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85 Cards in this Set

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Norman Triplett
In 1898, N. Triplett published the first study of social psychology: finding that people perform better on familiar tasks when in the presence of others rather than when alone.
First textbooks on social psychology
In 1908, psychologist William McDougall and sociologist E. H. Ross independently published the first textbooks on social psych.
Verplank
Experiments in 1950s suggested that social approval influences behavior, showing that the course of a conversation changes dramatically based on the feedback (approval) from others.
Reinforcement theory
Verplank, Pavlov, Thorndike, Hull, and Skinner helped to establish the theory that behavior is motivated by anticipated rewards. Later challenged by social learning theorists.
Social learning theory
Bandura is a main figure in social learning theory, a response to reinforcement theory that proposes that behavior is learned through imitation.
Role theory
Bindle (1979) proposed role theory, that people are aware of the social roles they are expected to fill, and much of their observable behavior can be attributed to adopting those roles.
Cognitive theory
Cognitive theory has influenced social psychological theory and research by positing that perception, judgment, memories, and decision making (cognitive concepts) influence our understanding of social behavior.
Attitudes
Attitudes are central to modern social psychology. Attitudes include cognition or beliefs, feelings, and behavioral predisposition, and are typically expressed in opinion statements.
Consistency theory
Consistency theories hold that people prefer consistency, and will change or resist changing attitudes based upon this preference.
Balance theory
Fritz Heider's balance theory is concerned with the way three elements are related: P (the person whom we're talking about), O (some other person), and X (a thing, idea, or some other person). Balance exists when all three fit together harmoniously. Unbalance = stress. Balance generally exists in a triad if there are one or three positives.
Cognitive dissonance theory
Leon Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory posits that cognitive dissonance is the conflict that you feel when your attitudes do not sync with your behaviors. Engaging in behavior that conflicts with an attitude may result in changing one's attitude so that it is consistent with the behavior.
Free-choice dissonance
Free-choice dissonance is one of two types of dissonant situations that have been heavily experimented. Free-choice dissonance occurs in a situation where a person makes a choice between several desirable alternatives. After the decision is made, there is post-decisional dissonance, and often there is an attempt to reduce the dissonance.
Spreading of alternatives
An approach to reducing dissonance by accentuating the positive in a decision and accentuating the negative in a "non-decision"-- so that the relative worth of the two alternatives is spread apart.
Forced-compliance dissonance
Forced-compliance dissonance occurs when an individual is forced into behaving in a manner that is inconsistent with his or her beliefs or attitudes. The force may come from either anticipated punishment or reward.
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) had subjects perform extremely boring tasks and then asked to tell the next subject that the task was actually enjoyable. The conditions were the amount of payment offered to the subjects (either $1 or $20). The $1 subjects reported enjoying the task more than the $20 subjects. In both groups, dissonance was present between the cognition and action. $20 subjects did not need to change their attitude because they justified lying about the task because of the pay, while the $1 subjects had to change their attitude to reduce the dissonance (no incentive in $1)
Minimal justification effect
When behavior can be justified by means of external inducements, there is no need to change internal cognitions. However, when the external justification is minimal, you will reduce your dissonance by changing internal cognitions.
Two main principles of cognitive dissonance theory
1. If a person is pressured to say or do something contrary to his or her privately held attitudes, there will be a tendency for him or her to change those attitudes.
2. The greater the pressure to comply, the less this attitude change. Ultimately, attitude change generally occurs when the behavior is induced with minimum pressure.
Self-perception theory
Daryl Bem's self-perception theory helps to explain forced-compliance dissonance. People infer what hteir attitudes are based upon observation of their own behavior. This theory, unlike cognitive dissonance theory, views a person's initial attitude as irrelevant. An implication of self-perception theory is the overjustification effect.
Overjustification effect
An implication of self-perception theory, the overjustification effect happens when you reward people for something they already like doing, and then they stop liking it. Behavior is now attributed to external causes, rather than dispositional ones.
Carl Hovland's model
Carl Hovland's model deals with attitude change as a process of communicating a message with the intent to persuade someone. This communication of persuasion is broken down into three components: the communicator (person making the argument), the communication (the argument), and the situation (context). As perceived credibility increases, so does the persuasive impact.
