Chapter 14 Social psychology: Module 43 Flashcards
Social psychology
The scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions are affected by others.
Attitudes
Evaluations of a particular person, behavior, belief, or concept.
Central route processing
Message interpretation characterized by thoughtful consideration of the issues and arguments used to persuade.
Peripheral route processing
Message interpretation characterized by consideration of the source and related general information rather than of the message itself.
Cognitive dissonance
The conflict that occurs when a person holds two contradictory attitudes or thoughts (referred to as cognitions).
Social cognition
The cognitive processes by which people understand and make sense of others and themselves.
Schemas
Sets of cognitions about people and social experiences.
Central traits
The major traits considered in forming impressions of others.
Attribution theory
The theory of personality that seeks to explain how we decide, on the basis of samples of an individual’s behavior, what the specific causes of that person’s behavior are.
Situational causes (of behavior)
Perceived causes of behavior that are based on environmental factors.
Dispositional causes (of behavior)
Perceived causes of behavior that are based on internal traits or personality factors.
Halo effect
A phenomenon in which an initial understanding that a person has positive traits is used to infer other uniformly positive characteristics.
Assume-similarity bias
The tendency to think of people as being similar to onself even when meeting them for the first time.
Self-serving bias
The tendency to attribute personal success to personal factors (skills,ability,or effort) and to attribute failure to factors outside oneself.
Fundamental attribution error
A tendency to overattribute others’ behavior to dispositional causes and minimize of the importance of situational causes.
