PSYC 360 1st Edition Exam 1 Study Guide Lectures 1 9 Lecture 1 August 21 Introduction to the Social Psychology What is the relationship among personality behavior and situation Define a situation Define Social Psychology Behavior is a person s observable actions Personality is an individual s stable way of typically behaving Personality influences a person s behavior Situation is another word for environment or context So the situation is when something is being done where it is with whom and what is being done It is where you are at a particular moment Social Psychology is the why when considering a situation There are two definitions Scientific study of the power of the situation to influence behavior Scientific study of how our behavior is influenced by others and our behavior toward others Lecture 2 August 26 Relationship among personality situations and behavior Personality Behavior Situation Personality and situation influence a person s behavior Lecture 3 August 28 What are the two different types of causation Define both types of causation What type of causation is human behavior considered Define hindsight bias principle of multiple of determinism and magic bullet fallacy The two types of causation are Deterministic Probabilistic Deterministic Causation If A causes B then A must always be followed by B o The two things MUST occur in sequence always Probabilistic Causation A s occurrence increases the likelihood of B o The occurrence of A does not guarantee that B will occur o Human behavior is probabilistic Hindsight Bias is the tendency to think we knew something all along even if we didn t o Ex Football fans stating they knew their team was going to win the game before the game started but not stating this until after the game was won Principle of Multiple Determinism is defined as anything interesting is influenced by many factors Magic Bullet Fallacy is mistakenly believing that there is one single cause for a complex event Lecture 4 September 2 Relationship Variables What are the 3 logical possibilities when given any scenario Means CORRELATED with Means CAUSES Three logical possibilities when given a scenario X Y Y Y X causes Y X Y causes x Z A third variable Z causes both X and Y X With probabilistic causation we can never say correlation proves causation So for this class the most logical possibility will be option 3 Lecture 5 September 5 Third Variable Option From the third variable option we can assume X Y Lecture 6 September 11 Why you use random assignment Define dependent and independent variable Random Assignment Assigning people to different groups in an experiment in such a way that everyone has an equal chance of being in each condition group Using a random assignment will eliminate the possibility of a third variable to influence a situation Independent Variable the variable that is manipulated in an experiment Dependent Variable the variable that is measured Lecture 7 September 16 Define Paradox of social cognition Compare random assignment and random sample Paradox of social cognition We have the ability to make extremely complex decisions and we do not use the abilities Random Sample gives each individual an equal opportunity to be included in a study Generalizes the population as a whole Only choses certain people and all treated the same Random Assignment is assigning a certain action part to people by some maneuver such as a coin toss Lecture 8 September 18 Discuss Heuristics Define availability Define two social cognition processes Availability Ease of which something comes to mind Availability Heuristic Our tendency to base judgments on how easily relevant events come to mind Heuristics Rule of thumb Representativeness The extent to which some case looks like a member of a category Representativeness Heuristics Basing our judgments on a cases representativeness We should rely on heuristics because being accurate is important it takes time to follow rules and we do not know they are actually heuristics we don t know they are inaccurate Controlled thinking is voluntary and conscious Automatic thinking is involuntary and unconscious Lecture 9 September 23 Fundamental Attribution Error Attributions Our explanations for people s behaviors Internal Attributions Attributing behavior to personality factors External Attributions Attributing behavior to situational factors Our initial attributions of a person are often wrong because we thing of someone s personality when judging them We usually do not consider how the situation a person is in effects them Fundamental Attribution Error Our tendency to overestimate personality factors and underestimate situational factors when making attributions for other s behaviors Fundamental Attribution can be avoided Get more data study the person more Take time to see more Take your judgment seriously Know and understand that we do make mistakes Please review all notes and look over all information Dr Larsen has posted on 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