Social Psychology Exam 1

• The ways in which people think about themselves and the social world
• Includes how they select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions

• Think that is non-conscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless
• Allows us to form judgments easily
• These are based on our past experiences and knowledge of the world

• Mental structures that organize our knowledge about the social world
• Based on themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember
• Ex: our schema about frat boys is they are loud, douchey, obnoxious party-goers

• They help us figure out what is going on
• Ex: Guest lecturer comes into class. Half the class is told he's mean and cold hearted; the other half he is nice and likeable.
• Students used the given schema and rated the professor accordingly. The ones who were told he was mean wrote he was mean and vice versa.

• People cannot form new memories and much approach every situation as if it is new
• Some people go to great lengths to form memories and reasons for why things were the way they were

• People were more likely to shoot blacks even if they were not weapon wielding
• This resulted in the most shootings of an armed person, but also the most of an unarmed person

• Ex: guy sits next to you on a bus and mutters incoherently to himself and rocks in his seat
• There are three types
• 1) Chronological - If you have had alcoholism in your family you think he's an alcoholic. If you've had a history of mental disorders, he has a mental disorder
• 2) Related to a current goal - If you are studying about a disease in your abnormal psych class you might attribute the disease to this person
• 3) Recent experiences - Reading book about mental disorders that morning, you attribute him to have a mental disorder

The process by which recent experiences in cease the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept

The ase hereby people have an expectation abou what another person if like, which influences how they act toward that person, which causes that person to behave consistently with people's original expectations, making the expectations come true

• Students in a class were given a test
• Researchers told the teacher that certain students would perform better, they chose these kids out of random
• Students that were chosen as bloomers showed significantly greater IQ score gains than the other students did

• 1) Create a warmer emotional climate, more personal attention, encouragement, and suppor
• 2) Give more material to learn and more difficult material
• 3) Give bloomers more and better feedback
• 4) Give bloomers more opportunities to respond in class and give them longer to respond

People can "cite the actual course of events as proof that they were right from the beginning"

• A girl with is about to go in for a job interview
• Someone who has negative expectations about her qualifications, gender, race, previous place of employment, etc is interviewing her
• Can she overcome these expectations?
• If the interviewer is not paying attention, no
• But if the interviewer is paying attention and trying to make an effort, yes

• Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently
• Sometimes we do not have schemas or there are too many schemas so we must apply judgmental heuristics
• MOST of the time they are highly functional and serve us well

• A mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind
• If someone asks you if they are lazy and you can only think of them being active, you will tell them they are active. If you can only think of them being lazy, they are lazy.

• Information about the frequency od members of different categories of the population
• Ex: More in state than out of state students. Someone who fits a Cali demographic may be from the in state school because of the statistical evidence.
• We focus more on representativeness heuristics than base rate information

• A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case
• Student in NYU has blonde hair, relaxed, likes the ocean -> assume he's from Cali
• We focus more on representativeness heuristics than base rate information

• A type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context
• This is common in western cultures

• A type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other
• This is common in east Asian cultures

Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful

Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been

• The attempt to avoid thinking about something we would prefer to forget
• --Although thinking about it and reasoning is proven to be psychologically healthier than suppression

The fact that people usually have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgments

The study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people

• The way in which people communicate, intentionally, or unintentionally, without words
• Nonverbal cues include facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position and movement, the use of touch and gaze
• Generally more honest than verbal cues

To express or emit nonverbal behavior, such as smiling or patting someone on the back

To interpret the meaning of the nonverbal behavior other people express, such as deciding that a pat on the back was an expression of condescension and not kindness

• Anger, fear, disgust, happiness, surprise, sadness
• Pride and contempt are also cross-culturally recognized

• Culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display
• Ex: US it is discouraged to show shame while others embrace or encourage it

• A nonverbal gesture that has a well-understood definition within a given culture
• Usually have a direct verbal translation such as flipping someone off means "fuck you" or "fuck off"

A type of schema people use to group various kinds of personality traits together; for example, many people believe that someone who is kind is generous as well

