Chapter 15 - SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Prejudice

A preconceived opinion or bias; especially a negative attitude or evaluation toward a group of people defined by their racial, ethnic, or religious heritage or by their gender, occupation, sexual orientation, level of education, place of residence, or membership in a particular group.

Self-Serving Bais

The tendency to attribute our accomplishments and successes to internal causes and our failures and mistakes to external causes.

Illusion Of Outgroup Homogeneity

A belief that members of groups to which one does not belong are very similar to one another.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

A model that explains the effectiveness of persuasion. The central route requires the person to think critically about an argument and the peripheral route entails the association of the argument with something positive.

Self

A person's distinct individuality.

Attitude

An evaluation of persons, places, and things.

Cross-Culture Psychology

A branch of psychology that studies the effects of culture on behaviour.

Group

A collection of individuals who generally have common interests and goals.

Loving

A combination of liking and a deep sense of attachment to, intimacy with, and caring for another person.

Liking

A feeling of personal regard, intimacy, and esteem toward another person.

Availability Heuristic

A general rule for decision making by which a person judges the likelihood or importance of an event by the ease with which examples of that event come to mind.

Representative Heuristic

A general rule for decision making by which people classify a person, place, or thing into the category to which it appears to be the most similar.

Schema

A mental framework or body of knowledge that organizes and synthesizes information about a person, place, or thing.

Self-Schema

A mental framework that represents and synthesizes information about oneself; a cognitive structure that organizes the knowledge, feelings, and ideas that constitute the self-concept.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

A stereotype-based expectancy that causes a person to act in a manner consistent with the stereotypes.

Illusory Correlation

An apparent correlation between two distinctive elements that does not actually exist.

Passionate Love

An emotion, intense desire for sexual union with another person; also called romantic love.

Diffusion of Responsibility

An explanation of the failure of bystander intervention stating that when several bystanders are present, no one person assumes responsibility for helping.

Internal Factors

An individual's traits, needs, and intentions, which can affect his or her thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviours.

Stereotype

An overgeneralised and false belief about the characteristics of members of a particular group.

Consensual Behaviour

Behaviour that is shared by many people; behaviour that is similar from one person to the next. To the extent that people engage in the same behaviour, their behaviour is consensual.

Compliance

Engaging in a particular behaviour at another person's request.

Social Norms

Informal rules defining the expected and appropriate behaviour in specific situations.

Companionate Love

Love that is characterised by a deep, enduring affection and caring for another person, accompanied by a strong desire to maintain the relationship.

Mere Exposure Effect

The formation of a positive attitude toward a person, place, or thing based solely on repeated exposure to that person, place, or thing.

Bystander Intervention

The intervention of a person in a situation that appears to require his or her aid.

Attribution

The process by which people infer the causes of other people's behaviours.

Social Cognition

The process involved in perceiving, interpreting, and acting on social information.

Groupthink

The tendecny to avoid dissent in the attempt to achieve group consensus in the course of decision making.

Group Polarization

The tendency for the initial position of a group to become exaggerated during the discussion preceding a decision.

False Consensus

The tendency of a person to perceive his or her own response as representative of a general consensus.

Actor-Observer Effect

The tendency to attribute one's own behaviour to external factors but others' behaviour to internal factors.

Primacy Effect

The tendency to form impressions of people based on the first information we receive about them.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate the significance of internal factors and underestimate the significance of external factors in explaining other people's behaviours.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

The theory that changes in attitude can be motivated by an unpleasant state of tension caused by a disparity between a person's beliefs or attitudes and his or her behaviour.

Self-Perception Theory

The theory that we come to understand our attitudes and emotions by observing our own behaviour and the circumstances under which it occurs.

Impression Formation

The way in which we integrate information about another's traits into a coherent sense of who the person is.

Social Loafing

The decreased effort put forth by individuals when performing a task with other people.

Discrimination

The differential treatment of people based on their membership in a particular group.

Social Facilitation

The enhancement of task performance caused by the mere presence of others.

Distinctiveness

The extent to which a person behaves differently toward different people, events, or other stimuli.

Consistency

The extent to which a person's behaviour is consistent across time toward another person, an event, or a stimulus.

Best-Rate Fallacy

The failure to consider the likelihood that a person, place, or thing is a member of a particular category on the basis of mathematical probabilities.

Interpersonal Attraction

People's tendency to approach each other and to evaluate each other positively.

External Factors

People, events, and other stimuli in an individual's environment that can affect his or her thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviours.

Central Traits

Personality attributes that organize and influence the interpretation of other traits (peripheral traits).

Self-Concept

Self-identity.One's knowledge, feelings, and ideas about oneself.

Conformity

The adoption of attitudes and behaviours shared by a particular group of people.

Belief In A Just World

The belief that people get what they deserve in life; fundamental attribution error.

Social Psychology

The branch of psychology that studies our social nature - how the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others influences our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.