Psychology 2070A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Social Cognition, Safe Sex, Fundamental Attribution Error

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2070A/B
• Professor: Graeme Haynes

Document Summary

Social influence takes on forms other than deliberate attempts at persuasion. Social psychology is distinct: not concerned about social situations but how people are influenced by their interpretation (construal) of their social environment. Make educated guesses (hypotheses) about specific situations under which one outcome or the other would happen. Social psychologists makes experiments to bring out situations that would result in one outcome or another. Construal: the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world, can be persuaded with construal. Folk wisdom (common sense: birds of a feather flock together, go with people who have similar backgrounds and interest, opposites attract, out of sight out of mind, absence makes heart grow fonder, usually wrong or oversimplified. Personality psych: personality psych focuses their attention on individual differences, the aspects of people"s personalities that make them different from other people.