Unit 14: Social Psychology Flashcards
The scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.
Social Psychology
The theory that we explain someone’s behavior by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition.
Attribution Theory
The tendency for observes, when analyzing others’ behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.
Fundamental Attribution Error
Feelings, often influence by our beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events.
Attitude
Occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker’s attractiveness.
Peripheral Route Persuasion
Occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.
Central Route Persuasion
The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.
Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
A set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave.
Role
The theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. For example, when we become aware that our attitudes and our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Adjusting our behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.
Conformity
Influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval.
Normative Social Influence
Influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions about reality.
Informational Social Influence
Improved performance on simple or well learned tasks in the presence of others.
Social Facilitation
The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable.
Social Loafing
The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.
Deindividuation
The enhancement of a group’s prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group.
Group Polarization
The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.
Groupthink
The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
Culture
An understood rule for accepted and expected behavior.
Norm
An unjustifiable and usually negative attitude toward a group and its members.
Prejudice
A generalized (sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people.
Stereotype
Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members
Discrimination
“Us” - people with whom we share a common identity
Ingroup
“Them” - those perceived as different or apart from our ingroup.
Outgroup
The tendency to favor our own group.
Ingroup Bias
The theory that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame.
Scapegoat Theory
The tendency to recall faces of one’s own race more accurately than faces of other races.
Other-race Effect
Any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy.
Aggression
The principle that frustration - the blocking of an attempt to achieve some goal - creates anger, which can generate aggression.
Frustration-Aggression Principle
The phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them.
Mere Exposure Effect
An aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at the beginning of a love relationship.
Passionate love
The deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined.
Companionate Love
A condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it.
Equity
Revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others.
Self-Disclosure
Unselfish regard for the welfare of others.
Altruism
The tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present.
Bystander Effect
The theory that our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs.
Social Exchange Theory
An expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them.
Reciprocity Norm
An expectation that people will help those needing their help.
Social-Responsibility Norm
A perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas.
Conflict
A situation in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing their self-interest rather than the good of the group, become caught in mutually destructive behavior.
Social Trap
Mutual views often held by conflicting people, as when each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful and views the other side as evil and aggressive.
Mirror-Image Perceptions
A belief that leads to its own fulfillment.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
Shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation.
Superordinate Goals
Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction - a strategy designed to decrease international tensions.
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