Description
Exam 1: Textbook Review
Chapter 1
1.What are the 6 steps of the scientific method?
Step 1: Systematically Observing Events
Step 3: Forming a Hypothesis
Guide further investigation
Step 4: Testing the Hypothesis
Step 5: Formulating a Theory
Explain the relationship between the variables
Step 6: Testing the Theory
2. What is descriptive research?
Researcher need not go through all of the steps of the scientific method in order to do science. He or she can focus solely on the first step, observing events systematically.
naturalistic observation
observing events as they naturally occur and try to deduce regularities
produce only correlational data
Kinds of Natural Observation:
1. surveys: A number of participants answer specific questions 2. case studies: A single participant is analyzed in depth
3. What is correlational research?
Relations among different variables are documented but causation cannot be inferred
positive correlation:
a relationship in which increases in one variable are accompanied by increases in another
negative correlation:
a relationship in which increases in one variable are accompanied by decreases in another
4. What is experimental research?
Participants are assigned randomly to groups, and the effects of manipulating one or more independent variables on a dependent variable are studied
5. What are the advantages of correlational research? Don't forget about the age old question of brealbot
It allows researchers to compare variables that cannot be manipulated directly
6. What is the major drawback of correlational research?
Correlation does not imply causation.
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7. What are independent and dependent variables?
Independent Variable (IV):
The variable being manipulated by the experimenter. (anything else has to be kept constant)
Dependent Variable (DV):
The variable that measures the participant’s response.
8. What is a confounding variable?
An outside influence that changes the effect of a dependent and independent variable.
9. Why does experimental research produce causal data?
Any changes in the dependent variable can be said to be caused by changes in the independent variable, because only the independent variable is changing.
10. What is an experimental and a control group?
experimental group
A group that receives the complete procedure that defines the experiment
control group
A group that is treated exactly the same way as the experimental group, except that the independent variable that is the focus of the study is not manipulated. The control group holds constant all of the variables in the experimental group. If you want to learn more check out pogox
Used to avoid confounding
11. What is random assignment and why is it used?
The technique of assigning participants randomly to the experimental and the control groups, so that members of the two groups are comparable in all relevant ways.
12.What are reliability and validity?
Reliability
Consistency; data are reliable if the same values are obtained when the measurements are repeated.
Validity
A method does in fact measure what it is supposed to measure.
13. What is sampling bias? Why is it a problem?
A bias that occurs when the participants are not chosen at random but instead are chosen so that one attribute is over- or underrepresented.
14. What is an experimenter expectancy effect and why is it important? 2
Effects that occur when an investigator’s expectations lead him or her (consciously or unconsciously) to treat participants in a way that encourages them to produce the expected results. If you want to learn more check out life sciences 7a ucla
The experimenter may introduce cognitive bias into a study
15. What is a double-blind design and why is it important?
A study in which the participant is unaware of the predictions and therefore cannot consciously or unconsciously produce the predicted results; the investigator is also “blind” to the group to which the participant has been assigned or to the condition that the participant is receiving and therefore cannot produce the predicted results.
Used to guarantee that experimenter expectancy effects won’t occur
Chapter 13
1.What is social cognition? Don't forget about the age old question of ek 307 bu
The ways that people perceive, attend to, store, make inferences about, remember, and use information and feelings about other people and the social world.
2. What are implicit (automatic) processes?
Cognitive processing that occurs without awareness, without conscious intent, and with limited ability to be controlled or prevented once triggered. We also discuss several other topics like ongoing search consumer behavior
3. What is cognitive dissonance?
The uncomfortable state that arises from a discrepancy between two attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors.
A. What causes cognitive dissonance?
arises from a discrepancy among attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors B. How can cognitive dissonance be reduced and why?
Indirect strategies
trying to feel good about ourselves in other areas of life.
Direct strategies
involve actually changing our attitude or behavior. If you want to learn more check out biol 230
Trivialize an inconsistency between two conflicting attitudes as being unimportant and thereby make it less likely to cause cognitive dissonance
4. What is an attribution?
An explanation for the cause of an event or behavior.
A. What are internal and external attributions?
Internal attribution
An explanation of someone’s behavior that focuses on the person’s beliefs, goals, traits, or other characteristics; also called dispositional attribution.
