Social Psychology Final Exam Study Guide CH 1 2 1 Define Social Psychology The scientific study of how people affect and are affected by other people The scientific study of the way in which peoples thoughts feelings and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people Why study social psych To understand more about human nature To better ourselves 2 What does it mean to say p 05 How likely it is that the results would have occurred by chance Statistically significant If the results could have occurred by chance 5 or few times out of 100 p 05 95 sure that the results did not happen due to chance 3 Reification error Treating abstract concepts as concrete 4 Social and Cultural groups Humans are both social and cultural animals are social very few cultural People seek connections to others Prefer to live work and play together with others Why young humans are very helpless groups provide security food info and a means to reproduce Requires social acceptance Working to gain social acceptance People learn to work within cultural bounds Reputation is important work school and personal relationships Trying to succeed Cultural Animals The idea that evolution has shaped certain animals to be able to create and learn form culture Chimpanzee and culture can learn certain behaviors but not nearly as complex as humans Humans and culture share ideas and common ways of doing things that are passed down Importantly humans sense organs seemed to be geared towards perceiving other people not other animals perceiving faces prosopagnosia 5 Nature and Nurture Nature genes heredity the transmission of genes from one to another we are not born knowing to fear spiders but we are born with the ability to fear and learn what is dangerous ex spiders Nurture environment culture the context that a person lives and develops in It is better to think of them as shaping one another an interaction They depend on the amount of pathogens and the type of society Boy raised as a girl tells us that Nature kicks in around puberty Nature has an overwhelming force especially puberty The early part of Brenda s story claimed that sex roles are entirely due to so cialization nurture As the problems emerged it points to the idea that part of our gender identity is innate largely comes into play during puberty Nature and Social behavior Nature our genes hormones brain structure and other processes that we are born with Nurture what people learn from their parents peers society and other experiences Epigenetics a set of chemical reactions that switch parts of the genome off and on at strategic times and locations The genome dynamically responds to the environment Stress diet behavior toxins and other factors activate chemical switches that regu late gene expression ex irish potato famine famine affecting later generations seems to matter around 9 12 and for 2 generations 6 Demand Characteristics problem with experimental method Experimenter gives subtle cues to participants as to how to respond Solution 1 Standardization of the procedure everyone has the same experience ex pect for the IV 2 Double blind procedure 7 ABC triad of Social Psychology Affect How people feel inside self esteem prejudice attitudes Behavior Cognition What actions do people perform Why do people join groups help on each other or hurt one another What are people thinking How do they view themselves self concept What do they think about other groups of people 8 How is Psychology different than philosophy Scientific method and statistical methods 9 Scientific method 1 State problem 2 Formulate hypothesis 3 Collect data testing the hypothesis 4 Analyze the data using statistics 5 Publish finding 6 Statistical methods Experimental Method Only method which systematically controls and manipulates events can determine CAUSALITY Researcher manipulates IV Randomly assign subjects 10 When did Social psychology books first get published early 1900 s 11 Correlations Correlational Method Studies of naturally occurring relationships What are X and Y to each other Are two or more factors naturally associated Calculated by correlated coefficient Correlation does not equal causation Range from 1 00 to 1 00 Closer to 1 the stronger the correlation Closer to 0 the weaker the correlation pos neg neutral 12 The meaning of Confederate an actor that is part of the experiment and they will know the aim of the study someone who is part of the experiment working as a fake participant The Self 1 Three parts of the self 1 Self knowledge Also called self concept tell me about yourself Allows you to reflect on yourself Contains information about yourself Self awareness Helps us evaluate our self esteem Self deception When we try to escape from self awareness 2 Public Self Also called interpersonal self How we present ourselves to others Helps you connect socially with other people Trying to impress your friends coworkers family significant others ect Embarrass if we get caught doing something we didn t want others to know Reputation 3 Agent Self Also called Executive Function Enables you to influence other people and exert control over yourself Decision making should i eat desert Self control but i m on a diet 2 Three motivations of self knowledge 1 Appraisal motive simple desire to learn the truth about oneself whatever it is weakest 2 Self enhancement motive desire to learn favorable or flattering things about the self strongest 3 Consistency motive Desire to get feedback that confirms what the person already Can lead to biases believes about him herself 3 Define self deception strategies mental tricks people use to help them believe this that are false By dismissing failures suns in my eyes during tennis match thats why I didnt do well self serving bias Self deception When we try to escape from self awareness 4 Social Comparisons We assess our qualities by comparing our sense of self to others We prefer to compare ourselves to others that are similar How we view close others is important for how we view ourselves We try to associate ourselves with people who will make us look good BIRGing basking ins reflected glory Cutting off reflected failure CORfing we try to distance ourselves from others who make us look bad 5 Upward and Downward comparisons Senior compares himself to freshman downward comparison Freshman compares himself to senior upward comparison 4 Terror Management Theory How does SE let us avoid our own mortality SE is to protect us from the
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