| Term | Definition |
|---|
| social psychology | the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 723) |
| attribution theory | suggests how we explain someone's behavior—by crediting either the situation or the person's disposition. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 724) |
| 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. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 724) |
| attitude | feelings often based on our beliefs, which predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 726) |
| foot-in-the-door phenomenon | the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 727) |
| cognitive dissonance theory | the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. For example, when our awareness of our attitudes and of our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 728) |
| conformity | adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 732) |
| informational social influence | influence resulting from one's willingness to accept others' opinions about reality. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 733) |
| normative social influence | influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 733) |
| social facilitation | stronger responses on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 738) |
| social loafing | the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 739) |
| deindividuation | the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 739) |
| group polarization | the enhancement of a group's prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 740) |
| groupthink | the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 740) |
| discrimination | unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group or its members. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 743) |
| prejudice | an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members. Prejudice generally involves stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings, and a predisposition to discriminatory action. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 743) |
| stereotype | a generalized (sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 743) |
| ingroup | "us"—people with whom one shares a common identity. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 746) |
| ingroup bias | the tendency to favor one's own group. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 746) |
| outgroup | "them"—those perceived as different or apart from one's ingroup. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 746) |
| scapegoat theory | the theory that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 747) |
| just-world phenomenon | the tendency of people to believe the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 748) |
| aggression | any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 749) |
| frustration-aggression principle | the principle that frustration—the blocking of an attempt to achieve some goal—creates anger, which can generate aggression. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 751) |
| conflict | a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 756) |
| social trap | a situation in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing their self-interest, become caught in mutually destructive behavior. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 756) |
| mere exposure effect | the phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 759) |
| companionate love | the deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 763) |
| passionate love | an aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at the beginning of a love relationship. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 763) |
| equity | a condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 764) |
| self-disclosure | revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 764) |
| altruism | unselfish regard for the welfare of others. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 765) |
| bystander effect | the tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 766) |
| reciprocity norm | an expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 766) |
| social exchange theory | the theory that our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 766) |
| social-responsibility norm | an expectation that people will help those dependent upon them. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 767) |
| superordinate goals | shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 767) |
| GRIT | Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction, strategy designed to decrease international tensions. (Myers Psychology 8e p. 769) |
| norms | rules within a group indicating how members should or should not behave |
| self-effacing bias | tendency to attribute successes to help from others or ease of task and accept personal responsibility for their failures. more common iin collective cultures (Weiten, 6e p. 656) |
| self-serving bias | tendency often in individualistic cultures to attribute our own successes to dispositional factors and our own failures to situational factors |
| injunctive norms | Norms that define what behaviors are typically approved or disapproved. |
| descriptive norms | People adjust their behavior to match the rest of the group. |
| robber cave sherrif | Sherif's study at a summer camp, 2 groups were pitted against one another. They grew to despise the other group. Sherif then intermixed groups. When presented with goals in which they had to work together the new groups then worked together. |
| situational or internal attribution | belief that an individual's behavior is based on events in the environment rather than long-lasting personality characteristics. |
| dispositional or external attribution | belief that one's behavior is due to long-lasting personality traits rather than the current environment. |
| Weiner's attribution model | stability of a given action (stable/unstable) often leads to explaining it in terms of an internal or external attribution. |
| self-fullfilling prohecy | Process in which initial impression of someone or ourselves leads that person or ourselves to behave in accordance with that impression. |
| defensive attribution | also called blaming the victim - blaming victim for their misfortune so one feels less likely to be victimized in a similar way |
| chameleon effect | Natural (unconscious) tendency to imitate other peoples speech, inflections & physical movements |
| self-handicapping strategies | Doing things that contribute to you failing (knowingly or unknowingly) and then using these very things as excuses for failing. |
| spotlight effect | assumption that others pay more attention to our behavior & appearance than they actually do |
| actor-observor bias | tendency to attribute the behavior of others to dispositional factors and our own behavior to situational ones in a comparison |
| self-perception theory | Attitudes can change as people consider their behavior in given situations, and from this deduce what their attitude must be. (high and low self monitors) |
| high self-monitors | change behavior to match the group and gain approval - respond best to peripheral routes of persuasion |
