S1-Introduction Social Psychology Flashcards
Self-fulfilling prophecy
The process by which someone’s expectations about a person or group leads to the fulfillment of those expectations
Social psychology
The scientific discipline that attempts to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others
Self
A symbol-using social being who can reflect on his or her own behavior
Self-serving bias
The tendency to take credit for positive outcomes but deny responsibility for negative outcomes in our lives
Interactionism
An important perspective in social psychology that emphasizes the combined effects of both the person and the situation on human behavior
Social cognition
The ways in which we interpret, analyze, remember, and use information about our social world
Dual-process theories
Theories of social cognition that describe two basic ways of thinking about social stimuli, one involving automatic, effortless thinking and the other involving more deliberate, effortful thinking
Explicit cognition
Deliberate judgments or decisions of which we are consciously aware
Implicit cognition
Judgments or decisions that are under the control of automatically activated evaluations occurring without our awareness
Culture
The total lifestyle of a people, including all the ideas, symbols, preferences and material objects that they share
Individualism
The philosophy of life stressing the priority of individual needs of a group needs a preference for loosely net socialist tips and a desire to relatively autonomous of others influence
Collectivism
A philosophy of life stressing the priority of group needs over individual needs a preference for tightly knit social relationships and the willingness to submit to the influence of ones group
Evolutionary psychology
An approach to psychology based on the principle of natural selection
Genes
The biochemical units of inheritance for all living organisms
Natural selection
The process by which organisms with inherited traits best suited to the environment reproduce more successfully then less well-adapted organisms over a number of generations, and a process by which leads to evolutionary changes
Evolution
The genetic changes that occur in a species over generations due to natural selection
Sex
The biological status of being female or male
Gender
The meaning set societies and individuals attach to being female and male
Social neuroscience
The study of the relationship between neural processes of brain and social processes
Cerebral cortex
The wrinkled-looking outer layer of the brain that coordinates and integrates all other brain areas into a fully functioning unit, that is the brain’s “thinking” center, and that is much larger in humans than in other animals
Frontal lobe
The region of the cerebral cortex situated just behind the forehead that is involved in the coordination of movement and higher mental processes, such as planning, social skills, and abstract thinking. This is the area of the brain that is the originator of self processes
Positive psychology
An approach to psychology that studies ways to enrich human experience and maximize human functioning
