Social psych study guide Table Of Contents Chapter 1 The Mission and the Method A Brief History of Social Psychology What Do Social Psychologists Do Social Psychology s Place in the World How Do Social Psychologists Answer Their Own Questions Chapter 3 The Self Chapter 4 Choices and Actions The Self in Control Chapter 5 Social Cognition Chapter 6 Emotion and Affect Chapter 7 Attitudes Beliefs and Consistency Chapter 8 Social Influence and Persuasion Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Aggression and Antisocial Behavior Chapter 11 Attraction and Exclusion Chapter 12 Close Relationships Passion Intimacy and Sexuality Key Words Defined Prosocial Behavior Doing What s Best for Others Chapter 1 The Mission and the Method A Brief History of Social Psychology Social psychology can help you make sense of your own world The mere presence of another person enhances performance on simple tasks Behaviorism seeks to explain all of psychology in terms of learning principles such Individual effort decreases as group size increases as reward and punishment What Do Social Psychologists Do Social psychology features experiments and the scientific method It studies inner states and processes as well as behavior Social psychology is concerned with the effects of other people on mainly adult human being s thoughts feelings and behaviors The ABC triad in social psychology stands for o Affect How people feel inside including emotion o Behavior What people do their actions o Cognition What people think about Social Psychology focuses especially on the power of situations Social Psychology s Place in the World Psychology is the study of behavior There are many other areas of psychology that are related to social psychology o Biological psychology physiological psychology and neuroscience focus on the brain nervous system and other aspects of the body o Clinical psychology focuses on abnormal behavior and disorders o Cognitive psychology studies thought processes o Developmental psychology focuses on how people change across their lives How Do Social Psychologists Answer Their Own Questions They utilize the scientific method 1 State a problem for study 2 Formulate a testable hypothesis 3 Design a study to test the hypothesis 4 Conduct the study 5 Communicate your results 2 Chapter 3 The Self What is the self Who makes the self the individual or the society Self Awareness Chapter 4 Choices and Actions The Self in Control Chapter 5 Social Cognition o The tendency to take credit for success but deny blame for failure Actor Observer Bias Anchoring and Adjustment Attribution theory o o the tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by using a starting point called an anchor and then making adjustments up or down the attribution theory that uses three types of information consensus consistency and distinctiveness the causal explanations people give for their own and others behaviors and for events in general the tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which relevant instances come to mind the tendency to ignore or underuse base rate information and instead to be influenced by the distinctive features of the case being judged o a term used to describe people s reluctance to do much extra thinking the tendency to notice and search for information that confirms one s beliefs and to ignore information that disconfirms one s beliefs the tendency to see an event as more likely as it becomes more specific because it is joined with elements that seem similar to events that are likely in attribution theory whether other people would do the same thing in the same situation in attribution theory whether the person typically behaves this way in this situation Attributions o Availability heuristic Base Rate fallacy Cognitive Miser Confirmation bias Conjunction Fallacy Consensus o Consistency o Contaminaton Counterfactual thinking counterregulation Covariation principle the what the heck effect that occurs when people indulge in a behavior they are trying to regulate after an initial regulation failure for something to be the cause of a behavior it must be present when the behavior occurs and absent when the behavior does not occur reducing errors and biases by getting people to use controlled processing rather than automatic processing Debiasing o Distinctiveness o in attribution theory whether a person would behave differenly in a different situation Downward counterfactuals imagining alternatives that are worse than actuality False Consensus effect False uniqueness effect First instinct fallacy the tendency to overestimate the number of people who share one s opinions attitudes values and beliefs the tendency to underestimate the number of other people who share one s most prized characteristics and abilities o when something becomes impure or unclean imagining alternatives to past or present events or circumstances o o o o o o o o o o o the false belief that it is better not to change one s first answer on a test even if one starts to think that a different answer is correct o whether messages stress potential gains positively framed or potential Framing losses negatively framed Fundamental attribution error the tendency for observers to attribute other people s behavior to internal or dispositional causes and to downplay situational causes focuses on the positive such as how your teeth will be stronger and healthier if you brush and floss them everyday the tendency to believe that a particular chance event is affected by previous events and that chance events will even run out in the short run o mental shortcuts that provide quick estimates of the likelihood of uncertain the tendency for gamblers who get lucky to think they have a hot hand and their luck will continue the false belief that one can influence certain events especially random events chance events the tendency to overestimate the link between variables that are related only slightly or not at all o having too much information to comprehend or integrate o Organized packets of information that are stored in memory o focuses on the negative such as the potential for getting cavities if you do not brush and floss your teeth every day Gain framed appeal Gambler s Fallacy Heuristics events Hot Hand o Illusion of Control Illusory Correlation Information overload Knowledge structures Loss framed appeal o o o o o o o thinking based on assumptions that don t hold up to rational scrutiny Magical thinking Meta cognition reflecting
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