Chapter 1
Fundamental Attribution Error
the tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors
Advantages/disadvantages of correlational research
◦Advantages:
Allow researchers to study variables that are difficult to observe
◦Problems
Difficulty of obtaining a representative sample
Problems of inaccurate responding
Correlation ≠ causality
Counterfactual Thinking
◦mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been
Fear arousing communication
◦Persuasive message that attempts to change people’s attitudes by arousing their fears
◦The perception that individuals in the out-group are more similar to each other (homogeneous) than they really are, as well as more similar than the members of the in-group are
Behavorism
a school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behaviors, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment
Experimental Method
method in which the experimenter randomly assigns participants to different conditions and ensures that these conditions are identical except for the independent variable
Overconfidence Barrier
The fact that people usually have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgments
Heuristic systematic model of persuasion
◦An explanation of the two ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude change: either systematically processing the merits of the arguments or using mental shortcuts or heuristics
Realistic conflict Theory
The idea that limited resources lead to conflict between groups and result in increased prejudice and discrimination
Gestalt psychology
a school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object
Independent and dependent variable
In: variable a researcher changes or varies to see if it has an effect on some other variable
De: ◦a variable measured by the researcher to assess the effect of the independent variable
Planning Fallacy
◦The tendency for people to be overly optimistic about how soon they will complete a project, even when they have failed to get similar projects done on time in the past
Subliminal Messages and what they cannot do
words or pictures that are not consciously perceived but may nevertheless influence judgments, attitudes, and behaviors.
CANNOT:
◦Influence purchasing behavior
◦Improve your memory or study habits, raise your self-esteem, or help you quit smoking
◦Cause you to become a devil worshipper or drug addict
BUT they can cause PRIMING
Interdependence
The situation that exists when two or more groups need to depend on one another to accomplish a goal that is important to each of them
Construal
the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world
Internal and External Validity
Internal;making sure that nothing besides the IV can affect the DV
External; the extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other situations and to other people
Analytic Thinking
a type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context; common in Western cultures
Making people immune to attempts to change their attitudes by initially exposing them to small doses of the arguments against their position
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
A test thought to measure unconscious (implicit) prejudices according to the speed with which people can pair a target face (e.g., black or white, old or young, Asian or white) with a positive or negative association (e.g., the words honest or evil)
What are the sources of construal
self-esteem motive; need to feel good about ourselves
Self- esteem; people’s evaluation of their own self-worth, that is, the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent, and decent
Need to be accurate
Probability level (p-value)
a number calculated with statistical techniques that tells researchers how likely it is that the results of their experiment occurred by chance and not because of the IV(s).
Representativeness Heuristic
◦A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case
Reactance Theory
◦the idea that when people feel their freedom to perform a certain behavior is threatened, an unpleasant state of resistance is aroused, which they can reduce by performing the prohibited behavior.
◦The notion that increased contact between competing groups will reduce prejudice