Social Psychology Chapter 1 Introduction Study Questions Fall 2019
1. How is social psychology defined?
 Social psychology is the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and
relate to one another
2. When did social psychology emerge as a field of study?
 social psychology emerged as a filed of study during the world war 2 period.
3. How do we see objective reality?
 there is an objective reality, but we view it through our lens of beliefs and values.
4. How do values enter the study of social psychology?
 Our values enter the study of social psychology when we choose the things that we
want to research about. Other ways that our values enter is the types of people who are
attracted to various fields of study and hidden assumptions when forming concepts,
choosing labels, and giving advice.
5. Define culture as it pertains to social psychology.
 culture is the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by large
group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
6. Describe hindsight bias as it pertains to social psychology research.
 Hindsight bias is the tendency to exaggerate after learning an outcome, one’s ability
to have foreseen how something turned out.
7. Define the following terms: hypothesis, fact, and theory.
 Hypothesis- A testable proposition that describes a relationship that may exist
between events.
 fact- a fact is something that is not an opinion or bias.
 theory- An integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events.
8. What criteria are important when writing survey questions?
 When writing survey questions, it is important that we bear in the mind the four
potentially biasing influences: unrepresentative samples, question order, response
options, and question wording.
9. Explain opting in and opting out.
 opting in and opting out is one of the ways to frame a question. For example, when
choosing to be organ donor people are more likely to opt in if it the default decision
rather than opt out.
10. Compare correlational and experimental research. What is necessary for a research
study to be considered experimental research?
 correlational research are predictions and are mostly based on statistics. While
experimental research is based on experiments and explanation. For a research study to
be considered experimental research it has to be able to be tested. Also has to have a
cause and effect.
11. What does random assignment accomplish?
 random assignments make sure that everyone has the same chance of being in a
given condition.
12. What are demand characteristics?
 Demand characteristics are cues in an experiment that tell the participant what
behavior is expected.
13. Explain informed consent and debriefing.
 informed consent is an ethical principle requiring that research participants be told
enough to enable them to choose whether they wish to participate. Debriefing usually
discloses any deception and often queries participants regarding their understandings
and feelings.
Social Psychology Chapter 2 The Self Study Questions Fall 2019
1. Describe the spotlight effect and the illusion of transparency.
 the spotlight effect is the belief that others are paying more attention to our appearance and
behavior than they really are. It is when we believe that everyone is paying attention to us.
 the illusion of transparency is when the illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and
can be easily read by others.
2. Describe self-esteem, self-schema, social comparison, and the looking glass self. How do we
perceive our competitor in order to protect our self-concept? How does low self-esteem
predispose us to react to other’s expectations? What unattractive behaviors are associated
with high self-esteem? low self-esteem?
 self- esteem- a person’s overall self- evaluation or sense of self-worth
 self-schema- beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant
information
 social comparison- when we compare ourselves to other’s abilities and opinions
 the looking glass- our reflections of how we think we appear to others.
 We protect our self-concept by perceiving the competitors as advantaged. When we have
low self-esteem, we believe that we do not reach other’s expectations. An unattractive
behavior associated with high self-esteem is that sometimes most gang leaders and people in
jail have high self -esteem. With low self-esteem is that they are abuse drugs.
3. Compare individualism and collectivism. Describe how conservatives and progressives are
both collectivists and individualists.
 individualist- to be independent by habit and in control of your own thoughts and feelings
 collectivism- to put the thoughts and feelings of others above your own
 conservatives and progressives can be both collectivities and individualist by believing in
two different things. Like they believe gay marriage should be illegal but believe the wealthy
can have tax cuts.
4. Describe the planning fallacy. Who is best at predicting your behavior?
planning fallacy is the tendency to make optimistic predications concerning how long a given
task will take to complete. The person who is best at predicting our behaviors are the people
that surrounds us.
5. Describe affective forecasting, impact bias, and immune neglect.
 affective forecasting- the process of predicting our own and other happiness
impact bias- overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events
immune neglect- the tendency to underestimate the speed and strength of the psychological
immune system which enables emotional recovery after bad things happen.
6. When sexually harassed, what do women expect to feel? What do they actually feel?
 they except to feel angry and want to file compliant. However, they feel fear but also have a
bad image about themselves and blame themselves. They try to avoid the harasser.
