex: a sharpshooter in the military might feel high se efficacy and low self-esteem Where do our ideas about self-concept and self-esteem come from? • Direct from other people, • Indirect from other people (looking glass self); think of ourselves in a way that other people might perceive us; we care what other people think, • Social comparison: evaluating ones abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others • Daily experiences Understand the meaning of “looking-glass self”/“generalized other” • Looking Glass Self (Cooley, 1902): think of ourselves in the way other people m

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perceive us; we care what other people think • Generalized Other (Mead, 1930s): got specific about who is giving you the info other people that are important to you giving you info about a piece of your se concept; internalized impressions of societal norms and expectations Explain the difference between implicit and explicit attitudes (the dual attitude system) • Dual attitude system: differing implicit (automatic) and explicit (consciously controlled) attitudes toward the same object. Verbalized explicit attitudes may change with education and persuasion; implicit attitudes change slowly, with practice that forms new habits • Implicit: unconscious and uncontrolled • Explicit: conscious and controlled Describe the difference between an internal vs. external locus of control • Internal locus of control: free will personal control • External locus of control: control by chance/outside forces, lose personal contr Know the difference between barometric and baseline self-esteem. • Barometric self-esteem: unstable self-esteem, depends on specific events; can volatile, distressing, and uncomfortable • Baseline self-esteem: way individual typically feels about themselves; relatively stable, deep down feelings; social class, birth order, academic ability; better ov indicator about how a person feels What is learned helplessness and how does it relate to self-control? Is this behavio more likely in certain individuals? • Learned helplessness: feeling of hopelessness and resignation learned when yo feel you have no control over a situation • Individuals with an external locus of control are more likely to behave this way

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Know the difference between the false consensus effect and the false uniqueness effect. • False consensus effect: tendency to overestimate the commonality of ones opinions and ones undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors • False uniqueness effect: the tendency to underestimate the commonality of on abilities and ones desirable or successful behaviors What is self-handicapping? How does it relate to our self-image? • Self-handicapping: protecting ones self-image with behaviors that create a han excuse for later failure What are some ways in which we control “impression management”? • Impression management: effort to control other peoples perceptions • Changing or fixing his/her setting, appearance, and manner SOCIAL BELIEFS AND JUDGMENTS Understand what “priming” studies have shown. • Priming: activating particular associations in memory ○ Watch a scary movie and then start to hear sounds in your house; you we primed • Ideas that have been recently encountered are more likely to come to mind an used in interpreting social events • Stories that get more coverage in the media are viewed as more important What does belief perseverance mean? • When people hang on to their beliefs even though evidence proves that they a wrong Recall the misinformation effect (with respect to memory construction) • When participants recall of an event they witnessed is altered by introducing

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• When participants recall of an event they witnessed is altered by introducing misleading post event information ○ Reconstruct distant past from feelings; don’t want to be wrong Understand the difference between implicit vs. explicit thinking • Implicit thinking: not directly stated • Explicit thinking: directly stated Understand the attributional biases: assumed –similarity bias, self-serving bias, ha effect, fundamental attribution error, group-serving bias • Similarity bias: selecting people who are more similar to us, as opposed to people who appear more different

• Self-serving bias: the tendency to perceive oneself favorably; peoples tendency to attribute positive events to their own character but negative events to external factor

• Halo effect: if something has positive traits, we infer more positive traits (works for negative traits as well)

• Fundamental attribution error: overattribute other peoples behavior to dispositional causes and minimize situational causes

Define the overconfidence phenomenon. What are some arenas in which this occurs? How can we reduce this bias? • Overconfidence phenomenon: the tendency to be more confident than correct overestimate the accuracy of ones beliefs ○ Reduce: prompt feedback, look at disconfirming evidence, • Often caused by lack of ability, knowledge, or complete information to succeed a task Heuristics: availability, representativeness. What is the dilution effect and how do it relate to the representativeness heuristic? • Heuristic: a thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgements; human a "cognitive miser"

Define the overconfidence phenomenon. What are some arenas in which this occurs? How can we reduce this bias? • Overconfidence phenomenon: the tendency to be more confident than correct--to overestimate the accuracy of ones beliefs ○ Reduce: prompt feedback, look at disconfirming evidence, • Often caused by lack of ability, knowledge, or complete information to succeed at a task Heuristics: availability, representativeness. What is the dilution effect and how does it relate to the representativeness heuristic? • Heuristic: a thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgements; human as "cognitive miser" • Availability: quick judgements of likelihood of events (how available in memory); if instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace • Representative: snap judgements of whether someone or something fits into a category; the more similar something is to a prototype stored in memory, the more likely that entity belongs to that category ○ 30% Lawyer/ 70% banker description and asked to judge what they were, ignored base rates • Dilution effect: diagnostic information is not as significant when mixed with non-diagnostic information (base rates ignored); subjects become less confident ○ If there are no descriptions, representativeness goes away Is counterfactual thinking ever productive? How is it related to “luck”? • Counterfactual thinking: imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn't ○ Just missed getting in a car crash so therefore contribute it to "good luck"

