Key Terms - Sociocultural approach

Assimilation

when an individual abandons their original culture and adopts the cultural behaviours and values of a new culture.

Confirmation bias

when an individual abandons their original culture and adopts the cultural behaviours and values of a new culture.

Dispositional factors

individual characteristics that influence behavior and actions in a person - such as personality or temperament.

Informational social influence

Also known as social proof - when people look to the actions of others in an attempt to determine how to behave in a given situation.

In-group bias

favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members.

Normative social influence

when a person conforms to be liked or accepted by members of a group.

Salience

when one is highly aware of one of their membership to a social group.

Self-efficacy

one's belief in one's ability to succeed accomplishing a task.

Social comparison

a drive within individuals to gain accurate self-evaluations by comparing oneself to other people.

Social context

how someone reacts to something depending on their immediate social or physical environment.

Vicarious reinforcement

our tendency to repeat or imitate behaviors for which others are being rewarded.

Conformity

A change in behaviour as a result of real or imagined group pressure/norms, as a result of social comparison

Pluralistic ignorance

A conformity type where you do nothing because no one else is doing anything

Out-group discrimination

Form of cognitive bias that causes us to hold negative attitudes towards outgroups

Positive distinctiveness

Seek to achieve positive self-esteem by positively comparing our in-groups to an out-group on valued dimensions

Social categorization

The process by which we identify which groups we belong to and which group we don’t belong to

Social identification

The process of adopting to norms and taking on characteristics of in-group, after you have decided to belong to a group

Social Identity Theory

The idea that we have many differnet identities, derived from percieved memberships of social group

Social cognitive learning theory

The idea that behvaiour is learned from the environment through modelling and reinforcement