Konsepter Flashcards
Self schemas
A person’s beliefs and feelings about the self, both in specific situations and in general. Self-schemas help us organize and make sense of all the impressions and events in our lives and our own behavior. They may also help us make quicker decisions about how to behave or even think in social situations, and influence our judgements of ourselves and the social world
Working self-concept
The subset of our vast self-knowledge that is brought to mind in a particular context.
Situationism
The idea that the social self changes across contexts/situations.
Leon Festinger’s theory of social comparison
We construct our sense of self by comparing ourselves to other people, instead of some objective standard.
We are especially drawn to comparisons with similar others.
Downwards social comparison
We often choose someone who are slightly inferior in any given area to compare ourselves to.
Self-esteem
The overall positive or negative evaluation people have of themselves.
State self-esteem
A person’s dynamic, changeable self-evaluations that vary with mood and situation.
Trait self-esteem
A person’s enduring level of self-regard across time.
Contingencies of self-worth
A person’s self-esteem is contingent on their success or failure in domains on which they base their self-worth.
Mark Leary’s sociometer hypothesis
Self-esteem is primarily a readout of our likely standing with other people; an internal, subjective index of how well we are regarded by others.
Self-enhancement
The desire to maintain, increase, and protect positive self-views.
Better-than-average effect
Most people think they are above average on various personality trait and ability dimensions.
Self-affirmation theory
The idea that people can, and often do, maintain an overall sense of self-worth following psychologically threatening information by affirming a valued aspect of themselves unrelated to the threat.
Self-verification theory
People sometimes strive for stable, subjectively accurate beliefs about themselves since these beliefs give a sense of coherence and predictability.
Self-regulation
Processes by which people initiate, alter, and control their behavior in the pursuit of goals.
Self-discrepancy theory
People hold theories about both what they are like now, and also how they would like to be and ought to be. Thus, we have an actual, an ideal, and an ought self.
Promotion focus
When people regulate their behavior with respect to ideal self-standards.
Prevention focus
When people regulate their behavior with respect to ought self-standards.
Implementation intentions
Specifies our intentions on how to respond (in a goal-oriented way) in a given situation - “if x, then y”. For example, if the goal is to be less irritable: if my roommate makes a rude remark, I will just ignore it.
Self-presentation
Presenting the person we would like others to believe that we are
Goffman’s dramaturgic perspective on the social self
We attempt to create and maintain an impression of ourselves in the minds of others.
Face
The public image we want others to believe.
Self-monitoring
The tendency to monitor one’s behavior to fit the current situation. Too much of it can be destructive for the individual, but too little can cause problems in social situations.
Self-handicapping
The tendency to engage in self-defeating behavior in order to have an excuse ready, should one perform poorly or fail at something.
Dispositions
Internal factors such as beliefs, values, traits and abilities that guide someone’s behavior.
The fundamental attribution error
Our tendency to over-emphasize the influence of internal factors, while simultaneously under-emphasizing the influence of situational factors.
Construal
One’s interpretation of or inference about the stimuli or situations that one confronts.
Schemas
A knowledge structure consisting of any organized body of stored information that is used to help in understanding events, and knowing how to behave in a given situation.
Stereotype
A form of schema; a belief that certain attributes are characteristic of members of a particular group.
The naturalistic fallacy
The claim that the way things are is the way they should be.
Independent cultures
Found primarily in the Western world. These cultures are characterized by how the self is distinct from others, an insistence on ability to act for oneself, a need to be unique, a belief thst rules should apply to everyone, a preference for achieved status based on accomplishments, and individual freedom is seen as highly important.
Interdependent cultures
Found primarily in East Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. These cultures are characterized by the belief that the self and others are inextricably linked, a preference for collective action, a desire for harmonious relations within a group, acceptance of hierarchy and status ascribed based on age, group etc., a belief that rules should take context and particular relationships into account, and less importance is placed on individual freedom.
Framing effect
The influence on judgment resulting from the way information is presented, including the order of the presentation.
