Psychosocial Influence - Eppp Knowledge

1. Which condition most strongly increases dissonance after counterattitudinal behavior?

   Low external justification (insufficient justification). Insufficient external rewards force internal justification, heightening the perceived inconsistency between attitudes and actions.

2. What is the contact hypothesis for reducing prejudice?

   Intergroup contact reduces prejudice under equal status and shared goals. Positive interactions foster empathy and reduce stereotypes when groups have equal status, common goals, and institutional support.

3. What is the bystander effect in emergency helping behavior?

   Helping decreases as number of bystanders increases. As bystander numbers grow, individuals assume others will act, reducing personal initiative in ambiguous situations requiring help.

4. What is pluralistic ignorance in interpreting ambiguous emergencies?

   Relying on others' inaction as evidence help is not needed. In uncertain situations, people look to others' reactions for cues, collectively misinterpreting inaction as a sign no emergency exists.

5. What does attribution theory primarily explain in social behavior?

   How people infer causes of behavior (internal vs external). The theory posits that people use cues like consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus to determine if behavior stems from personal traits or external situations.

6. Which appraisal pattern best predicts emotion in Lazarus's theory: "I can cope with this"?

   Challenge appraisal (high coping potential; approach-oriented emotion). In Lazarus's cognitive appraisal theory, perceiving demands as manageable elicits challenge emotions, promoting motivation and engagement.

7. What is the representativeness heuristic in social judgment?

   Judging probability by similarity to a prototype; base-rate neglect. This heuristic leads to errors by prioritizing how well an event matches a category prototype while ignoring actual statistical probabilities.

8. Identify the concept: Categorizing self as "us" versus "them" drives bias and behavior.

   Social identity theory (in-group favoritism and out-group bias). Identifying with an in-group enhances self-esteem through favoritism, while derogating out-groups maintains positive distinctiveness.

9. What is cognitive dissonance and its typical behavioral outcome?

   Inconsistency causes discomfort; attitude change reduces discomfort. The theory holds that psychological tension from conflicting cognitions motivates resolution, often through altering attitudes to align with behavior.

10. What is the availability heuristic in judgment and decision-making?

    Estimating likelihood by ease of recalling examples. It relies on mental accessibility, where vivid or recent instances are overestimated in frequency due to cognitive ease of retrieval.

11. What is the door-in-the-face technique in compliance?

    Large refused request increases compliance with subsequent smaller request. The initial large request sets a high anchor, making the smaller follow-up seem reasonable by contrast and invoking reciprocity.

12. What is diffusion of responsibility in group contexts?

    Perceived personal obligation decreases as others are present. In groups, the sense of shared accountability dilutes individual responsibility, making people less likely to intervene in crises.

13. What is stereotype threat and its effect on cognition and performance?

    Fear of confirming stereotype; impairs working memory and performance. Anxiety about fulfilling negative group stereotypes consumes cognitive resources, leading to underperformance in stereotyped domains.

14. What is social facilitation and when does it improve performance?

    Others' presence boosts dominant response; improves simple/well-learned tasks. Arousal from an audience enhances performance on tasks where the correct response is dominant, due to increased drive and focus.

15. What is the actor–observer bias when explaining behavior?

    Own acts to situation; others' acts to disposition. This asymmetry arises from differing perspectives: actors have more situational information about their own behavior than observers do.

16. What is the just-world hypothesis and its cognitive consequence?

    Belief world is fair; increases victim-blaming attributions. This belief maintains a sense of order and control, leading to attributions that blame victims to preserve the illusion of fairness.

17. What is the self-serving bias in causal attributions?

    Success to internal causes; failure to external causes. It protects self-esteem by attributing positive outcomes to personal factors and negative ones to circumstances beyond control.

18. What is the foot-in-the-door technique in compliance?

    Small initial request increases later compliance with larger request. Compliance with the initial small request creates self-perception of helpfulness, increasing likelihood of agreeing to subsequent larger demands.

19. What is the norm of reciprocity in social influence?

    Obligation to return favors or concessions. This social norm evolved to promote cooperation, creating pressure to reciprocate actions to maintain balanced relationships.

20. What is social loafing in group performance?

    Reduced individual effort when contributions are not identifiable. In groups, individuals feel less accountable when efforts are pooled, leading to decreased motivation and output compared to solo work.

21. What is deindividuation and its typical behavioral effect?

    Reduced self-awareness in groups; increased impulsive/normative acts. Anonymity in crowds diminishes personal accountability, facilitating behaviors aligned with group norms or impulses without self-restraint.

22. What is confirmation bias in processing social information?

    Seeking and interpreting evidence to support existing beliefs. It stems from motivated reasoning, where individuals selectively attend to information that aligns with preconceptions to reduce cognitive dissonance.

23. What is the fundamental attribution error in social cognition?

    Overattributing others' behavior to traits and underweighting situation. This bias occurs because people tend to overlook situational factors when judging others, focusing instead on dispositional explanations for behavior.

24. What is groupthink and its key antecedent that impairs judgment?

    Cohesion-driven concurrence seeking; suppresses dissent and alternatives. High group cohesion prioritizes harmony over critical evaluation, leading to flawed decisions by ignoring risks and alternatives.

25. What is group polarization in group decision-making?

    Group discussion shifts members toward more extreme initial positions. Discussion amplifies shared views through persuasive arguments and social comparison, pushing the group average toward extremity.

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