Social Psych Flashcards
social psychology
the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people
social influence
the effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior
evolutionary psychology
the attempt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection
construal
the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world
fundamental attribution error
the tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors
behaviorism
a school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment
gestalt psychology
a school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object
naive realism
the conviction that we perceive things “as they really are”, underestimating how much we are interpreting or “spinning” what we see
self-esteem
people’s evaluations of their own self-worth – that, the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent and decent
social cognition
how people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgements and decisions
hindsight bias
the tendency for people to exaggerate, after knowing that something occurred, how much they could have predicted it before it occurred
observational method
the technique whereby a researcher observes people and systematically records measurements or impressions of their behavior
ethnography
the method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions they might have
archival analysis
a form of the observational method in which the researcher examines the accumulated documents, or archives, of a culture (diaries, novels, magazines, and newspapers)
correlational method
the technique whereby two or more variables are systematically measured and the relationship between them is assessed
