Psych 221 Exam 1 Questions & Answers Correctly Answered.

Definition of Social Psychology - Answer-**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** Social influence - Answer-How the people/society around us influences us Social Situation - Answer-Identify the objective properties of the situation Document the behaviors that follow from these objective properties Behaviorism - Answer-The objective situation (+) or (-) influences behavior Chooses not to deal with cognition, thinking, feeling Thinks these concepts are too vague Ignores construals of situation Life is thought of as a series of positive and negative events that teach us how to behave Criticism of Behaviorism - Answer-Inadequate for understanding the social world! Look at the situation from the viewpoint of the people in it, see how they construe the world around them Subjectivity of the social situation - Answer-Emphasis on the construal, the way people interpret the social situation, has its roots in Gestalt psychology Gestalt Psychology - Answer-A school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people's minds (the gestalt or "whole") rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object Early 20th century Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Kohler, Max Wertheimer, and colleagues Late 30s, several of these psychologists escaped Nazi Germany to the U.S.Kurt Lewin - Answer-Founding father of modern experimental social psychology Applied gestalt principles to social perception Stressed importance of taking perspective of the people in any social citation to see how they construe social environment Example of Gestalt psychology -- Illusions - Answer-The mind is "actively" involved in interpreting perceptual Example: old or young woman Construal - Answer-the way a person perceives, comprehends, and interprets a social situation The fundamental attribution error - Answer-The tendency to explain our own and other people's behavior entirely in terms of personality traits Underestimating the power of social influence Underestimating the Power of Social Influence - Answer-When we underestimate the power of social influence, we gain a feeling of false security Increases personal vulnerability to possibly destructive social influence Lulls us into lowering our guard Social influence often leads to atrocities By failing to fully appreciate the power of the situation, we tend to: Oversimplify complex situations Decrease our understanding of the true causes We have limited cognitive capacityAspects of the social situation that may seem minor can have powerful effects Can overwhelm personality differences Figure 1.1 in textbook Cooperative vs competitive people Same game was labelled as community or wall street depending on the gameConstruals shaped by two basic human motives - Answer-The Self-Esteem Approach and The Social Cognition Approach The Self-Esteem Approach - Answer-The Desire to Feel Good About Ourselves Justifying Past Behavior Suffering & Self-Justification Voluntarily The Desire to Feel Good About Ourselves - Answer-self-esteem maintenance Justifying Past Behavior - Answer-The motive to feel good about ourselves can lead people to distort memories of the past in order to preserve their self-esteem Suffering & Self-Justification Voluntarily - Answer-Voluntarily undergoing a painful or embarrassing event (hazing) may result in justifying the behavior by inflating the rewards associated with the event (my fraternity is the greatest thing ever). The Social Cognition Approach - Answer-The Need to be Accurate People try to understand and predict their social world Expectation can Interfere Revisit the "Jane Example" Self-fulfilling Prophesy *How we construe social influence is more important than actual social influence