advanced social psych
Terms
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- what is social psychology
- a scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual thoughts and behaviors in social situations; study of the way in which people's thoughts, behaviors, and feelings are influenced by real or imagined social influences.
- what is the primacy effect
- the tendency for the first items presented in a series to be remembered better or more easily, or for those items to be more influential than those presented later
- what is the recency effect
- the tendency for items presented last or most recently to be remembered better or more easily, or for those items to be more influential than those presented earlier
- what is the schema
- a cognitive system that helps us organize and make sense of the world, and is organized by attributes of a concept or type of stimulus and the relationship to other stimuli; these influence what we pay attention to, and how we process that information
- what is the correspondent inference theory
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jones & davis
the idea that attributions are made based on uncommon effects between a behavior and the plausible alternative, and the social desirability aspect of the behavior - what is the covariation approach
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kelley
the idea that attributions are made based on consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness of the behavior, as well as the augmenting and discounting principles. - what is the discounting principle
- tendency to distribute importance when there are multiple causes
- what is the augmenting principle
- tendency to add disproportionate importance to a cause when the behavior is unexpected or goes against the norm.
- what is the overjustification approach
- if there's an obvious and large enough situational reward people tend not to make dispositional attributions.
- what is the self-perception theory of attitudes
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Bem
idea that people infer their own internal states just like observers do, by observing their own behavior, and the extent that the situation is not a plausible cause and making inferences about their own disposition. - what is the two-factor theory of attributing emotion
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schacter
the idea that people self-attribute emotions based on a combination of undifferentiated physiological arousal and an explanation that seems logical in context (shaky vancouver bridge & hot girl study) - what is attribution
- the process by which people use information to make inferences about the causes of behavior or events; how we go about inferring behavior of self and others.
- what is the fundamental attribution error
- the tendency for an observer to over attribute behavior to dispositional causes, and under attribute behavior to situational causes.
- what is the actor-observer effect
- the tendency to see other people's behavior as being dispositionally caused, while viewing one's own behavior as being situationally caused
- what is correspondence bias
- the tendency to infer that people's behavior reflects their disposition, ignoring situational influences.
- what is defensive attribution
- attribution of responsibility and blame; attributions that blame a person for adversity in order to give the attributor a feeling that they can personally avoid it.
- what is behavioral self-blame
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janoff-bulman
when victims blame their own modifiable behaviors for their traumatic experiences, and this facilitates adjustment by enhancing their self control. - what is characterological self-blame
- when victims blame stable, unmodifiable aspects of the self, which leads to feelings of inevitability and lack of control regarding the future.
- what is counterfactual thinking
- when victims blame stable, unmodifiable aspects of the self, which leads to feelings of inevitability and lack of control regarding the future.
- what are self-serving attributions
- attributions for one's success is credited to internal dispositional factors and attributions for one's failure is credited to external situational factors.
- what is self-enhancement
- striving and wanting to see yourself and be seen in a positive light, an instantaneous, automatic process.
- what is self-verification
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swann
the idea that people seek to confirm their self-beliefs (whether negative {depressed individuals} or positive). - what is social desirability
- the desire or pressure for a person to act in a manner that is socially acceptable and conform to social norms.
- what is the representative heuristic
- people's tendency to classify an event, etc. according to its similarity to a typical case, this is wrong, wrong, wrong because you ignore base-rates when you do this.
- what is the availability heuristic
- people's tendency to make decisions based on the ease with which examples come to mind, not accurate because what you remember may be the outstanding exceptions (e.g. sensational murders, etc.)
- what is stereotype threat
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steele
occurs when members of a group, stereotyped as having low ability (e.g. academically, etc.) are placed in a situation in which that stereotype is acknowledged and group membership is made salient, and unconsciously confirm the stereotype - what is the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic
- people's tendency to use an anchor or starting point and adjusting their prediction accordingly. This is only useful if the starting point is accurate (e.g. estimating someone's weight, guess the average weight for that gender, and look at their height to adjust up or down.)
- what is the social comparison theory
- idea that people tend to compare themselves to other people to assess how they're doing and to help predict their future performance.
- what is downward comparison
- people seek self-enhancement by comparing themselves to others who are worse off.
- what is upward comparison
- people's desire to seek interactions with others who are better off to give themselves hope and motivation
- what is the illusion of control
- tendency of mentally healthy individuals to think they have more control than they actually do.
- what is illusory correlation
- the tendency to overestimate how often two events occur together (e.g. false idea that there really are no such things as coincidences)
- what is an unrealistic positive view of self
- idea that meantally healthy individuals have an overly positive view of themselves. They more readily incorporate, process, and recall positive personality information, see themselves as better than others, and have self-rating scores higher than observers rate them as.
- what is unrealistic optimism
- tendency of mentally healthy individuals to believe that the present is better than the past and that the future will be better than the present, basically it's unwarrented hopefulness and confidence that things will improve
- what is terror management theory
- idea that everything people do is driven by fear of death (as soon as you're born you are dying; life is a terminal disease) and that people derive hope from culturally derived worldviews that instill hope (e.g. live a good life, and you'll get into heaven) meaning, order, stability, and permanence.
- what is cognitive dissonance
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festinger
the feeling of discomfort you get when you act in a manner that is inconsistent with your attitudes or beliefs (e.g. when you're a hypocrite you feel uncomfy, and well you should.) - what is bystander apathy
- tendency of people not to intervene in an emergency due to diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance
- what is the propinquity effect
- the more exposure you have to people the more you like them
- what is social influence
- any change in beliefs, attitudes, behaviors that results from interpersonal interaction
- what is conformity
- in influence of the majority on individual behavior (e.g. asch, line study)
- what is compliance
- the influence of a peer's request (e.g. foot in the door technique)
- what is obedience
- the influence an authority figure demands on subordinates (eg. milgram's obedience study)
- what is models of helping
- medical (e.g. victim is not responsible), moral (e.g. victim is responsible for both cause and solution), enlightenment (e.g. victim is responsible and must submit to a higher power), and compsensatory (e.g. people are basically good, you're not responsible for being down, but you're responsible for getting up).