Social Psychology Quiz

Social Psychology and Human Behavior

• Subjects in a dark room estimated the distance a light moved, and their estimates converged on a common value, establishing a group norm.
• Informational Social Influence: People look to others for information on how to behave in novel or ambiguous situations, driven by the desire to be right.
• Normative Social Influence: People conform to be liked and approved, driven by the desire to be accepted.
• Milgram's obedience experiment involved delivering painful electric shocks to a fellow participant under the influence of an authority figure.
• Adolf Eichmann supervised the deportation of 6,000,000 Jews to Nazi gas chambers, raising questions about the nature of evil and social obedience to authority.
• Stanley Milgram's experiment involved males aged 20-50 as subjects, an authority figure as the experimenter, and a victim as the learner.
• Obedience was highest in the presence of an authority figure and when the victim was depersonalized, with over 60% of subjects fully obedient.
• Factors influencing obedience included the proximity of the person giving orders and the depersonalization of the victim.
• Altruism refers to voluntary self-sacrificing behavior intended to benefit others without expectation of reward, influenced by situational power and the presence of others.
• Social cognition involves forming impressions of others based on physical appearance and stereotypes, often leading to distorted impressions.
• Thin-slicing refers to the unconscious ability to find patterns in behavior based on narrow slices of experience, showcasing the power of implicit processes.
• Bystander effect and diffusion of responsibility illustrate how ethics can be a luxury in modern society, impacting social behavior.

Social Cognition: Understanding Human Behavior

• The halo effect influences how individuals form impressions, where first impressions tend to be lasting.
• Asch's study showed that the order of information presentation can significantly impact how a person is perceived.
• Simplification strategies, such as expectations and dispositional inferences, are used to conserve mental effort in the information-rich social world.
• Schemas are cognitive structures that organize our knowledge about the world and influence what we pay attention to.
• The use of screens during auditions accounted for a significant increase in the number of female musicians in orchestras.
• Automatic vigilance leads individuals to pay more attention to negative information about others, which is a consequence of human evolution.
• Social perceptions and impressions are resistant to change, and attribution is the process by which people infer the causes of others' behavior.
• The fundamental attribution error refers to the tendency to underestimate situational factors and overestimate dispositional factors in explaining others' behavior.
• The just-world hypothesis and fallacy lead to blaming the victim and shield individuals from believing they will suffer similar misfortunes, fueling stereotypes and prejudice.
• The actor-observer effect suggests that individuals tend to attribute others' behavior to dispositional factors but attribute their own behavior to situational factors.
• Situational attributions require more effort and are often overlooked in favor of blaming the individual.
• Individuals tend to make different attributions about others' behavior than they do about their own, highlighting the complexity of human behavior and perception.

Test your knowledge of social psychology and human behavior with this quiz! Explore influential experiments such as Milgram's obedience study and Asch's conformity research, and delve into topics like social influence, altruism, social cognition, and attribution. Sharpen your understanding of the complexities of human behavior and perception in social settings.