Attitudes and Social-Cognitive Theories Flashcards
Asch’s conformity studies
Solomon Asch’s experiments with lines showed that many people will go along with the majority, even if they know the majority’s answer is incorrect.
attitude
A disposition toward a particular situation or object. Attitudes typically have cognitive, behavioral, and affective (emotional) components.
availability heuristic
Estimating how likely an event is based on how available the event is in one’s memory.
bystander effect
The effect that a person is less likely to assist in an emergency when he or she is among a group of bystanders than when he or she is a lone bystander.
conformity
The process of adjusting one’s attitudes or behavior to fit with others or to meet a group standard.
diffusion of responsibility
A phenomenon in which a person feels less responsibility to assist in an emergency situation if there are others around with whom to “share” that responsibility. It is suggested that this is the reason for the bystander effect.
fundamental attribution error
The tendency to attribute the behavior of others to internal dispositions, and to attribute one’s own behavior to external dispositions.
mere exposure effect
Repeated exposure to a novel stimuli increases the liking of that stimuli.
Milgram’s obedience study
An experiment in which Stanley Milgram found that people will usually obey an authority, even if they might think what they are doing is wrong.
pluralistic ignorance
A phenomenon in which a person does not know that there are others in the group who share his or her opinion.
similarity
One of the factors that tends to be associated with attraction. We tend to be attracted to those to whom we are similar in terms of age, ethnic background, attitudes, level of physical attractiveness, and so on.
Stanford prison experiment
An experiment by Phillip Zimbardo conducted in a mock prison that showed how quickly people adopt social roles and how strong the power of the situation is.