| low self-monitors | behavior stays the same regardless of who they are with and what is happening - respond best to central routes of persuasion |
| central route to persuasion | persuasion method that focuses on individuals who have to make a decision take time and effort necessary to gather all info & and make well determined choice. |
| peripheral route to persuasion | persuasion method that focuses on individuals that need to make a decision take into account random and inconsequential factors in order to arrive at a decision. usually, topic is of little importance to them |
| sleeper effect | After previously rejecting a choice, delayed reaction of persuasion convinces an individual to change their mind. |
| door-in-face strategy | tendency for an individual who denies an outrageous request to agree to a lesser one. |
| halo effect | term for how we think beautiful people are more vivacious, socially skilled, intelligent, & well adjusted |
| matching hypothesis | we seek individuals most like ourselves (attractive wise). |
| attitude balance | we like those who agree with us. (similar) |
| attitude alignment | attraction causes similarity as couples who stay together move closer together in beliefs |
| romantic ideals | expect partner to fit ideals about loyalty, status, attractiveness, humor, etc. and the closer they match these the more attractive they are |
| Sternberg's Love Theory | combinations of passion, intimacy, and committment result if various types of love |
| contact theory | idea that prejudice can be reduced by increasing contact with those that are different |
| aggression | physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy |
| social impairment | lowering of performance on a given task in the pressence of others - usually a task that is not well reshearsed |
| conformity | changing behavior or beliefs to match other members of group. |
| compliance | adjusting behavior because of a request. |
| reciprocity norm | Tendency to respond to others as they have acted towards you |
| confederates | "fake subjects" that look & behave like real subjects in study. |
| Asch | researcher famous for line study of conformity |
| Milgram | researcher famous for teacher-learner study on obedience to authority |
| Festinger | experimenter famous for $1 or $20 experiment on cognitive dissonance |
| Zimbardo | experimentor famous for research on how roles influence behavior and the power of the situation in a mock prison |
| negative state relief model | Helping others aids in eliminating negative moods and unpleasant feelings. |
| empathy-altruism model | Unselfish behavior can occur as a result of empathy with another person. |
| commons dilemma | People who share a common resource tend to overuse it and therefore make it unavailable in the long run. |
| prisoner's dilemma | situation in which an individual must choose between a cooperative act and an act that will help them but hurt others. |
| individualist culture | cultural perspective which places the individual, independence and autonomy over the group. |
| collectivist culture | cultural perspective which places interdependence, cooperation and social harmony take precedence over personal goals. |
| schema | cognitive structures that guides information processing. |
| social schema | organized cluster of ideas about categories of social events and people. |
| injunctive norms | norms that define what behaviors are typically approved or disapproved. |
| descriptive norms | norms that indicate what most other people typically do and thereby provide pressure or permission to do the same. |
| low ball technique | Getting someone to commit to an attractive option before revealing the hidden costs. |
| hindsight bias | tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it. |
| confirmation bias | tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions. |
| reference group | social group that serves as a point of reference in making evaluations and decisions |
| self-handicapping strategy | when an individual intentionally places one's self at a disadvantage to provide an excuse for failure. |
| self-schema | schema of beliefs & views about ourselves |
| upward social comparison | compare yourself with people who do much better than you; can sometimes inspire us to do better and sometimes lower self esteem |
| downward social comparison | compare yourself with those who are not as good as yourself although our performance or lives are not ideal... it could be worse |
| relative deprivation | result of unfavorable comparison of your own status with those in your reference group. |
| implicit prejudice | unconsciously held prejudicial attitudes; also called automatic |
| explicit prejudice | prejudicial attitudes that are consciously held. |
| enemy perceptions | Tendency to form diabolical images of those we are in conflict with. |
| mixed-motive conflict | Conflict with good motives to cooperate and good motives to compete. |
| public goods dilemma | People have to decide how much to contribute to a common resource |
| zero-sum game | Social situation in which one person's gains are subtracted from another person's resources, so that the total of gains & losses = nothing. |
| public conformity | type of conformity in which behavior altered to fit socially desirable thing to do, but beliefs or attitudes do not change. |
| private acceptance | type of conformity in which people are convinced own perceptions were wrong and alter their beliefs and attitudes. |
| bystander effect | any particular witness is less likely to get involved if more witnesses are present |
| diffusion of responsibility | theory for why bystander effect occurs - each individual bystander thinks someone else will get involved |
| Kitty Genovese | woman whose murder in front of witnesses led to research on bystander effect |
| cost reward model of alturism | we make a decision whether to help others we first assess how much there is to gain or lose from the particular situation |
| negative state relief model of altruism | Helping others aids in eliminating negative moods and unpleasant feelings |
| empathy alturism model | Unselfish behavior can occur as a result of empathy with another person |
| defensive aggression | heightened aggressiveness to stimuli not usually threatening |
| social striving | increased individual effort in group settings – more common in collectivist cultures |
| devil's advocate | main tool in preventing groupthink – designate 1 person to take unpopular role of constantly challenging groups emerging consensus & offer additional alternatives – forces group to see other ways and face reality |
| compassionate love | intimate, non-passionate love, which includes committment |
| illusory correlation | perception of a relationship where none exists |
| false consensus effect | tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors |
| debriefing | procedure to inform participants about the true nature of an experiment after its completion |
| conditioning | learning |
| cognition | thinking |
| affect | mood or feeling |
| justification of effort | cognitive dissonance predicts that working hard to attain a goal makes the goal more attractive than same goal obtained with no effort |
Combine with other sets
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