Sleeper effect
The sleeper effect is related to Carl Hovland's model, where initially, the persuasive impact of the high credibility source is large, but then decreases, as the persuasive impact of a low credibility source starts out small, and then increases over time. It has been found that individuals can increase their incredibility by arguing against their own self-interest.
Two-sided messages
Two-sided messages contain arguments for and against a position, and are often used for persuasion, as they appear to be balanced. News reporting has frequent instances of two-sided messages.
Elaboration likelihood model of persuasion
Petty and Cacioppo's elaboration likelihood model of persuasion is a more recent theory on persuasion, suggesting that there are two routes to persuasion: the central route and peripheral route. When examining the central route, the argument is important to us, and thus a strong argument will be more effective than a weak one. When examining a peripheral route, the argument is not very important to us, and thus strength of the argument doesn't matter, however context (situation) does.
Analogy of inoculation
William McGuire uses the analogy of inoculation against diseases, that like the inoculation process in the body, people can be inoculated against the attack of persuasive communications.
Cultural truisms
Cultural truisms are axioms or norms that are seldom questioned. McGuire used these to test his idea of inoculation against persuasive communications.
Refuted counterarguments
In the work of McGuire, the practice of inoculating people against attacks on cultural truisms by first presenting arguments against the truisms and then refuting the arguments.
Belief perseverance
Belief perseverance refers to the idea that under certain conditions, people will hold beliefs even after they have been shown to be false.
Reactance
Reactance occurs when social pressure to behave in a particular way becomes so blatant that the person's sense of freedom is threatened, the person will tend to act in a way to reassert a sense of freedom. Thus, if you try too hard to persuade someone of something, that person will choose to believe the opposite of your position.
Social comparison theory
Leon Festinger's social comparison theory suggests that we are drawn to affiliate because of a tendency to evaluate ourselves in relationship to other people. This theory has three principles: 1) people prefer to evaluate themselves by objective, nonsocial means, but when this isn't possible, people evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing them to those of other people, 2) the less the similarity of opinions and abilities between two people, the less the tendency to make these comparisons, 3) when a discrepancy exists with respect to opinions and abilities, there is a tendency to change one's position so as to move it in line with the group.
Stanley Schachter
Stanley Schachter found that greater anxiety leads to a greater desire to affiliate. Thus, a situation that provokes little anxiety typically does not lead to a desire to affiliate.
Reciprocity hypothesis
The reciprocity hypothesis tells us that we tend to like people who indicate that they like us, and conversely we tend to dislike people who dislike us. Thus, we don't merely evaluate a person's qualities when deciding to like/dislike someone, we take into account their evaluation of us.
Gain-loss principle
Aronson and Linder hypothesized a twist to the reciprocity hypothesis known as the gain-loss principle, that states that an evaluation that changes will have more of an impact on us than an evaluation that remains constant.
Social exchange theory
Social exchange theory assumes that a person weighs the rewards and costs of interacting with another. The more the rewards outweigh the costs, the greater the attraction to the other person.
Equity theory
Equity theory proposes that we consider not only our own costs and rewards, but the costs and rewards of the other person.
Individual characteristics and affiliation
Correlations have been found between affiliation and similarity of intelligence, attitudes, education, height, age, religion, SES, drinking habits, and mental health.
Need complimentarity
The claim that people choose relationships so that they mutually satisfy each other's needs.
Attractiveness stereotype
Research has repeatedly documented the potency of physical attractiveness as a determinant of attraction. The attractiveness stereotype refers to the tendency to attribute positive qualities and desirable characteristics to attractive people.
Factors in attraction
Physical attractiveness, spatial proximity, and familiarity are all factors of attraction.
Spatial proximity
People will generally develop a greater liking for someone who lives within a few blocks than for someone who lives in a different neighborhood. Proximity may also increase the intensity of initial interactions.
Mere exposure hypothesis
Mere repeated exposure to a stimulus leads to enhanced liking for it. Robert Zajonc is a key figure in mere exposure research.
Helping behavior and altruism
Behaviors that benefit other individuals or groups of people. Altruism is a form of helping behavior in which the person's intent is to benefit someone else at some cost to himself or herself. Helping behavior includes altruistic motivations, but also includes behaviors that may be motivated by egoism or selfishness.
