PSYC 201 Midterm Study Guide PDF

**PSYC 201 Midterm Study Guide** **Module 1: An Invitation to Social Psychology** ***While this chapter is not on the quiz, these questions provide a useful foundation for other material.*** 1. How is social psychology different from personality psychology? How do each of these relate to Kur...

**PSYC 201 Midterm Study Guide** **Module 1: An Invitation to Social Psychology** ***While this chapter is not on the quiz, these questions provide a useful foundation for other material.*** 1. How is social psychology different from personality psychology? How do each of these relate to Kurt Lewin's B=f(P,E) and the Fundamental Attribution Error? 2. What are the results of the Good Samaritan study? 3. What is a channel factor/ nudge? What are some examples? 4. What is a construal? How do construals impact our thoughts & behavior? 5. What is Gestalt psychology? How does it relate to construals and schemas? 6. What is the difference between automatic and controlled processing? 7. What is the difference between independent and interdependent cultures? **Module 1, Chapter 2: The Methods of Social Psychology** I would make sure you are especially comfortable with all types of validity, and reliability. Note: self-selection may also be called selection bias. 1. What are the differences between observational, archival, survey, & experimental research? Observational: observing pps in a controlled setting Archival: using past data, such as 2. What is the difference between a correlational and an experimental study? 3. What is important about experiments? Why do we like using experiments in social psychology? 4. What are the main components of an experiment? 5. What is reliability and (measurement) validity? What is internal and external validity? 6. What are the common threats to internal validity? 7. What is a dependent variable? An independent variable? Can you identify each in an experiment? 8. What is random assignment? Why is random assignment important? How is it different from random sampling? 9. What does it mean that correlation does not imply causation? What are the important differences between correlation and causation? 10. What is the difference between basic and applied science? 11. What are some ethical concerns in social psychology? What is the IRB? What is informed consent? What is deception research? 1. What are self-schemas? What role do they play in organizing knowledge? Framework of ideas and conceptions about oneself. They hep organize knowledge into 2. What is the Contingencies of Self-Worth model? What does it say about how people handle negative events? The idea that self worth is based on success in activities that are important to oneself. It may suggest that people may feel extremely low self worth when they do not achieve what they want to achieve 3. What is trait self-esteem? What is state self-esteem? Trait: relatively stable self esteem State: dynamic self esteem that changes based on the situation that one is in. 4. What is the self-discrepancy theory? What feelings are triggered when you do not live up to your ideal self? Ought self? It is when there is a gap, or discrepancy between your actual and ought self -- it occurs when they do not overlap. It may trigger feelings of worthlessness or sadness. a. Also note: ideal and ought self-definitions. Ideal self: who you want to become Ought self: your self currently 5. What is social comparison theory? b. What is the difference between upward & downward comparisons? Upward: comparing yourself to someone better than yourself (conceived) Downward: comparing yourself to someone who is worse than you (conceived) c. When are we more likely to engage in social comparisons? When you want to justify/make yourself feel better about a lower achievement 6. What is the better-than-average effect? When is it most likely to occur? The idea that westerners are more likely to rate themselves higher than average on usually mundane, ambiguous tasks -- eg driving. 7. What is self-verification theory? What are the important research findings on self-verification theory? When people are motivated to have consistent views of themselves, and when we have a selective memory for things related to ourselves. 8. How do we maintain positive self-evaluation (think: self-evaluation maintenance model)? When we maintain positive self esteem through social comparison to other and reflection. d. How do people use social comparisons to help maintain high self-esteem? They may use downward comparison (festinger) e. What is basking in reflected glory? Under what conditions do we do it? A self serving cognition where an individual associates themselves with the success of another individual whereby that winner's success becomes the individuals own accomplishment. 9. What is the sociometer hypothesis? What does it say about self-esteem? When we use our own internal evaluation to assess how we are doing socially. Our self esteem may help us see how we are doing socially -- eg high: we thriving, low: we're struggling 10. What are some of the cultural differences in self-esteem (e.g. in individualist vs. collectivist cultures, men vs. women)? Individualist: care more about self esteem Collectivist; care more about self improvement **Module 3, Chapter 4: Social Cognition** 1. What is pluralistic ignorance? What are some examples of pluralistic ignorance? The tendency to think that all other people hold a different opinion that one's own. For instance, everyone saying that they care about climate change, but you do not. In reality, these people may in fact not care about climate change. 