Spin framing
A kind of framing that varies the content, not just the presentation, of the information presented.
Construal level theory/temporal framing
When an event is far in the future, we think of it in broad, abstract terms, but if an event is close in time, we think of it in a more narrow, detailed way.
The availability heuristic
The process where judgments of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind.
Attribution theory
the study of how people understand the causes of events around them, as well as the effects of these causal assessments.
Explanatory style
A person’s habitual way of explaining events, typically assessed along three dimensions: internal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific.
The covariation principle
In assessing causality, we try to determine what causes covary with the observation or effect we are trying to explain.
Three types of covariation information are particularly significant:
1. Consensus - whether most people would behave the same way or differently in a given situation.
2. Distinctiveness - whether a behavior is unique to a situation or occurs in many situations.
3. Consistency - whether an individual behaves the same way or differently in a given situation on different occasions.
The discounting principle
The idea that people will assign reduced weight to a particular cause of behavior if other causes might have produced it.
The augmentation principle
The idea that people will assign greater weight to a particular cause of behavior if other causes are present that normally would produce a different outcome.
Self-serving attributional bias
People often attribute positive events to themselves, and negative events to external circumstances.
Actor-observer difference
A difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment: the actor (who is inclined to make situational attributions), or the observer (who is inclined to make dispositional attributions).
Emotions
Brief, specific, and subjective responses to challenges or opportunities that are important to our goals.
Evolutionary view of emotions
Emotions are adaptive reactions to survival-related threats and opportunities - emotions are universal.
Cultural view of emotions
Emotions are strongly influenced by the values, roles, socialization practices etc. that vary across cultures.
Focal emotions
Emotions especially common within a culture.
Jeanne Tsai’s affect valuation theory
Emotions that promote important cultural ideas are valued and will tend to play a more prominent role in the social lives of individuals.
Display rules
Culturally specific rules that govern how, when, and to whom people express emotion.
Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build hypothesis
Negative emotions narrow our attention on the details of our perception, but positive motions broaden our patterns of thinking in ways that help us expand our understanding of the world and build relationships.
Haidt’s social intuitionist model of moral judgment
Our moral judgments are the product of fast, emotional intuitions, instead of reason. Reason instead follows our initial judgment, in order to justify our opinion.
Haidt’s moral foundations theory
Our moral psychology rests on five foundations, supported by different cultural reactions. These five foundations are care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and purity/degradation.
Affective forecasting
Predicting future emotions.
Immune neglect
The tendency to underestimate one’s own resilience in difficult times, leading to overestimating the extent to which the difficulties will reduce one’s well-being.
Focalism
We focus too much on the most immediate and most central/focal elements of significant events.
Cognitive consistency theories
Theories that seek to explain the relationship between attitudes and behavior. These theories elaborate on our powerful tendency to justify or rationalize our behavior, to minimize inconsistency between attitude and action.
Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance
The most influential theory on cognitive consistency. This theory proposes that people are troubled by inconsistency between thoughts and actions, and seek to balance it out.
Effort justification
The tendency to reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing.
Induced (forced) compliance
Subtly compelling people to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes or values in order to elicit dissonance and therefore a change in their original attitudes.
Daryl Bem’s self-perception theory
People do not always come to know their own attitudes by introspection. Rather, they look outward, at their behavior and the context where it occurred, and infer from that what their attitudes must be. A criticism of cognitive dissonance theory.
Terror management theory
The theory that people deal with the anxiety related to knowledge of death’s inevitability and unpredictability by striving for symbolic immortality through preserving valued cultural worldviews and believing that they are living up to the culture’s standards.
The elaboration likelihood model (ELM)
People in certain contexts process persuasive messages rather mindlessly and effortlessly, and on other occasions deeply and attentively. Developed to explain how people change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages by Cacioppo and Petty.
The peripheral route (ELM)
Occurs when people attend to mostly peripheral and easy processed aspects of a message. Examples of peripheral cues are the number of arguments, expertise, attractiveness, credibility, fame etc. Occurs when the issue is not personally relevant, when the receiver is distracted, or when the message is hard to comprehend. People depend on simple heuristics.