Bystander intervention
John Darley and Bibb Latane's research in response to the Kitty Genovese killing. They interpreted that anyone in any emergency might decide not to help because of two situational factors, social influence and diffusion of responsibility.
Social influence and pluralistic ignorance
Social influence refers to the influence of other people. The presence of others may lead to the interpretation of an event as a nonemergency.
Diffusion of responsibility
The more people present, the less the likelihood that any individual will offer help.
Empathy
Empathy is the ability to vicariously experience the emotions of another, and is thought to be a strong influence on helping behavior.
Batson's empathy-altruism model
Batson's empathy-altruism model is one explanation for the relationship between empathy and helping behavior. When faced with situations in which others may need help, people might feel distress (mental pain or anguish), and/or they might feel empathy. Both of these states are important, since either can determine helping behavior.
Frustration-aggression hypothesis
The frustration-aggression hypothesis is one possible explanation for aggressive behavior. When people are frustrated, they act aggressively. The strength of frustration experienced is correlated with level of aggression observed.
Bandura's social learning theory
Bandura's social learning theory is perhaps the most influential theory on aggression that is also focused on social context. Here, aggression is learned through modeling (direct observation), or through reinforcement. The "Bobo" doll experiment provides some empirical evidence for this theory.
Autokinetic effect
The autokinetic effect is an illusion where if you stare at a point of light in a room that is otherwise completely dark, the light will appear to move. Muzafer Sherif used this in a classic study on conformity in which he evaluated the concept of norm formation.
Muzafer Sherif's study on conformity
Sherif had subjects, when alone, estimate the amount of movement of a point of light in an otherwise completely dark room. He then brought a group of subjects together and had the group estimate the amount of movement. Individuals conformed to the group, and their judgments converged on some group norm.
Conformity
Conformity has been defined as yielding to group pressure when no explicit demand has been made to do so.
Solomon Asch's conformity study
A subject was gathered in a classroom with seven to nine college men and informed that they would be comparing the lengths of lines. Two large white cards were shown. On one of hte cards was a single black line (the comparison line). On the other card were three lines of differing lengths. The subjects were asked to choose which of the three lines was the same length as the comparison line. Two conditions: control vs. wrong answer condnition. In control condition, subjects selected the wrong line less than one percent of the time. In the wrong answer condition, subjects gave the wrong answer 37 percent of the time.
Stanley Milgram's obedience experiment
Milgram looked at pressure to conform and obedience behavior. Milgram's interpretation is that the drive to obey is stronger than the drive not to hurt someone against his will.
Key experiments on conformity and obedience
Sherif--autokinetic effect, Asch--comparing length of lines, Milgram--electric shocks
Foot-in-the-door effect
Compliance with a small request increases the likelihood of compliance with a larger request.
Compliance
Compliance is a change in behavior that occurs as a result of situational or interpersonal pressure.
Door-in-the face effect
The door-in-the face effect is one in which people who refuse a large initial request are more likely to agree to a later smaller request.
Self-perception
Self-perception refers to how other people's views, our social roles, and our group memberships have an influence on our perceptions of ourselves.
Clark and Clark (1947)
Clark and Clark studied ethnic self-concept among ethnically white and black children using the doll preference task. The experimenter showed each child a black doll and a white doll, and asked the child a series of questions about their feelings on the dolls. The majority of white and black children preferred the white doll. This highlighted the negative effects of racism and minority group status on the self-concept of black children. It was also used to argue against school segregation in the 1954 Brown v. The Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court case. Findings from more recent replications of this study has shown that black children in fact hold positive views of their own ethnicity.
Dimensions of personal identity
Individuals have more than one dimension of personal identity. Our identities are organized according to a hierarchy of salience, or that which holds the most importance for us in each particular situation. Researchers have found that the more salient the identity, the more we conform to the role expectations of the identities.
Primacy and recency effects
The primacy effect refers to those occasions when first impressions are more important than subsequent impressions. Sometimes the most recent information we have about an individual is more important in forming our impressions; this is called the recency effect.
