Social Psychology

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Social psychology

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the scientific study of how people think about, inference, and relate to one another

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Social neuroscience

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an integration of biological and social perspectives that explores the neural and psychological bases of social and emotional behaviors

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Culture

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the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next

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Social representations

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social shared beliefs - widely held ideas and values, including our assumptions and cultural ideals

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Hindsight bias

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the tendency to exaggerate, after learning an outcome, one's ability to have foreseen how something turned out; also know as the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon

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Theory

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integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed behaviors

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Hypothesis

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testable proposition that describes a relationship that may exist between events

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Field research

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research done in natural, real-life settings outside the laboratory

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Correlational research

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study of the naturally occurring relationships among variables

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Experimental research

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studies that seek clues to cause-effect relationships by manipulating one or more factors (independent variables) while controlling others (holding them constant)

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Random sample

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survey procedure in which every person in the population being studied has an equal chance of inclusion

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Framing

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way a question or an issue is posed

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Independent variable

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experimental factor that a researcher manipulates

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Dependent variable

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variable being measured, so called because it may depend on manipulations of the independent variable

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Random assignment

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process of assigning participants to the conditions of an experiment such that all persons have the same chance of being given a condition

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Mundane realism

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degree to which an experiment is superficially similar to everyday situations

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Experimental realism

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degree to which an experiment absorbs and involves its participants

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Deception

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an effect by which participants are misinformed or misled about the study's methods and purposes

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Demand characteristics

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cues in experiment that tell the participant what behavior is expected

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Informed consent

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an ethical principle requiring that research participants be told enough to enable them to choose whether they wish to participate

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Debriefing

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post-experimental explanation of a study to its participants

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Adaptation-level phenomenon

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tendency to adapt to a given level of stimulation and thus to notice and react to changes from that level

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Social comparison

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evaluating one's abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others

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Spotlight effect

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belief that others are paying more attention to one's appearance and behavior than they really are

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Illusion of transparency

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illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by others

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Self-concept

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person's answer to the question "who am I?"

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Self-schema

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beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information

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Self-reference effect

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tendency to process efficiently and remember well information related to oneself

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Possible selves

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images of what we dream of or dread of becoming in the future

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Social comparison

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evaluating one's abilities and opinions by comparing oneself to others

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Individualism

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concept of giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications

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Collectivism

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giving priority to the goals of one's group and defining one's identity accordingly

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Interdependent self

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construing one's identity in relation to others

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Confederate

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accomplice of the experimenter

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Impact bias

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overestimating the enduring impact of emotion causing events

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Immune neglect

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human tendency to neglect the speed and the strength of the psychological immune system, which enables emotional recovery and resilience after bad things happen

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Self-esteem

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person's overall self-evaluation or sense of self-worth

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Self-efficacy

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sense that one is competent and effective - one's sense of self-worth

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Locus of control

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extent to which people perceive outcomes as internally controllable by their own efforts and actions or as externally controlled by chance or outside forces

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Learned helplessness

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hopelessness and resignation learned when a human or animal perceives no control over repeated bad events

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Self-serving bias

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tendency to perceive oneself favorably

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Self-serving attributions

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tendency to attribute positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to other factors

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Defensive pessimism

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adaptive value of anticipating problems and harnessing one's anxiety to motivate effective action

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False consensus effect

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tendency to overestimate the commonality of one's opinions and one's undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors

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False uniqueness effect

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tendency to underestimate the commonality of one's abilities and one's desirable or successful behaviors

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Group-serving bias

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explaining away outgroup members' positive behaviors; also attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions

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Self-handicapping

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protecting one's self-image with behaviors that create a handy excuse for later failure

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Self-presentation

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act of expressing oneself and behaving in ways designed to create a favorable impression or an impression that corresponds to one's ideals

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Self-monitoring

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being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting one's performance to create the desired impression

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Priming

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activating particular associations in memory

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Belief perseverance

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persistence of one's initial conceptions, as when the basis for one's belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives

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Controlled processing

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explicit thinking that is deliberate, reflective, and conscious

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Automatic processing

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implicit thinking that is effortless, habitual, and without awareness, roughly corresponds to intuition

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Overconfidence phenomenon

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the tendency to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs

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Confirmation bias

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a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions

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Heuristic

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a thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments

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Representativeness heuristic

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the tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling (representing) a typical member

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Availability heuristic

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a cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory; if instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace

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Counterfactual thinking

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imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn't

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Illusory correlation

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perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists

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Illusion of control

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perception of uncontrollable events as subject to one's control or as more controllable than they are

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Regression toward the average

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the statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to return toward one's average

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Misattribution

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mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source

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Attribution theory

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the theory of how people explain other's behavior; for example, by attributing it either to internal dispositions (enduring traits, motives, and attitudes) or to external situations

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Dispositional attribution

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attributing behavior to the person's disposition and traits

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Situational attribution

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attributing behavior to the environment

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Fundamental attribution error

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tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon other's behavior; also called correspondence bias

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Self-awareness

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a self-conscious state in which attention focuses on oneself; it makes people more sensitive to their own attitudes and dispositions

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Self-fulfilling prophecy

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a belief that leads to its own fulfillment

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Behavioral confirmation

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a type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people's social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations

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Attitude

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a favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something of someone (often rooted in one's beliefs, and exhibited in one's feelings and intended behavior)

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Role

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a set of norms that defines how people in a given social position ought to behave

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Foot-in-the-door phenomenon

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the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request

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Low-ball technique

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a tactic for getting people to agree to something; people who agree to an initial request will often still comply with the requester ups the ante

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Cognitive dissonance

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tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions

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Insufficient justification effect

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reduction of dissonance by internally justifying one's behavior when external justification is insufficient

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Self-perception theory

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the theory that when we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them much as would someone observing us, by looking at our behavior and the circumstances under which it occurs

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Over justification effect

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the result of bribing people to do what they already like doing; they may then see their actions as externally controlled rather than intrinsically appealing

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Self-affirmation theory

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a theory that people often experience a self-image threat, after engaging in an undesirable behavior; and they can compensate by affirming another aspect of the self