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113 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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social psychology
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the scientific study of the way in which people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people
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social influence
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the effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior
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individual differences
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the aspects of people's personalities that make them different from other people
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fundamental attribution error
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the tendency to overestimate the extent to which people's behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors
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behaviorism
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a school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment
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construal
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the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world
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Gestalt psychology
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a school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people's minds rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object
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self-esteem
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people's evaluation of their own self-worth; that is, the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent, and decent
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social cognition
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how people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions
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hindsight bias
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the tendency for people to exaggerate how much they could have predicted an outcome after knowing that it occurred
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observational method
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the technique whereby a researcher observes people and systematically records measurements or impressions of their behavior
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ethnography
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the method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions they might have
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interjudge reliability
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the level of agreement between two or more people who independently observe and code a set of data
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archival analysis
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a form of the observational method in which the researcher examines the accumulated documents, or archives, of a culture
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correlational method
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the technique whereby two or more variables are systematically measured and the relationship between them is assessed
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correlation coefficient
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a statistical technique that assesses how well you can predict one variable from another
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surveys
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research in which a representative sample of people are asked questions about their attitudes or behavior
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random selection
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a way of ensuring that a sample of people is representative of a population by giving everyone in the population an equal chance of being selected for the sample
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experimental method
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the method in which the researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions and ensures that these conditions are identical except for the independent variable
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random assignment to condition
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a process ensuring that all participants have an equal chance of taking part in any condition of an experiment; through random assignment, researchers can be relatively certain that differences in the participants' personalities or backgrounds are distributed evenly across conditions
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probability level (p-value)
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a number calculated with statistical techniques that tells researchers how likely it is that the results of their experiment occurred by chance and not because of the independent variable or variables; if the p-level is less than 5 in 100 that the results might be due to chance factors, the study is trustworthy
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internal validity
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making sure that nothing besides the independent variable can affect the dependent variable; accomplished by controlling all extraneous variables and by randomly assigning people to different experimental conditions
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external validity
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the extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other situations and to other people
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psychological realism
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the extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment are similar to psychological processes that occur in everyday life
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cover story
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a description of the purpose of a study, given to participants, that is different from its true purpose and is used to maintain psychological realism
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field experiments
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experiments conducted in natural settings rather than in the laboratory
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replication
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repeating a study, often with different subject populations or in different settings
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meta-analysis
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a statistical technique that averages the results of two or more studies to see if the effect of an independent variable is reliable
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basic research
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studies that are designed to the best answer to the question of why people behave as they do and that are conducted purely reasons of intellectual curiosity
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applied research
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studies designed to solve a particular social problem
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cross-cultural research
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research conducted with members of different cultures, to see whether the psychological processes of interest are present in both cultures or whether they are specific to the culture in which people were raised
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evolutionary theory
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a concept developed by Charles Darwin to explain the ways in which animals adapt to their environments
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natural selection
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the process by which heritable traits that promote survival in a particular environment are passed along to future generations; organisms wit those traits are more likely to produce offspring
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evolutionary psychology
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the attempt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection
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informed consent
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agreement to participate in an experiment, granted in full of awareness of the nature of the experiment, which has been explained in advance
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deception
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misleading participants about the true purpose of a study or the events that will actually transpire
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Institutional Review Board
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a group made up of at least one scientist, one neuroscientist, and one member not affiliated with the institution that reviews all psychological research at that institution and decides whether it meets ethical guidelines; all research must be approved by the IRB before it is conducted
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debriefing
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explaining to participants, at the end of an experiment, the true purpose of the study and exactly what transpired
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social cognition
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how people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions
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automatic thinking
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thinking that is unconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless
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schemas
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mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember
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accessibility
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the extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people's minds and are therefore likely to be used when making judgments about the social world
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priming
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the process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept
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self-fulfilling prophecy
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the case wherein people have an expectation about what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person, which causes that person to behave consistently with people's original expectations, making the expectations come true
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judgmental heuristics
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mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently
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availability heuristic
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a mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind
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representativeness heuristic
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a mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case
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base rate information
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information about the frequency of members of different categories in a population
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analytic thinking style
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a type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context; common in Western cultures
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holistic thinking style
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a type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other; common in East Asian cultures
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controlled thinking
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thinking that is conscious, intentional, and voluntary
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counterfactual thinking
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mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been
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overconfidence barrier
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the fact that people usually have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgments
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social perception
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the study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people
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nonverbal communication
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the way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words; nonverbal cues include facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position and movement, the use of touch, and gaze
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encode
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to express or emit nonverbal behavior, such as smiling or patting someone on the back
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decode
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to interpret the meaning of the nonverbal behavior other people express, such as deciding that a pat on the back was an expression of condescension and not kindness
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affect blend
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a facial expression in which one part of the face registers one emotion while another part of the face registers a different emotion
