Social Psychology

• Social psychology is the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another.
• Theories are scientific explanations that connect and organize existing observations and suggest fruitful paths for future research.
• The Sociocultural perspective is the theoretical viewpoint that searches for the causes of social behavior in influences from larger social groups
• Social norms are rules or expectations for appropriate social behavior.
• Define Social Norms

  Rules/expectations for appropriate social behavior
• Culture is the beliefs, languages, and habits shared by the people living in a particular time and place.
• The evolutionary perspective is the idea that human behavior is the result of evolutionary processes.
• What has the evolutionary approach proved?

  Physical and psychological predispostions that helped our ancestors survive.
• Natural Selection is the process by which individuals with traits that are better suited to their environment survive and reproduce more than individuals with traits that are less suited.
• Adaptation is where a species chaanges its behaviour to suit its environment and help reproduce offspring.
• The social learning perspective is a theory that suggests that behaviour is learned through observation and imitation.
• The social cognitive perspective is a theory that explains how people's mental processes are involved in paying attention, memory, and interpreting social experiences.
• Social Cognitive Theory states that we have three main components; Behaviour, Environment & Personality
• Descriptive methods involve recording behaviors, thoughts, and feelings in their natural state. These methods can uncover correlations, but they do not pin down causes.
• Name the basic descriptive methods.

  Naturalistic observation, Case Studies, archival studies, Surveys, Psychological tests.
• Experiments allow conclusions about cause and effect but are more artificial than many descriptive methods.
• Experimental methods search for causal processes by systematically manipulating some aspect of the situation (called the independent variable).
• Ethical issues for researchers include invasion of privacy and potential harm to subjects. These potential dangers must be weighed against the benefits of possibly useful knowledge.
• What is the FIRST thin a researcher does?

  Ask for consent before starting the experiment.
• Social psychology is closely connected to other subdisciplines of psychology, including developmental, personality, clinical, cognitive, and physiological psychology.
• Social psychology is closely connected to other subdisciplines of psychology, including developmental, personality, clinical, cognitive, and physiological psychology.
• Define the Archival method.

  Examination of systematic data originally collected for other purposes i.e marrige license
• Define Case study

  An intensive examination of an individual or a group.
• Correlation coefficient is a mathematical expression of the relationship between two variables.
• The correlation coefficient can range from -1 (perfect negative correlation) to +1 (perfect positive correlation).
• Debriefing is a discussion of procedures, hypotheses, and participant reactions at the completion of the study.
• Situational influences on individuals:

  • People are influenced by their physical and social environments, affecting their thoughts, feelings, and behavior
  • The number of people in an environment can greatly influence behavior, as seen in small high schools where students were more motivated, participated more, and felt challenged
• Affordances are different opportunities and threats provided by various situations, which individuals can detect effectively and with little effort
• Descriptive norms communicate information about common behaviors in a situation, helping individuals make correct choices; they usually represent what people truly believe or feel
• Pluralistic ignorance can occur when people behave differently from what they believe or feel, leading to dangerous behaviors like binge drinking
• Injunctive norms are rules in situations that define approved and disapproved behaviors; some situations are scripted with a general sequence of expected behaviors
• Motivation is the energy that moves people toward their goals
• Achieving goals sometimes requires considerable attention, but with practice, strategies for reaching some goals can become automatized
• Goals can be difficult to achieve, especially goals of not doing something, as suppressed thoughts may rebound into awareness with greater frequency and intensity
• Knowledge is the information we take away from our life experiences and store in memory
• We organize knowledge in mental structures, such as exemplars and schemas
• Priming is when knowledge is especially likely to influence what we pay attention to, how we interpret ambiguous social situations, and how we behave
• Feelings include attitudes, emotions, and moods, and can be measured through self-report, behavioral observation, and physiological techniques
• Genetic and cultural backgrounds influence the way we experience and express our feelings
• Motives are the reasons behind a person's actions, while goals are the specific outcomes a person aims to achieve