External attribution
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An explanation of someone’s behavior that focuses on the situation; also called situational attribution.
5. What are attributional biases and why do they occur?
A tendency to make certain types of attributions; this sort of bias generally occurs outside of conscious awareness.
Fundamental Attribution Error
the strong tendency to interpret other people’s behavior as arising from internal causes rather than external ones. (ex: see homeless man as being lazy rather than under unfair treatment) Self-Serving Bias
the inclination to attribute your own failures to external causes and your successes to internal ones, but to attribute other people’s failures to internal causes and their successes to external causes (ex: different description in newspaper)
Belief in a Just World (just-world attribution)
the assumption that people get what they deserve. (ex: criminals get deserved punishments)
6. What are the factors involved in liking someone and why is each important?
Physical Attraction
Make inferences about people
Repeated Contact
The more contact you have with someone, the more likely you are to think positively about that person
Similarity
The more similar the new acquaintance’s attitudes are to your own, the more likely you are to be attracted to him or her
7. What are companionate and passionate love? How are they related? Companionate love
An altruistic type of love characterized by expending time, attention, and resources on behalf of another person.
passionate love
The intense, often sudden feeling of being “in love,” which typically involves sexual attraction, a desire for mutual love and physical closeness, arousal, and a fear that the relationship will end. Over time, passionate love matures into the more stable companionate love characterized by bonding and affection
8. What are Sternberg’s three dimensions of love?
passion (including sexual desire)
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intimacy (emotional closeness and sharing)
commitment (the conscious decision to be in the relationship).
9. What forms of love are formed from Sternberg’s three dimensions? 10. What is an attachment style?
the manner of behaving with and thinking about a partner
11. What are the three forms of attachment in adult relationships? Secure attachment style
adults seek closeness and interdependence in relationships and are not worried about possibly losing the relationship because they feel secure in it. Avoidant attachment style
adults are uncomfortable with intimacy and closeness.
Anxious-ambivalent style
adults want but simultaneously fear a relationship
12. How is a group described in social psychology?
A social entity characterized by regular interaction among members, some type of social or emotional connection with one another, a common frame of reference, and a degree of interdependence
A. Within a group, what is a norm and what is a role?
Norms
A rule that implicitly or explicitly governs members of a group. Roles
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The behaviors that a member in a given position in a group is expected to perform.
13. What is conformity?
A change in behavior in order to follow a group’s norms.
A. What are informational and normative social influence? B. What role does each form of influence play in conformity? Informational social influence
occurs when we conform to others because we believe that their views are correct or their behavior is appropriate for the situation likely to occur when:
1. the situation is ambiguous
2. there is a crisis
3. the task is very difficult
4. other people are experts
Normative social influence
occurs when we conform because we want to be liked or thought of positively.
C. What role does social support play in conformity?
If another group member openly disagrees with the group consensus, conformity then decreases
14. What is compliance?
a change in behavior brought about by a direct request rather than by social norms.
A. How do each of the following techniques influence compliance: Foot-in-the-door
achieves compliance by beginning with an insignificant request, which is then followed by a larger request.
Lowball technique
consists of getting someone to make an agreement and then increasing the cost of that agreement.
Door-in-the-face
someone makes a very large request and then when it is denied (as expected) makes a smaller request—for what is actually desired.
15. What is obedience?
compliance with an order
A. What does the Milgrim experiment tell us about obedience? Participants were designated as the “teacher” who were to keep track of how well the learner memorized word pairs. The teacher had to administer an electric shock if the learner made a mistake, increasing the voltage each time.
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Most people obeyed orders to inflict pain. Milgram concluded that people would go against what they thought was morally right so that they could obey authority figures.
However, the specifics of the situation (such as proximity to the learner) influence whether an individual will obey an order to hurt someone else.
16. For each of the following phenomena, please be able to describe what it is, when it occurs, and why it occurs:
Group polarization
the tendency of group members’ opinions to become more extreme (in the same direction as their initial opinions) after group discussion Likely occur:
1. When some members of the group give many very
compelling reasons for their initial views. (likely to occur
when an intellectual issue is at stake or when the group is deciding about a task to be undertake.)
2. After members come to see an emerging consensus, and some members try to increase their standing in the group by taking that consensus position to an extreme. (likely to occur when the issue involves making a judgment call or
when the group is more focused on group harmony than on correctness.)
