Unit 6 - Social Psychology

Equal Status Contact

A longstanding line of research that aims to combat bias among conflicting groups springs from a theory called the "contact hypothesis." Developed in the 1950s by Gordon Allport, PhD, the theory holds that contact between two groups can promote tolerance and acceptance, but only under certain conditions, such as equal

Behavior component

Behavioral (or conative) component: the way the attitude we have influences on how we act or behave. For example: "I will avoid spiders and scream if I see one". Cognitive component: this involves a person's belief / knowledge about an attitude object. For example: "I believe spiders are dangerous".

Behavioral (Learning)

Behaviorism, also known as behavioral psychology, is a theory of learning which states all behaviors are learned through interaction with the environment through a process called conditioning. Thus, behavior is simply a response to environmental stimuli.

Bandura

Albert Bandura is an influential social cognitive psychologist who is perhaps best known for his social learning theory, the concept of self-efficacy, and his famous Bobo doll experiments. He is a Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and is widely regarded as one of the greatest living psychologists.

Implicit Personality Theory

An implicit personality theory refers to a person's notions about which personality characteristics tend to co-occur in people. ... Implicit personality theories guide the inferences that social perceivers make of other people.

Biology

Biological psychology - also known as biopsychology or psychobiology - is the application of the principles of biology to the study of mental processes and behaviour. ... The fields of behavioural neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychology are all subfields of biological psychology.

Central-route processing

Central route processing means your audience cares more about the message. They'll pay more attention and scrutinize the quality and strength of the argument. Any attitudes formed or reinforced this way are thought to be more enduring and resistant to counter-arguments

Cognitive component

Cognitive component: this involves a person's belief / knowledge about an attitude object. For example: "I believe spiders are dangerous".

Conformity

Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group. This change is in response to real (involving the physical presence of others) or imagined (involving the pressure of social norms / expectations) group pressure.

Conformity

Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms, politics or being like-minded. Norms are implicit, specific rules, shared by a group of individuals, that guide their interactions with others.

Deindividualization

Deindividualization or deindividuation is a concept in social psychology which refers to a person's loss of distinct awareness as well as lessened perception of responsibility when in a group. For example, a student is in jail for shoplifting. <--

Diffusion of Responsibility

Diffusion of responsibility is a socio psychological phenomenon whereby a person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction when other bystanders or witnesses are present.

Dispositional cause

Dispositional attribution assigns the cause of behavior to some internal characteristic of a person, rather than to outside forces. When we explain the behavior of others we look for enduring internal attributions, such as personality traits. This is known as the fundamental attribution error.

ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism refers to a tendency to use your own culture as the standard by which to judge and evaluate other cultures. ... It can also make it difficult to see how your own cultural background influences your behaviors.

Evolution

Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior. Along with cognitive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if not all, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internal psychological mechanisms.

Foot-in-the-door

Foot-in-the-door technique is a compliance tactic that aims at getting a person to agree to a large request by having them agree to a modest request first. This technique works by creating a connection between the person asking for a request and the person that is being asked.

Gina Perry

Gina Perry is a psychologist and writer. She wrote the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's award-winning Radio National documentary Beyond the Shock Machine. She lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Informational Social Influence

Informational social influence is the change in opinions or behavior that occurs when we conform to people who we believe have accurate information. We base our beliefs on those presented to us by reporters, scientists, doctors, and lawyers because we believe they have more expertise in certain fields than we have.

Groupthink

Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. The practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility.

Attribution theory

Humans are motivated to assign causes to their actions and behaviors. In social psychology, attribution is the process by which individuals explain the causes of behavior and events. Models to explain this process are called attribution theory.

Impression formation

Impression formation is the process by which individuals perceive, organize, and ultimately integrate information to form unified and coherent situated impressions of others. Internalized expectations for situated events condition what information individuals deem is important and worthy of their attention.

Compliance

In general, compliance means conforming to a rule, such as a specification, policy, standard or law. Regulatory compliance describes the goal that organizations aspire to achieve in their efforts to ensure that they are aware of and take steps to comply with relevant laws, policies, and regulations.

Attitude

In psychology, an attitude refers to a set of emotions, beliefs, and behaviors toward a particular object, person, thing, or event. Attitudes are often the result of experience or upbringing, and they can have a powerful influence over behavior.

Aggression

In psychology, the term aggression refers to a range of behaviors that can result in both physical and psychological harm to yourself, others, or objects in the environment. This type of behavior centers on harming another person either physically or mentally.

Fundamental attribution error

In social psychology, fundamental attribution error, also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect, is the tendency for people to under-emphasize situational explanations for an individual's observed behavior while over-emphasizing dispositional and personality-based explanations for their behavior.

