| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Culture | the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next |
| Social Self | The idea that people have a collective or social identity |
| Identity | one's sense of self; according to Erikson, the adolescent's task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles |
| Participant Observation | a naturalistic observation in which the observer becomes a participant in the group being observed |
| Non-Participant Observation | A research technique involving detached watching and listening in which the researcher does not interact with the study participants. |
| Covert Observation | observation in which the observer's presence or purpose is kept secret from those being observed |
| Overt Observation | observation in which those being observed and informed are informed of the observers presence and purpose |
| Attribution | The process of explaining the causes of people's behavior, including our own |
| Actor-Observer Effect | People making an attribution about behavior depending on whether they are preforming it themselves or observing someone else doing it. |
| Situational Factors | Forces outside an individual's immediate control such as environmental conditions. |
| Dispositional Factors | Personal factors of the individual being the main explanation for their behaviour |
| Validity | Is research measuring what it is supposed to measure? |
| Reliability | Is your method of research consistent? |
| Ecological Validity | The extent to which a study is realistic or representative of real life. |
| Population Validity | The extent to which a real or universal effect can be applied to or relevant to different populations |
| Cross Cultural Validity | Is the measure ethnocentric ( based on values/ beliefs of one culture) |
| Content Validity | the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest |
| Predictive Validity | The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior. |
| Inter-rater Reliability | The extent of agreement or consistency between two or more scorers, judges, or raters (operating independently) for attributes being measured or observed |
| Fundamental Attribution Error | the tendency for observers, when analyzing another's behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition |
| Self-serving bias | The tendency for people to credit their success ( attribute) to dispositional factors and their failings to situational factors |
| stereotype | a generalised, distorted, exaggerated, or oversimplified image applied to a category of people |
| Social Categorization | Mental process of categorizing people in groups based on shared characteristics, Automatic, often unconscious |
| spotlight anxiety | Emotional distress and pressure that may undermine performance |
| gatekeepers | people or corporations that control access to information |
| Grain of truth hypothesis | Campbell's theory that an experience with an individual from a group will then be generalised to the group |
| Illusory correlation | the perception of a relationship where none exists |
| confirmation bias | a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions and to avoid "counter-attitudinal" new information |
| Social desirability effect | An effect which occurs when some people try to present themselves in a favourable light. |
Combine with other sets
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