Social Thinking Flashcards
Interpersonal attraction
Phenomenon of individuals liking each other.
Golden ratio
Humans are attracted to individuals with certain body proportions (1.618:1)
Self-disclosure
Sharing one’s fears, thoughts, and goals with another person and being met with nonjudgemental empathy. Depends on attraction and friendship.
Reciprocal liking
Phenomenon whereby people like others better when they believe the other person like them.
Proximity
Just being physically close to someone, plays a factor in our attraction to him/her.
Mere exposure effect (or familiarity effect)
People prefer stimuli that they have been exposed to more frequently.
Amygdala
Part of the brain that is responsible for associating stimuli and their corresponding rewards or punishments.
Cognitive association model
We are more likely to respond to others aggressively whenever we are feeling negative emotions, such as being tired, sick, frustrated, or in pain.
Secure attachment
Seen when a child has a consistent caregiver and is able to go out and explore knowing that he has a secure base to return to.
Avoidant attachment
Results when the caregiver has little or no response to a distressed child.
Ambivalent attachment
When a caregiver has an inconsistent response to a child’s distress, sometimes responding appropriately, sometimes neglect fully.
Disorganized attachment
Children show no clear pattern of behavior in response to the caregiver’s absence or presence, but instead can show a mix of different behaviors.
Social support
Perception or reality that one is cared for by a social network. 5 types: emotional, esteem, material, informational, and network
Emotional support
Is listening, affirming, and empathizing with someone’s feelings.
Esteem support
Similar to emotional support, but touches more directly on affirming the qualities and skills of a person. (Reminding someone of their skills to bolster their confidence)
Material support (or tangible support)
Any type of financial or material contribution to another person.
Informational support
Providing information that will help someone. (Providing support to patients as you explain their diagnoses. Potential treatment options m, etc.)
Network support
Gives a person a sense of belonging that is accomplished through gestures, group activities, and shared experiences.
Foraging
Seeking out and eating food, is driven by biological, psychological and social influences.
Hypothalamus
Where the Sensation of hunger is controlled. (Specifically the lateral hypothalamus).
Ventromedial hypothalamus responds to cues that we are full and promotes satisfactions.
Monogamy
An exclusive mating relationship.
Polygamy
Invoked a male having exclusive relationships with multiple females (polygyny) or a female having exclusive relationships with multiple males (polyandry).
Promiscuity
Refers to a member of one sex mating with any member of the opposite sex, without exclusivity.
Phenotypic benefits
Observable traits that make a potential mate more attractive to the opposite sex.
Sensory bias
Development of a trait to match a preexisting preference that exists in the population.
Fisherian or runaway selection
A positive feedback mechanism in which a particular trait that has no effect on survival becomes more and more exaggerated over time.
Indicator traits
A trait the signifies overall good health and well being of an organism, increasing its attractiveness to mates.
Generic compatibility
The creation of mate pairs that, when combined, have complementary genetics.
Altruism
A form of helping behavior in which the person’s intent is to benefit someone else at some cost to himself.
Empathy
The ability to vicariously experience the emotions of another, and it is thought by some psychologists to be a strong influence on helping behavior.
Empathy-altruism hypothesis
One individual helps another person when he feels empathy for the other person, regardless of the cost.
Game theory
Attempt to explain decision-making behavior to predict interactions based on game characteristics, including strategy, winning, losing, rewards, punishments, profits, and cost.
Evolutionary stable strategy (ESS)
When an ESS is adopted by a given population in a specific environment, natural selection will prevent alternative strategies from arising.
Inclusive fitness
A measure of an organism’s success in the population. It’s based on the number of offspring, success in supporting offspring, and the ability of the offspring to then support others.
Components of social perception
Perceived: influences by experience, motives and emotional state
Target: refers to the person about which the perception is made.
Situation: a given social context can determine what information is available to the perceived.
Primacy effect
The idea that first impressions are often more important then subsequent impressions.
Recent effect
Most recent information we have about an individual that is most important in forming our impressions.
Reliance on central traits
Individuals tend to organize the perception of others based on traits and personal characteristics of the target that are most relevant to the perceiver.
Implicit personality theory
The categories we place others in during impression formation.
There are sets of assumptions people make about how different types of people, their traits, and their behavior are related.
Stereotyping
Making assumptions about people based on the category in which they are placed.
Halo effect
A cognitive bias in which judgements about a specific aspects of an individual can be affected by one’s overall impression of the individual.
Just-world hypothesis
In a just-world, good things happen to good people, and vice versa. (Karma)
Self serving bias (or self-serving attributional bias)
Refers to the fact that individuals will view their own success based on internal factors, while viewing failures based on external factors.
Self-enchancement
Focuses on the need to maintain self-worth and can be done through internal attribution of successes and external attribution of failures.
Attribution theory
Focuses on the tendency for individuals to infer the causes of other people’s behaviors.
Dispositional (internal) attributions
Those that relate to the person whose behavior is being considered, including his beliefs, attitudes, and personality characteristics.
Situational (external) attributions
Relate to features of the surroundings, such as threats, money, social norms, and peer pressure.
Consistent cues
Refer to the consistent behavior of a person over time.
Consensus cues
Relate to the extent to which a person’s behavior differs from others.
Distinctiveness cues
Refer to the extent to which a person engages in similar behavior across a series of scenarios.
Correspondent inference theory
Focuses on the intentionality of others’ behavior. When an individual unexpectedly performs a behavior that helps or hurts us, we tend to explain the behavior by dispositional attribution.
Fundamental attribution error
Assumes that we are generally biased toward making dispositional attributions rather than situational attributions, especially in negative contexts.
Attribute substitution
Occurs when individuals must make judgments that are complex, but instead they substitute a simpler solution or apply a heuristic.
Stereotypes
Occur when attitudes and impressions are based on limited and superficial information about a person or a group of individuals.
Stereotype content model
Attempts to classify stereotypes with respect to a hypothetical in-group using two dimensions: warmth and competence.
Paternalistic stereotype
Low status, not competitive (housewives, elderly people, disabled people)
High warmth & low competence
Admiration stereotype
High status, not competitive (in-groups, close allies).
High warmth & high competence
Contemptuous stereotype
Low status, competitive (welfare recipients, poor people)
Low warmth & low competence
Envious stereotype
High status, competitive (Asians, Jews, rich people, feminists)
Low warmth & high competence
Self fulfilling prophecy
Expectations from stereotypes that create conditions that lead to confirmation of those expectations.
Stereotype threat
Refers to the concept of people being concerned or anxious about confirming a negative stereotype about one’s social group.
Prejudice
An irrigation all positive or negative attitude toward a person, group, or thing, priori to an actual experience with that entity.
Propaganda
A common way by which large organizations and political groups attempt to create prejudices in others.
Power
Ability of people or groups to achieve their goals despite any obstacles and their ability to control resources.
Prestige
The level of respect shown to a person by others.
Class
Socioeconomic status
Ethnocentrism
The practice of making judgements about other cultures based on the values and beliefs of one’s own culture, especially when it comes to language, customs, and religion.
In-group
A social group with which a person experiences a sense of belonging or identifies as a member.
Out-group
A social group with which an individual does not identify.
Cultural relativism
Perception of another culture as different from one’s own, but with the recognition that the cultural values, mores, and rules of a culture fit into that culture itself.
Discrimination
Occurs when prejudicial attitudes cause individuals of a particular group to be treated differently from others.
Prejudice is an attitude.
Discrimination is a behavior.
Individual discrimination
Refers to one person discriminating against a particular person or group.
Institutional discrimination
Discrimination against a particular person or group by an entire institution.
