Social Psychology

Social Psychology

The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another, focusing on the influences of situations on individuals.

Social representations

Socially shared beliefs; widely held ideas and values, including our assumptions and cultural ideologies. Our social representations help us make sense of our world.

Naturalistic fallacy

The error of defining what is good in terms of what is observable: For example, what’s typical is normal; what’s normal is good.

Hindsight bias

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

Dual Processing

The concept that thinking, memory, and attitudes operate on two levels - conscious and nonconscious, guiding our behaviors both deliberately and automatically.

Social Influences

External factors that shape our behavior, including social intuitions, cultural norms, and social interactions.

Evolutionary Psychology

The study of how natural selection predisposes our actions and reactions, considering how inherited human nature influences behavior.

Social Neuroscience

An integration of biological and social perspectives exploring the neural and psychological bases of social and emotional behaviors.

Social Representations

Socially shared beliefs and values that help individuals make sense of the world, influencing perceptions and behaviors.

Social Comparison

Evaluating abilities and opinions by comparing oneself to others, impacting self-concept and self-esteem.

Individualism

Prioritizing personal goals over group goals and defining identity based on personal attributes, common in Western cultures.

Collectivism

Prioritizing group goals over personal goals and defining identity in relation to others, common in some Eastern cultures.

Planning Fallacy

The tendency to underestimate the time needed to complete a task, leading to unrealistic planning and time management.

Affective Forecasting

Difficulty in predicting the intensity and duration of future emotions, often leading to overestimation of emotional impact.

Hungry shoppers are more likely to impulse buy (“Those doughnuts would be delicious!”) than shoppers who have just enjoyed a mega-sized blueberry muffin

Self-esteem

A person’s overall self-evaluation or sense of self-worth.

Self-esteem motivation

Most people are extremely motivated to maintain their self-esteem.

Self-efficacy

A sense that one is competent and effective, distinguished from self-esteem, which is one’s sense of self-worth.

Self-serving bias

The tendency to perceive yourself favorably.

They attribute the success to their ability and effort, but they attribute failure to such external factors as bad luck or the problem’s inherent “impossibility”

Defensive pessimism

The adaptive value of anticipating problems and harnessing one’s anxiety to motivate effective action.

False consensus effect

The tendency to overestimate the commonality of one’s opinions and one’s undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors.

Temporal comparisons

Comparisons between how the self is viewed now and how the self was viewed in the past or how the self is expected to be viewed in the future.

Learned helplessness

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

System 1

The intuitive, automatic, unconscious, and fast way of thinking.

System 2

The deliberate, controlled, and slower way of thinking.

Priming

Activating particular associations in memory.

Overconfidence phenomenon

The tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs.

Confirmation bias

A tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions.

Heuristics

A thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments.

Illusory correlation

A perception of a relationship where none exists or a perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists.

Regression Toward the Average

The tendency for extreme scores or behaviors to return towards the average over time.

Mood Infusion

Our moods influence our judgments and perceptions of the world, with unhappy individuals being more self-focused and brooding.

Misinformation Effect

Incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event, leading to false memories and potentially false confessions.

Attribution Theory

The theory explaining how people attribute behavior to internal dispositions or external situations, leading to biases like the fundamental attribution error.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Beliefs that lead to their own fulfillment, impacting how we feel and act in social situations.

Proximity Effect

The tendency for geographical closeness to increase liking and the likelihood of forming relationships.

Mere-Exposure Effect

The phenomenon where repeated exposure to a stimulus increases liking or positive ratings of that stimulus.

Physical Attractiveness Stereotype

The assumption that physically attractive people possess other socially desirable traits, influencing our perceptions and judgments.

Passionate Love

A state of intense longing for union with another, characterized by physical expression and exclusivity, often leading to intense fascination.

Companionate Love

Affection felt for those with whom our lives are deeply intertwined, marked by trust and intimacy.

Secure Attachment

Attachment rooted in trust and intimacy, essential for close relationships and personal growth.

Theory

An integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events

Hypotheses

Testable propositions that describe relationships that may exist between events

Operationalization

translating variables that are described at the theoretical level into specific variables that we are going to observe

Field research

Research done in natural, real-life settings outside the laboratory.

Correlational research

The study of the naturally occurring relationships among variables.

• allows us to predict, but it cannot tell us whether changing one variable will cause changes in another.

