Final Exam Study Guide

Social Psychology Sec 01 and 03: Spring 2004

The examination will consist of approximately 40-45 multiple choice questions. You are responsible for all material presented in class and Chapters 3 & 6 (p. 232-247).The material covered is approximately ½ from lecture and ½ from the book. You will need to carefully read each book chapter and familiarize your self with the major concepts (often indicated by italicized words, bulleted/numbered lists, and highlighted text boxes). Use the questions below to help focus your studying. Note that though you could provide single word answers to many of the questions, doing so will not sufficiently prepare you for this examination.

Ch. 3 (Social Cognition)

1. Know the parts of the information processing flow chart and the different concepts associated with it, e.g., attention, encoding, elaboration, storage, and retrieval.

2. Know the metaphors

3. What are automatic and controlled processing? Be sure to know the features of each.

4. What are schemas, what do they do for us (i.e., the functions), and how do they influence the different aspects of information processing?

5. What are automatic schemas, what characteristics are associated with automatic schemas, and what is the difference between an chronically accessible and temporarily accessible schema?

6. What are stereotypes, what do they do for us, and what are the positive and negative aspects of stereotypes?

7. Why are schemas/stereotypes resistant to change? I.E. what is the perseverance effect, and what role do the summative nature of schemas and the sub-typing effect play in this effect?

8. What is the self-fulfilling prophesy (aka self fulfilling stereotypes, behavior confirmation, and the self-confirming nature of schemas)? Know the Jacobsen and Rosenthal study and the Snyder, Tanke, and Bershied study.

9. What are Heuristics, how are they related to the speed/accuracy trade-off, and what heuristics do we typically rely on? Be able to identify examples of each heuristic in action.

10. What is priming and what are the cognitive and behavioral effects of priming? Know the Bargh, Chen, and Burrows study.

11. What are the positivity and negativity bias? What evidence is there to suggest that we often demonstrate these biases.

12. What is magical thinking?

13. In what ways can affect (emotion) influence our cognitions and what evidence is there that demonstrates these effects?

14. In what way can cognitions influence our affect and what evidence is there that demonstrates these effects?

Ch. 6 (Prejudice)

1. What were the definitions we covered in class regarding prejudice, discrimination, and racism? Further, what are the origins of the race concept?

2. What is the distinction between traditional and modern racism? What are the key aspects of each?

3. What is the distinction between hostile and benevolent sexism? What are the key aspects and consequences of each?

4. What are ingroups and outgroups and what effects are associated with making such distinctions? What have we learned about such effects from the minimal groups paradigm?

5. What subtle forms of sex discrimination still exist (be sure to know what the book has to say about each)? For example, what is the Glass Ceiling and what has research demonstrated about this phenomenon?

6.What are the methods we discussed regarding the reduction of prejudice? How do they work and what limitations have been identified with respect to some of these methods?

– Note: know all the studies, what they did (the different conditions), and what the results were. You do not need to know numbers/scores for groups, but do know what groups were higher/lower on the DV of interest (this goes for all the studies we covered, as well as major studies covered in the book).

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