SP Midterm Study Guide - Instructor: Mark Bauermeister Book: Gilovich, T., Keltner, D., Chen, S., & PDF

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Instructor: Mark Bauermeister
Book: Gilovich, T., Keltner, D., Chen, S., & Nisbett, R.E. (2016). Social psychology (4th ed.). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company....

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SP Midterm Study Guide ● Symbolic interaction ○ Interacting with others helps us interpret the world around us through symbols (verbal and non-verbal communication) ○ Ex. someone smiles at you… meaning/implication depends on culture, gender, manners, thoughts, circumstance, age, environment ○ We interpret peoples symbols ■ Ex. music, type of car, clothes = make inferences about them ● Don't know why until you ask them - so you make assumptions in the meantime ● Social Structure and Personality ○ Larger social structures influence individuals and the roles they play ■ Role ex. Sister, job position, student ○ We act how society expects us to act based on those roles we play ○ Everything is a symbol ■ Ex. hair, gender, clothes, food, drink, job, ect. ■ Then you make associations from these symbols and make assumptions ● Group processes ○ Analysis of groups, context, and processes ○ Ex. power, status, justification, ect. ○ Can be affected by stratification (a hierarchy of power/authority) ■ May reduce willingness to participate ■ Sends messages of insecurity ○ Different messages affect how groups run ● Sociological imagination ○ Understanding of personal biography and the biography of others as well as social structure and how they relate ○ Applying sociological imagination: ■ How we are affected similarly and differently ■ Eg.. shared private troubles and larger public issues (ex. loans) ● “Terrible lesson and a magnificent one” - Mills 1959 ● Terrible = monumental thing to hurdle ● Magnificent = not the only one to face it ● Social groups (in/out group) ○ You identify and work with the group you are in ○ The group with the opposing view is the outgroup ○ However, the in group does not always look down on the out group, only in certain cases ● Generalizability ○ The ability to generalize to the larger population within a study - not limited to a

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specific group ■ Ex. in group = environmentalists and tribe… out group = loggers ○ Connected to: ■ Internal validity: in experimental research, confidence that only the manipulated variable could have produce the results ■ External validity: an indication of how well the results of an experiment generalize to contexts besides those of the study itself Physiological responses ○ Society and emotions ■ Importance of emotion in society cannot be overlooked ● Happiness? Sadness? ○ Physiological changes with different emotions ■ Goosebumps, pitch of tone in voice, energy level, posture, tears ○ Emotions affect society and vice versa? Causality ○ In research, the only way to find causality is to run a random experiment ○ Otherwise, it is impossible to find causation, only correlation Self fulfilling prophecy ○ To fulfill the prophecy of how you think other people expect you to act, while normally you would not do that thing ○ Social norms ○ The mask you live in Independent variable vs. Dependent variable ○ IV: the variable you manipulate ○ DV: the variable you measure ○ The IV affects the outcome of the DV ○ Can have multiple IV’s ■ Ex. decrease = IV1, screentime = IV2, age = IV3… cognitive skills = DV Participant observation ○ The observer participates in the environment they are studying without being known as an observer ■ Ex. meat packing - Deborah Fink - had to quit because of carpal tunnel Stereotypes ○ The belief that certain attributes are characteristic of members of a particular group Looking glass self ○ From the symbolic interactionist perspective, self is a process, like a construction of social reality ■ We give meaning to self through interactions with others ○ Charles Horton Cooley: looking glass self ■ The development of self is dependent on the perception of how we believe

others see us - our self changes because of other people ■ Synonymous with self-appraisal ● Sample ○ In survey research the sampling must be representative of the population size and the characteristics ○ The survey questions must include fixed response (quantitative) or open ended response (qualitative) ● Schemas ○ A knowledge structure consisting of any organized body of stored information and which is used to help in understanding events ○ When you create categories in your head of similar information and pull from those categories to understand something in the world or create a new schema about novel information ● Norms ○ Rules from society that tell you how you should behave based on your role in it ● Ascribed status vs. achieved status ○ Ascribed: something given at birth (gender, inheritance) ○ Achieved: something acquired in life (status) ● Impression management ○ Erving Goffman: we use info from others presentations to help establish expectations of our behavior and of the people around us ○ The ways people seek to control the impressions they convey to others ● Socialization ○ The process of learning how to behave that is acceptable to society ● Nature vs. nurture ○ Genes vs. environment ○ Nature = biological psychology ○ Nurture = behaviorism ● Agents of socialization ○ Attitudes are our primary agents of socialization (ex. family) and individuals rely on those agents for the initial sets of values and beliefs that govern attitude processes ○ Families transmit attitudes in at least two ways: ■ Stems from families status in society, and status is associated with attitudes ■ Children often realize status and then mimic the behavior of the family members ○ This intersects with SI ■ H. Blumer’s theory of group position: prejudicial attitudes reflect a groups relative position in society (think ascribed status) ● This explains the persistence of racial, ethnic, gender, and other