7. What is self-efficacy? Locus of control? Learned helplessness?
 self- efficacy- is one’s belief in his or her innate ability to achieve goals.
 locus of control- degree of how strongly people believe they have control over something.
 learned helplessness- one’s lack of faith in their ability to control the situation and the
feeling of hopelessness. More likely to develop learned helplessness if they have low selfefficacy.
8. What is the self-serving bias? Describe the false consensus and uniqueness effects, and
unrealistic optimism and defensive pessimism.
 self- serving bias- the tendency to perceive oneself favorably
 false consensus- the tendency to overestimate one’s opinion and one’s undesirable
behaviors.
 uniqueness effect – the tendency to underestimate one’s abilities and one’s desirable
behaviors.
 unrealistic optimism- believing that something is good when you know that it is in fact not.
For example, smoking.
 defensive pessimism- the value of anticipating problems and harnessing one’s anxiety to
motivate effective behaviors.
9. Describe self-handicapping, self-presentation, and self-monitoring.
 self- handicapping- protecting one’s self- image with behaviors that create a handy excuse
for later failure.
 self- presentation- the act of expressing oneself and behaving in ways designed to create a
favorable impression or an impression that corresponds to one’s ideas.
 self-monitoring- being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and
adjusting one’s performance to create the desired impression
10. What is the impact of choice?
 the impact of choice is that it can either help us or bring us down. Sometimes an excessive
amount of choices can have. Negative effect on us. if we have a lot of choices we don’t pay
attention to the impact the choice we made has on us and on others.
11. Describe the dual attitude system. How can you change an implicit attitude?
 dual attitude system- Differing implicit (automatic) and explicit (consciously controlled)
attitudes toward the same object. Verbalized explicit attitudes may change with education and
persuasion; implicit attitudes change slowly, with practice that forms new habits
12. Describe the overlap between self-esteem and narcissism.
 self-esteem is the level of confidence one has for one’s self. Sometimes an individual has too
much self-esteem that it turns into narcissism
Social Psychology Chapter 3 Beliefs and Judgments Study Questions Fall 2019
1. Describe the process of priming.
 A process strategy of mindset used in one situation is more likely to be later used in
an unrelated context.
2. Describe the phenomenon of embodied cognition.
the thought processes involved in representing parts of the body and reenacting
bodily actions in thought
3. Explain belief perseverance.
The tendency to cling to one’s initial belief even after receiving new information that
contradicts or disconfirms the basis of that belief
4. Describe the misinformation effect.
 post-event information to interfere with the memory of the original event.
5. What influences the reconstruction of past emotions?
 our feelings and attitudes influence the reconstruction of past emotions.
6. Compare implicit and explicit processing.
 explicit- obvious
 implicit- unobvious
7. Define mental schemas.
a cognitive framework that helps to organize and interpret information in the brain
8. Why does overconfidence persist?
 incompetence feeds overconfidence which means that’s if you are unaware then you
will never change.
9. What is confirmation bias?
occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs.
10. Define heuristic and compare the representative and availability heuristics.
 Heuristic- a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make
judgements quickly and efficiently
 representative heuristics- make a decision by comparing information to our mental
prototypes
 availability heuristics- make a decision based on how easy it is to bring something to
mind
11. What is counterfactual thinking?
 thinking about how things could have gone differently
12. Gives examples of illusory correlation and the illusion of control.
 illusory correlation- lottery and lucky numbers
 illusion of control- gambling (control)
13. Describe the phenomenon of regression toward the average.
 The statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to return toward
one’s average
14. How do our moods affect our social judgments?
our moods pervade our thinking. Our moods infuse our judgements. If we are sad, we
tend to process the information more while happy people just go with the flow and
trust anyone. Our moods also trigger bad or good memories that effect our judgments
15. What is misattribution and the fundamental attribution error? Define both dispositional
and situational attributions.
misattribution- mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source.
 the fundamental attribution error- the tendency for observers to underestimate
situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon other’s behavior.
 Dispositional attributions- attributing behavior to the person’s disposition and traits
 situational attributions- attributing behavior to the environment
16. What is spontaneous trait inference?
 the mechanism that causes individuals to form impressions of people based on
behaviors they witness them exhibiting
17. Describe behavioral confirmation.
 self- fulfilling prophecy whereby people’s social expectations lead them to behave in
ways that cause others to confirm their expectations.