The central route (ELM)
Occurs when people think deliberately about the content of the persuasive message, using logic, argument strength, own memories and knowledge to evaluate the message. Occurs when the issue at hand is personally relevant, and the receiver is knowledgeable in the domain.
Sleeper effect
A persuasive message from an unreliable source initially exerts little influence but later causes a shift in attitude in many cases, as we dissociate the source from the content.
The identifiable victim effect
Vivid, real life victims are often more powerful sources of persuasion than statistics. However, when it is possible to blame the victim for their situation, people are less likely to elicit empathy.
The self-validation hypothesis
Feeling confident about our thoughts validates those thoughts, making it more likely that we will be swayed in that direction.
Agenda control
The efforts of the media to select certain events and topics to emphasize, shaping which events and issues people see as important.
Selective attention
We often choose to not attend to messages that contradict our own beliefs or behaviors, and tune in to messages that confirms our beliefs.
Selective evaluation
People evaluate information in ways that support their existing beliefs.
Tesser’s thought polarization hypothesis
Public commitments engage us in more extensive thoughts about a given issue, which leads to more entrenched attitudes.
Attitude inoculation
Small attacks on our beliefs engage our preexisting attitudes, commitments and knowledge, and thereby counteract a larger attack.
Social influence
The many ways people affect one another, including changes in attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and behavior, resulting from the comments, actions, or mere presence of others.
Conformity
Changing one’s behavior/belief in response to explicit/implicit, real/imagined pressure from others.
Compliance
Responding favorably to an explicit request by another person.
Obedience
In an unequal power relationship, submitting to the demands of the person in authority.
Automatic mimicry
We mindlessly imitate the behavior and movement of others.
Ideomotor action
Merely thinking about a behavior makes performing the behavior more likely.
Informational social influence
Reliance on other people’s comments/actions as a source of information about what is correct/proper/effective.
Normative social influence
The influence of other people that comes from the desire to avoid social sanctions (disapproval/ridicule/ostracism).
The Norm of reciprocity
We feel that we should provide benefits for someone who has provided benefits for us (returning the favor).
The “door-in-the-face”/reciprocal concessions technique
Asking a very large favor that they almost certainly will turn down first, and then asking them to do the favor you really wanted. Giving the impression of a concession makes the other person feel that they have to match your “concession” and comply to doing the favor.
The “foot-in-the-door” technique
Making an initial small request with which nearly everyone will comply, followed by a larger request involving the real behavior of interest. Our behavior often follows a “slippery slope” where a small action enables more to occur, creating a sort of momentum.
Negative state relief hypothesis
Doing others a favor can help get rid of negative feelings and help redeem our self-image.
Normalist thesis
Most people are capable of destructive obedience, and given the right circumstances, most people would commit harmful acts.
Exceptionalist thesis
Only exceptionally sadistic, desperate people are capable of committing cruelties like torture.
Communal relationship
A relationship, often long term, where the individuals feel a special responsibility for each other, and give and receive according to need.
Exchange relationship
A relationship, often short term, where the individuals feel little responsibility for each other’s well being, and give and receive according to equity and reciprocity.
Social exchange theory
Humans, in seeking to maximize their own satisfaction, seek out rewards in interaction with others, and they are willing to pay certain costs to obtain those rewards.
Comparison level
The expectations people have about what they expect to get out of a relationship.
Comparison level for alternatives
The outcomes people think they can get out of alternative relationships.
Equity theory
People are motivated to pursue fairness, or equity, in their relationships, so that the ratio of rewards to costs is similar for both partners.
Attachment theory
The idea that early attachments with parents and caregivers can shape relationships for a person’s whole life.
Anxiety dimension of attachment
The amount of fear a person feels about abandonment in close relationships.
Avoidance dimension of attachment
Whether a person is comfortable with intimacy and dependence or finds adult relationships aversive.
