Chapter 18 first half Flashcards
the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another
Social psychology
: suggests how we explain someone’s behavior—by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition.
Attribution theory
: the tendency for observers, when analyzing another’s behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.
Fundamental attribution error
: feelings, often based on our beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events.
Attitudes
: the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.
Foot-in-the-door Phenomenon
: a toxic situation triggered degrading behaviors among those assigned to the guard role, while the prisoners broke down mentally. Zimbardo ended the experiment sooner than expected and later admitted how the experiment failed.
Philip Zimbardo—Stanford Prison Experiment
: the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. For example, when our awareness of our attitudes and of our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes.
Cognitive dissonance theory
: adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.
Conformity
: an experiment conducted by Solomon Asch consisting of a set of simple questions with clear-cut answers. After the first two questions, the third question has the same clear-cut answer. However, the four men/women before you answer unanimously with the wrong answer and you go against the clear-cut evidence before you to conform with the others by answering with the incorrect response.
The Asch Conformity Experiment
: influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval.
Normative Social Influence
: influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions about reality.
Informational Social Influence
: Undertook social psychology’s most famous and controversial experiment. Consisted of two college students participating in “teacher” and “student” roles where the student is strapped to an electric chair and has to answer a series of questions, but every incorrect answer receives an electric shock. The voltage increases after every incorrect answer and despite the agonizing cries of the student, the teacher will follow the experimenter’s orders despite their moral beliefs. The students complied with social pressures 63 percent of the time.
Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiment
: stronger responses on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others.
Social facilitation
: the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal that when individually accountable.
Social loafing
: the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.
Deindividuation
