Term
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Definition
| The tendency to exaggerate, after learning an outcome, one's ability to have foreseen how something turned out |
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Term
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Definition
| Research and experiments done in natural, real-life settings outside the laboratory |
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Term
| Define laboratory experiments |
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Definition
| Studies that seek clues to cause-effect relationships by manipulating one or more factors (independent variables) while controlling others (holding them constant) |
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Term
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Definition
| Content analysis of existing archives, e.g., newspapers, television, movies, magazines, diaries |
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Term
| Define internal and external validity |
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Definition
Internal Validity: The degree of confidence that the independent variable in an experiment caused the effects obtained on the dependent variable
External Validity: The degree of confidence that the results of a study would be obtained for other people and in other situations |
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Term
| How does your textbook define social psychology? According to lecture, why is social psychology described as the “scientific study” of human thinking and behavior? |
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Definition
The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another.
Because social psychology uses the empirical method to test its hypotheses and theories: there is a strong emphasis on theory and research |
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Term
| According to lecture, what historic event prompted a surge of social psychological research in the areas of prejudice and persuasion? |
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Definition
| World War II (Nazis, fascism, etc.) |
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Term
| How did research interests in social psychology shift in during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s? |
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Definition
1950s: research on conformity
1960s: research on aggression
1970s: research on gender
1980s: research on conflict and peacemaking
1990s: research on cultural diversity |
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Term
| Name and describe the “big ideas” in social psychology described in your textbook and in lecture. |
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Definition
-We construct our social reality
-Social influences shape our behavior
-Attitudes and dispositions shape behavior
-Social behavior is biologically rooted
-Social psychology can be applied in everyday life |
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Term
| How is social psychology different from sociology? |
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Definition
| Sociology focuses on group or institutional influences, e.g., race, social class, income level, institutions, where as social psychology focuses on the average individual |
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Term
| How is social psychology different from personality psychology? |
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Definition
| Personality Psychology focuses on differences between individuals and social psychology focuses on how most people would act in a given situation |
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Term
| Provide some examples of the hindsight bias and explain why people are prone to believe that social psychology is just common sense. |
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Definition
Hurricane Katrina: The levees were tested and shown to be sub par, many residents didnt own cars, etc.
Common sense in hindsight (usually accompanied by a convenient proverb) |
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Term
| Describe the follow-up study of the 1951 Princeton-Dartmouth grudge match. Which “big idea” in social psychology did the results of this study best reflect? |
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Definition
| Both sides thought the coach favored the other team; "We construct our social reality" |
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Term
| What are the major tenets of Kurt Lewin’s field theory presented in class? |
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Definition
-b = f (p/e)
Behavior is a function of the person and the environment
-The social environment is dynamic and interactive
-The person and the situation interact |
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Term
| What are the advantages and disadvantages of correlational research? |
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Definition
Advantages: Allows researcher to collect data as it exists in a natural environment and can be used when other research methods would be unethical
Disadvantages:Researcher cannot manipulate variables or establish cause-effect, and the third variable problem |
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Term
| What are the advantages and disadvantages of experimental research? |
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Definition
Advantage: Establishes cause-effect relationships
Disadvantage: Poor external validity |
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Term
| To what does internal and external validity refer? |
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Definition
Internal Validity: The degree of confidence that the independent variable in an experiment caused the effects obtained on the dependent variable
External Validity: The degree of confidence that the results of a study would be obtained for other people and in other situations |
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Term
| Describe the following concerns of survey research and provide an example for each: Unrepresentative samples, order of questions, response options, and wording of questions. |
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Definition
Unrepresentative samples: Taking your data from a non-random source (1936 presidential election and the use of phones/DMV records when it was the Depression)
Order of questions:"Americans' support for civil unions of gays and lesbians rises if they are first asked their opinion of gay marriage, compared with which civil unions seem a more acceptable alternative"
Response options: Joop van der Plight asked English public what % they'd like nuclear energy to provide (41%) then what percentages from coal, nuclear, and other sources. Percent went down to 21.
