PSYCH 280 EXAM 1 STUDY GUIDE
The Primary Thesis of Social Psychology - Answers - human social thought and social
behavior is governed heavily by the situation in which the thoughts and behaviors occur
Secondary Theses of Social Psychology - Answers - the power of situational forces is
far greater than people think, social thought and social behavior often do not fit into
rational theories, peoples perceptions are more important than are objective features of
a situation, social thought and behavior are a function of the person and the situation
Intuitive - Answers - easily apprehended by mere thought or reflection, obvious, not in
need of proof, already known by reasonable people, common sense
Aphorisms - Answers - "birds of a feather flock together" and "opposites attract"
Impression Management - Answers - a process in which people deliberately try to
present themselves to others in a good light. trying to make oneself look good to others
while knowing that is not true
Illusion - Answers - a cognitive process in which a person genuinely perceives that
something is one way when it actually is not
Hindsight Bias - Answers - the tendecy for people to exaggerat4e how much they could
have predicted an outcome after knowing that it occured; it is a genuine illusion
although people usually try to make themselves look better, human intuition cannot
substitute for empirical proof
Social Influence - Answers - the effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of
other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes or behavior
Fundamental Attribution Error - Answers - 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
Behaviorism - Answers - a school of psychology maintaining that to understand human
behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment
Gestalt Psychology - Answers - a school of psychology 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
Social Cognition - Answers - How people think about themselves and the social world;
more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember and use social information to
make judgments and decisions
, Operational Definition - Answers - when you define some concept according to how it
can be tested or characterized (aggression, attitude, fear)
Statistical Abuse - Answers - when people want to make you think a quantity is very
large, they stress its linear properties; when they want to make you think it s small, they
stress its volume properties
Question Effects - Answers - the question-order effect, the number of alternatives effect
(less likely to choose an answer if there are more choices) and the assertion-agreement
effect (if someone agrees with two statements that are completely different)
Random Sample - Answers - each and every member of the population to which you
want to generalize has an equal chance of being in the sample. 1200 people has a 3%
margin of error
Normal Distribution - Answers - the mean=median=mode. each of these is a measure of
central tendency
Correlation - Answers - a single statistic that reflects the degree of linear relation
between two or more variables
Confoundings - Answers - inadvertently, a difference was created between the
conditions other than just the independent variable and this other difference could
account of the results
Statistical Significance - Answers - the observed difference between conditions was not
due merely to chance
Subject or Organismal Variables - Answers - a variable that is not manipulated but
instead is merely measured or selected (gender)
Factorial Designs - Answers - designs for conducting research experiments in which two
or more variables, each with two or more levels, are fully crossed (male/female,
insulated/non insulated)
Statistical Interaction - Answers - the effect of one variable changes as a function of the
other variable (insult causes retaliation from men more than from women)
Reliability - Answers - consistency, is the test measure consistent in its assignment of
scores; test-retest reliability (produce the same results) and inter-judge reliability (does
the test produce the same result from different testers)
Validity - Answers - truth, does this test actually measure what it is suppose to; face
validity (does it appear to measure what it is supposed to) and construct validity (does
the test produce results that agree with already accepted tests)
The Primary Thesis of Social Psychology - Answers - human social thought and social
behavior is governed heavily by the situation in which the thoughts and behaviors occur
Secondary Theses of Social Psychology - Answers - the power of situational forces is
far greater than people think, social thought and social behavior often do not fit into
rational theories, peoples perceptions are more important than are objective features of
a situation, social thought and behavior are a function of the person and the situation
Intuitive - Answers - easily apprehended by mere thought or reflection, obvious, not in
need of proof, already known by reasonable people, common sense
Aphorisms - Answers - "birds of a feather flock together" and "opposites attract"
Impression Management - Answers - a process in which people deliberately try to
present themselves to others in a good light. trying to make oneself look good to others
while knowing that is not true
Illusion - Answers - a cognitive process in which a person genuinely perceives that
something is one way when it actually is not
Hindsight Bias - Answers - the tendecy for people to exaggerat4e how much they could
have predicted an outcome after knowing that it occured; it is a genuine illusion
although people usually try to make themselves look better, human intuition cannot
substitute for empirical proof
Social Influence - Answers - the effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of
other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes or behavior
Fundamental Attribution Error - Answers - 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
Behaviorism - Answers - a school of psychology maintaining that to understand human
behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment
Gestalt Psychology - Answers - a school of psychology 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
Social Cognition - Answers - How people think about themselves and the social world;
more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember and use social information to
make judgments and decisions
, Operational Definition - Answers - when you define some concept according to how it
can be tested or characterized (aggression, attitude, fear)
Statistical Abuse - Answers - when people want to make you think a quantity is very
large, they stress its linear properties; when they want to make you think it s small, they
stress its volume properties
Question Effects - Answers - the question-order effect, the number of alternatives effect
(less likely to choose an answer if there are more choices) and the assertion-agreement
effect (if someone agrees with two statements that are completely different)
Random Sample - Answers - each and every member of the population to which you
want to generalize has an equal chance of being in the sample. 1200 people has a 3%
margin of error
Normal Distribution - Answers - the mean=median=mode. each of these is a measure of
central tendency
Correlation - Answers - a single statistic that reflects the degree of linear relation
between two or more variables
Confoundings - Answers - inadvertently, a difference was created between the
conditions other than just the independent variable and this other difference could
account of the results
Statistical Significance - Answers - the observed difference between conditions was not
due merely to chance
Subject or Organismal Variables - Answers - a variable that is not manipulated but
instead is merely measured or selected (gender)
Factorial Designs - Answers - designs for conducting research experiments in which two
or more variables, each with two or more levels, are fully crossed (male/female,
insulated/non insulated)
Statistical Interaction - Answers - the effect of one variable changes as a function of the
other variable (insult causes retaliation from men more than from women)
Reliability - Answers - consistency, is the test measure consistent in its assignment of
scores; test-retest reliability (produce the same results) and inter-judge reliability (does
the test produce the same result from different testers)
Validity - Answers - truth, does this test actually measure what it is suppose to; face
validity (does it appear to measure what it is supposed to) and construct validity (does
the test produce results that agree with already accepted tests)