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group positions ○ Also pairs well with GP Presentation of self ○ The idea of impression management from Erving Goffman ○ Two main ideas for impression formation and presentation of self when we interact with other people ■ Shakespeare ● Front stage: how we present ourselves to others ● Backstage: when we relax impression management effort and may practice performance for future interactions ○ This is not inherent human behavior, it is derived from social norms Stratification ○ A hierarchy of power ○ Can lead to the internalization of the societal norms based on how they relate to our lives ○ Constant competition of who and what is better ○ Patriarchy… stratification by gender ■ Ex. outlawing sonograms in some places bc there are more abortions of girls ○ Ranking system: more resources = more power ■ Max Weber: Dimensions of Stratification ● The Economic Dimension ○ Income and wealth (net worth) ○ Ascribed = given ○ Achieved = acquired ● The Political Dimension ○ Power is developed and exercised through political action (ex. Donations and lobbying) ● The Social Prestige Dimension ○ Status related to social position (ex. Family, name, education, job, accomplishments, achieved status, ect.) Social institutions ○ The influence of education, government, economy, religion, family, media, peers on how we behave and interact with people Cues ○ We interpret people’s signals and it influences what we do Emotional intelligence ○ The ability to express, recognize, and use emotions well within social interactions ■ Primary emotions: physiologically grounded emotions that we inherit through evolutionary processes ● Ex. fear, happiness, anger, sadness

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■ Secondary emotions: social emotions, refer to attaching varying meanings to primary emotions ● Ex. affection, pride, conceit Framing effect ○ When someone chooses something based on how the information is presented (positive or negative) Counterfactual thoughts ○ Thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened “if only” something had occurred differently Fundamental attribution error ○ The failure to recognize the importance of situational influences on behavior, and the corresponding tendency to overemphasize the importance of disposition on behavior Explanatory research ○ A mix of both quantitative and qualitative methods Correlational research ○ Hard to find causation ■ Ex. more murders in the summer Experimental research ○ Used to gather data ■ Ex. Milgram and Stanford Prison ○ Internal validity: in experimental research, confidence that only the manipulated variable could have produce the results ○ External validity: an indication of how well the results of an experiment generalize to contexts besides those of the study itself Theory ○ Refers to organized sets of propositions about how various elements of social life are related to one another Hypothesis ○ A single statement about reality that can be tested The Scientific Method ○ Ask a Question ○ Research Existing Sources ○ Formulate a Hypothesis (if, then statement) ○ Design and Conduct a Study ○ Draw Conclusions ○ Report Results Unobtrusive observation ○ Observational research ■ Avoid reactivity (when there is a change in behavior when you know you are being watched)

● Affective forecasting ○ Predicting future emotions, such as whether an event will result in happiness or anger or sadness, and for how long ● Scripts ○ Series of behaviors, actions, and consequences that are expected in a particular situation or environment. ○ Social scripts are used to interpret different social situations ● Self comparisons ○ Self is a process and we give meaning to our self in different ways during interactions with others ● Self-discrepancy theory ○ Behavior is motivated by standards from who we think we should be and falling short of this standard produces emotions of feeling sad because of the discrepancy between ideal and reality ● high/low self monitoring ○ Low: tend to use inner beliefs and values in deciding how to behave ○ High: tend to monitor their surroundings and change their behavior to fit in ● Attitudes ○ Evaluation of an object along a positive-negative dimension ■ Affect - emotions ■ Cognition - thoughts ■ Behavior ○ Positive: optimism in general and about the future ○ Negative: being pessimistic in different circumstances like getting caught off guard ● Bogardus scale (social distance) ○ Social distance: how close we feel to other people ○ Attitudes can reflect our prejudices toward people and their groups ○ Longitudinal study by Emory Bogardus produced the social distance scale ■ White people rated the highest ■ Even non-white people rated the white people higher - because of social norms and attitudes ■ People with higher status believe they are more important ● Social contact hypothesis ○ A way to improve group relationships ■ Members of each group have equal status ■ You have a shared goal ■ More open-minded when contacting people ■ Interaction among group members that never would have happened before without this issue ■ There needs to be an authority figure guiding the process (mediator)

● Emile Durkheim ○ Suicide research in the 1800’s ○ Three hypotheses: protestants, men, and unmarried people ■ During industrial revolutions many people were migrating for labor (mostly men) ■ Some patterns hold true today - men commit suicide more than women ● George Herbert Mead ● C. Wright Mills ● Robert Merton ○ Typology of prejudice and discrimination ○ The liberal-bigot scale ● Cecilia Ridgeway ○ Research found that individuals in both low and high resource groups developed positive biases toward the high resource group ○ Pairs well with Bogardus scale and system justification theory...