Wording of questions: 23% of Americans thought their government was spending too much on assistance to the poor, but 53% thought gov't was spending too much on welfare |
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Term
| Describe and provide an example of archival research. |
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Definition
| Archer et. al (1983) Hypothesis: Advertisers and the television and print media visually portray men and women differently. Results found in magazine and other ads had full bodied pictures of women, but only chest up for men |
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Term
| What is interjudge reliability and why is its use critical to observational research? |
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Definition
| The results' ability to be replicated by other experimenters. Indicates how sound the research was |
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Term
| Why did the Literary Digest incorrectly predict that Alf Landon would defeat Franklin Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election? |
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Definition
| They took their sample from phone and DMV records, not taking into account that the majority of people could not afford either of these things, since it was during the Depression |
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Term
| Define the "Looking Glass Self" |
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Definition
| Cooley: Other people serve as a mirror through which we see ourselves |
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Term
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Definition
| Beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information |
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Term
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Definition
| A person's answers to the question, "Who am I?" |
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Term
| Define "spotlight effect" |
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Definition
| The belief that others are paying more attention to one's appearance and behavior than they really are |
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Term
| Define the "illusion of transparency" |
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Definition
| The illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by others |
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Term
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Definition
| Being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting one's performance to create the desired impression |
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Term
| What is the "self reference effect"? |
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Definition
| The tendency to process efficiently and remember well information related to onesself |
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Term
| What is "affective forecasting" |
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Definition
| Self-predictions of how one would feel in response to future events |
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Term
| What is the "impact bias"? |
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Definition
| The tendency to overestimate the enduring impact of an emotion-causing event |
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Term
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Definition
| The human tendency to underestimate the speed and the strength of the "psychological immune system," which enables emotional recovery and resilience after bad things happen |
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Term
| What is one's "social identity"? |
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Definition
| The "we" aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to "Who am I" that comes from our group memberships |
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Term
| Define "self handicapping" |
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Definition
| Protecting one's self-image with behaviors that create a handy excuse for later failure |
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Term
| Describe the social comparison theory |
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Definition
| Evaluating one's abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others |
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Term
| Describe a "collectivist culture" |
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Definition
| A group of people who share the concepts of giving priority to the goals of one's groups and defining one's identity acccordingly |
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Term
| What is an "individualistic culture?" |
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Definition
| A group of people who agree with the concepts of giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identification |
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Term
| Describe the "independent self" |
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Definition
| Defining the self apart from others |
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Term
| Describe the "Interdependent self" |
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Definition
| Construing one's identity in relation to to others |
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Term
| Describe the way the self shifts its focus with regard to our social surrounds, self-interests, self-concerns and social relationships. |
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Definition
-Social surroundings affect self-awareness
-Self-interests affect our social judgments
-Self-concern motivates our social behavior
-Social relationships help define ourselves |
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Term
| Describe the study presented in lecture conducted by George Gallup that examined self-awareness in non-human animals. What were the results of the study? How did being raised in isolation affect the development of self-awareness in great apes? |
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Definition
Dogs, cats, rhesus monkeys and great apes placed in front of mirror, only rhesus monkeys and great apes showed interest in their reflection.
