Chapter 1
What is Social Psychology
The scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behavior, feelings, and thoughts in social situations. It investigates the ways in which our thoughts, feelings and actions are influenced by the social environment we live by other people or our thoughts about them.
What is aggression?
An action or behavior done with the intention of causing harm to another person. Physical/emotional harm-hurts feelings, psychological harm- mind games. Gas lightening-making someone feel like they are losing their mind.
What is empathetic joy hypothesis
Someone is doing something solely for the reward the benefit. For example doing service only to feel good
What is group decision making?
Processes that are involved in combining/integrating available information to choose one out of several possible causes of action. For example, government and corporations.
Work with enemies to achieve a goal. Overt cooperation. Example surviving together in a Zombie apocalypse.
The Role and formation of theories. What are the four steps of theories>
1. Theories are proposed
2. Hypothesis
3. Study
4. Results accepted or rejected
What are three causes of aggression with examples of each?
Frustration- frustration hypothesis that frustration always leads to aggression and aggression always leads to frustration.
Provocation- a stimulus reaction that is purposely used toward someone to cause them to get arroused. For example continuously throwing egg shells at some one even after they asked you to stop.
Physiological arousal- excitation transfer theory- a stimulus aroused in one situation is intensified in a later unrelated situation
What is defensive helping?
people that help others especially people who do not belong to their own in group as a means of diffusing status threats from these people. help people to put them down in subtle ways and reduce their threat to in group status.
What is social loafing
People feel anonymous while working in groups and are more likely to put in less effort.
What is a narcissism
Someone that is over infatuated with one's accomplishments and virtues and when their ego is threatened they act aggressively.
What two things reduce the dangers of deception?
Debriefing and informed consent.
What is the GAM Model?
Agression is triggered by a wide range of input variables that influence arousal, affective stages and cognitions. Lead to overt aggression through the processes of arousal, affective states and cognition.
What is empathy
the capacity to be able to experience others emotional states and feel sympathetic toward them and take their perspective. emotional reactions focused on other people including compassion, sympathy and concern.
What are additive, conjunctive, disconjuctive, and compensatory tasks?
additive- everyone's output/input are put together
conjunctive- group members support the weakest member and cannot move on to the next task until all group members do
disconjunctive- group members support the strongest in the group.
Compensatory task- each group members task is individually accessed and then put together to create the whole. For example, pots dam's mission statement.
What is a social delimma?
Situations in which each person can increase his or her individual gains by acting in a purely selfish manner, but if all people do the same thing the outcomes of the experiment are reduced.
Difference between Iv and DV?
Iv- changed variable
DV- what is being measured
Define Prosocial,sanctioned,antisocial,hostile,and instrumental aggression.
Prosocial- required by norms. Beneficial/positive. Example, will smith congratulated for killing the aliens.
Sanctioned- acts/behavior not required by norms. For example defensive acts of behavior.
Antisocial - acts that violate social norms, acts that are not allowed.
Hostile-acts that are based in anger and meant to hurt someone kicking or punching.
Instrumental aggression- acts that are not anger based but done for the purpose of a goal or reward.
What is the difference between altruism and helping?
Altruism- doing kind acts solely to help someone else without any rewards.
Helping-could be selfish or selfless . Positive desirable behavior for others that could be selfish or selfless.
What is groupthink and group polarization.
Group polarization- groups show a pronounced tendency to shift toward views that are more extreme than the ones they initially began with. Groups are moving toward risker alternatives as they discuss important issues a change described as the risky shift.
Group think- a strong tendency for decision making groups to closer ranks around a decision, to assume that the group can't be wrong with pressure for all members to support the decision strongly. reject any information contrary to the decision.
What is the catharsis hypothesis
If people handle aggression in healthy ways such as venting aggression will be reduced.
What is Debriefing, Deception, and informed consent?
Debriefing- procedures at the conclusion of a research session in which participants are given full information about the nature of the research and the hypothesis of hypothesis under investigation.
Deception- researchers withhold information about the purposes of a study from people participating in it.
Informed consent- a procedure in which participants are provided with as much information as possible about a research project before deciding whether to participate in it.
What is Frustration?
An emotional response when someone/something interferes with our attempt to achieve a goal.
What is diffusion of responsibility?
Name one example with this.
List the five steps of the helping tree.
The more people at the site of an emergency the less likely victims are to receive help.
Kitty Genovese
1. Notice the event.
2. Interpret it as an emergency
3. Assume responsibility
4. Know what to do
5. Weigh the costs and benefits
What is the difference between hooliganism and deindividuation.
Deindividuation- psychological state characterized by reduced self-awareness brought on by external conditions such as being an anonymous member of a large crowd. Loose individuality. Such as booing at a sports event.
What is the TASS Model?
the traits as situational sensitivities model. It suggests that many aspects of personality function in a threshold manner. Only when one situation factors are strong enough to trigger them do they influence behavior.