Experimental research

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

Experimental realism

Degree to which an experiment absorbs and involves its participant

Informed consent

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

spotlight effect

The belief that others are paying more attention to our appearance than they really are.

Spotlight effect example

Timothy Lawson (2010) explored the —— by having university students change into a sweatshirt emblazoned with “American Eagle” before meeting a group of peers. Nearly 40 percent were sure the other students would remember what the shirt said, but only 10 percent actually did. Most observers did not even notice when the students changed sweatshirts after leaving the room for a few minutes. In another experiment, even noticeably embarrassing clothes, such as a T-shirt with singer Barry Manilow on it, provoked only 23 percent of observers to notice—much less than the 50 percent estimated by the unfortunate students sporting the 1970s soft-rock warbler on their chests (Gilovich et al., 2000).

illusion of transparency

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

Illusion of Transparency

Savitsky and Gilovich (2003) wondered whether an “———-” might surface among inexperienced public speakers—and whether it might disrupt their performance. To find out, they invited 40 university students to their laboratory in pairs. One person stood at the podium and spoke for three minutes as the other sat and listened. Then the two switched positions and the other person gave a different three-minute impromptu talk. Afterward, each rated how nervous they thought they appeared while speakingand how nervous the other person seemed.

People rated themselves as appearing relatively nervous (6.65, on average). But to their partner they appeared not so nervous (5.25). Twenty-seven of the 40 participants (68%) believed that they appeared more nervous than their partner did.

self-schemas

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

social comparison

Evaluating your abilities and opinions by comparing yourself to others.

social comparison study

Consider a study conducted by Penelope Lockwood of the University of Toronto and Ziva Kunda of the University of Waterloo (Lockwood & Kunda, 1997). They exposed first-year or fourth-year accounting students to an article about a superstar accounting student who had won numerous awards, attained a very high grade point average, and landed a spectacular job. For first-year students, this role model represented achievements they could hope to attain. But fourth-year students knew that—at this point in their studies—they could not hope to achieve such spectacular heights. When first- and fourth-year students did not read about the superstar, they had similar self-evaluations. But when they were exposed to the superstar, first-year students seemed inspired; their self-evaluations were substantially more positive. Fourth-year students, on the other hand, seemed dejected; their self-evaluations plummeted

individualism

The 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.

independent self

Construing one’s identity as an autonomous self.

interdependent self

Construing one’s identity in relation to others.

planning fallacy

The tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task.

Wilfrid Laurier University students writing an honours thesis were asked to predict when they would complete the project. On average, students finished three weeks later than their “most realistic” estimate—and a week later than their “worst-case scenario” estimate

impact bias

Overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events.

dual attitudes

Differing implicit (automatic) and explicit (consciously controlled) attitudes toward the same object. Verbalized explicit attitudes may change with education and persuasion; implicit attitudes change slowly, with practice that forms new habits.

self-serving attributions

A form of self-serving bias; the tendency to attribute positive outcomes to yourself and negative outcomes to other factors.

explanatory style

A person’s habitual way of explaining life events. A negative, pessimistic, and depressive explanatory style attributes failures to stable, global, and internal causes.

Unrealistic Optimism

Thinking with unrealistic optimism about future life events

students perceive themselves as far more likely than their classmates to get a good job, draw a good salary, and own a home

defensive pessimism

The adaptive value of anticipating problems and harnessing one’s anxiety to motivate effective action.

false consensus effect

The tendency to overestimate the commonality of one’s opinions and one’s undesirable or unsuccessful behaviours.

false uniqueness effect

The tendency to underestimate the commonality of one’s abilities and one’s desirable or successful behaviours.

temporal comparisons

Comparisons between how the self is viewed now and how the self was viewed in the past or how the self is expected to be viewed in the future.

self-handicapping

Protecting one’s self-image with behaviours that create a handy excuse for later failure.

Imagine yourself in the position of the participants of a study conducted by Steven Berglas and Edward Jones (1978). You guess answers to some difficult aptitude questions and are told, “Yours was one of the best scores seen to date!” Feeling incredibly lucky, you are then offered a choice between two drugs before answering more of these items. One drug will aid intellectual performance and the other will inhibit it. Which drug do you want? Most students wanted the drug that would supposedly disrupt their thinking, thus providing a handy excuse for doing badly

self-monitoring

Being attuned to the way you present yourself in social situations and adjusting your performance to create the desired impression.

self-presentation theory

A theory positing that we are eager to present ourselves in ways that make a good impression.

learned helplessness

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

Priming Study

Rob Holland and colleagues (2005) observed that Dutch students exposed to the scent of an all-purpose cleaner were quicker to identify cleaning-related words, recalled more cleaning-related activities when describing their day, and even kept their desk cleaner while eating a crumbly cookie.

embodied cognition

The mutual influence of bodily sensations on cognitive preferences and social judgments.

overconfidence phenomenon

The tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs.

confirmation bias

A tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions.

heuristics

A thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments.

representativeness heuristic

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

availability heuristic

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.