Those held in isolation were less likely to recognize or react to a reflection of themselves than those with social experience. |
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Term
| Describe what Cooley meant by the term “looking-glass self.” |
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Definition
| We form the picture of ourselves according to the reactions of those around us |
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Term
| According to research by Lewis and Brooks-Gunn presented in lecture at what age does self-recognition typically emerges in humans? |
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Definition
| A year and a half to two years |
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Term
| How often do we think about ourselves? Describe the Beeper Study (Csikszentmihalyi & Figurski, 1982) presented in class. What percentage of thoughts were about the self? |
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Definition
| Beeper study: 107 participants wore beepers that went off randomly. They reported activities, thoughts and mood. The participants were only thinking of themselves a small amount of the time |
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Term
| What is the spotlight effect? Provide an example. |
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Definition
| Thinking that others are paying more attention to us than they really are. Study done where participants gave a speech and rated how nervous they thought they looked vs. how nervous the audience thought they looked |
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Term
| What is a self-schema? What is the self-reference effect? Provide examples. |
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Definition
Schema: If athletics is central to your self-concept (schema), then you will tend to notice others' bodies and skills, recall sports-related experiences, and welcome info that is consistent with your self-schema
Self-reference: The tendency to efficiently process and remember information that is relevant to ourselves (recalling sports facts as noted above) |
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Term
| What are the differences between individualistic cultures and collectivist cultures? |
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Definition
| Individualistic cultures focus on the individual and being good at something, whereas collectivists focus on the group and focus on becoming better |
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Term
| What is the difference between an independent sense of self and an interdependent sense of self? |
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Definition
| Independent sense of self is what is different about us compared to others, interdependent is a view of ourselves in relation to others |
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Term
| Is an interdependent sense of self more likely to be found in an individualistic culture or collectivist culture? |
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Definition
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Term
| What is most likely to affect the self-esteem of individuals living in a collectivist culture? |
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Definition
| "What others think of me and my group;" more relational, less personal |
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Term
| According to lecture, why do people tend to overestimate the extent to which they would feel following an emotional event? Discuss the role of the durability bias and immune neglect. |
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Definition
Because strategies for rationalizing, discounting, forgiving and limiting emotional trauma allow us to recover from trauma more quickly than we would expect (psychological immune system);
"Emotional races of good tidings evaporate faster than we expect" (impact bias); |
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Term
| According to social comparison theory presented in lecture when and why are we most likely to make an upward social comparison and a downward social comparison? |
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Definition
Upward:Comparing ourselves to people who are better than we are (when we need to improve knowledge or skills)
Downward: Comparing ourselves to people who are worse than we are (to boost self esteem) |
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Term
| What are the benefits of self-efficacy presented in your textbook and lecture? |
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Definition
People with strong feelings of self-efficacy:
-are more persistent in achieving a goal
-are less anxious
-are less depressed
-have a greater tolerance for pain
-have stronger immune systems |
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Term
| Describe the Attribution theory |
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Definition
| People attribute the behavior of others to either the person or to the situation |
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Term
| What is the fundamental attribution error? |
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Definition
| The tendency to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences when explaining the behavior of others |
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Term
| Define belief perseverance |
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Definition
| Persistence in a belief even after contradictory or dis-confirming evidence has been provided |
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Term
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Definition
| Activating particular associations in memory |
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Term
| What is the misinformation effect? |
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Definition
| Misleading or suggestive information can cause us to recall an event differently than how it actually happened |
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Term
| What is rosy retrospection? |
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Definition
| Recalling mildly pleasant events as being more pleasurable than they had experienced them |
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Term
| What is controlled processing? |
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Definition
| "explicit" thinking that is deliberate, reflective, and conscious |
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Term
| Automatic processing is... |
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Definition
| "Implicit" thinking that is effortless, habitual, and without awareness, roughly corresponding to "intuition" |
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Term
| Describe the overconfidence effect |
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Definition
| The tendency to be more confident than correct; to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs |
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Term
| Define the confirmation bias |
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Definition
| The tendency to search for information that confirms our preconceptions |
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Term
| What is the self-fulfilling prophecy? |
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Definition
| A belief that f=leads to its own fulfillment |
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Term
| What is a representative heuristic? |
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Definition
| A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case |
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Term
| What is the availability heuristic? |
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Definition
| The tendency to judge the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory, i.e., by the ease at which it comes to mind |
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Term
| Describe counter-factual thinking |
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Definition
| Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn't |
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Term
| What is the illusion of control? |
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Definition
| Perception of uncontrollable events as under one’s control or as more controllable than they are |
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Term
| What is the illusory correlation? |
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Definition
| Perception of a relationship where none exists or believing a relationship is stronger than it really is |
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Term
| Define nonverbal communication. |
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Definition
| The way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words |
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Term
| What are the four functions of nonverbal communication presented in lecture? |
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Definition
-Expression of emotions
-Conveying attitudes
-Communicating one’s personality
-Facilitating verbal communication |
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Term
| Describe the study by Hansen and Hansen presented in lecture. Do the results of the study support or refute Darwin’s claim that the facial expression of emotions has survival value? |
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Definition
Participants shown picture of a crowd of happy faces and one angry face or a crowd of angry faces with one happy face. They were asked to find the one happy or angry face amidst the others. People found the angry face among the happy much faster.
