Chapter 11 Flashcards
Social psychology
The study of how people think about, influence, and relate to other people.
Bystander effect
The tendency of an individual who observes an emergency to be less likely to help when other people are present than when the observer is alone.
Social cognition
The area of social psychology exploring how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information.
Stereotype
A generalization about a group’s characteristics that does not consider any variations from one individual to another.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Social expectations that cause an individual to act in such a way that the expectations are realized.
Stereotype threat
An individual’s fast-acting, self-fulfilling fear of being judged based on a negative stereotype about their group.
Attribution theory
The view that people are motivated to discover the underlying causes of behavior as part of their effort to make sense of the behavior.
Fundamental attribution theory
The view that people are motivated to discover the underlying causes of behavior as part of their effort to make sense of the behavior.
Attitudes
An individual’s opinions and beliefs about people, objects, and ideas—how the person feels about the world.
Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment
A study where people were paid $15 ($97 today) per day and assigned as either a prisoner or guards. Guards acted sadistically towards prisoners and prisoners became docile and lost their sense of self. Zimbardo claimed the study showed the strong power of roles in determining behavior.
Cognitive dissonance
An individual’s psychological discomfort (dissonance) caused by two inconsistent thoughts.
Elaboration likelihood model
Theory identifying two ways to persuade: a central route and a peripheral route. Central: works by engaging the audience thoughtfully with a sound, logical argument. Peripheral: involves factors such as the attractiveness of the person giving the message or the emotional power of an appeal.
Social behavior
The way we behave in social environments. The way people interact with and influence other individuals. Not only the way other people respond to the current situation but also their future decisions.
Altruism
Giving to another person with the ultimate goal of benefiting that person, even if it incurs a cost to oneself.
Egoism
Giving to another person to ensure reciprocity; to gain self-esteem; to present oneself as powerful, competent, or caring; or to avoid social and self-censure for failing to live up to society’s expectations.
Empathy
A feeling of oneness with the emotional state of another person.
Aggression
Social behavior whose objective is to harm someone, either physically or verbally.
Overt aggression
Physical or verbal behavior that directly harms another person.
Relational aggression
Behavior that is meant to harm the social standing of another person.
Close Relationships
Characterized by relatively high levels of trust, love, knowledge, commitment, and intimacy.
Mere exposure effect
The phenomenon that the more individuals encounter someone or something, the more probable it is that they will start liking the person or thing even if they do not realize they have seen it before.
Social exchange theory
The view of social relationships as involving an exchange of goods, the objective of which is to minimize costs and maximize benefits.
Social influence
Social Influence: describes how our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors respond to our social world, including our tendencies to conform to others, follow social rules, and obey authority figures.
Group processes
Group processes: the behaviors of the members of small working groups (usually between three and twelve members) as they engage in decision-making and task performance.
Conformity
A change in a person’s behavior to coincide more closely with a group standard.
Informational social influence
The influence other people have on us because we want to be right.
Normative social influence
The influence other people have on us because we want them to like us.
Obedience
Behavior that complies with the explicit demands of the individual in authority.
Milgram’s Study of Obedience
In an experiment, people were asked to act as a teacher punishing the mistakes made by the learner by electric shock. Each time the learner made a mistake, the teacher was asked to increase the intensity of the shock. The experimenter was able to command people to shock a man to unconsciousness (the man was pretending to be shocked). The critical decision was made at the 150-volt level when the learner first requested that the experiment be halted.
Deindividuation
The reduction in personal identity and erosion of the sense of personal responsibility when one is part of a group.
Social contagion
Imitative behavior involving the spread of behavior, emotions, and ideas.
Social facilitation
Improvement in an individual’s performance because of the presence of others.
Social loafing
Each person’s tendency to exert less effort in a group because of reduced accountability for individual effort.
Groupthink
The impaired group decision making that occurs when making the right decision is less important than maintaining group harmony.
Prejudice
An unjustified negative attitude toward an individual based on the individual’s membership in a group.
Systemic racism
Systems, structures, and procedures in a society that disadvantage a racial group and privilege another.
Microaggressions
Everyday, subtle, and potentially unintentional acts that communicate bias to members of marginalized groups.
Discrimination
An unjustified negative or harmful action toward a member of a group simply because the person belongs to that group.
Muzafer Sherif, Ph.D.
Muzafer Sherif was a Turkish-American social psychologist. He helped develop social judgment theory and realistic conflict theory. He graduated from Columbia University with his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Columbia in 1935. Dr. Sherif is credited with helping found modern social psychology and published over 60 articles and 24 books. His most famous experiment was the 1954 Robbers Cave Experiment which supported the Realistic Conflict Theory that he developed.
