Chap 13

egoism

Giving to another person to ensure reciprocity; to gain self-esteem; to present oneself as powerful, competent, or caring; or to avoid censure from self and others for failing to live up to society's expectations.

social contagion

Imitative behavior involving the spread of actions, emotions, and ideas.

false consensus effect

Observers' overestimation of the degree to which everybody else thinks or acts the way they do.

attitudes

Our feelings, opinions, and beliefs about people, objects, and ideas.

positive illusions

Positive views of the self that are not necessarily rooted in reality.

discrimination (in operant conditioning)

Responding appropriately to stimuli that signal that a behavior will or will not be reinforced. an unjustified negative attitude towards an individual based on the persons member of a group

feelings of elevation

The feelings we have when we see someone else do a good deed

social identity

The way we define ourselves in terms of our group membership.

elaboration likelihood model

Theory identifying two ways to persuade: a central route and a peripheral route.

altruism

Unselfish interest in helping another person.

Explicit racism

a person's conscious and openly shared attitude, which might be measured using a questionnaire.

Heuristics

are cognitive shortcuts that allow us to make decisions rapidly

inoculation

giving people a weak version of a persuasive message and allowing them time to argue against it can help individuals avoid persuasion.

Implicit racism

refers to attitudes that exist on a deeper, hidden level. Implicit attitudes must be measured with a method that does not require awareness

Person perception

refers to the processes by which we use social stimuli to form impressions of others. One important social cue is the face

door-in-the-face technique

relies on the fact that the customer feels a sense of reciprocity and obligation: make a large request, expecting to be refused and follow it with a smaller request.

foot-in-the-door technique

relies on the notion that in agreeing to the smaller offer, the customer has created a relationship with the seller, expressing some level of trust.

frustration-aggression hypothesis

states that frustration always leads to aggression. Soon, however, psychologists found that aggression is not the only possible response to frustration

conformity

A change in a person's behavior to coincide more closely with a group standard.

empathy

A feeling of oneness with the emotional state of another person.

obedience

Behavior that complies with the explicit demands of the individual in authority.

Social cognition

the area of social psychology that explores how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information. Essentially, it is the way in which individuals think in social situations

self-esteem

the degree to which we have positive or negative feelings about ourselves. One of the most important self-related variables.

actor

the person who produces the behavior to be explained

task-oriented cooperation

working together on a shared goal—in reducing tensions between groups

stereotype

A generalization about a group's characteristics that does not consider any variations from one individual to another.

investment model

A model of long-term relationships that examines the ways that commitment, investment, and the availability of attractive alternative partners predict satisfaction and stability in relationships.

affectionate love

Also called companionate love; love that occurs when individuals desire to have another person near and have a deep, caring affection for the person.

romantic love

Also called passionate love; love with strong components of sexuality and infatuation, often dominant in the early part of a love relationship.

stereotype threat

An individual's fast-acting, self-fulfilling fear of being judged based on a negative stereotype about his or her group.

cognitive dissonance

An individual's psychological discomfort (dissonance) caused by two inconsistent thoughts.

prejudice

An unjustified negative attitude toward an individual based on the individual's membership in a particular group.

aggression

Behaviors that are intended to harm another person. The amygdala and the limbic system are brain structures related to aggression

self-perception theory

Bem's theory on how behaviors influence attitudes, stating that individuals make inferences about their attitudes by perceiving their behavior.

social loafing

Each person's tendency to exert less effort in a group because of reduced accountability for individual effort.

social facilitation

Improvement in an individual's performance because of the presence of others.

fundamental attribution error

Observers' overestimation of the importance of internal traits and underestimation of the importance of external situations when they seek explanations of an actor's behavior.

social identity theory

Tajfel's theory that our social identities are a crucial part of our self-image and a valuable source of positive feelings about ourselves.

groupthink

The impaired group decision making that occurs when making the right decision is less important than maintaining group harmony. A type of thinking in which group members share such a strong motivation to achieve consensus that they lose the ability to critically evaluate alternative points of view

informational social influence

The influence other people have on us because we want to be right.

normative social influence

The influence others have on us because we want them to like us.

observer

The person who offers a causal explanation of the actor's behavior

mere exposure effect

The phenomenon that the more we encounter someone or something, the more probable it is that we will start liking the person or thing even if we do not realize we have seen it before.

social comparison

The process by which individuals evaluate their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and abilities in relation to those of other people.

attribution

The process by which we come to understand the causes of others' behavior and form an impression of them as individuals

deindividuation

The reduction in personal identity and erosion of the sense of personal responsibility when one is part of a group.

group polarization effect

The solidification and further strengthening of an individual's position as a consequence of a group discussion or interaction.

social psychology

The study of how people think about, influence, and relate to other people.

risky shift

The tendency for a group decision to be riskier than the average decision made by the individual group members.

bystander effect

The tendency of an individual who observes an emergency to help less when other people are present than when the observer is alone.

ethnocentrism

The tendency to favor one's own ethnic group over other groups.

self-objectification

The tendency to see oneself primarily as an object in the eyes of others.

self-serving bias

The tendency to take credit for our successes and to deny responsibility for our failures.

social exchange theory

The view of social relationships as involving an exchange of goods, the objective of which is to minimize costs and maximize benefits.

attribution theory

The view that people are motivated to discover the underlying causes of behavior as part of their effort to make sense of the behavior.

self-fulfilling prophecy

expectations cause individuals to act in ways that serve to make the expectations come true.

lower levels of serotonin

have been linked to aggressive behavior

two main factors have been identified as contributing to conformity:

informational social influence and normative social influence.

Attributions vary along three dimensions

internal/external causes, Stable/unstable causes, Controllable/uncontrollable causes

Effort justification

one type of dissonance reduction, means rationalizing the amount of effort we put into something

primacy effect

peoples tendency to attend to and remember what they learned first