A description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people's behavior

The inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character, or personality

• The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation the person is in
• The assumption is that most people would respond the same way in that situation
• IE tripping on a sidewalk

A theory that states that to form an attribution about what caused a person's behavior, we systematically note the pattern between the presence or absence of possibly causal factors and whether or not the behavior occurs

Information about the extent to which the other people behave the same way toward the same stimulus as the actor does

Information about the extent to which one particular actor behaves in the same to different stimuli

Information about the extent to which the behavior between one actor and one stimulus is the same across time and circumstances

• The tendency to infer that people's personality corresponds to, or matches, their dispositions and personalities
• People tend to underestimate external influences when explaining other people's behavior
• When we try to explain someone's behavior we focus on the person, not the external environment
• The situation is too hard to see or know

• Analyzing another person's behavior first by making an automatic internal attribution and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behavior, after which one may adjust the original internal attribution
• 1) We make an internal attribution -- we assume that a person's behavior was due to something about that person
• 2) We then attempt to adjust this attribution by considering the situation the person was in

• Americans are more focused on internal attributions and we focus on the main target in pictures (zoom)
• Other, more Asian cultures, focus on external attributions and focus on the whole picture (panorama)
• The Asians tend to take the 2nd step in the two-step process, Americans stop at 1

• The tendency to see other people's behavior as dispositionally caused but focused more on the role of situational factos when explaining one's own behavior
• We see things differently if we are in the situation or watching the situation
• Refers to perceptual saliency: we notice other people's behavior more than the situation
• Likewise, we notice our own situation more than our behavior
• Ex: tripping on a sidewalk

• People tend to take personal credit for their successes but blame their failures on external events beyond their control
• We do this to preserve our self-esteem and we want people to think highly of us

Explanations for behavior that avoid feelings of vulnerability and mortality

A form of defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people

• Nature is the belief that we are who we are because of heredity and genetics
• Nurture is the belief that we are who we are because of how we are raised and from our surroundings. Environment determines our behavior

• Free will is the belief that the individual has control over his/her life and can choose to make decisions
• Determinism is the belief that everything is pre-decided for us and we have no control over what we do

• Optimism is the belief that we can make the world a better place
• Pessimism is the belief in suffering and pain
• 3rd source of suffering is the natural world
• 2nd source is the natural world
• ***1st srouce of anguish/suffering is others

• It is an objective and systematic method of research in any scientific analysis
• The goals are to determine if a variable influences some form of social behavior

• The factor being studied
• This is manipulated by the experimenter

The behavior being studied or measured

• Control group - Receives no treatment or stimulus
• Sample size - Number of people in experiment
• Replication - Repeating the experiment to verify results

• There is direct control over the independent variable
• We ran randomly assign
• We can simplify the world to control behavior

• Mundane realism is low. This is the degree to which the study resembles real-world events. Higher is better.
• External validity - This is the degree of "generalizibility" of the findings to the population

College sophomores

• Cues that reveal the hypothesis under study
• The people in the experiment determine what the experiment is about
• We don't want people feeling like they have a demand for something, IE politics

The participant has a concern about being observed during a study so they are not themselves

Participants are aware they are being watched

Participants are unaware they are being watched

• High mundane realism
• High external validity
• Covert studies avoid evaluation apprehension and demand characteristics

• The independent variable must be salient (apparent, obvious)
• Dependent variable is simple
• Practical problems show up that can destroy the experiment

• Cannot deceive the participants
• Must get the participant's approval before the experiment (also sets up demand characteristics)
• Must provide a debriefing to give the participant a FULL explanation of what went on, after the study was over

• Toward the end of his life he studied facial expressions
• 1. Facial expressions are universal and innate (we are born with them)
• 2. Human facial expressions evolve from animal emotions and expressions
• 3. Facial expressions have survival value

• Went out with Friesen and proved that it was true
• Facial expressions are universal

• The human face has 44 muscles
• Ekman determined we have roughly 10,000 facial expressions

