Social Psychology - Ch. 1

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Social Psychology

Back 1

The scientific study of how we feel about, think about, and behave toward the people around us and how our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are influenced by those people.

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Social neuroscience

Back 2

The study of how our social behavior both influences and is influenced by the activities of our brain.

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Social situation

Back 3

The people with whom we interact every day.

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Social influence

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The processes through which other people change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and through which we change theirs.

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Evolutionary adaptation

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The assumption that human nature, including much of our social behavior, is determined largely by evolution.

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Fitness

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The extent to which having a given characteristic helps the individual organism to survive and to reproduce at a higher rate than do other members of the species who do not have the characteristic.

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Self-concern

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The motivation to protect and enhance the self and others who are close to us.

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Other-concern

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The motivation to affiliate with, accept, and be accepted by others.

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Kin selection

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Strategies that favor the reproductive success of one's relatives, sometimes at a cost to the survival of the individual

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Ingroup

Back 10

Other people whom we view as being similar and important to us and with whom we share close social connections.

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Social support

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The comfort that we receive from the people around us - for instance, our family, friends, classmates, and co-workers.

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Social norms

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The ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members and perceived by them as appropriate.

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Culture

Back 13

A group of people, normally living within a given geographical region, who share a common set of social norms, including religious and family values and moral beliefs.

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Individualism

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Cultural norms, common in Western counties, that focus primarily on self- enhancement and independence.

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Collectivism

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Cultural norms, common in Eastern countries, that indicate that people should be more fundamentally connected with others and this oriented toward interdependence.

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Social cognition

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Mental activity that relates to social activities and that helps us meet the goal of understanding and predicting the behavior of ourselves and others.

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Schema

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A knowledge representation that includes information about a person or group.

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Attitude

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Knowledge that includes primarily a liking or disliking of a person, thing, or group.

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Mood

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The positive or negative feelings that are in the background of our everyday experiences.

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Social exchange

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The sharing of goods, services, emotions, and other social outcomes among people.

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Reciprocal altruism

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The mutual, and generally equitable, exchange of benefits between people.

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Behavioral measure

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A measure designed to directly measure an individual's actions.

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Electroencephalography (EEG)

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A technique that records the electrical activity produced by the brain's neurons through the use of electrodes that are placed around the research participant's head.

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Fuctional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

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A neuroimaging technique that uses a magnetic field to create images of brain structure and function.

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Observational research

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Research that involves making observations of behavior and recording those observations in an objective manner.

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Research hypothesis

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A specific and falsifiable prediction regarding the relationship between the two or more variables.

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Falsifiability

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When the outcome of the research can demonstrate empirically either that there is support for the hypothesis (i.e., the relationship between the variables was correctly specified) or that there is actually no relationship between the variables or that the actual relationship is not in the direction that was predicted.

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Correctional research

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Research that involves the measurement of two or more relevant variables and an assessment of the relationship between the variables.

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Common-causal variable

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In a correlations design, a variable that is not part of the research hypothesis but that causes the variables of interest to be correlated, thus producing a correlation between them.

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Experimental research design

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Research that includes the manipulation of a given situation or experience for two or more groups of individuals who are initially created to be equivalent, followed by a measurement of the effect of that experience.

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Independent variable

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In an experiment, the variable that is manipulated by the researcher.

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Dependent variable

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In an experiment, the variable that is measured after the manipulations have occurred.

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Random assignment to conditions

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The most common method of creating equivalence among the experimental conditions before the experiment begins.

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Internal validity

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The extent to which changes in the dependent variable in an experiment can confidently be attributed to changes in the independent variable.

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Field experiment

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Experimental research that is conducted in a natural environment, such as a school or a factory.

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Factorial research design

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An experimental research design that uses two or more independent variables.

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Cover story

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A false statement of what the research is really about.

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Experimental confederate

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A person who is actually part of the experimental team but who pretends to be another participant in the study.

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External validity

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The extent to which the results of a research design can be generalized beyond the specific settings and participants used in the experiment to other places, people, and times.

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Replication

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The repeating of research.

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Meta-analysis

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A statistical procedure in which the results of existing studies are integrated to draw new conclusions about a research hypothesis.