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PSYC 2600- Ch. 1

Terms in this set (22)

Social Psychology
book: "the scientific study of the way in which people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people."

class: "The scientific study of how thoughts, behaviors, and emotions and influenced by the presence of other people, whether those people are real or imagined."

me: "the study of how our emotions and actions are affected by other people."
Social Influence
book: "the effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behaviors.:

me: "how other people affect the way we think and act."

ex. The cool girls at school all wear riding boots, so you want to wear riding boots to be cool
Fundamental Attribution Error
book: "the tendency to overestimate the extent to which people's behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors."

me: "assuming that a person's actions are due to their personality rather than the situation that they are in."

ex. a girl is crying in the hallway and you assume she is dramatic and emotional, when in reality her dog just died and she got a bad grade on a test
Wall Street v. Community Game
the name of the game determined whether students played competitively or cooperatively, regardless of whether or not their personality traits were more "competitive" or "cooperative." This illustrates the FAE.
Behaviorism
book: " (pioneered by B.F. Skinner) a school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment."

me: "the only way to understand a person's behavior is by looking at what is motivating them to continue or discontinue doing something."

**key fault: it overlooks how people interpret their environment (thinking, feeling)

ex. if someone is given a candy bar every time they win a softball game, they will continue playing/working hard in softball.
Construal
book: "the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world."

me: "what people think about the social dynamic of the world around them."

ex. your response to a "you up?" text will depend on how you perceive the text- is it a booty call or a simple question?
Gestalt Psychology
book: "a school of psych stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people's minds rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object."

class: "the subjective experience of a phenomenon is more important that the objective reality of the phenomenon. This is where construal gets its roots."

me: "an approach to psych that studies how people interpret an object rather than the physical, observable properties of the object."

ex. In order to understand how people interpret a song, you can't look at the individual notes and words and quantify it; rather, you need to look at the subjective ways in which a person feels the music
Kurt Lewin
Founding father of modern experimental social psychology

Applied Gestalt principles beyond objects and into social perception
Fritz Heider
An early founder of social psychology
Naïve Realism
book: "the conviction that we perceive things as they really are."

class: "the belief that one's construals reflect objective reality."

me: "I am right."

ex. I think someone was being arrogant; someone else thinks he was being nice; the other person must be biased because they "clearly" saw it wrong
Self-esteem
book: "people's evaluations of their own self-worth- that is, the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent, and decent."

me: "how strongly I feel that I am a good person."
Social Cognition
book: "how people think about themselves and the social world; how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgements and decisions."

me: "how people interpret the world around them and then use those interpretations to make decisions."
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
book: "you expect that you or another person will behave in some way, so you act in ways to make your prediction come true."
Liberman, Samuels, and Ross (2004)
- Community game v. Wall street game
- tested whether people would play in line with their construal or personality traits
- construals heavily affected the way people interacted; the personality traits determined by their RA had nothing to do with it
- 66.1% of people cooperated during the "community game."
- 31.5% of people defected during the "wall street game."
Need for Accuracy
class: "people want to understand and predict their world as accurately as possible."
Need for Self-Esteem
class: "People want to see themselves as good, competent, and decent. This can affect the way you construe things."
All behavior is a function of ______________ and ______________
a person; their environment

B= f(P,E)
Behavior equation
B = f(P,E)
Construals gets it roots in
gestalt psychology
The Wall Street/Community game experiment was trying to affect the _________________ of participants.
construals
For social psychologists, the level of analysis is the _____________ in the context of a ________ ___________.
Individual; social situation
Two central motives for human behavior:
- need for accuracy
- need for self-esteem
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