Social Psychology Flashcards

Flashcards based on Social Psychology lecture notes.

What is social psychology?

The branch of psychology that studies how a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by the presence of other people and by the social and physical environment.

What influences your sense of self?

Social, cultural, and psychological experiences.

What is person perception?

The mental processes we use to form judgments and draw conclusions about the characteristics of other people.

What are social norms?

The 'rules' or expectations for appropriate behavior in a particular social situation.

What is social categorization?

The mental process of categorizing people into groups based on their shared characteristics.

What is explicit cognition?

Deliberate, conscious mental processes involved in perceptions, judgments, decisions, and reasoning.

What is implicit cognition?

Automatic, unconscious mental processes that influence perceptions, judgments, decisions, and reasoning.

What is implicit personality theory?

A network of assumptions or beliefs about the relationships among various types of people, traits, and behaviors.

What is attribution?

The mental process of inferring the causes of people’s behavior, including one’s own.

What is situational attribution?

Focus blame on the situation (environment, economy, traffic).

What is internal attribution?

Focus blame on the person or the person’s characteristics or personality.

What is the fundamental attribution error?

We overestimate the impact of the personal disposition and underestimate the impact of the situation.

What are attitudes?

Feelings, based on our beliefs, that predispose our reactions to objects, people, and events.

What is cognitive dissonance?

Unpleasant state of psychological tension (dissonance) resulting from two inconsistent thoughts or perceptions (cognitions).

What is conformity?

Adjusting opinions, judgments, and behaviors so that they match those of others or the norms of a social group or situation.

What is Normative Social Influence?

Influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain social acceptance and approval or avoid disapproval.

What is Informational Social Influence?

Influence resulting from a person’s willingness to accept other’s opinions about reality because we want to be correct but are uncertain or doubt our own judgment.

What is social facilitation?

Stronger performance on easy or well learned tasks in the presence of others (as well as poorer performance on difficult tasks.)

What is Social Loafing?

Phenomenon when people in a group exert less effort than they would if working independently.

What is Social Striving?

Phenomenon when people tend to work harder when they are in groups than when they are alone.

What is deindividuation?

Abandon self-awareness and self-restraint in anonymous group situations.

What is group polarization?

Groups that share opinions, ideas and attitudes become more extreme over time.

What is group think?

When desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic discussion of alternatives.

What is prejudice?

Means “prejudgment” a negative attitude toward a specific social group.

What are stereotypes?

A generalized belief about a group of people. Often underlie prejudicial emotions.

What is discrimination?

Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group or its members. Ultimately, when prejudice is displayed behaviorally.

What is ethnocentrism?

The belief that one’s culture or ethnic group is superior to others.

What is the cross-race effect?

The tendency to recall faces of one’s own race more accurately than faces of other races.

What is the scape goat theory?

A theory that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame.

What is the Just-world hypothesis?

Belief that the world is just, that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get, and the world needs to be “fair”. “Victims of the world deserve to suffer.”

What is hindsight bias?

The tendency to overestimate one’s ability to have foreseen or predicted the outcome of an event.

What is self-serving bias?

The tendency to attribute successful outcomes of one’s own behavior to internal causes and unsuccessful outcomes to external/situational causes.

What are the in-group and the out-group?

The social group to which a person belongs is called the in-group and the social group to which a person does not belong is the out-group.

What is The Out-group homogeneity effect?

We see members of the 'out- group' as similar to one another

What is in-group bias?

The tendency to judge the behavior of the in-group members favorably and out-group members unfavorably.

Besides proximity, physical attractiveness, and similarity, what else affects attraction and liking?

The situations in which we interact: happy, intoxicated, physically aroused by exercise, more likely to rate others as attractive

what is the Mere exposure effect?

when we are repeatedly exposed to something or someone (novel stimuli) our liking to them/it increases

What is the 'Feel good, do good' effect?

People who feel good, (happy, successful, fortunate, etc.) are more likely to help others.

What is the reciprocity norm?

Expectation that we should return help to those who help us. The rule of reciprocity is simply if someone gives you something or does you a favor, you feel obligated to return the favor.

What is the social-responsibility norm?

That we should help those who need our help.

What is altruism?

The unselfish regard for the welfare of others.

What is the bystander effect?

When someone is less likely to give aid because others are present. Assume someone else will do it or if no one does anything, you don’t as well.

What is diffusion of responsibility?

Phenomenon in which the presence of other people makes it less likely that any individual will help someone in distress because the obligation to intervene is shared among all the onlookers.