| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Attitudes | Beliefs and feelings about objects, people, and events that lead people to behave in certain ways |
| Cognitive anchors | Persistent beliefs that shape the ways in which people see the world and interpret events; beliefs that tend to keep attitudes from changing |
| Cognitive dissonance | An uncomfortable feeling of tension caused by a contradiction between behaviors and attitudes |
| Persuasion | A direct attempt to influence other people's attitudes |
| Central route | A way to persuade people by using evidence and logical arguments |
| Peripheral route | A way to persuade by arousing feelings such as loyalty or fear |
| Sales resistance | The quality that some people have that makes them less easily persuaded than others |
| Prejudice | A negative attitude toward a group of people |
| Discrimination | The unfair treatment of individuals because they are members of a particular group |
| Scapegoat | An individual or group that is blamed for the problems of others |
| Social perception | The ways in which people perceive one another |
| Primacy effect | The tendency for people to form opinions of others on the basis of first impressions |
| Recency effect | The changing of one's opinion of others on the basis of recent interactions rather than on first impressions |
| Actor-observer bias | The tendency to explain the behavior of others in terms of dispositional factors and one's own behavior in terms of situational factors |
| Fundamental attribution error | The tendency to overestimate the effect of dispositional causes for another person's behavior and to underestimate the effect of situational causes |
| Self-serving bias | The tendency to attribute one's own successes to personality factors and one's failures to situational factors |
| Gazing | A type of eye contact that involves looking at someone steadily and is generally interpreted as a sign of friendliness |
| Staring | A type of eye contact that involves looking fixedly with wide-open eyes and is generally interpreted as a sign of anger |
| Attraction | An attitude of liking that often leads to friendship or love |
| Matching hypothesis | The tendency to choose as friends and partners those who are similar to oneself |
| Reciprocity | The situation in which feelings of attraction and affection toward another person are returned |
| Intimacy | A characteristic of a love relationship involving closeness and caring |
| Passion | A characteristic of a love relationship involving feelings of romantic and sexual attraction |
| Commitment | A characteristic of a love relationship involving recognition of being "in love" and a desire to be together |
| Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes | Experiment conducted by a 3rd grade teacher to illustrate the impact of prejudice |
| Stanford Prison study | Experiment that showed the power of roles in people's behaviors. When one takes on a role, they will often change their behavior in order to fit the perceived set of expectations for that role |
| Obedience study | Experiment on whether people 'investigate' the role of punishment on memory and how people respond to authority |
| Conformity study | Experiment on whether people would go along with a group's opinion rather than their own. |
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