3. When group members who have more extreme positions take more turns in the discussion and spend more time
talking.
Groupthink
occurs when people who try to solve problems together accept one another’s information and ideas without subjecting them to critical analysis.
most likely to fall into groupthink when the group is cohesive (the members like and value each other), which then deters members from voicing dissenting opinions or raising questions that can lead to conflict Social loafing
occurs when some members don’t contribute as much to a shared group task as do others and instead let other members work proportionally harder than they do
Consciousness Material
1.What is attention?
The act of focusing on particular information, which allows it to be processed more fully than what is not attended to
2. What is selective attention?
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The process of picking out and maintaining focus on a particular quality, object, or event, and ignoring other stimuli or characteristics of the stimuli. Pop-out:
occurs when the perceptual characteristics of a stimulus are so different from the ones around it that it immediately comes to our attention.
Active searching: actively searching for a particular characteristic, object, or event
what we see and hear influences what we expect
initial perception of an event may not be very clear, and so we need a “second look”
Seeing without awareness:
repetition blindness: The inability to see the second instance of a stimulus when it appears soon after the first instance.
attentional blink: A rebound period in which a person cannot pay attention to a second stimulus after having just paid attention to another one (which need not be the same as the second stimulus).
3. What are the stages of sleep?
Stage of Sleep
Key Aspects
Stage 1
(hypnogogic
sleep)
• Can be readily awakened
• If awakened, a person won’t feel that he or she has been asleep
• May experience hypnic jerk
• Lasts about 5 minutes
Stage 2
• Can still readily be awakened
• More relaxed and less responsive to the environment than during Stage 1 sleep
Stage 3
• Decreased heart rate and body temperature • Less easily awakened than in Stages 1 and 2
Stage 4
• Lowest heart rate, breathing, and body temperature of all sleep stages
• Very deep sleep—difficult to awaken
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Stage of Sleep
Key Aspects
REM Sleep
• Eyes move rapidly under closed lids
• Fast and irregular heart rate and breathing
• Voluntary muscles are paralyzed and unresponsive • Vivid dreams that are memorable if awakened during this sleep stage
May have genital arousal
B. How is REM different from the other stages of sleep?
Stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements, marked brain activity, and vivid dreaming.
C. How does the pattern of sleep change across the night?
The time you spend in each stage varies over the course of the night, with slow-wave sleep occurring predominantly in the early hours of sleep and REM sleep occurring primarily in the later hours of sleep.
4.What are the effects of deprivation of sleep and what are the effects of deprivation of REM?
Sleep deprivation
problems sustaining your attention and performing visual-motor tasks
disrupts learning
perceive more stressors and create additional stressors alters the normal daily patterns of changes in temperature, metabolism, and hormone secretions
Deprivation of REM
REM rebound: The higher percentage of REM sleep that occurs following a night lacking the normal amount of REM.
5. What are the major functions of sleep?
Conserves energy
sleep allows energy conservation because the body’s temperature lowers and caloric demands decline.
Restores the body
helps the body repair the wear and tear from the day’s events reduces the bodily effects of stressors and other stimuli.
Facilitates learning
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facilitates the learning of material encountered during the day
6. What is the function of dreaming in each of the following theories: Activation-synthesis
The theory that dreams arise from random bursts of nerve cell activity that may affect brain cells involved in hearing and seeing; the brain attempts to make sense of this hodgepodge of stimuli, resulting in the experience of dreams.
Editing/strengthening neural connections
dreams are used to edit out unnecessary or accidental brain connections formed during the day or strengthen useful connections
Wish Fulfillment
dream content originates in the unconscious—outside our conscious awareness
allow us to fulfill unconscious desires
7. What is a circadian rhythm?
The body’s daily fluctuations in response to the cycle of dark and light. A. What are the effects of violating your natural circadian rhythm? develop a bad mood
alter the body’s physical health
disrupt hormones and immune function
potentially accelerate tumor growth in people with cancer 8. What is insomnia?
Repeated difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, or waking up too early
9. What is sleep apnea?
A disorder characterized by a temporary cessation of breathing during sleep, usually preceded by a period of difficult breathing accompanied by loud snoring.
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