Chapter 17- Social Cognition Flashcards
Social cognition
Mental processes associated with people’s perceptions of and reactions to other people.
Social psychology
The study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior influence and are influenced by the behavior of others.
Self-concept
The way one thinks of oneself.
Self-esteem
The evaluations one makes about how worthy one is as a human being.
Social comparison
Using other people as a basis of comparison for evaluating oneself.
Reference groups
Categories of people to which people compare themselves.
Relative deprivation
The belief that, in comparison to a reference group, one is getting less than is deserved.
Social identity
The beliefs we hold about the groups to which we belong.
Social perception
The processes through which people interpret information about others, draw inferences about them, and develop mental representations of them.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
A process through which our expectations about another person cause us to act in ways that lead the person to behave as we expected.
Attribution
The process of explaining the causes of people’s behavior, including our own.
Fundamental attribution error
A bias toward over attributing the behavior of others to internal causes.
Outgroup
Those whom we perceive as being different from ourselves.
Ingroup
Those whom we perceive as being similar to ourselves.
Actor-observer effect
The tendency to attribute other people’s behavior to internal causes while attributing our own behavior (especially errors and failures) to external causes.
Self-serving bias
The tendency to attribute our successes to internal characteristics while blaming our failures on external causes.
Attitude
A predisposition toward a particular cognitive, emotional, or behavioral reaction to objects.
Elaboration likelihood model
A model suggesting that attitude change can be driven by evaluation of the content of a persuasive message (central route) or by irrelevant persuasion cues (peripheral route).
Cognitive dissonance theory
A theory asserting that attitude change is driven by efforts to reduce tension caused by inconsistencies between attitudes and behaviors.
Self-perception theory
A theory suggesting that attitudes can change as people consider their behavior in certain situations and then infer what their attitude must be.
Stereotype
A false assumption that all members of some group share the same characteristics.
Prejudice
A positive or negative attitude toward an entire group of people.
Social discrimination
Differential treatment of various groups; the behavioral component of prejudice.
Contact hypothesis
The idea that stereotypes and prejudice toward a group will diminish as contact with the group increases.