luck" Understand the types of illusory thinking. How does Gilovich' theory explain illusory correlations. • Illusory thinking: perceptions of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists ○ Example: Pam's mom convinced that when she has the hiccups, both of her daughters have the hiccups also ○ "Nature operates in such a way that we often feel punished for rewarding others and rewarded for punishing them."

• Gilovich: "one-sided" & "two-sided" events ○ Two-sided: 2 different outcomes produce same intensity of emotion (regardless of outcome, you get the same reaction) § Example: Pam didn’t care if they had hiccups on the same day or not ○ One-sided: only remember when suspicions were confirmed, not when they aren't § Example: Have hiccups on the same day--> WOW!, Don't have hiccups on same day --> ohh… Definition of confirmation bias--be able to evaluate data from studies showing we do this in our social thinking about self and others. • Confirmation bias: a tendency to search for information that confirms ones preconceptions • In social situations (Swann & Reed, 1981): examines idea of "selfverification" as a confirmatory strategy ○ Question: How do individuals evaluate social feedback that they suspect confirms rather than disconfirms their self-perception?

§ Rated themselves as self-likeable/self-dislikable § Subjects that reported self-likeable spent more time looking at favorable statements (vice versa for self-dislikable subjects) § Subject that was self-likeable remembered things that were favorable (vice versa for self-dislikable subjects) • In our social world (Snyder & Swann, 1978): Hypothesis-Testing Processes in social interaction ○ 3 possible strategies § Confirmatory strategy: looking for cues that show/confirm beliefs § Disconformity strategy: opposite of what you think this person is § Equal opportunity strategy: ask questions in both directions ○ Participants ask 11 questions when given an extrovert (confirmatory) or introvert (equal opportunity) card Seeking explanations for others’ behavior: Attribution theory (know it well!) • Attribution theory: the theory of how people explain others' behavior -for example by attributing it to either internal or external traits; looks for causes/explanation of behavior ○ Dispositional: attributing behavior to a persons traits ○ Situational: attributing behavior to a person environment • Looks for "thin slices of behavior"- short excerpts of behavior from which perceivers can draw inferences about states, traits, and other personallyrelevant characteristics What types of information do we use to make attributions for others’ behavior (Kelley’s work)?

• Impression formation (Kelley, 1950): ○ Group 1: note indicated speaker was "warm, industrious, critical, practical, determined" ○ Group 2: note indicated speaker was "cold, industrious, critical, practical, determined" ○ People who thought he was cold rated him more harshly than people who thought he was warm Understand the self-fulfilling prophecy & behavioral confirmation-understand the studies we talked about in class about these topics. • Self-fulfilling prophecy (Rosenthal & Jacobsen, 1966): other peoples beliefs lead to fulfilment of those beliefs; "I think I am talking to an attractive person therefore I must be talking to an attractive person" ○ Perceivers behavior toward the target, targets behavior toward the perceiver, perceivers expectations • Behavioral confirmation (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid ,1977): a type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby peoples social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations • Happens in the work place constantly; telling employees they are hardworking is better than telling employees they are lazy ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR ABC’s of attitude • Affective • Behavioral • Cognitive • For "attitude research" the affective or emotional reaction to the attitude object is the most salient

What types of tests are available to examine attitudes? • IAT, behavioral survey Under what conditions will attitudes predict behavior? • High correspondence between attitude measure and behavior in question, same specificity • Strong attitudes based on information, direct exposure, or accessibility in memory What did Zimbardo’s prison study illustrate? • Behavior of normal men can be dramatically affected when a role they are given involves considerable power status • Zimbardo believes that prisons bring out the worst in social situations among people Be able to describe self-presentation theory; under what circumstances do we use this theory. • Self-presentation: the act of expressing oneself and behaving in ways designed to create a favorable impression or an impression that corresponds to ones ideals • We use this when we are self-conscious; at parties; unfamiliar situations • I am presenting myself in a certain way NOT because I believe it, but because I don’t want to look inconsistent Explain cognitive dissonance theory (and insufficient justification effect); under what circumstances do we use this theory to explain attitudes/behaviors. • Cognitive dissonance (Leon Festinger, 1950s): tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of tow inconsistent cognitions; for example, dissonance can occur when we realize the we have, with little justification acted contrary to our attitudes or made a decision favoring...