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Social thinking

Involves thinking about others, especially when they engage in unexpected actions.

Attribution

Giving credit to someone or something.

Dispositional attribution

Attributing behavior to a person's traits and characteristics.

Situational attribution

Attributing behavior to external environmental factors.

Fundamental attribution error

Overemphasizing dispositional factors and underestimating situational factors in attributions.

Just-world phenomenon

Belief that the world is just and people get what they deserve.

Self-serving bias

Taking credit for successes and attributing failures to external situations.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Expectations about an individual influencing behavior towards them.

Attitudes

Beliefs and feelings guiding behavior.

Mere exposure effect

Preference for familiar things.

Central route of persuasion

Focusing on factual info and logical arguments.

Peripheral route of persuasion

Focusing on emotional appeals.

Foot-in-the-door

Persuasion strategy starting with a small request.

Reciprocity

Giving in hopes of receiving.

Cognitive dissonance

Psychological tension from inconsistent attitudes and behavior.

Role playing

Attitude change based on assigned roles.

Social influence

How attitudes and actions are shaped by social factors.

Chameleon effect

Unconsciously mimicking behaviors of others.

Mood linkage

Person's mood influenced by the group.

Conformity

Adopting behaviors and attitudes of a group.

Norms

Rules governing acceptable behavior in a group.

Roles

Positions individuals have in a group.

Social loafing

Reduced effort in group settings.

Deindividuation

Loss of self-awareness in a group.

Social facilitation

Improved performance in simple tasks in the presence of others.

Group polarization

Making more extreme decisions as a group.

Groupthink

Desire for harmony leading to incorrect decisions.

Altruism

Putting others' welfare before one's own.

Social Exchange Theory

Social behavior as an exchange process.

Bystander effect

Less likelihood of helping in a group.

Aggression

Behavior intended to cause harm.

Instrumental aggression

Aggression for goal attainment.

Hostile aggression

Aggression due to pain, anger, or frustration.

Attraction

Being drawn to a person.

Proximity

Geographic nearness predicting friendship.

Physical Attractiveness

Importance in attraction after proximity.

Similarity

Strengthening attraction through shared views.

Conflict & Peacemaking

Working together to overcome problems.

Non-zero sum game

All participants gain or suffer together.

Mirror-image perceptions

Each side viewing itself positively and the other negatively.

Superordinate goals

Goals overriding differences requiring joint effort.

Fritz Heider:

proposed the Attribution Theory.

Philip Zimbardo

studied role playing through the Stanford prison experiment.

Solomon Asch:

ran the conformity experiment involving people.

Stanley Milgram

ran the obedience experiment with the “teachers” and the “learners” in which the “learners” were “shocked” every time they gave a wrong answer.  2/3 of the “teachers” shocked people to a death level.  

Kitty Genovese

the woman who kept calling for help as she was being stabbed and no one would help her.  Her murder focused public attention on the reasons why bystanders failed to come to her rescue.  

Conciliation (GRIT)

a bargaining strategy used by both sides to help maintain the peace.  GRIT stands for Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension reduction.  Researchers have found that reciprocal conciliatory acts can begin the process of reducing tensions between hostile groups.

Social trap

a term used by psychologists to describe a situation in which a group of people act to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole.

Self-Disclosure

Revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others.

Equity

A condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it.

Companionate Love:

Deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined.

Passionate Love

An aroused state of intense positive absorption in another usually present at the beginning of a love relationship.

Frustration-aggression principle

principle in which frustration (caused by the blocking of an attempt to achieve a desired goal) creates anger, which can generate aggression.

Reciprocity norm

people are more likely to help someone if they are going to get something out of it.

Diffusion of responsibility

explains the bystander effect: people are less likely to take action or feel a sense of responsibility in the presence of a large group of people.  Ex. in the case of Kitty Genovese, people assumed others called the police.

Social Trap

A situation in which a person acts to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole.

Social–Responsibility Norm

Tells us to help others when they need us even though they may not repay us in kind.

Minority influence

the minority of a group can have an effect on the group.  Ex. The juror in Twelve Angry Men.

Contact theory:

lessening the tensions between two groups by putting them together on an equal playing field.  Usually the two groups have a goal to reach and they have to work together to reach that goal.

Ethnocentrism:

• the tendency to consider other cultures, customs, and values as inferior to one’s own.  

Scapegoat

theory: people look for someone to blame when things go wrong, usually fueled by prejudice.  Ex.  After 9/11, Americans lashing out at Arab-Americans, the US putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Stereotypes

generalized beliefs about a certain group, sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized. 

Ingroup Bias

the tendency to favor one’s own group.

prejudice

a learned prejudgment toward people solely based on their membership in a specific social group.  The prejudice can be positive or negative but most research focuses on the causes and consequences of negative prejudice.

Social Relations

how people relate to one another which doesn’t always have to be positive.