Chapter 1

Front 1

Channel Factors

Back 1

Concept that helps explain why certain circumstances that appear unimportant on the surface can have greater consequences for behavior, either facilitating it or blocking it. The term is also meant to reflect that such circumstances can sometimes guide behavior in a very particular direction by making it easier to follow one path rather than another.

Front 2

Construal

Back 2

People's interpretation and inference about the stimuli or situations they confront.

Front 3

Dispositions

Back 3

Internal factors such as beliefs, values, personality traits, or abilities that guide a person's behavior.

Front 4

Fundamental Attribution Error

Back 4

The failure to recognize the importance of situational influences on behavior, and the corresponding tendency to overemphasize the importance of dispositions or traits on behavior.

Front 5

Gestalt Psychology

Back 5

Based on the German word gestalt, meaning "form" or "figure", this approach stresses the fact that people perceive objects not by means of some automatic registering device but by active, usually unconscious interpretation of what the object represents as a whole.

Front 6

Independent (Individualistic) Cultures

Back 6

Cultures in which people tend to think of themselves as distinct social entities, tied to each other by voluntary bonds of affection and organizational memberships but essentially separate from other people and having attributes that exist in the absence of any connections to others.

Front 7

Interdependent (Collectivistic) Cultures

Back 7

Cultures in which people tend to define themselves as part of a collective, inextricably tied to others in their group and placing less importance on individual freedom or personal control over their lives.

Front 8

Naturalistic Fallacy

Back 8

The claim that the way things are is the way they should be.

Front 9

Natural Selection

Back 9

An evolutionary process that molds animals and plants so that traits that enhance the probability of survival and reproduction are passed on to subsequent generations.

Front 10

Parental Investment

Back 10

The evolutionary principle that costs and benefits are associated with reproduction and the nurturing of offspring. Because these costs and benefits are different for males and females, one sex will normally value and invest more in each child than will the other sex.

Front 11

Prisoner's Dilemma

Back 11

A situation involving payoffs to two people, who must decide whether to "cooperate" or "defect". In the end, trust and cooperation lead to higher joint payoff than mistrust and defection.

Front 12

Schema

Back 12

A knowledge structure consisting of any organized body of stored information.

Front 13

Social Psychology

Back 13

The scientific study of the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of individuals in social situations.

Front 14

Theory of Mind

Back 14

The understanding that other people have beliefs and desires.