Group polarization

In social psychology, group polarization refers to the tendency for a group to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members.

Social loafing

In social psychology, social loafing is the phenomenon of a person exerting less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when working alone. It is seen as one of the main reasons groups are sometimes less productive than the combined performance of their members working as individuals.

In group / out group

In sociology and social psychology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an out-group is a social group with which an individual does not identify.

Cognitive dissonance

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, and is typically experienced as psychological stress when they participate in an action that goes against one or more of them.

Theories of Aggression

Instinct Theory of Aggression: The instinct theory of aggression was advanced by Sigmund Freud (1927) the great psychoanalyst of yester years. Frustration Aggression Hypothesis: Social Learning Theory:

Interpersonal Attraction

Interpersonal attraction as a part of social psychology is the study of the attraction between people which leads to the development of platonic or romantic relationships. It is distinct from perceptions such as physical attractiveness, and involves views of what is and what is not considered beautiful or attractive.

Irving Janis

Irving Lester Janis was a research psychologist at Yale University and a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley most famous for his theory of "groupthink" which described the systematic errors made by groups when making collective decisions.

Obedience

Obedience is a form of social influence that involves performing an action under the orders of an authority figure. ... Instead, obedience involves altering your behavior because a figure of authority has told you to.

Reciprocity of Liking

Reciprocal liking, also known as reciprocity of attraction, is the act of a person feeling an attraction to someone only upon learning or becoming aware of that person's attraction to themselves. ... Feelings of admiration, affection, love, and respect are characteristics for reciprocal liking between the two individuals.

Peripheral-route processing

Peripheral Route Processing (also known as Peripheral Route To Persuasion) occurs when someone evaluates a message, such as an advertisement, on the basis of physical attractiveness, background music, or other surface-level characteristics rather than the actual content of the message.

Persuasion

Persuasion, the process by which a person's attitudes or behaviour are, without duress, influenced by communications from other people. One's attitudes and behaviour are also affected by other factors (for example, verbal threats, physical coercion, one's physiological states).

Rules of Attraction (4)

Physical Attractiveness: Research shows that romantic attraction is primarily determined by physical attractiveness. In the early stages of dating, people are more attracted to partners whom they consider to be physically attractive. Men are more likely to value physical attractiveness than are women. People's perception of their own physical attractiveness also plays a role in romantic love. The Matching Hypothesis proposes that people tend to pick partners who are about equal in level of attractiveness to themselves. Proximity: People are more likely to become friends with people who are geographically close. One explanation for this is the mere exposure effect. The Mere Exposure Effect refers to people's tendency to like novel stimuli more if they encounter them repeatedly. Similarity: People also tend to pick partners who are similar to themselves in characteristics such as age, race, religion, social class, personality, education, intelligence, and attitude. This similarity is seen not only between romantic partners but also between friends. Some researchers have suggested that similarity causes attraction. Others acknowledge that people may be more likely to have friends and partners who are similar to themselves simply because of accessibility: people are more likely to associate with people who are similar to themselves. Reciprocity: People tend to like others who reciprocate their liking.

Altruism - ProSocial Behavior

Prosocial behavior refers to a pattern of activity, whereas, altruism is the motivation to help others out of pure regard for their needs rather than how the action will benefit oneself. ... There is evidence that voluntary actions that benefit others are rooted in human (and animal) behavior.

Scapegoat theory

Scapegoat theory refers to the tendency to blame someone else for one's own problems, a process that often results in feelings of prejudice toward the person or group that one is blaming. Scapegoating serves as an opportunity to explain failure or misdeeds, while maintaining one's positive self-image.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Self-fulfilling prophecy, process through which an originally false expectation leads to its own confirmation. In a self-fulfilling prophecy an individual's expectations about another person or entity eventually result in the other person or entity acting in ways that confirm the expectations.

Social role

Social Roles refer to the expectations, responsibilities, and behaviors we adopt in certain situations. The ideas for expected or "normal" behavior are reinforced both by the individual and by society. Each of us takes on many different roles, and we shift among them throughout our lives and throughout each day.

Social Categorization

Social categorization is the process by which people categorize themselves and others into differentiated groups. Categorization simplifies perception and cognition related to the social world by detecting inherent similarity relationships or by imposing structure on it (or both).

Social Cognition

Social cognition is a sub-topic of social psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in our social interactions.

Social cognitive theory

Social cognitive theory, used in psychology, education, and communication, holds that portions of an individual's knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing others within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside media influences.

Social facilitation

Social facilitation is defined as improvement in individual performance when working with other people rather than alone. In addition to working together with other people, social facilitation also occurs in the mere presence of other people.

