Social Psychology Flashcards
7 cards from real BAPSY practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Social Psychology flashcards as text
Robert Cialdini's principle of 'scarcity' as a tool of influence works primarily because:
Answer: People desire things more when they are less available
Scarcity triggers psychological reactance — the perception that freedom to obtain something is threatened increases its desirability.
The 'foot-in-the-door' technique achieves compliance with a large request by first securing agreement to:
Answer: A small, reasonable request
Agreeing to a small initial request shifts self-perception toward seeing oneself as cooperative, increasing compliance with larger follow-up requests.
Leon Festinger's concept of social comparison theory proposes that we evaluate our opinions and abilities by comparing ourselves to:
Answer: Similar others
Festinger argued that in the absence of objective criteria, people turn to similar others as a benchmark for self-evaluation.
Which of the following is an example of the 'door-in-the-face' compliance technique?
Answer: Asking someone to volunteer 40 hours per week, then settling for 2 hours
Door-in-the-face works by making a large request first, then retreating to a smaller target request that seems reasonable by comparison.
Stereotype threat, as described by Claude Steele, refers to the risk of:
Answer: Confirming a negative stereotype about one's group through performance
Stereotype threat occurs when awareness of a negative group stereotype creates anxiety that impairs performance on tasks relevant to that stereotype.
The 'mere exposure effect' in social psychology refers to the finding that:
Answer: Familiarity with a stimulus increases liking for it
Robert Zajonc demonstrated that simply being exposed to a stimulus repeatedly tends to increase positive affect toward it.
According to terror management theory, thoughts of mortality increase people's defense of their:
Answer: Cultural worldviews
Terror management theory holds that cultural worldviews provide symbolic immortality, so mortality salience intensifies their defense as a buffer against death anxiety.