Social Psychology 1

Define social psychological

The scientific study of how individuals think, feel and behave in social context.

Define social influence

The effect that words, actions, or mere presences of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior.

Explain how social psychologists go about finding the answers to life's important questions including how this differs from the approach of philosophers and social commentators. Describe why the social psychological approach may lead to more accurate pred

Integration of both "hot" and "cold" perspectives in the study. It integrates emotion, motivation, and cognition; biological and evolution perspectives; cultural perspectives; new technologies.

Define individual differences

The aspects of people's personalities that make them different from other people.

Identify the goals of personality psychology compared to those of social psychology.

Social psychology is the study of the psychological processes people have in common that make them susceptible to SOCIAL INFLUENCE. Personality psychology is the study pf the characteristics that make individuals UNIQUE and DIFFERENT from one another.

What is the goal of social psychology?

It identifies universal properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of social class or culture.

What is sociology?

The study of groups, organizations, and societies rather than individuals.

Define 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.

Identify the consequences of making this error and underestimating the power of social influence.

People often tend to underestimate external influences when explaining other people's behavior.

Define the basic approach of behaviorism and explain how social psychology builds on this approach.

This is a school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment. When behavior is followed by a reward(such as money, attention, praise, or other benefits), it is likely to

Define construals.

The way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world.

Indicate why social psychologists study construals rather than simply the objective environments of people.

A person my interpret/react to the same action depending on the situation/ the person who did it.

Explain how social psychology is influenced by Gestalt psychology.

Gestalt psychology is to study the subjective way in which an object appears in people's minds rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object. Social psychologists began to focus on the importance of how people construe their environments.

Identify the two basic motives that underlie the origins of people's construals. Describe what happens when the two basic human motives conflict.

The need to feel good about yourselves and the need to be accurate. The need to feel good about our decisions can fly in the face of the need to be accurate, and can have catastrophic consequences.

Describe The Self-Esteem Approach.

The need to feel good about ourselves. -Human beings are motivated to maintain a positive picture of themselves, in part by justifying their past behavior, and that under certain specifiable conditions, this leads them to do things that at first glance mi

Describe The Social Cognition Approach

The Need to be Accurate. Social cognition: how people think about themselves and the social world; how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgements and decisions.

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