Social identity theory

Social identity theory, in social psychology, the study of the interplay between personal and social identities. Social identity theory aims to specify and predict the circumstances under which individuals think of themselves as individuals or as group members.

Social impairment

Social impairment occurs when an individual acts in a less positive way or performs worse when they are around others. Imagine doing a crossword puzzle by yourself and then imagine doing it on a screen in front of an entire classroom. You would most likely perform the puzzle faster and more accurately when alone.

Social influence

Social influence comprises the ways in which individuals change their behavior to meet the demands of a social environment. It takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing.

Social Learning Theory

Social learning theory, proposed by Albert Bandura, emphasizes the importance of observing, modelling, and imitating the behaviors, attitudes, and emotional reactions of others. Social learning theory considers how both environmental and cognitive factors interact to influence human learning and behavior.

Solomon Asch

Solomon Eliot Asch was a Polish-American gestalt psychologist and pioneer in social psychology. He created seminal pieces of work in impression formation, prestige suggestion, conformity, and many other topics.

Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist, best known for his controversial experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale. Milgram was influenced by the events of the Holocaust, especially the trial of Adolf Eichmann, in developing the experiment.

Stereotype Vulnerability

Stereotype threat is defined as a "socially premised psychological threat that arises when one is in a situation or doing something for which a negative stereotype about one's group applies"

Frustration - Aggression Hypothesis

The frustration-aggression hypothesis is one of the earliest aggression theories. It was first proposed by a group of Yale psychologists in 1939. The original theory made two bold claims: (1) aggression is always preceded by frustration, and (2) frustration always leads to aggression.

Zimbardo Prison Experiment

The Stanford prison experiment was a social psychology experiment that attempted to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison officers.

Actor-observer bias

The actor-observer bias is a term in social psychology that refers to a tendency to attribute one's own actions to external causes while attributing other people's behaviors to internal causes. It is a type of attributional bias that plays a role in how we perceive and interact with other people.

Affective component

The affective component refers to the feelings or emotions a person has when faced with an attitude object.

Bystander effect

The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological theory that states that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when there are other people present.

Door-in-the-face

The door-in-the-face technique is a compliance method commonly studied in social psychology. The persuader attempts to convince the respondent to comply by making a large request that the respondent will most likely turn down, much like a metaphorical slamming of a door in the persuader's face.

Lowball technique

The low-ball technique is a compliance strategy which is used to persuade a person to agree to a request. A person using the technique will present an attractive offer at first. The offer will be attractive enough for the other party to it. Then, before finalising the agreement, the person will then change the offer.

Mere exposure effect

The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle.

Situational cause

The process of assigning the cause of behavior to some situation or event outside a person's control rather than to some internal characteristic. When we try to explain our own behavior we tend to make external attributions, such as situational or environment features.

Realistic Conflict Theory

The realistic conflict theory states that whenever there are two or more groups that are seeking the same limited resources, this will lead to conflict, negative stereotypes and beliefs, and discrimination between the groups.

Social comparison

The social comparison process involves people coming to know themselves by evaluating their own attitudes, abilities, and traits in comparison with others. In most cases, we try to compare ourselves to those in our peer group or with whom we are similar.

Temporoparietal junction TPJ

The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is an area of the brain where the temporal and parietal lobes meet, at the posterior end of the lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure). The TPJ incorporates information from the thalamus and the limbic system as well as from the visual, auditory and somatosensory systems.

Sternberg Triangle

The triangular theory of love is a theory of love developed by Robert Sternberg. In the context of interpersonal relationships, "the three components of love, according to the triangular theory, are an intimacy component, a passion component, and a decision/commitment component."

Vicarious conditioning

Vicarious conditioning can be defined as learning by observing the reactions of others to an environmental stimulus that is salient to both the observer and the model. The saliency of the stimulus is characterized by its relevance (e.g., fear relevance) and ability to produce emotional arousal.

Prejudice/discrimination

prejudice includes all three components of an attitude (affective, behavioral and cognitive), whereas discrimination just involves behavior. For example, a person may hold prejudiced views towards a certain race or gender etc. (e.g. sexist). Discrimination is the behavior or actions, usually negative, towards an individual or group of people, especially on the basis of sex/race/social class, etc.

Social psychology

the branch of psychology that deals with social interactions, including their origins and their effects on the individual.

Primacy Effect

the tendency for facts, impressions, or items that are presented first to be better learned or remembered than material presented later in the sequence. This effect can occur in both formal learning situations and social contexts.

Normative Influence

the tendency for people to conform in order to fit in with the group Normative social influence is a type of social influence that leads to conformity. It is defined in social psychology as "...the influence of other people that leads us to conform in order to be liked and accepted by them."