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Psychology
Social Psych
60
Psychology
Undergraduate 4
09/11/2012

Additional Psychology Flashcards

 


 

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Term
What is Social Psychology?
Definition
the scientific study of how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of an individual are influenced by other people.

-two motivations from people: the need to be accurate and predict what will happen in the future
-the need to belong and be liked by others
Term
Ideas emphasized in social psychology:
Definition
The construction of social reality. how individuals perceive, comprehend, and interpret the world around them, particularly the behavior or action of others towards themselves.

-The effects of individual attitudes and disposition on behavior
-Biological influences on social behavior
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Term
Social psychology vs. sociology
Definition
_____tends to focus on the group level, while Social psychology tends to focus on the individual level.

They often publish in the same journal.
Term
Social psychology vs. clinical psychology
Definition
-_____ psychologists seek to understand and treat people with psychological difficulties or disorders.
-Social psychologists focus on the more typical ways in which individuals think, feel, behave, and influence each other.

Fields intersect because social psych research helps understand clinical phenomena
Term
Social psychology vs. cognitive psychology
Definition
-_____ psychologists study mental processes overall.
-Social psychologists are interested in mental processes with respect to social information and how these processes influence social behavior.
Term
Social Psychology vs. Personality Psychology
Definition
-Personality psychologists are interested in differences between individuals.
-Social psychologists are interested in how social factors affect most individuals.
Term
Hindsight Bias
Definition
Common sense seems to explain many social psychological findings after the fact. But unlike common sense, social psychology uses the scientific method to put its theories to the test.
Term
3 goals to social psychology
Definition
1. measurement and description
2. understanding and prediction
3. application and control
Term
Correlation research
Definition
the study of naturally occurring relationships among variables NOT manipulated by researchers.


A correlation (r) can range from -1.00 to 1.00.
The closer the value is to -1.00 or 1.00, the stronger the relation between the two variables.

BUT Correlation does not equal causation
Term
Important considerations in survey methodology
Definition
-unrepresentative samples
-random samples
-response options
-Question order
-question wording(it matters how you ask)
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Term
Experimental Research
Definition
explores cause and effect relationships by manipulating one or more variable while holding other factors constant
Term
placebo effect
Definition
a therapeutic effect due to the expectations of the person rather than a treatment
Term
Double blind
Definition
procedures to control for placebo effects and experimenter biases
Neither the subject or the experimenter know which group the subject is in
Term
Correlation
Definition
advantage- often uses real world settings
disadvantage-causation often ambiguous
Term
Experimental
Definition
advantage- can explore cause and effect by controlling variables and by random assignment

disadvantage- come important variable cannot be studified with experiments
Term
Research ethics in experiments
Definition
Some fields of research may raise questions about the ethics of experiments
Social psychologists and other researchers may face challenges in designing experiments that are engaging and ethical
Factors influencing participant engagement and research outcomes:

Mundane Realism vs. Experimental Realism
Deception
Demand Characteristics
Term
Founders of social psychology
Definition
Norman Triplet
McDougall
Floyd Allport
Term
What Kurt Lewin contributed
Definition
What we do depends to a large extent on how we perceive and interpret the world around us.
Behavior is a function of the interaction between the person and the environment.
Social psychological theories should be applied to important, practical issues.
Term
Spotlight effect
Definition
our tendency to think that other people are watching us more closely than they actually are.
Term
Illusion of transparency
Definition
a tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which their personal mental state is known by others
Term
Self esteem
Definition
a persons overall sense of self worth.
Motivation: sibling rivarlry, threat of rejection, terror management.
Term
Self-Control
Definition
Self-regulation is like a muscle
Becomes depleted after intense usage
Replenished after rest
Strengthened by exercise
Term
Self Efficacy
Definition
A sense that you are competent and effective
Relationship with psychopathology
Predicts worker productivity
Term
Locus of control
Definition
The extent to which you feel that you have control over outcomes in your life
Term
Learned Helplessness
Definition
Hopelessness and resignation learned when a human or animal perceives no control over repeated bad events
Term
Self determination
Definition
Development of self-discipline in one area of your life may cause self-control in other areas as well
Term
Self concept
Definition
composed of self schemas about our current selves as well as our possible selves
Term
Factors influencing the development of self
Definition
Our roles
Social comparisons
Success and failure
Judgments from other people
Surrounding Culture
Term
Roles we play
Definition
new ____ begin as play-acting then become reality

