Social Psychology Makeup Study Guide-2

Makeup Exam Study Guide ● Attribution theory: a set of concepts explaining how people assign causes to the events around them and the effects of people’s casual assessments ● Availability heuristic: basing a judgment on the ease with which examples come to mind ● Beaman et al. trick-or-treaters research ○ Trick or treaters greeted at researcher’s door + left alone to help themselves to candy, asked to take only 1 piece ○ IV - full length mirror behind bowl or no mirror ○ DV - how much candy the child took ○ 34% broke rule with no mirrors, 12% broke rule when there was a mirror ● Brewer and Treyens grad-student’s office research ○ Wait a minute in a grad student’s office ○ Schema-consistent objects (stapler, filing cabinets, typewriter) ○ Schema-inconsistent objects (picnic basket and wine, toy top, skull) ○ Later, participants are asked what was in the room ■ Remembered more schema-consistent items than inconsistent (noticing what they expected to see) ■ Remembered schema-consistent items that were not there (filling in details, memory is reconstructive) ● Cognitive dissonance theory: the theory that inconsistencies among a person’s thoughts, sentiments, + actions cause an aversive emotional state that leads to efforts to restore consistencies ● Confirmation bias: the tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that would support it ● Construal level theory: a theory about the relationship between psychological distance + abstract or concrete thinking; psychologically distant actions + events are thought about in abstract forms, actions + events that are close at hand are thought of in concrete terms ● Correspondence between attitudes and behavior ○ Broad, general attitudes don’t predict specific behaviors very well ● Defensive pessimism: a strategy where a person expects the worst and works harder because of this expectation ● Discounting principle: how someone attributes a cause to an eventual outcome ○ Augmentation principle: attributional tendency to assign greater influence to a particular cause or rationale of behavior if there are other factors present that normally would produce a different outcome ● Elaboration likelihood model ○ Central route (systematic processing of information) ■ Relies on analysis of the strength of the arguments; people aren’t always motivated to process carefully (or unable to do so) ○ Peripheral route (heuristic processing or noncognitive factors) ■ Using information other than the relative strength of the argument ● Experimental research: research that randomly assigns people to different conditions + enables researchers to make strong inferences about how these different conditions affect behavior ● Explanatory style: a person’s habitual way of explaining events, usually assessed along 3 dimensions (internal/external, stable/unstable, global/specific) ● Framing effect: influence on judgment resulting from the way information is presented ● Fundamental attribution error: the tendency to underestimate the contribution of situational factors + to overestimate the contribution of personal factors in explaining another person’s behavior ● Independent versus interdependent self-construals ○ Independent culture: a culture where people tend to think of themselves as distinct social entities, tied to each other by voluntary bonds of affection + organizational memberships but essentially separate from other people + having attributes that exist in the absence of any connection to others ○ Interdependent culture: a culture where people tend to define themselves as part of a collective, inextricably tied to others in their group + placing less importance on individual freedom or personal control over their lives ● LaPiere’s research with Chinese couple ○ Traveled through US with Chinese couple (prejudice high at this time) ○ 183 out of 184 restaurants served them ○ Later asked if provide service to Chinese people, 91% of 128 who replied said no ● Order effects: influence of the order that treatments are administered ● Peripheral route processing: using information other than the relative strength of the argument (superficial cues) ○ Source variables - familiarity, likability, credibility, physical attractiveness, similarity ○ Message variables ■ Vividness - enhances persuasive appeal of strong arguments ■ Positive aesthetic ■ Fear appeal - works if target believes danger is serious, target believes danger is probable, message includes prescriptive information (how to avoid danger), target believes recommended precautions will be effective, target believes they have behavioral control ■ Humor ■ Repetition - mere exposure effect, sheer number of arguments ○ Channel variables - rapid speech, powerful speech ○ Target variables - mood, issue involvement (relevance for self), response involvement (self presentational concerns), need for cognition, discrepancies ● Perseverance effect: phenomenon where people’s beliefs about themselves + others persist despite a lack of supporting evidence or contradiction of supporting evidence ● Random sampling: subset of individuals randomly selected by researchers to represent an entire group as a whole ● Schemas: mental representations of various objects or categories; contain defining features of the object or category + other organized knowledge about it; guide the selection, interpretation, + recall of information ○ Help us organize information + remember it better ○ Help us fill in details + make inferences ○ Influence what information we attend to ○ Tell us what to expect + what not to expect ■ Schema-inconsistent events are surprising + require extra effort to understand + to respond to ○ Help us interpret ambiguous information ○ Can influence behavior ● Self-awareness theory: most of they time, we’re not overly focused on ourselves; when people focus their attention on themselves, they evaluate + compare their behavior to their internal standards + values (associated with a drop in self esteem, associated with behaving in line with socially desirable standards) ● Self-esteem: overall positive or negative evaluation an individual has of themselves ● Self-presentational strategies ○ Ingratiation: presenting yourself as likable ○ Self-promotion: presenting yourself as competent ○ Exemplification: presenting yourself as moral ○ Modesty: downplaying your strengths ○ Intimidation: presenting yourself as threatening ○ Supplication: presenting yourself as weak ○ Sandbagging: strategically hiding your competence ● Self-verification theory: the theory that people strive for stable, subjectively accurate beliefs about the self because such self views give a sense of coherence ● Snyder and Swann’s interview study ○ IV: will be interviewing “introvert” or “extrovert” ○ DV1: selection of questions to ask ○ DV2: independent ratings of actual extraversion of talk partner ● Social comparison: hypothesis that people compare themselves to other people in order to obtain an accurate assessment of their own opinions, abilities, and internal states ● Working self-concept: a subset of self knowledge that’s brought to mind in a particular context