Social Psychology
Study Guide for Test 1: Fall 2013
The test will be concept and not detail based. In each chapter I have highlighted terms
and names (not very many). I am not looking for verbatim term definitions. You should
understand what the term means and be able to put it into your own words. The term
should bring to mind a theory or a research study that will, in turn lead you to the
understanding of the concept. The questions that follow the list of terms point to
various understandings that you should have. Some terms will be on the test directly.
There will also be some application and general knowledge questions. Questions will
not be focused on detailed items such as the particular groups in an experiment. The
format of the questions will be varied.
Chapter 1: Introducing Social Psychology
Terms
Social psychology
Social influence
Construal
Naïve realism
Self-esteem approach vs. social-cognitive approach
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Names
Kurt Lewin
Fritz Heider
Leon Festinger
Must you be present in the social situation in order to exert social influence?
What is the difference between social psychology and philosophy?
What is used to answer empirical questions?
What is the primary difference between the approaches of social psychology and
personality psychology in explaining behavior?
What is the difference in focus between social psychology and sociology?
Does social psychology focus on the group or the individual? Does it focus on individual
differences or the power of the social situation?
According to social psychologists, what did the behaviorists overlook?
Where do construals come from? What principles guide their construction?
What happens to our evaluation of things for which we have suffered?
Chapter 2: Methodology
Terms
Hindsight bias
Archival analysis
Survey
Psychological realism
Cover story
Field experiment
Independent variable
Dependent variable
Replication
Meta-analysis
Internal experimental validity
External experimental validity
What are the three research methods? What is the focus of each and what are some of
the limitations of each?
We did the exercise on page 23 of your textbook in class. Could you still make correct
predictions?
Why do we use random sampling for surveys? Why do we use random assignment of
participants to groups in experiments?
What will correlations not tell you? What will they tell you?
What is the only research method acceptable for finding evidence of causal
relationships?
What does the p-value of reported experimental results indicate?
How do we accomplish the internal validity of experiments?
What are the different goals of basic and applied research?
According to APA Ethical Principles, under what conditions may deception be used in
an experiment?
There are eight areas on page 41 of your textbook. You should be able to recognize all of
them and to remember and describe three of them.
Chapter 3: Social Cognition
Terms
Automatic thinking
Schemas
Controlled thinking
Counterfactual thinking/reasoning
Base rate information
Priming
Priming metaphors
Judgmental heuristics
How do we use schemas?
How do we choose what schemas to use?
What makes a schema accessible?
Apply the use of the availability heuristic to medical diagnosis.
How do we use the representativeness heuristic? Does this always lead us to the right
answer? Does it always lead us to the wrong answer? Do we tend to use it more than
base rate information?
Does culture have more influence on controlled or automatic thinking? Why?
Describe the difference between analytic and holistic controlled thinking.
Is free will more closely associated with automatic or controlled thinking?
Give an example of when we feel we are exerting control, but we are not.
Are we more or less moral and/or helpful when we feel that we have a choice?
The easier it is to “undo” a past outcome, the stronger or the weaker the associated
emotional reaction?
How do we “improve” human thinking to get people to be more objective?
Chapter 4: Social Perception
Terms
Non-verbal communication
Social perception
Implicit personality theory
Affect blends
Emblems
Display rules
Attribution theory
Internal vs. external attributions
Covariation model
Fundamental attribution error
Perceptual salience
Self-serving attributions
Defensive attributions
Bias blind spot
Just world hypothesis
Names
Fritz Heider
Harold Kelley
What are the six major emotional expressions?
Are they culturally universal?
What other personality characteristics are tied to warmth and to competence?
Do internal or external attributions tell you more about the person?
In happy marriages, do spouses tend to make internal or external attributions of their
partner’s behavior?
What are the three variables used in the Covariation model? What patterns lead to
internal or external attributions?
In the two-step process of attribution, what is considered first and what is considered
second (or not at all)? Under what conditions are we most likely to consider the
situation?
In what countries are the tendencies for self-serving attributions found to be the highest
and the lowest?
Describe how holistic vs. analytic thinking can affect social perception.
Chapter 5: The Self
Terms
Introspection
Self-knowledge
Relational vs. collective interdependence
Self-awareness theory
Causal theories
Reasons-generated attitude change
Self-perception theory
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
Task-contingent vs. performance-contingent rewards
Two-factor theory of emotion (Schachter & Singer)
Misattribution of arousal
Social comparison theory
Upward and downward social comparison
Social tuning
Self-control
Thought suppression
Self-regulatory resource model
Impression management
Ingratiation
Self-handicapping
Self-esteem (as defined in your textbook)
narcissism
What is the earliest indication of a self-awareness or self-concept in babies? About what
age does this appear?
What are the four components of the self?
What is the self-concept and why is it so important?
Does culture influence the choices we make in defining our self?
On average, do people spend a great deal of time introspecting?
Does introspection generally reveal the reasons for our feelings?
According to self-awareness theory, what are people doing when they focus on
themselves? Is this always pleasant? Why or why not? Does this tend to make us more
or less moral?