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display rules
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culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display
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emblems
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nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture; they usually have direct verbal translations, such as the OK sign
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implicit personality theory
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a type of schema people use to group various kinds of personality traits together; for example, many people believe that someone who is kind is generous as well
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attribution theory
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a description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people's behavior
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internal attribution
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the inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character, or personality
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external attribution
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the inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he or she is in; the assumption is that most people would respond the same way in that situation
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covariation model
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a theory that states that to form an attribution about what caused a person's behavior, we systematically note the pattern between the presence or absence of possible causal factors and whether or not the behavior occurs
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consensus information
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information about the extent to which other people behave the same toward the same stimulus as the actor does
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distinctiveness information
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information about the extent to which one particular actor behaves in the same way to different stimuli
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consistency information
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information about the extent to which the behavior between one actor and one stimulus is the same across time and circumstances
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fundamental attribution error
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the tendency to overestimate the extent to which people's behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors
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perceptual salience
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the seeming importance of information that is the focus of people's attention
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two-step process of attribution
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analyzing another person's behavior first by making an automatic internal attribution and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behavior, after which one may adjust the original internal attribution
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self-serving attributions
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explanations for one's successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one's failures that blame external situational factors
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defensive attributions
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explanations for behavior that avoid feelings of vulnerability and mortality
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bias blind spot
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the tendency to think that other people are more susceptible to attributional biases in their thinking than we are
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belief in a just world
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a form of defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things to bad people and that good things happen to good people
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independent view of the self
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a way of defining oneself in terms of one's own internal thoughts, feelings, and actions and not in terms of the thoughts, feelings, and actions of other people
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interdependent view of the self
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a way of defining oneself in terms of one's relationships to other people, recognizing the one's behavior is often determined by the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others
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introspection
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the process whereby people look inward and examine their own thoughts, feelings, and motives
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self-awareness theory
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the idea that when people focus their attention on themselves, they evaluate and compare their behavior to their internal standards and values
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causal theories
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theories about the causes of one's own feelings and behavior; often we learn such theories from our culture
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reasons-generated attitude change
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attitude change resulting from thinking about the reasons for one's attitudes; people assume that their attitudes match the reasons that are plausible and easy to verbalize
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self-perception theory
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the theory that when our attitudes and feelings are uncertain or ambiguous, we infer these states by observing our behavior and the situation in which it occurs
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intrinsic motivation
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the desire to engage in an activity because we enjoy it or find it interesting, not because of external rewards or pressures
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extrinsic motivation
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the desire to engage in an activity because of external rewards or pressures, not because we enjoy the task or find it interesting
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over-justification of effort
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the tendency for people to view their behavior as caused by compelling extrinsic reasons, making them underestimate the extent to which it was caused by intrinsic reasons
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task-contingent rewards
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rewards that are given for performing a task, regardless of how well the task is done
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performance-contingent rewards
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rewards that are based on how well we perform a task
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two-factor theory of emotion
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the idea that emotional experience is the result of a two-step self-perception process in which people first experience physiological arousal and then seek an appropriate explanation for it
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misattribution of arousal
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the process whereby people make mistaken inferences about what is causing them to fell the way they do
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fixed mindset
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the idea that we have a set amount of an ability that cannot change
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growth mindset
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the idea that our abilities are malleable qualities that we can cultivate and grow
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social comparison theory
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the idea that we learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to other people
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upward social comparison
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comparing ourselves to people who are better than we are with regard to a particular trait or ability
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downward social comparison
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comparing ourselves to people who are worse than we are with regard to a particular trait or ability
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social tuning
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the process whereby people adopt another person's attitudes
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impression management
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the attempt by people to get others to see them as they want to be seen
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ingratiation
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the process whereby people flatter, praise, and generally try to make themselves likable to another person, often of higher status
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self-handicapping
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the strategy whereby people create obstacles and excuses for themselves so that if they do poorly on a task, they can avoid blaming themselves
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self-esteem
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people's evaluations of their own self-worth; that is, the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent, and decent
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terror management theory
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the theory that holds that self-esteem serves as a buffer, protecting people from terrifying thoughts about their own mortality
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narcissism
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the combination of excessive self-love and a lack of empathy toward others
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cognitive dissonance
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a drive or feeling of discomfort, originally defined as being caused by holding two or more inconsistent cognitions and subsequently defined as being caused by performing an action that is discrepant from one's customary, typically positive self-conception
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self-affirmation
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in the context of dissonance theory, a way of reducing dissonance by reminding oneself of one or more of one's positive attributes
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impact bias
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the tendency to overestimate the intensity and duration of one's emotional reactions to future negative events
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post-decision dissonance
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dissonance aroused after making a decision, typically reduced by enhancing the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and devaluating the rejected alternatives
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lowballing
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an unscrupulous strategy whereby a salesperson induces a customer to agree to purchase a product at a low cost, subsequently claims it was an error, and then raises the price; frequently, the customer will agree to make the purchase at the inflated price
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justification of effort
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the tendency for individuals to increase their liking for something they have worked hard to attain
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external justification
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a reason or an explanation for dissonant personal behavior that resides outside the individual
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internal justification
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the reduction of dissonance by changing something about oneself
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counter-attitudinal advocacy
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stating an opinion or attitude that runs counter to one's private belief or attitude
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insufficient punishment
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the dissonance aroused when individuals lack sufficient external justification for having resisted a desired activity or object, usually resulting in individuals devaluing the forbidden activity or object
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self-persuasion
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a long-lasting form of attitude change that results from attempts at self-justification
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hypocrisy induction
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the arousal of dissonance by having individuals make statements that run counter to their behaviors and then reminding them of the inconsistency between what they advocated and their behavior; purpose is to lead individuals to more responsible behavior
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