Functional distance
The influence an architectural layout has to encourage or discourage contact between people.
The mere exposure effect
The more you are exposed to something - or someone - the more you tend to like it (up to a certain point).
The status exchange hypothesis
Romantic attraction increases when two people complement each other in terms of their social status by offering each other elevated status, through romantic partnership, where they themselves are lacking.
The halo effect
People who are physically attractive are perceived as nice, popular, successful, and generally viewed more favorably (according to the attributes most valued in that specific culture).
The investment model of commitment
A model of interpersonal relationships maintaining that three determinants make partners more committed to each other: relationship satisfaction, few alternative partners, and investments in the relationship.
Economic perspective on stereotypes
Identifies the roots of intergroup hostility in competing interests that can set groups apart from one another.
Motivational perspective on stereotypes
Emphasizes the psychological needs that lead to intergroup conflict.
Cognitive perspective on stereotypes
Traces the origin of stereotyping to the same cognitive processes that enable people to categorize objects. Takes into account the frequent conflict between people’s consciously held beliefs and their quick reactions to outgroup members.
Stereotypes
A belief that certain attributes are characteristic of members of a particular group. A way (positive or negative) of categorizing people.
Prejudice
An attitude or affective response (positive or negative) toward a group and its individual members.
Discrimination
Favorable or unfavorable treatment of individuals based on their membership in a particular group.
Modern racism
Prejudice directed at racial groups that exist alongside the rejection of explicitly racist beliefs.
Benevolent racism/sexism/etc
Stereotypes that may not be negative, but still are harmful to the group. For example: all women are warm and caring, all blacks are good at sports etc.
Greenwald & Mazarin’s Implicit association test (IAT)
A sequence of words are presented on a screen, and a respondent presses a key with their left hand if the picture or word conforms to one rule, and another key with the right hand if it conforms to another rule.
Greenwald & Mazarin argued that people will respond quicker to press one key for members of a group and words stereotypically associated with that group. The IAT aims to uncover unconscious attitudes and stereotypes about groups.
The affect misattribution procedure (AMP)
A priming procedure measuring how people evaluate a stimulus (a person’s face for example) following a prime. Designed to assess people’s implicit associations to different stimuli, including their associations to ethnic, occupational and lifestyle groups.
Realistic group conflict theory
Groups develop prejudices about each other and discriminate against each other when they compete for limited material, ideological, or cultural resources.
Superordinate goals
Goals that transcend the interest of any one group and can be achieved more readily by two or more groups working together.
The minimal group paradigm
An experimental paradigm in which researchers create arbitrary (minimal) groups and examine how the minimal group members behave toward one another.
Social identity theory
The idea that a person’s self-concept and self-esteem derive not only from personal identity and accomplishments, but also from the status and accomplishments of the group(s) they belong to.
Paired distinctiveness
The pairing of two distinctive events that stand out even more because they occur together.
Subtyping
Explaining away exceptions to a stereotype by creating a subcategory of the group that can be expected to differ from the group as a whole.
The outgroup homogeneity effect
The tendency to assume that within-group similarity is much stronger for outgroups than for ingroups.
Attributional ambiguity
The tendency for minorities to not know whether their experiences have the same causes as those of members of the majority, or if they actually are the result of prejudices against their group.
Stereotype threat
The fear of confirming the stereotypes that others hold about one’s group.
Contact hypothesis
The proposition that prejudice can be reduced by putting members of majority and minority groups in frequent contact with one another.
Group
A collection of individuals who have relations to one another that make them interdependent to some significant degree.
Social facilitation
The positive or negative effect of the presence of others on performance.
Evaluation apprehension
Concern about how one might appear to, or be evaluated by, others.
Social loafing
The tendency to exert less effort when working on a group task where individual contributions cannot be monitored.
Groupthink
Faulty thinking by members of highly cohesive groups in which the critical scrutiny that should be devoted to the issues at hand is subverted by social pressures to reach consensus.
