Psychology Study Guide Final Exam Chapter 16 Social Psychology 1 1 What is psychology What are the three main focuses of social psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of how we think about social cognition influence social influence and relate to one another social relations 2 What is an attribution Describe the fundamental attribution error Attributions explain someone s behavior by crediting either the situation or the person s disposition People usually attribute others behavior either to their internal dispositions or their external situations The fundamental attribution error is defined as overestimating the influence of personality and underestimating the influence of situations 3 Define attitude and explain how attitudes and actions affect each other Attitudes are feelings often influenced by our beliefs that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects people and events If we believe someone is mean we may feel dislike for the person and act unfriendly Attitudes often predict our behavior and attitudes follow behavior Belief feeling action 4 Explain the foot in the door phenomenon A tendency for people who agree to a small action to comply later with a larger one A trivial act makes the next act easier To get people to agree to something big start small and build 5 Explain the central claim of cognitive dissonance theory We often bring our attitudes in line with our actions It is the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort dissonance we feel when two of our thoughts cognitions are inconsistent The less coerced and more responsible we feel for a troubling act the more dissonance we feel The more dissonance we feel the more motivated we are to find consistency such as changing our attitudes to help justify the act 6 What is conformity Adjusting one s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard 7 Describe Asch s experiments on conformity and differentiate between normative and informational social influence Note factors influencing conformity Asch devised and experiment where he had 5 people sitting down and had one person come in and the experimenter performed a vision test On the second round one of the students has trouble stating the obvious correct answer after the 5 confederates had answered incorrectly The study showed that people have a hard time going against the norm Normative social influence explains that people conform because they fear social rejection or to gain social approval where as informational 2 social influence explains that people conform because they accept the opinions of others 8 List Factors that increase conformity Feeling incompetent the group has at lest three people the group is unanimous you admire the groups status or attractiveness one has made no prior commitment to any response others in the group observe one s behavior you are a collectivist culture 9 What is obedience Describe Milgram s experiment on obedience and explain what this experiment teaches us Obedience is behavior following the rules or commands of one in authority Milgram conducted a study learner and teacher where the teacher gives tests on word pairs and the learner receives shocks for wrong answers However the learner doesn t actually get shocked the teacher is forced to shock the learner by the experimenter The teacher continued to shock the learner for wrong answers just because he was being forced to The study showed that good people can do bad things And that situation plays important roles in behavior 10 Describe conditions in which the presence of others in likely to result in social facilitation social loafing and de individualization Social facilitation is the tendency for people in the presence of others to enhance performance on simple tasks and impair performance on complex tasks Social loafing is the tendency of people to exert less effort in group tasks tug of war People think their contribution is unimportant therefore causing less individual participation De individualization causes us to be less self conscious and less restrained in a group situation The presence of others can arouse us and can diminish the feelings of responsibility resulting in uninhibited behavior food fights 11 What is group polarization Explain how group interaction can facilitate group polarization Strengthening of attitudes through discussion with like minded people Group polarization can have beneficial results is amplifies and reinforces feelings and beliefs But can also enhance people s feelings of prejudice or other negative feelings 12 What is prejudice and identify the three components of prejudice Prejudice is an unjustifiable attitude toward a group and its members Prejudice generally involves stereotyped beliefs negative feelings and predisposition to discriminatory action 13 What are the social roots of prejudice Inequalities social divisions and emotional scapegoating People who have money power and prestige tend to develop attitudes towards people who don t have these things We tend to identify ourselves in groups and dislike people who our out group This develops an in group bias Prejudice springs from cultures divisions heart s passions and also 3 from the mind s natural workings Stereotyped beliefs are a by product of how we cognitively simplify the world We categorize people and groups biased on stereotypes and biased opinions 14 Describe four ways that cognitive processes may help create and maintain prejudice Categorization In categorizing groups we often stereotype them biasing our perceptions of their diversity We recognize how greatly people differ from oth er individuals in our groups but we overestimate the similarity of those within our groups Other race effect The tendency to recall faces of one s own race more accurately than faces of other races Vivid cases We often judge the frequency of events by instances that readily come to mind Vivid cases are readily available to our memory and therefore influence our judgments of a group Just world phenomenon People justify their prejudice by blaming its victims People get what they deserve The just world phenomenon reflects an idea we commonly teach our children that good is rewarded and evil is punished 15 What are the two types of prejudice Overt open which is conscious associating words such as happy or peace with positive objects and negative words with insects and subtle implicit which is unconscious black and white people 16 Define altruism Unselfish regard for the
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