Chapter 13 Key Terms

Front 1

actor-observer effect

Back 1

tendency to attribute internal causes more often for other people's behavior and external attributions for one's own behavior.

Front 2

altruistic behavior

Back 2

accepting some cost or risk to help others

Front 3

ambivalent sexism

Back 3

overt belief in equal treatment of the sexes joined with a lingering. often unstated belief that women should be treated differently.

Front 4

attitude

Back 4

like or dislikes that influence our behavior towards a person or thing

Front 5

attribution

Back 5

thought processes we use to assign causes to our own behavior and the behavior of others.

Front 6

aversive racism

Back 6

conscientiously expressing the idea that all people are equal but nonetheless unintentionally discriminating against some groups.

Front 7

bait-and-switch technique

Back 7

procedure of first offering an extremely favorable deal and them making additional demands after the person has committed to the deal.

Front 8

bona fide pipeline

Back 8

task on which people alternate between looking at different kinds of faces, such as black and white, and reading words that they need to classify as -pleasant or unpleasant; investigators measure whether they respond "pleasant" after one kind of face or the other.

Front 9

central route to persuasion

Back 9

method of persuasion based on careful evaluation of evidence and logic.

Front 10

cognitive dissonance

Back 10

state of unpleasant tension that people experience when they hold contradictory attitudes or when their behavior is inconsistent with their attitudes, especially when they are displeased with this inconsistency.

Front 11

conformity

Back 11

maintaining or changing one's behavior to match the behavior or expectations of others.

Front 12

conscientious information

Back 12

comparisons of one person's behavior with that of others.

Front 13

consistency information

Back 13

observations of how a person's behavior varies from one time to another.

Front 14

diffusion of responsibility

Back 14

tendency to feel less responsibility for helping when other people are around than when we know that no one else can help.

Front 15

discrimination

Back 15

(1) in classical conditioning, making different responses to different stimuli that have been followed by different outcomes.

(2) in operant conditioning, learning to respond in one way to one stimulus and in another way to another sitmulus.

(3) in social behavior, unequal treatment of different groups of people.

Front 16

distinctiveness

Back 16

observations of how a person's behavior varies from one object or social partner to another

Front 17

Door-in-the-face technique

Back 17

method of eliciting compliance by first making an outrageous request and then responding to the refusal with a more reasonable request.

Front 18

exchange (or equity) theories

Back 18

theories maintaining that social relationships are transactions in which partners exchange goods or services.

Front 19

external attribution

Back 19

explanation for someone's behavior based on the current situation including events that presumably would influence almost anyone.

Front 20

foot-in-the-door technique

Back 20

method of eliciting compliance by first making a modest request and then following it with a larger request.

Front 21

forewarning effect

Back 21

tendency of a brief preview of a message to decrease its persuasiveness

Front 22

fundamental attribution error

Back 22

tendency to make internal attributions for people's behavior even when an observer sees evidence for an external influence.

Front 23

group polarization

Back 23

tendency of a group whose members lean in the same direction on a particular issue to become more extreme in its views after discussing the issue as a group.

Front 24

groupthink

Back 24

process by which members of a group suppress their doubts about a group's poorly thought out decision for fear of making a bad impression or disrupting the group's harmony.

Front 25

implicit association test

Back 25

procedure that measures how fast someone responds to a category that combines a topic with pleasant words or with unpleasant words.

Front 26

inoculation effect

Back 26

tendency of a persuasive message to be weakened if people first hear a weak argument supporting the same conclusion.

Front 27

internal attribution

Back 27

explanation based on someone's individual characteristics such as attitudes, personality traits or abilities.

Front 28

mere exposure effect

Back 28

the principle that the more often we come into contact with someone or something the more we tend to like that person or object.

Front 29

moral dilemma

Back 29

problem that pits one moral value against another

Front 30

peripheral route to persuasion

Back 30

method of persuasion based on such superficial factors such as the speaker's appearance and reputation or the sheer number of arguments presented regardless of their quality

Front 31

pluralistic ignorance

Back 31

situation where people say nothing and each person falsely assumes that everyone else has s different, perhaps better informed opinion.

Front 32

prejudice

Back 32

unfavorable stereotype; negative attitude towards a group of people.

Front 33

primacy effect

Back 33

tendency to be more influenced by the first information learned about someone than by later information learned about that person

Front 34

prisoner's dilemma

Back 34

situation where people must choose between an act that is beneficial to themselves but harmful to others and an act that is moderately beneficial to the entire group

Front 35

proximity

Back 35

(a) in Gestalt psychology, the tendency to perceive objects that are close together as belonging to a group

(b) in social psychology, the tendency to choose as friends people with whom we come in frequent contact.

Front 36

self-fulfilling prophecy

Back 36

expectation that alters one's behavior in such a way as to decrease the probability of a predicted event.

Front 37

self-handicapping strategies

Back 37

techniques for intentionally putting oneself at a disadvantage to provide excuse for expected failure.

Front 38

self-serving biases

Back 38

attributions that people have to adopt to maximize their credit for their successes and minimize their blame for their failures.

Front 39

sleeper effect

Back 39

delayed persuasion by an initially rejected message.

Front 40

social loafing

Back 40

tendency to "loaf" (or work less hard) when sharing work with other people.

Front 41

social perception and cognition

Back 41

process of gathering and remembering information about others and making inferences based on that information

Front 42

social psychologists

Back 42

psychologists who study social behavior and how individuals influence other people and are influenced by other people

Front 43

stereotypes

Back 43

overgeneralization of either positive or negative attitudes towards a group of people

Front 44

that's not all technique

Back 44

method of eliciting compliance whereby someone makes an offer and then improves the offer before anyone has a chance to reply.