Group polarization
The tendency for group decisions to be more extreme than those made by individuals - whatever way the group as a whole is leaning, group discussion tends to make it lean further in that direction.
Power
The ability to control one’s own outcomes and those of others; the freedom to act.
Status
The outcome of an evaluation of attributes that produces differences in respect and prominence.
Authority
Power that derives from institutionalized roles or arrangements.
Dominance
Behavior enacted with the goal of acquiring or demonstrating power.
The approach/inhibition theory of power
High-power individuals are inclined to go after their goals and make quick (and sometimes rash) judgments, since they are less vulnerable to consequences, whereas low-power individuals are more likely to constrain their behavior and pay careful attention to others.
Emergent properties of groups
Behaviors that emerge only when people are in groups, when people often do things they would never do on their own.
Deindividuation
A reduced sense of individual identity accompanied by diminished self regulation.
Individuation
An enhanced sense of individual identity produced by focusing attention on the self, leading people to act more carefully and in accordance with their values.
Self-awareness theory
When people focus their attention inward on themselves, they become concerned with self-evaluation and how their current behavior conforms to their internal standards and values.
The spotlight effect
People’s conviction that others are paying attention to their appearance and behavior more than they actually are.
Dehumanization
Attribution of nonhuman characteristics and denial of human qualities to groups other than one’s own.
Culture of honor
Defined by its members’ strong concerns about their own and others’ reputations, leading to sensitivity to insults and a willingness to use violence to avenge any perceived wrong.
Rape-prone cultures
A culture in which rape tends to be used as an act of war against women, as a ritual act, or as a threat against women to keep them subservient to men. These cultures are defined by high levels of violence in general, an emphasis on machismo and a history of war, and lower social and economical status of women.
Inclusive fitness
Our own survival plus the survival of our children (our genes).
The precarious manhood hypothesis
A man’s gender identity of strength and toughness may be lost under various conditions, and such a loss can trigger aggressive behavior.
Reactive devaluation
attaching less value to an offer in a negotiation once the opposing group makes it.
Altruism
Prosocial behavior that benefits others without regard to consequences for oneself.
Bystander intervention
Assistance given by a witness to someone in need.
Kin selection
An evolutionary strategy that favors behavior that increase the chance of survival of genetic relatives.
Reciprocal altruism
Helping other people with the expectation that they’ll help in return at some other time.
The prisoner’s dilemma
A situation involving payoffs to two people who must decide whether to cooperate or defect. Trust and cooperation lead to higher joint payoffs in the end.
Reputation
The collective beliefs, evaluations and impressions about a person’s character that develop in a social network.
The tit-for-tat strategy
A strategy in the prisoner’s dilemma game where the player’s first move is cooperative; thereafter, the player mimics the other person’s behavior (cooperative or competitive). This strategy fares better than other strategies. Five factors make this strategy appealing: it encourages mutually supportive action toward a shared goal, it’s not envious, it’s not exploitable, it’s forgiving and it’s easy to read.
Psychological stress
The sense that challenges and demands surpass one’s current capacities, resources and energies.
Rumination
The tendency to think about a stressful event repeatedly.
Incremental (personal) theory of intelligence
The belief that intelligence is malleable and can be improved by working at it.
Entity (personal) theory of intelligence
The belief that intelligence is a fixed and predetermined quality that cannot be changed.
Scientific jury selection
A statistical approach to jury selection whereby members of different demographic groups are asked about their attitudes toward issues related to the trial.
Death-qualified juries
A jury where people who would never recommend the death penalty has been removed.
Just desserts/eye-for-an-eye justice
The goal is to avenge a prior evil deed, rather than to prevent future crimes. The punishments are calibrated to the degree of moral offensiveness.
Deterrence
The goal is to reduce the likelihood of future crimes. The punishment of committing a crime should outweigh the potential benefits.
Procedural justice
Assessments of whether the processes leading to legal outcomes are fair. Three factors influence a person’s sense of procedural justice: the neutrality of the authority figure, the trust in the system’s fairness, and the degree of respect that authority figures show toward others.
