Social Psych Flashcards
Solomon Asch
Conducted experiments with lines which proved that people will conform to a group even when the group is wrong.
Normative Social Influence
Conforming to others in order to be liked/accepted
Informative Social Influnce
Conforming to others in an ambiguous situation in order to behave “correctly”
Groupthink
People feel it’s more important to maintain a group’s cohesiveness than to realistically consider facts.
Group Polarization
People in a group tend to take more extreme positions on an issue than they would individually.
Social facilitation
When having a person present as someone else completes a task creates a positive influence on the task’s completion
Social impairment
When having a person present as someone else completes a task creates a negative influence on the task’s completion
Social loafing
Lazy people don’t work well on a task when others are also working on that task, but do work well on their own
Deindividuation
Losing a sense of personal identity when in a group
Compliance
People change their behavior as a result of others directing them to change (think foot-in-the-door/door-in-the-face)
Foot-in-the-door Technique
Asking fora small favor and then asking for a larger favor
Door-in-the-face Technique
Ask for something big, and then downgrade to something smaller/more reasonable
Lowball Technique
Once a commitment is made, the “cost” of the commitment is increased
Obedience
Changing one’s behavior at the direct order of an authority figure
Stanely Milgram
Experiment with administering dangerous shocks showed people’s willingness to obey
Social norms
How you are expected to act (can be something like a written law or more of a general expectation)
Attitude
Tendency to respond a certain way towards certain things
Three components to attitude
Affective (emotion), Behavior (action), Cognitive (thought)
Direct contact
Learning an attitude through interacting with the target of the attitude directly
Direct instruction
Learning an attitude because someone tells you a certain thing is good/bad
Interaction with others
Learning an attitude by being around people with that same attitude
Vicarious conditioning
Learning an attitude by observing someone else’s attitude
Persuasion
When someone tries to change someone else’s attitude through argument, pleading, or explanation
Components of persuasion
Source, message, target audience, and medium
Elaboration likelihood model of persuasion
People will either add details (elaborate) based on what they hear or won’t at all
Central-route processing
When you just take a persuasive message at face value
Peripheral-route processing
When you elaborate on a persuasive message based on peripheral cues and context
Cognitive dissonance
When people find themselves doing something that doesn’t match their attitude about themselves
Daryl Bem’s sef perception theory
People will look at their own behaviors and then form attitudes about themselves
Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith
Conducted a test with a boring task and found that students payed less to lie experienced more cognitive dissonance, and where therefore more convinced that they weren’t lying
Impression formation
Forming the first attitude one person has about another
Primacy effect
A first impression lasts
Social catagorization
Assignment of a person to a particular category or group
Stereotype
The belief that a set of characteristics is shared by all members of a social catagory
Implicit personality theory
Sets of assumptions that people have about how different people, traits, and actions are related (happy people are also friendly people)
Attribution
Explanation of the cause of behavior (nothing to do with accuracy)
Attribution theory
Explains why people choose the particular explanations of behavior that they do
Fritz Heider
Came up with the attribution theory
Situational cause
Our behavior is caused by external factors
Dispositional cause
Our behavior is caused by internal factors
Fundamental attribution error (actor-observer bias)
We tend to explain our own behavior as situational and others’ behavior as dispositional
Saliency bias
Tendency to make assumptions based off of what is noticable, causing “insiders” to have more details
Self-serving bias
You tend to take credit for the good things you do and externalize what goes poorly
Prejudice
When a person holds an unsupported attitude about the members of a social group
Discrimination
When prejudicial attitudes cause members of a social group to be treated certain ways
Ethnocentricism
Belief that your culture is above all others
In-group
A group you identify with
Out-group
A group you don’t identify with
Scapegoat
Person/ group (frequently the out-group) who serves as a target for frustrations of the in-group
Social cognitive theory
Prejudice is an attitude formed alongside other attitudes
Realistic conflict theory
Prejudice is formed/strengthened when two groups are competing for reasources
Social identity theory
Social catagorization, identification, and social comparison are the three processes responsible for the formation of a person’s social identity
Stereotype vulnerability
The effect a person’s knowledge of another’s stereotyped opinions of themselves has on their own behavior
Self-fufilling prophecy of stereotypes
People feel pressure to behave in ways that support their stereotype
Stereotype threat
Members of a stereotyped group are wary in any situation in which their behavior could confirm a stereotype
Intergroup contact
When people with different backgrounds interact with each other
Equal status contact
When neither group has power over the other (Belmont vs. Lexington)
Jigsaw classroom
Students must work together to achieve a goal where each student is dependent on the rest, creating a collaborative environment
In-group favoritism
Favoring the group you belong to
Out-group homogeneity
Believing all members of groups you don’t identify with are the same
Just-world phenomenon
Tendency to believe that the world is a fair place, and therefore those who don’t succeed are bad people who deserve their misfortune
Aggression
When one person tries to hurt another deliberately
Frustration-aggression hypothesis
Concept of aggression as a response to frustration
Konrad Lorenz
Saw aggression as an instinct to promote individual safety (but this can’t be true, since patterns of human aggression world wide are far too disimilar)
Social learning theory for aggression
Theory that aggressive behavior is learned
Craig Anderson
Found evidence of a positive correlation between exposure to violent video games and aggressive behavior
Interpersonal attraction
Having the desire for a relationship with someone
Things that impact attraction
PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS, proximity, similarity, and reciprocity
Mere exposure effect
People like things more the more they are exposed to them
Matching hypothesis
People of similar “levels” of attractiveness tend to pair up
Sternberg’s components of love
Intimacy, Passion, and Commitment
Rubin’s components of love
Intimacy, Caring, and Attachment
Prosocial behavior
Behavior that is socially desirable and benefits others
Altruism
Helping someone in danger without expecting a reward or guaranteed safety
Bystander effect
The likelihood of a bystander to help someone decreases as the number of bystanders increases
Bibb Latané and John Darley
Conducted experiments with smoke in a room to test the bystander effect
Diffusion of responsibility
A person will take less responsibility for something if there are others around them sharing responsibility.
Five decision points
Noticing, defining, taking responsibility, determining the course of action, and taking action