Attribution theory
Attribution theory focuses on the tendency for individuals to infer the causes of other people's behavior. Fritz Heider is one of the founding fathers of attribution theory. According to Heider, individuals attempt to discover causes and effects in events. The causes are either dispositional or situational.
Dispositional causes
Dispositional causes refer to the features of the person whose behavior is being considered, and include the beliefs, attitudes, and personality characteristics of the individual.
Situational causes
Situational causes are external and are those that relate to features of the surroundings. Examples are threats, money, social norms, and peer pressure.
Fundamental attribution error
A bias that occurs in the attribution process where an individual is more likely to make a dispositional attribution rather than a situational one.
Halo effect
The halo effect is a tendency for bias in evaluations of other people that allows a general impression about a person to influence other, more specific evaluations about a person.
M. J. Lerner
M. J. Lerner studied the tendency of individuals to believe in a just world. A strong belief in a just world increases the likelihood of "blaming the victim" since such a world view denies the possibility of innocent victims.
Theodore Newcomb
Theodore Newcomb demonstrated the influence of group norms by studying a small women's college. Most of the women came from wealthy, conservative families, but the college itself had a very liberal atmosphere. Newcomb found that over time, students increasingly accepted the norms of their community.
Edward Hall
Edward Hall suggested that there are cultural norms that govern how far away we stand from the people we're speaking to.
Proxemics
The study of how individuals space themselves in relation to others is called proxemics.
Zajonc and dominant responses
Zajonc argued that the presence of others increases arousal and consequently enhances the emission of dominant responses.
Social loafing
Social loafing is a group phenomenon referring to the tendency for people to put forth less effort when part of a group effort than when acting individually.
Philip Zimbardo
SPE. Philip Zimbardo found that people are more likely to commit antisocial acts when they feel anonymous within a social environment.
Deindividuation
Deindividuation refers to a loss of self-awareness and of personal identity. Related to Zimbardo's SPE.
Irving Janis
Irving Janis has studied the ways that group decisions often go awry by examining historical documents about situations in which government officials had made what he considered to be serious blunders. According to Janis, judgment failed in these situations because the decision makers engaged in groupthink.
Groupthink
Groupthink refers to the tendency of decision-making groups to strive for consensus by not considering discordant information.
Risky shift
Risky shift is an important factor in group decision-making, where group decisions are riskier than the average of the individual choices (and this average riskiness of the individual choices can be considered to be an estimate of the group's original riskiness). One explanation for the risky shift is the value hypothesis.
Value hypothesis
The value hypothesis suggests that the risky shift occurs in situations in which riskiness is culturally valued.
James Stoner (1968)
In Stoner's experiment, dilemmas were presented to couples to examine the risky shift in controversial situations. Stoner found a shift with group decisions toward caution instead of risk, emphasizing that the content of the item can determine the direction of the shift.
Group polarization
Group polarization refers to a tendency for group discussion to enhance the group's initial tendencies towards riskiness or caution. For example, if a group originally has a tendency to be risky, further discussion will tend to make the group more risky, and vice versa.
Leadership and communication
Leaders seem to possess special qualities that separate them from followers, and that leaders of groups engage in more communication than nonleaders. Furthermore, by artificially increasing the amount a person speaks, that person's perceived leadership status also increases.
Kurt Lewin and leadership
Kurt Lewin conducted research to determine the effects of different leadership styles. Using a sample of boys in an afterschool program, Lewin manipulated the leadership styles used to supervise them: autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire. Laissez-faire groups were less efficient, less organized, and less satisfying for the boys than the democratic groups. The autocratic groups were more hostile, more aggressive, and more dependent on their leader. Democratic groups were more satisfying for the boys and more cohesive than autocratic groups. The quantity of work in autocratic groups as greater than in the other groups, but work motivation and interest were stronger in the democratic groups.
Cooperation and competition
In cooperation, persons act together for their mutual benefit so that all of them can obtain a goal. In competition, a person acts for his or her individual benefit so that he or she can obtain a goal that has limited availability.
Robber's cave experiment
Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues created hostilities through competition and then reduced the hostilities through cooperation using a boy's camp in Robber's Cave, OK.
Superordinate goals
Superordinate goals are goals that are best obtained through intergroup cooperation. Joint effort on superordinate goals dramatically improve intergroup relations.