Impression Formation And Social Interaction Flashcards
Aggression
Behaviour that is intended to harm another person who does not wish to be harmed
Altruism
Behaviours that are acted out without any expectation that you will be rewarded for them
Attraction
the power of eliciting feelings of desire, interest, or liking.
Bystander effect
the inhibiting influence of the presence of others on a person’s willingness to help someone in need.
bystander is less likely to extend help when he or she is in the real or imagined presence of others than when he or she is alone.
Bystander-calculus model
Proposes 3 steps that people proceed through when faced with an emergency involving another person:
Physiological arousal - first response
Arousal labelling - feelings of personal distress.
Anxiety/tension. Labels physiological responses to reflect this
Evaluation of consequences. Weigh up the costs of acting and not acting
Central traits
an attribute in someone’s personality that is considered particularly meaningful, in that its presence or absence signals the presence or absence of other traits
Cost-reward ratio
We all undergo an appraisal of what is will cost to seek reward from another
Costs outweigh rewards = relationship won’t work
Diffusion of responsibility
Person assumes other people will take responsibility with the result that nobody does
Empathy
Ability to experience the emotions that somebody else is experiencing
Empathy-altruism hypothesis
Only behaviour associated with empathy feelings is truly altruistic
Daniel Batson
Equity theory
Suggests that along with a cost-reward analysis, liking is dependent on how fair people think the exchange is
E.g effort into a relationship but not a lot in return = inequity
Excitation-transfer approach
Proposes that aggression is the product of learned behaviour, arousal (or excitation) from another stimulus and the persons interpretation of this aroused state (I.e. aggression is appropriate)
E.g after-match violence between football fans could be cause by the heightened states of arousal generated while watching the game
Halo effect
If information we get about a person is positive we form a positive impression (positive halo) and vice versa (negative halo)
Helping
The act of a person or thing that helps
Implicit personality theory
Argues that people have preconceptions of what a person is broadly like based on knowledge about central traits
Impression formation
We attend to central traits of a person when forming an impression
Peripheral traits - far less importance for the impression developed
Central + peripheral traits guide the impression formed
Soloman Asch - godfather of impression formation research
Impression management
Strategic self presentation - changing or managing others perceptions of you
Motives we have for self-presentation: ingratiation, self-promotion, intimidation, supplication, exemplification
Expressive self presentation - people trying to get some validation of their self-concept through their behaviours
Interpersonal distance zones
AKA proxemics.
Form of non verbal communication that does not involve explicit parts of the body to convey information.
Hall identified 4 that describe the function of non verbal communication in social interaction: intimate distance, personal distance, social distance, public distance
Just world hypothesis
To protect self-esteem, people attribute negative outcomes to the victims themselves
Liking
A feeling of regard or fondness
Lamm + Weismann (1997) “liking is about wanting to interact with a person”
Loving
Feeling or showing love or great care
Rubin (1973): “loving comprises attachment, caring and intimacy and is completely distinct from liking”
Lamm + Weismann (1997) “loving is trusting a person. Being in love is being aroused by another person”
Mere exposure effect
The more we are exposed to someone the more we like them, even strangers
Modelling
Form of observational learning
People reproduce the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours displayed by another person
Albert Bandura “modelling is the key vehicle through which learning occurs”
classic bobo doll experiment
Negative state relief theory
We act pro-socially to relieve our own distress about another’s misfortune
Cialdini
Non verbal communication
Nonverbal communication is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, distance and body language.
Peripheral traits
one whose presence or absence does not imply many other characteristics
E.g. if a person is sarcastic, it might imply that he or she is cynical about the world or has a dark sense of humor—but not much else.
Person-positivity bias
Argues that we seem to assume that people are good so if negative info is seen or heard it tends to grab our attention
Pluralistic ignorance
Each person believes their personal perceptions and feelings are difference from other people’s, while at the same time their behaviour is the same (not helping)
=co-occurrence
=people think that other people in the emergency situation believe the event to be harmless and therefore nothing needs to be done
Primacy effect
First things we hear, read or observe in another person
- Asch’s trait reversal experiment*
- Luchin’s 4 experimental groups*
Pro-social behaviour
acts that are evaluated positively by your society, contribute to the psychological and physical wellbeing of others
Recency effect
a cognitive bias in which those items, ideas, or arguments that came last are remembered more clearly than those that came first.
If there is a delay in getting info
If asked not to make an immediate impression
Used more when forming impressions of people we know
Reinforcement-affect model
People learn to associate particular feelings (like, love, hate) with particular people
Self concept
an idea of the self constructed from the beliefs one holds about oneself and the responses of others.
Self-esteem
A person’s overall subjective sense of personal worth or value.
may be defined as how much you appreciate and like yourself regardless of the circumstances.
defined by many factors including: Self-confidence.
Social exchange theory
Proposes that people like or dislike others in terms of the rewards they exchange between each other
Liking/disliking dependent on cost reward ratio
Social learning theory
Albert Bandura
Adopted principles of reward and punishment from operant conditioning
suggests that social behavior is learned by observing and imitating the behavior of others.
Stereotypes
generalizations about the personal attributes or characteristics of a group of people
Triangular model of love
Theory of love developed by Robert Sternberg
In the context of interpersonal relationships, “the three components of love, according to the triangular theory, are an intimacy component, a passion component, and a decision/commitment component.”
