More Gre Social Psych

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Verplank, Pavlov, Thorndike, Hull, and Skinner

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Helped to establish reinforcement theory.

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reinforcement theory

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Behavior is motivated by anticipated rewards.

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post-decisional dissonance

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Dissonance that emerges after a choice is made in order to reduce dissonance. (For example, dissonance that occurs after a decision is made in a situation of free-choice dissonance).

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Leon Festinger

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Created the theory of cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory.

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Daryl Bem

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Developed self-perception theory as an alternative to cognitive dissonance theory.

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self-perception theory

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When attitudes about something are weak or ambiguous, people observe their own behavior and then attribute attitudes to themselves.

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The difference between cognitive dissonance and self-perception theories.

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Self-perception theory suggests that there is no state of discomfort produced by the behavior as in the cognitive dissonance theory.

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overjustification effect

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The tendency of people to stop liking something that they previously enjoyed because of receiving a reward for the behavior.

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Carl Hovland

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Studied attitude change as a process of communicating a message with the intent to persuade someone.

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sleep effect

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In a study of source credibility, highly credible sources impact subject's opinions more than low-credibility sources. The sleep effect occurs when the persuasive impact of a highly credible source decreases over time and the persuasive impact of a low-credibility source increases over time.

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The effect of arguing against self-interest

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Causes significant attitude change, even when the argument comes from a low-credibility source.

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Two-sided messages

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Contain arguments for and against a position and are often used for persuasion since such seems to be "balanced" communication.

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Petty and Cacioppo

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Developed the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion

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elaboration likelihood model of persuasion

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This model suggests that there are two routes of persuasion: the central route (if the issue is very important to us) and the peripheral route (if the issue is not very important to us or we cannot clearly hear the message).

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William McGuire

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Studied how psychological inoculation could help people resist persuasion.

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psychological inoculation

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Being prepared for a psychological attack by being first exposed to a weakened attack.

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cultural truisms

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beliefs that are seldom questioned.

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refuted counterarguments

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Arguments against truisms that are then refuted.

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belief perseverance

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Holding onto a belief that has been shown to be false.

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reactance

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When a social pressure to behave in a particular way becomes so blatant that a person's sense of freedom is threatened, the person will tend to act in a way to reassert a sense of freedom.

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social comparison theory and its 3 principles

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Theory that suggests that we are drawn to affiliate because of a tendency to evaluate ourselves in relationship to other people.

There are 3 principles in this theory:

1. People prefer to evaluate themselves by objective, nonsocial means but will evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing them to other people when objectivity is not possible.

2. The less 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 in line with the group.

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Stanley Schachter

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Studied the relationship between anxiety and the desire to affiliate.

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reciprocity hypothesis

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We tend to be attracted to people who are attracted to us; conversely, we tend to dislike people who dislike us.

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Aronson and Linder

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Proposed the gain-loss principle

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gain-loss principle

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A principle that states that an evaluation that changes will have more of an impact than an evaluation that remains constant.

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social exchange theory

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Theory that assumes that a person weighs the rewards and costs of interacting with another.

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equity theory

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Theory that proposes that we consider both our own costs and rewards and the costs and rewards of the other person when interacting.

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need complementarity

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A theory that people choose relationships so that they mutually satisfy each other's needs.

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attractiveness stereotype

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The tendency to attribute positive qualities and desirable characteristics to attractive people.

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spatial proximity

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The tendency for people to develop a greater liking for someone who lives closer to them than for someone who lives farther away.

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mere exposure hypothesis

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The theory that mere repeated exposure to a stimulus leads to enhanced liking for it.

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Robert Zajonc

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Studied the mere exposure effect; also resolved problems with the social facilitation effect by suggesting that the presence of others enhances the emission of dominant responses and impairs the emission of nondominant responses.

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altruism

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A form of helping behavior in which the person's intent is to benefit someone else at some cost to himself or herself.

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helping behavior

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Behavior in which a person helps another person, which could be at a personal cost or motivated by egoism or selfishness.

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John Darley and Bibb Latane

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Proposed that there were two factors that could lead to non-helping: social influence and diffusion of responsibility

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bystander effect

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The theory that each person in a group of people witnessing an emergency would not help due to social influence and diffusion of responsibility.

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pluralistic ignorance

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A situation where a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but assume incorrectly that most others accept it.

For example, if a majority of a group believes that an event is not an emergency, everyone in the group will treat the event as a nonemergency.