Explain the phrase “telling more than we can know”.
What happens (or can happen) if you offer people extrinsic rewards for performing
intrinsically-motivated behavior?
In general, which are better – task-contingent or performance-contingent rewards?
Explain.
Schachter and Singer did a cluster of the most famous experiments in social psychology.
What were their results and interpretation?
Carol Dweck talks about fixed and growth mindsets. How do these relate to success?
In social comparison, what determines to whom we compare ourselves?
When we adopt other people’s views, do we always do so consciously?
Does thought suppression work well as a means of self-control?
How might going on a “starvation” diet which allows you very few calories backfire?
What are the personal advantages of positive self-evaluations?
Does high self-esteem lead to better performance, better social relationships, and /or
decreases in bad or risky behavior?
How does Jean Twenge explain the measurable increase in narcissism in U.S. culture?
How did Dunn et al. (2008) demonstrate that “it is more blessed to give than to
receive”?
Do narcissists fare better in life than others? Explain.
Chapter 6: The Need to Justify Our Actions
Terms
Cognitive dissonance
Self-affirmation
Post-decision dissonance
Internal vs. external justification
Impact bias
Post-decision dissonance
Lowballing
Counter attitudinal advocacy
Self-persuasion
Insufficient punishment
Hypocrisy induction
Ben Franklin Effect
dehumanization
The need to resolve cognitive dissonance is powerful because we have a need to
maintain a stable, positive image of ourselves. Dissonance occurs when we encounter
information that threatens this image. Dissonance is motivating because it causes
discomfort.
In order to resolve dissonance, we can 1) change our behavior; 2) change a dissonant
cognition; 3) add new cognitions.
Is dissonance reduction largely conscious or unconscious?
Who feels the most dissonance after doing something cruel, foolish or incompetent, the
person with low or the person with high self-esteem?
The relationship between dissonance and self-esteem is tricky. The idea is that if you
have an elevated image of yourself, you will want to preserve it with good performance,
moral behavior, etc. Hence, raising a person’s self-esteem will result in a payoff of hard
work and good behavior. This may work under limited conditions. However,
psychology sold this bill of goods to education and created the self-esteem movement.
Thirty to forty years later, the data show that the “empty” self-esteem created did not
result in any performance or behavioral improvements. Instead, it resulted in
entitlement attitudes, irresponsibility, and an increase in measured narcissism
(probably due to use of other dissonance reduction mechanisms which distort reality).
Now, there is a backlash in psychology against the self-esteem movement and an
admission that self-esteem interventions should be firmly grounded in reality.
Does increasing the importance of a decision increase or decrease the dissonance?
Does increasing the permanence and irrevocability of a decision increase or decrease the
dissonance? Given this, does keeping your options open make you happier? Why or
why not?
Why or how does lowballing work?
Does the person who succumbs to temptation after a struggle later become more lenient
or stricter on the behavior? How about the person who resists temptation? Explain this
as resolution of cognitive dissonance.
How do we resolve the dissonance of having exerted great effort or spent a lot of money
on something that may turn out not to be all that wonderful?
In external justification, you have a reason for acting counter to your attitude or selfimage. Do you experience much dissonance? What happens if you don’t have an
external justification? (The external justification could be a rationalization – phony but
plausible reason.)
How does saying become believing?
When you are trying to get people to change their attitudes based on counterattitudinal
advocacy, should you offer a large or a small reward?
How can you use counterattitudinal advocacy to effect prejudice, use of marijuana, or
even to reduce the risk of development of eating disorders?
Behaviors that are punished by parents and/or society are those that we want the
individual to stop. Generally the reason that the individuals are engaging in those
behaviors is that the behaviors are intrinsically rewarding (fun). The first rule of
punishment is that if the pain of the punishment exceeds the fun of the behavior, then
we will succeed in stopping the behavior. However, this is one-time-only or for future
situations that we are able to monitor and enforce. How do we get the offender to agree
with us and decide not to engage in the behavior in the future?
Cognitive dissonance theory offers some insight. Not doing something (the offending
behavior) that you enjoy doing creates dissonance (for example, just doing the speed
limit when you like to drive fast). You then ask yourself why you are driving so slowly in
order to reduce the dissonance. If you are afraid of strong punishment – a heavy fine or
losing your driver’s license, you have an external justification for your behavior.
However, if the threat of punishment is light (Maybe you would only expect a warning
ticket or your spouse to complain.) and you slow down, you need to add some internal
justification. Then you may convince yourself that driving too fast is not all that much
fun and may be dangerous. The danger in this paradigm is that if the threat of
punishment is too light you may not slow down. In this case you may increase the value
of driving fast as you justify that you persisted in spite of these minor threats and
annoyances. (This might be a good one to stop and ponder.)
The principle is that large rewards and punishments are external justifications that
result in compliance, but not permanent attitude change.
What were the variables that needed to enhance one another in the Aronson study
where students changed their attitudes about unsafe sex and AIDs?
How does inducing hypocrisy reduce the need to retaliate?
How do you justify cruelty?