when we are kids we play 'house'
Term
social comparison
Definition
we compare ourselves with others and consider how we differ
Term
development of the social self (success and failure)
Definition
our daily experience cause us to have empowerment or low self-esteem
Term
self and culture: Individualism
Definition
Focused on own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications
Term
self and culture: collectivism
Definition
Focused on the goals of one’s groups and defining one’s identity accordingly (asian, african, and central and souther american cultures)
Term
Cultural concepts of self
Definition
Independent self is further away from personal relationships.
Interdependent is close with personal relationships
Term
explaining our behavior
Definition
our explanations for our behavior are often wrong
Term
Deception
Definition
intentionally misleading participants in a study
Term
Predicting our behavior
Definition
Romantic Relationships
Voting Behavior
Planning Fallacy- tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task
Spending Money
Term
predicting our feelings
Definition
Studies of “affective forecasting” reveal people have the greatest difficulty predicting the intensity and the duration of their future emotions

-Impact bias
Overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events (e.g. getting fired, winning lottery)
-Immune neglect
Tendency to neglect the speed and strength of the “psychological immune system” which enables emotional recovery and resilience after bad things happen
Term
self-serving bias
Definition
the tendency to maintain positive self perceptions

-Self-serving bias is a by-product of how we process and remember information about ourselves
-Self-Serving Bias may be
-Adaptive
-Protects people from psychological disorders
Aftermath of Trauma
Depressive realism
“The capacity to develop and maintain positive illusions may be thought of as a valuable human resource to be nurtured and promoted, rather than an error-prone processing system to be corrected.” Taylor & Brown (1988)
Maladaptive
Responsibility for group output
Group-serving bias


-Self-Serving Attributions – tendency to attribute positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to other factors
-We attribute successes to internal attributes
-We attribute failures to external factors
Term
Unrealistic Optimism
Definition
-Most individuals (in all cultures) are disposed to being overly optimistic
-People tend to believe that negative events are less likely to happen to them and positive events are more likely
-Unrealistic Optimism increases our vulnerability

"even though 50% of mariages fail, I know mine will be enduring joy"
Term
Defensive Pessimism
Definition
Adaptive value of anticipating problems and harnessing one’s anxiety to motivation action.
Term
False Consensus Effect
Definition
Tendency to overestimate the commonality of one’s opinions and one’s undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors
Term
False Uniqueness Effect
Definition
Tendency to underestimate the commonality of one’s abilities and one’s desirable or successful behaviors
Term
self handicapping
Definition
Protecting one’s self-image with behaviors that create a handy excuse for failure
Term
self presentation
Definition
behaving in ways designed to create a favorable impression or an impression that corresponds to one’s ideals
Term
self monitoring
Definition
Being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting one’s performance to create the desire impression
Term
Priming
Definition
Activating particular associations in memory
Term
Perceiving and interpreting events
Definition
-Political perceptions
-Perceptions of others
-Others perceptions of us
-Spontaneous trait inference (An automatic tendency to associate with people the traits that they impute to others.)
Term
Belief perseverance
Definition
Persistence of one’s initial conceptions, as when the basis for one’s belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives
Term
Overconfidence phenomenon
Definition
Tendency to be more confident than correct – to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs

"“I feel 98% certain that the air distance between New Delhi and Beijing is more than miles but less than miles."
Term
Confirmation bias
Definition
Tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions
Helps explain why our self-images are so stable
Term
Remedies of Overconfidence
Definition
-Give prompt feedback to explain why statement is incorrect
-For planning fallacy, ask one to “unpack a task” – break it down into estimated time requirements for each part
-Get people to think of one good reason why their judgments might be wrong
Term
Heuristics
Definition
heuristics: mental shortcuts
-Representativeness heuristic: Tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling (representing) a typical member
Term
availability heuristic
Definition
A Cognitive rules that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory
Term
Counterfactual Thinking
Definition
Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn’t
Term
Illusory correlation
Definition
perceiving a relationship where none exists

"it rains after you wash the car"
The myth of the hot hand
Term
Illusionary Control
Definition
Perception of uncontrollable events as subject to one’s control or as more controllable than they actually are

-gambling
Term
Misattribution
Definition
Mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source
Term
attribution theory
Definition
Theory of how people explain others’ behavior
Term
Inferring Traits
Definition
We often infer that other people’s actions are indicative of their intentions and dispositions
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