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social influence

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A person's behavior is shaped by the behavior of his or her peers.

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diffusion of responsibility

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The tendency for a group of people to share the responsibility, blame, and guilt for not helping when everyone is witnessing an emergency together.

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empathy

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The ability to vicariously experience the emotions of another.

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Batson's empathy-altruism model

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A model that states that when faced with situations in which others may need help, people might feel distress and/or they might feel empathy.

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frustration-aggression hypothesis

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The theory that people act aggressively when they feel frustrated.

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Bandura's social learning theory

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A theory that proposes that aggression is learned through modeling or through reinforcement.

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modeling

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Learning behavior through direct observation and imitation of another person.

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autokinetic effect

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An illusion that occurs when a spot of light appears to move erratically in a dark room, simply because there is no frame of reference.

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Muzafer Sherif

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Use the autokinetic effect to study conformity; also performed Robber's Cave experiment and found that having superordinate goals increased intergroup cooperation.

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Conformity

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The act of yielding to group pressure, sometimes in the absence of explicit demand to do so.

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Soloman Asch

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Studied conformity by asking subjects to compare the length of lines.

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Stanley Milgram

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Studied obedience by asking subjects to administer electroshock; also proposed stimulus-overload theory to explain differences between city and country dwellers.

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Compliance

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A change in behavior that occurs as a result of situational or interpersonal pressure.

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foot-in-the-door effect

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Model that demonstrates that compliance with a small request increases the likelihood of compliance with a larger request.

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door-in-the-face effect

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Model that demonstrates that refusal to comply with a large request increases the likelihood of compliance with a smaller request.

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Clark and Clark

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Performed a study on doll preferences in African-American children; the results were used in the 1954 Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court case.

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social perception

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The ways in which we form impressions about the characteristics of individuals and of groups of people.

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primacy effect

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The tendency for first impressions to be more important than subsequent impressions.

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recency effect

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The tendency for items that are presented last to be remembered the best.

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Attribution theory

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The tendency for individuals to infer the causes of other peoples behavior.

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Fritz Heider

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Developed balance theory to explain why attitudes change; also developed attribution theory and divided attributions into two categories: dispositional and situational.

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dispositional causes for attribution

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Those causes that relate to the the features of the person whose behavior is being considered including beliefs, attitudes, and personality characteristics.

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situational causes for attribution

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Those causes that are external and those that relate to features of the surroundings such as threats, money, social norms, and peer pressure.

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fundamental attribution error

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The tendency to attribute individual characteristics as causes of others' behaviors and situational characteristics to one's own behavior.

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halo effect

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The tendency to allow a general impression about a person to influence other, more specific evaluations about a person.

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M.J. Lerner

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Studied the tendency of individuals to believe in a just world.

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Theodore Newcomb

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Studied political norms.

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Edward Hall

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Studied norms that govern how far away we stand from the people we are speaking to.

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proxemics

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The study of how individuals space themselves in relation to others.

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social loafing

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The tendency for people to put forth less effort when part of a group than when acting individually.

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Philip Zimbardo

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Performed prison simulation and used the concept of deindividuation to explain results.

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prison simulation

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An experiment that demonstrated that when people are anonymous the restraint for unacceptable behavior is diminished.

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deindividuation

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A loss of self-awareness and personal identity.

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Irving Janis

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Developed the concept of groupthink to explain how group decision-making can sometimes go awry.

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groupthink

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The tendency of decision-making groups to strive for consensus by not considering discordant information.

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risky shift

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The finding that group decisions are riskier than the average of the individual choices.

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value hypothesis

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Theory that risky shift occurs in situations in which riskiness is culturally valued.

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James Stoner

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Studied risky shift by presenting couples with controversial situations in which to make decisions.

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group polarization

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A tendency for group discussion to enhance the group's initial tendencies towards riskiness or caution.

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Kurt Lewin

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Conducted research to determine the effects of different leadership styles.

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3 styles of leadership identified by Lewin

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1. autocratic
2. democratic
3. laissez-faire

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cooperation

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Persons act together for the their mutual benefit so that all of them can obtain a goal.

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competition

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A person acts for his or her individual benefit so that he or she can obtain a goal that has limited availability.

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prisoner's dilemma

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A classic method of investigating people's choices to compete or cooperate using a hypothetical case where two men have been taken into custody, separated, and can choose either to confess or not to confess.

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superordinate goals

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Goals that are best obtained through intergroup cooperation.