PSY 1001 Study Guide - Final Guide: Kurt Lewin, Fundamental Attribution Error, Cognitive Miser
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
What is Social Psychology?
1. What topics are of interest to Social Psychologists?
Social Psychology: scientific psychological study of how and why humans think about,
react to, and behave as we do in our interactions with other humans
2. What assumptions underlie the research done by Social Psychologists.
Social Psych Assumptions: behavior varies due to situations, focus on individual
3. Briefly describe the history of this area of psychology. Who is Kurt Lewin & what is
“Action Research?”
Kurt Lewin: social researcher, subjectivity research, humans assign meaning to social
world
Social Cognition
Reasoning
4. How does a “flawed scientist” reason?
Flawed Scientist: people who aspire to be reasonable, value accuracy, system 2
thinking
Flawed Information: consistency info, distinctiveness info, consensus info
5. How does a “cognitive miser” reason?
Cognitive Miser: value ease and efficiency over accuracy, system 1 thinking
6. What is situated social cognition?
Situated Social Cognition: knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all
knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts
7. What is the dual process model of persuasion?
Dual Process Model of Persuasion: A model that accounts for the two basic ways that
attitude change occurs - with & without much thought
8. What characterizes the central route and what kinds of decisions are involved?
Central Route: speaker uses facts, figures, and other information to enable listeners to
carefully process information and think about their opinions
9. What characterizes the peripheral route and what kinds of decisions are involved?
Peripheral Route: superficial factors (supermodels & celebrities) used as distractions,
leading to less stable change in attitudes
Attribution
10. What is the Fundamental Attribution Error?
Fundamental Attribution Error: people place emphasis on internal characteristics
rather than external factors
11. What is the actor-observer bias?
Actor-Observer Bias: observers focus on actors and their faults; actors focus on
situation, not personal characteristics
12. What is an attribution?
Attribution: process of assigning causes to behavior
13. What is an internal versus an external attribution?
Internal Attribution: personal reason for the cause of a situation
External Attribution: person’s behavior is effect of situation
14. What is the difference between situational factors and dispositional factors?
Cognitive dissonance
15. What is cognitive dissonance?
Cognitive dissonance: unpleasant mental experience of tension resulting from two
conflicting thoughts or beliefs
16. What is self-perception theory?
Self perception theory: we acquire our attitudes by observing our behaviors
Direct Social Influence
17. What is obedience?
Obedience: changing behavior in response to a demand from an authority figure
18. What is conformity?
conformity: adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group
standard
19. How did Asch study conformity? Describe his findings. What variables influence
whether or not people conform?
Asch Study: One person in the group is made to feel insecure or uncertain about his
answer after hearing everyone else's different answer
20. How did Milgram study obedience? Describe his findings. What factors affect
obedience?
Milgram Study: Would average people obey orders that could hurt another person?
Escalating shocks, urged by experimenter
21. What is an authoritarian personality?
Authoritarian personality: personality that is disposed to favor obedience to authority
and intolerance of out-groups and those lower in power
22. What is the “foot-in-the-door” technique?
Foot-in-the-Door-Technique: making a larger request and successfully attaining a
smaller one
23. What is the “door-in-the-face” technique?
Door-in-the-Face Technique: making requests that are so large that are denied but then
making a more reasonable request
24. What is “lowballing?” What characteristics of the messenger increase persuasiveness?
Lowballing: adding just a little more to a convincing offer
Indirect Social Influences
Social facilitation
25. What is social facilitation? Describe the findings of Zajonc’s cockroach study and the
playing pool study.
Social Facilitation: tendency for people to do better at simple tasks and worse at
difficult tasks when in the presences of other people
Document Summary
Social psychology: scientific psychological study of how and why humans think about, react to, and behave as we do in our interactions with other humans: what assumptions underlie the research done by social psychologists. Social psych assumptions: behavior varies due to situations, focus on individual: briefly describe the history of this area of psychology. Kurt lewin: social researcher, subjectivity research, humans assign meaning to social world. Flawed scientist: people who aspire to be reasonable, value accuracy, system 2 thinking. Dual process model of persuasion: a model that accounts for the two basic ways that. Central route: speaker uses facts, figures, and other information to enable listeners to. Peripheral route: superficial factors (supermodels & celebrities) used as distractions, leading to less stable change in attitudes. Internal attribution: personal reason for the cause of a situation. Self perception theory: we acquire our attitudes by observing our behaviors. Lowballing: adding just a little more to a convincing offer.