Said simply, the more easily we can recall something, the more likely it seems

If people hear a list of famous people of one sex (Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga, Margaret Atwood) intermixed with an equal size list of unfamous people of the other sex (Donald Scarr, William Wood, Mel Jasper), the famous names will later be more cognitively available and people will believe they heard more women’s names

counterfactual thinking

Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn’t.

The higher a student’s score within a grade category (such as B+), the worse they feel (Medvec & Savitsky, 1997). The B+ student who misses an A− by a point feels worse than the B+ student who actually did worse and just made a B+ by a point

regression toward the average

The statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behaviour to return toward the person’s average.

belief perseverance

Persistence of your initial conceptions, as when the basis for your belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives.

misinformation effect

Incorporating “misinformation” into one’s memory of an event, after witnessing an event and then receiving misleading information about it.

misattribution

Mistakenly attributing a behaviour to the wrong cause.

Misattribution is especially likely when men are in positions of power. A male manager may misinterpret a subordinate woman’s submissive or friendly behaviour and, full of himself, may see the woman only in sexual terms

attribution theory

The theory of how people explain the behaviour of others—for example, by attributing it either to internal dispositions (enduring traits, motives, and attitudes) or to external situations.

dispositional attribution

Attributing behaviour to the person’s disposition and traits.

situational attribution

Attributing behaviour to the environment.

spontaneous trait inference

An effortless, automatic inference of a trait after exposure to someone’s behaviour.

In experiments at New York University, James Uleman (1989) gave students statements to remember, such as “The librarian carries the old woman’s groceries across the street.” The students would instantly, unintentionally, and unconsciously infer a trait. When later they were helped to recall the sentence, the most valuable clue word was not “books” (to cue “librarian”) or “bags” (to cue “groceries”) but “helpful”—the inferred trait that we suspect you, too, spontaneously attributed to the librarian. Exposure for just one-tenth of a second to someone’s face leads people to spontaneously infer some personality traits

fundamental attribution error

The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences on others’ behaviour; also called correspondence bias because we so often see behaviour as corresponding to a disposition.

self-fulfilling prophecies

Beliefs that lead to their own fulfillment.

In his well-known studies of experimenter bias, Robert Rosenthal (1985, 2006) found that research participants sometimes live up to what they believe experimenters expect of them. In one study, experimenters asked individuals to judge the success of people in various photographs. The experimenters read the same instructions to all their participants and showed them the same photos. Nevertheless, experimenters who expected their participants to see the photographed people as successful obtained higher ratings than did those who expected their participants to see the photographed people as failures

behavioural confirmation

A type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people’s social expectations lead them to act in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations.

In a classic study, Snyder, Elizabeth Tanke, and Ellen Berscheid (1977) had male students talk on the telephone with women they thought (from having been shown a picture) were either attractive or unattractive. Analysis of just the women’s comments during the conversations revealed that the supposedly attractive women spoke more warmly than the supposedly unattractive women

proximity

Geographical nearness. Proximity (more precisely, “functional distance”) powerfully predicts liking.

matching phenomenon

The tendency for men and women to choose as partners those who are a “good match” in attractiveness and other traits.

complementarity

The popularly supposed tendency, in a relationship between two people, for each to complete what is missing in the other.

ingratiation

The use of strategies, such as flattery, by which people seek to gain another’s favour.

reward theory of attraction

The theory that we like those whose behaviour is rewarding to us or whom we associate with rewarding events.

secure attachment

Attachment rooted in trust and marked by intimacy.

avoidant attachment

Attachments are marked by discomfort over, or resistance to, being close to others. An insecure attachment style.

anxious attachment

Attachment marked by anxiety or ambivalence. An insecure attachment style.

equity

A condition in which the outcomes people receive from a relationship are proportional to what they contribute to it. Note: Equitable outcomes needn’t always be equal outcomes.