• 1) Average facial expression lasts 1 to 1.5 seconds
• 2) We mask our emotions with facial expressions. IE we are sad, we mask to seem like we are happy
• 3) MME are brief, contradictory facial expressions of emotion
• 4) Ex: girl in hospital seemed very happy. She was released and killed herself. Exploration revealed that she was angry via MME's

• 1) Lots of blinking and using a false smile with extra laughter
• 2) Masking - we hide the true emotion with a fake expression
• 3) Display rules - cultural rules that dictate the appropriate conditions for displaying emotions

• Many agencies were subjected to a test to determine if people were lying
• Only the secret service passed

• Newborns are born with one active facial muscle
• We use the face to display emotion from birth to 1.5 years
• Once we develop voice we stop with face
• Most infants smile after birth
• Babies only 36 hours old can imitate happy, sad, and surprised emotions

• 1) Body language - gestures, movements, postures
• 1b) Emblems - Body movements with specific meanings. Refers to a GIVEN culture
• 2) Gazing - High level of eye contact can refer to someone liking another person
• 2b) During job interviews a high level of eye contact yields high success of being hired

• 1) Females are superior to males in the use of emotional cues
• 2) Females are both more effective at both sending and receiving unspoken messages
• 3) Socialization -> Women are raised to express their emotions and feelings, males are told to go play

• After something bad happens we ask why?
• We want causality - 1 things causes another
• We need to understand the cause

• The process of explaining the causal nature of events
• 1) Personal attribution -> Attribution based on internal characteristics (personality, talent, moods, effort)
• 2) Situational attributions -> Attribution based on external factors (luck, government, religion)

• Generalized beliefs about the control of ones personal and situational behavior (and the behavior of others)
• Do others control you? Or do you control yourself?

The individual assumes responsibility for life events

The person accepts uncontrollable forces that determine life events

• Develop tendencies that push you to develop internal or external LOC's
• a) Internal LOC is related to high parental expectations and autonomy (freedom) in childhood
• b) External LOC is related to a hostile, strict upbringing. Parents care TOO much

• a) Higher ILOC yields a higher GPA and higher levels of education
• b) Higher ELOC yields higher drop-out rates. If I study it doesn't make a difference and I'll fail, so why study?

• a) Aging is associated with an increase in ILOC. We gain a larger sense of the world and gain more control
• b) Trauma may produce higher levels of ELOC. Helpless, can't control, such as divorce and rape

• The tendency to overestimate dispositional factors and ignore situational factors
• We assume people are angry based on the situation
• Lady is screaming at a customer, judge her as a bitch without considering the situational factors. Only focus on her personality.

• The tendency to attribute our behavior to situational causes and the behavior of others to their personalities
• Judge others on personality
• Judge ourselves based on the situation

• The tendency to take credit for successes but to blame others (or the situation) for our errors
• American politics thrives here

• a) The tendency to overestimate commonality of one's opinions, beliefs, attributions, and behavior
• b) People ignore (the true) consensus information in favor of their self-generated attributions
• They believe their behavior ius typical, but not everyone agrees with us

Tendency to search for information that confirms our beliefs and attributions

Mental set used to organize information abut the social world

• "On being insane in insane places"
• Found people with no mental illness and admit them to a psych ward
• Not one staff could tell they were sane
• All the patients could tell they were normal
• Staff thought their normal behavior was abnormal

• When a person's initial expectation about someone leads to actions that cause the expectations to come true
• **Someone else judges you and you live up or down to that expectation
• This bias' how you see yourself

• Tendency to cling to initial beliefs even after being discredited
• People will believe things even if there's no need
• Want to believe things despite evidence

• Tendency to base our beliefs on vivid images or anecdotes rather than on consensus statistical data
• Ex: presidents tell stories

• These are rule of thumb methods that allow us to make quick, although not always accurate, judgments
• It is NOT an algorithm (slower speed, more accurate)
• They ARE educated guesses (much faster, less accurate)

Tendency to overestimate how likely an event will occur by how easily other instances or examples come to mind

• Tendency to classify information according to ho similar it is to a typical case
• Someone stole a TV and we assume he's a Mexican