2. What are primacy, recency, and framing effects? Primacy: the information told first has the most impact on memory Recency: the information told last has the most impact on memory Framing effects; the way in which information is told/framed can have an impact on cognition. 3. What is confirmation bias? When we actively seek for information that will support our claim. a. How does confirmation bias impact the way we search for information? We tend to ignore information that goes against our claim, and only search for information that supports our claim. b. How does confirmation bias impact how we evaluate someone? We use our pre-exiting belief/claim primarily to evaluate someone. 4. What is a self-fulfilling prophecy? When one believes that other people around them have a belief about oneself, it makes that person want to make it come true, and so it does. 5. What is positive/negative framing? What is temporal framing? 6. What are schemas? c. How do schemas impact memory? We are more likely to remember the things that fit within our schemas, and stimuli that catch our attention d. How can schemas impact behavior? (Think about priming!) When different units of info are encountered at the same time, it can lead to related schemas being activated at the same time too. 7. What are heuristics? Decision making shortcuts e. What is the availability heuristic? What is the role of *ease of retrieval*? The Biased assessment of risk -- if it comes to mind easily people will tend to think that its true. f. What is the representativeness heuristic? How does base rate information play a role? The tendency to compare things to prototypes of their own category. **Module 4, Chapter 5: Social Attribution** 1. What is the covariation principle? a. What are consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency? (Can you identify each piece of info?) Consensus: do most people do this given the situation? Distinctiveness: how unique is this behaviour given the situation? Consistency: does this person always do what they are doing? b. What leads you to form an internal (dispositional) attribution? When consensus is low and consistency is high, and distinctiveness is high c. What leads you to form an external (situational) attribution? When all 3 are high 2. What is the augmentation principle? Greater weight is given to causes of behavior if there are other causes that would produce an opposite outcome. 3. What is the discounting principle? Less weight being given to a particular cause if there are alternative views present 4. What is counterfactual thinking? 5. What is the self-serving bias? How do we attribute our successes and failures differently? 6. What is the fundamental attribution error? What are the reasons why it happens? Tendency to overemphasize power of disposition al factors on behavior while ignoring situational factors 7. What is Dan Gilbert's dual-process model? What is the first stage and correction/adjustment stage? First, we make a rapid, almost unconscious attribution to behvaiour, and only then do we make a slower, concious attribution. 8. What is the actor-observer difference? What does it say about the fundamental attribution error? When seeing a behavior, we tend to emphasize effect of personality, but when we act in a behavior, we tend to emphasize the situation. Suggests that fundamental attribution error is active when we are an observer. 9. What does research evidence suggest about cross-cultural differences in fundamental attribution error? **Individualistic: often attribute behavior to personal attribution (committing the fundamental attribution error)** **Collectivist: often attribute behavior to situational causes.** **Module 5, Chapter 6: Emotion** 1. What purposes do emotions serve? Allow us to navigate our world, meet social goals, and prompt us to act -- eg serving as motivation through guilt, anger etc. 2. What are the six universal emotions? What does it mean that they are *universal*? Universal means that they are expressed in similar ways across cultures. Emotions are: happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise and anger 3. What are the cultural differences in the expression of emotions? Give examples. Cultures may have emotional accents focal emotions (emotions that are common within a culture), ideal emotions, and display rules (eg rules that govern how, when and to whom people express emotion) eg in the UAE, focal emotion is modesty. 4. Which emotion is connected to high-power individuals? Anger 5. What are the 5 dimensions of moral foundations theory? How do they relate to political ideology? Loyalty/betrayal Harm/care Fairness/cheating Authority/subversion Purity/degradation 6. What is affective forecasting? Are people good or bad at it? Why or why not? 7. What makes people happy? Usually, the strongest source is social relationships, and practicing gratitude, and even to a certain extent, living in countries where there is greater opportunity and economic stability 8. How do the peak, end, and duration of an experience influence our memories of emotional events? Duration usually has little impact on influencing our memories of emotional events 9. What is the concept of display rules? **The concept is that these are rules on how, to whom and when to display emotions that are particular to a certain culture.