Intro to Psychology Final Review - Leeanna

1. Dispositional: Internal cause. Assigns the cause of behavior to some internal characteristic of a person, rather than to outside forces.
   1. For example, we attribute the behavior of a person to their personality, motives or beliefs.
2. Situational: External Cause. The process of assigning the cause of behavior to some situation or event outside a person’s control rather than to some internal characteristic.
   1. When we try to explain our own behavior we tend to make external attributions, such as situational or environmental features.
3. For example, a teacher may wonder whether a child’s hostility reflects an aggressive personality (dispositional attribution) or is a reaction to stress or abuse (a situational attribution).

1. Fritz Heider (1958) suggested that we have a tendency to give causal explanations for someone’s behavior, often by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition.

The fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasise dispositional, or personality-based explanations for behaviours observed in others while under-emphasising situational explanations.

Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.

1. Stanford Prison Study: Zimbardo (1972) assigned the roles of guards and prisoners to random students and found that guards and prisoners developed role-appropriate attitudes.

1. Conformity: compliance with standards, rules, or laws. Adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.
2. Asch Conformity Study: We adjust our behavior or thinking toward some group standard.

1. People comply to social pressures. Compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another’s authority.
2. Stanley Milgram designed a study that investigates the effects of authority on obedience.

1. Refers to improved performance on tasks in the presence of others.

1. The tendency of an individual in a group to exert less effort toward attaining a common goal than when tested individually.

1. A mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides the realisitic appraisal of alternatives.
2. When people set aside their own personal beliefs or adopt the opinion of the rest of the group.

1. A mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides the realisitic appraisal of alternatives.
2. When people set aside their own personal beliefs or adopt the opinion of the rest of the group.

1. Ingroup: People with whom one shares a common identity.
2. Outgroup: Those perceived as different from one’s ingroup.
3. Ingroup Bias: The tendency to favor one’s own group.

1. Aggression can be any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy. It may be done reactively out of hostility or proactively as a calculated means to an end.

1. Animals have been bred for aggressiveness for sport and at times for research. Twin studies show aggression may be genetic. In men, aggression is possibly linked to the Y chromosome.

1. Some centers in the brain, especially the limbic system (amygdala) and the frontal lobe, are intimately involved with aggression.