Social Psychology Flashcards
social cognition
how people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions
attitude
set of beliefs and feelings
mere exposure effect
the more one is exposed to something, the more one will come to like it
LaPiere study
discovered that although people had bad attitudes towards Asians, they still treated them well
cognitive dissonance theory
the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. For example, when our awareness of our attitudes and of our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes
Festinger and Carlsmith experiment
Subjects asked to perform a boring task and then lie to the next subject that it was fun. One group was paid $1 and the other group was paid $20. The group paid $1 said that the boring task was fun, because they didn’t have much of an external motivation to lie.
compliance strategies
strategies to get others to comply with your wishes
foot-in-the-door
if you can get people to agree to a small request, they will become more likely to agree to a follow-up request that is larger
door-in-the-face
after people refuse a large reques, hey will look more favorably upon a follow-up request that seems, in comparison, much more reasonable
norms of reciprocity
if someone does something nice for you, you feel obligated to do something nice for them
attribution theory
how people determine the cause ofwhat they observe
dispositional/person attribution
personality traits; Charley did well on a math test because he is good at math
situation attribution
situational influence; Charley did well on a math test because the test was easy
Harold Kelley
put forth a theory that explains the kind of attributions people make based on three kinds of information: consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus
consistency
how similarly the individual acts in the same situation over time
distinctiveness
how similar this situation is to other situations in which we have watched the individual
consensus
how other people acted in the same situation
self-fulfilling prophecy
an expectation that causes others to act in ways that make that expectation come true
Rosenthal and Jacobsen’s experiment
Pygmalion in the Classroom
fundamental attribution error
people in individualist cultures systematically seem to overestimate the role of dispositional factors in influencing another person’s actions
false-consensus effect
the tendency of people to overestimate the number of people who agree with them
self-serving bias
the endency to take more credit for good outcomes than for bad ones
just-world belief
misfortunes befall people who deserve them
stereotypes
ideas about what members of different groups are like, and these expectations may influence the way we interact with members of these groups