\ Module 6, Chapter 7: Attitudes, Behavior, and Rationalization** 1. What is the role of introspection when it comes to predicting behavior from attitudes? Introspection is misleading -- we tend to focus on the easy to identify reasons for liking something instead of finding the true reasons. Often also introspection contamination can occur -- when attitudes are most effectively based. 2. What is cognitive dissonance theory? The feeling of discomfort experienced after coming across information that is inconsistent with your existing information. 3. What is post-decision dissonance? 4. When should researchers utilize implicit measures? When they want to measure non-concious attitudes in people -- eg through IAT and research latency 5. What factors influence the amount of cognitive dissonance we experience? Or, said another way, under what conditions does attitude-behavior inconsistency cause dissonance? The amount of free choice we have, foreseeability, insufficient justification, and negative consequences 6. What are the effects of small or large payments on dissonance after doing something against our attitudes? 7. What is self-perception theory? When we look at our own behavior to make inferences about our own attitude. 8. When is cognitive dissonance theory in action? When is self-perception theory in action? When effort justification, pre/post dissonance and induced compliance 9. In the Aronson & Carlson experiment, when did children experience the most dissonance? In the mild threat condition -- when they were told politely not to play with the toy. **Module 7, Chapter 8: Persuasion** 1. What are the two routes to persuasion according to the Elaboration-Likelihood Model (ELM)? Central and peripheral 2. What role do attention, motivation, and ability play in persuasion? Attention: Motivation: Ability: 3. What is the sleeper effect? Sleeper effect: when information is not initially agreed upon, but is eventually agreed upon. 4. What is the role of attractiveness, certainty, and credibility in persuasion? Attractiveness: celebrity = more persuasion Certainty: if a source appears more certain = more persuasion Credibility: if a source is more credible = more persuasion 5. Under what conditions is fear an effective method of persuasion? Under what conditions is it not effective? Fear is only effective if it is moderate -- if it is too much, people may simply tune it out. 6. How might the characteristics of the audience affect the persuasive message? Age? Mood? Need for cognition? - Younger audiences more likely to get persuaded 7. What is the self-validation hypothesis? - People are more inclined to change their attitudes towards some policy after they are exposed to solid arguments. 8. How can one protect their attitudes against persuasion attempts? Attitude inoculation, 9. How effective is the media in persuading us? Very. 10. What is attitude inoculation? Resisting a 'small' attack on our attitude makes us more resistant to larger attacks later on. **[Some Important Studies]** 1. Darley & Batson (1973): The "Good Samaritan" Study Priests who were given a sermon were given routes -- one group told that they need to hurry, but other group told that they could take their time. 2. Heine (2001): Canadian and Japanese responses to the creativity task Pps given false feedback on tasks that were creative. Japanese pps who were given failure feedback worked harder on the next task, vs Canadians only worked longer on the next task if they were told they performed well in 3. McGuire & Padawer-Singer (1978): Children's self-definition (Chapter 3) How children defined themselves through responses to various prompts about identity -- gathered from different aged children, Younger children provided concrete, simpler explanations, while older children provided more abstract complex identities that incorporated social roles and personality traits 4. Tesser & Smith (1980): Helping Friends Succeed (Chapter 3) 5. McNeil et al. (1982): Doctors Recommend Surgery (Chapter 4) 6. Schwarz et al. (1991): Availability Heuristic & Ease of Retrieval (Chapter 4) 7. Todorov et al. (2008): Understanding evaluation of faces on social dimensions (Chapter 4) 8. Cohen (1981): Effects of Schemas on Memory (The Librarian/Waitress Study) (Chapter 4) 9. Jones & Harris (1967): The "Pro-Castro/Anti-Castro" Study & Fundamental Attribution Error (Chapter 5) 10. Gilbert (1989): Cognitive Load & Fundamental Attribution Error (Woman's Dispositional Anxiety) (Chapter 5) 11. Tracy & Matsumoto (2008): Blind & Sighted Judo Athletes & Emotions (Chapter 6) 12. Knox & Inkster (1968): Horse Bettors & Cognitive Dissonance (Chapter 7) 13. Wilson et al. (1984): Relationship Introspection (Chapter 7) 14. Aronson & Carlsmith: The "Forbidden Toy" Study (Chapter 7) 15. Zanna & Cooper (1974): Self-perception vs. Cognitive dissonance theory (Chapter 7) 16. Petty et al. (1981): Testing the ELM (Chapter 8) 17. McGuire & Papageorgis (1961): Attitude inoculation (Chapter 8) **Guide to the Readings** **Note:** The exam may cover material from any or all of the readings. Pay special attention to the following: 1. van't Veer & Gineer-Sorolla (2016): Pre-registration in social psychology -- A discussion and suggested template 2. Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self 3. Medvec et al (1995): When Less is More: Counterfactual Thinking and Satisfaction Among Olympic Medalists 4. Ross & Sicoly (1979): Egocentric Biases in Availability and Attribution 5. Fischer et al. (2004): Gender and Culture Differences in Emotion 6. Harmon Jones & Harmon Jones (2007): Cognitive Dissonance Theory After 50 Years of Development