Has a survival advantage because the angry face is a potential threat |
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Term
| What are the six universal facial expressions of emotions identified by Paul Ekman? |
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Definition
Happiness
Sadness
Fear
Surprise
Disgust
Anger
(Later added contempt) |
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Term
| Describe the way in which affect blends and display rules can lower the accuracy of decoding nonverbal behavior. |
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Definition
Affect blends: more than one expression at a time
Display rules: cultural norms that govern how and when to display an emotion
Both make expressions veiled or complicated |
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Term
| What are the gender differences in nonverbal communication skills presented in lecture? |
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Definition
| Men are more likely than women to attribute a woman’s friendliness to sexual interest |
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Term
| How good are most people at correctly decoding the meaning of nonverbal behavior? |
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Definition
| Pretty good (64% accuracy, Americans being better than most) |
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Term
| Describe Archer and Ackert’s (1998) research using the Social Interpretations Task |
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Definition
| Used videotaped, naturally occurring interactions as stimuli, revealed that people are able to interpret such cues fairly accurately by making use of multiple cues. Research with the SIT indicates that extraverts may be better decoders than introverts. |
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Term
| What are the four explanations for the fundamental attribution error presented in lecture? |
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Definition
-We tend to be “cognitive misers”
-The actor-observer difference
-Motivational biases
-Priming and accessibility |
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Term
| Describe the study by Storms (1973) on the actor-observer difference explanation of the fundamental attribution error. In what condition were participants most likely to make a dispositional attribution for their own behavior? |
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Definition
| When viewing a video of the other participant actors were more likely to make a situational attribution for their own behavior, but when viewing themselves they were more likely to make dispositional attributions. |
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Term
| According to your textbook, why do many men assume women are flattered by repeated requests for dates, when women actually view the behavior as harassing? |
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Definition
| It is a misattribution error on the part of the men. Men think about sex more often and are more likely to assume that others share their feelings |
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Term
| According to the attribution theorist Kelley (1973), what three types of information do we use when we make attributions for other people's behavior? |
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Definition
Consistency: How consistent the is behavior to the situation
Distinctness: How specific the behavior is to the specific situation
Consensus: The extent to which others' behavior is similar |
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Term
| Describe the study by Jones & Harris in which students read debaters' speeches either supporting or attacking Cuban leader Fidel Castro. What were the results of the study? |
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Definition
| When told debater was ASSIGNED to write a pro-Castro speech participants still believed that he/she was pro-Castro |
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Term
| Describe the study by Burger & Pavelich (1994). According to their findings, how does a person’s initial explanation of another’s behavior change over time? |
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Definition
| Asked voters why election turned out the way it did, which people attributed to personality and positions (incumbent was likable). A year later, voters said it was the circumstances. As time goes on, people give more and more credit to the situation |
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Term
| Describe the study by Bem and McConnell in which they had students write essays opposing student control over university curriculum. What were the results of the study? |
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Definition
| Students more likely to recall being opposed to student control over the curriculum after writing the essay |
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Term
| Describe the research by Loftus and others on the misinformation effect presented in lecture. |
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Definition
| Participants viewed a videotaped car accident and asked how fast they were going when the “bumped” or “collided”. "Bumped" prompted slower speed estimates than "collided" (collided also had broken glass recalls) |
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Term
| Describe the study conducted by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) on teachers’ expectations of students’ academic potential. What were the results of this study? |
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Definition
| Those randomly selected students that teachers were led to believe were gifted began performing better due to the teacher's unconscious encouragement |
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