Ch. 1 - Intro Flashcards
Social psychology
The scientific study of the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of individuals in social situations.
Dispositions
Internal factors, such as beliefs, values, personality traits, and abilities, that guide a person’s behavior.
Fundamental attribution error
The failure to recognize the importance of situtational influences on behavior, along with the corresponding tendency to overemphasize the importance of dispositions on behavior.
Gestalt psychology
Based on the German word gestalt, meaning “form” or “figure”, an approach that stresses the fact that people perceive objects not by means of some automatic registering device but by active, usually nonconscious interpretation of what the object represents as a whole.
Construal
One’s interpretation of inference about the stimuli or situations that one confronts.
Schema
A knowledge structure consisting of any organized body of stored information that is used to help in understanding events.
Stereotype
A belief that certain attributes are characteristic of members of a particular group.
Natural selection
An evolutionary process that molds animals and plants so that traits that enhance the probability of survival and reproduction are passed on to subsequent generations.
Parental investment
The evolutionary principle that costs and benefits are associated with reproduction and the nurturing of offspring. Because these costs and benefits are different for males and females, one gender will normally value and invest more in each child than will the other.
Naturalistic fallacy
The claim that the way things are is the way they should be.
Independent (individualistic) culture
A culture in which people tend to think of themselves as distinct social entities, tied to each other by voluntary bonds of affection and organizational memberships but essentially separate from other people and having attributes that exist in the absence of any connections to others.
Interdependent (collectivistic) culture
A culture in which people tend to define themselves as part of a collective, inextricably tied to others in their group and placing less importance on individual freedom or personal control over their lives.
