Social Psychology Flashcards
Three Big Wig Founders of Social Psychology
Norman Triplett
Kurt Lewin
Fritz Heider
Norman Triplett
Conducted 1st official social psych experiment in 1897 on social facilitation. Cyclists performed better when paced by others than when they rode alone.
Kurt Lewin
Applied Gestalt ideas to social behavior.
Conceived field theory- total of influences upon individual behavior. A persons life space is collection of forced upon individual behavior. Valence, vector and barrier are forces in the life space.
Fritz Heider
Founder of attribution theory and balance theory.
Attribution theory
The study of how people infer the causes of others behavior. People attribute intentions and emotions to anything.
Balance theory
The study of how people make their feelings and/or actions consistent to preserve psychological homeostasis.
Actor observer attributional divergence
Tendency for person to see their behavior differently than those watching the behavior.
Self serving attributional bias
Interpreting ones actions and behaviors positively, blaming situations for failures and taking credit for successes. We think we are better than average.
Illusory correlation
Assuming two unrelated things have a relationship.
Slippery slope
Logical fallacy that says a small insignificant first step in one direction will eventually lead to greater steps that will eventually have a significant impact.
Hindsight bias
Believing after the fact that you knew something all along.
Halo effect
Thinking that if someone has one good quality then he has only good qualities.
Self fulfilling prophecy
When ones expectations somehow draw out or cause the very behavior that is expected.
False consensus bias
Assuming that most other people think as you do.
Lee Ross
Studied subjects who were first made to believe a statement and then later told it was false. Subjects continued to believe statement if they had processed it and devised their own logical explanation for it.
