PSY243: Social Psychology Lecture Notes

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering key terms, historical experiments, theoretical mechanisms, and concepts from Social Psychology.

Social Psychology

The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another, or how an individual's thoughts, feelings, and actions are affected by the presence of other people.

Social Facilitation

The phenomenon observed by Norman Triplett in $1898$ showing that people perform tasks better or faster in the presence of others, which enhances dominant, well-learned responses.

Person-Situation Interaction

Kurt Lewin's foundational formula $B = f(P, E)$, stating that behavior is a function of the interacting characteristics of both the person and the environment.

Big Ideas in Social Psychology

The framework organizing social psychology into social thinking (constructing reality, intuitions, attitudes), social influences (contexts, dispositions), and social relations (biological roots, positive and negative feelings), all applicable to everyday life.

Self-Schema

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

Looking-Glass Self

Charles Horton Cooley's concept proposing that individuals develop their self-concept based on how they believe others perceive them, using others as a social mirror.

Planning Fallacy

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

Affective Forecasting

The process of predicting one's future emotions and feelings in response to upcoming events or situations.

Impact Bias

The tendency to overestimate the enduring impact and intensity of future emotion-causing events.

Dual Attitude System

Differing implicit (automatic, unconscious) and explicit (consciously controlled) attitudes toward the same object or issue.

Self-Efficacy

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

System 1 and System 2 Thinking

Dual-processing cognitive systems described by Daniel Kahneman: System 1 is fast, intuitive, automatic, and unconscious; System 2 is slow, deliberate, controlled, and conscious.

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions while ignoring or discounting contradictory evidence.

Availability Heuristic

A cognitive rule of thumb that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory.

Representativeness Heuristic

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

Illusory Correlation

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

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others' behavior.

Epigenetics

The study of environmental influences on gene expression that occur without changes in underlying DNA sequence.

Norms

Standards for accepted and expected behavior that prescribe proper conduct in a given culture or social context.

Compliance

Conformity that involves publicly acting in accord with an implied or explicit request while privately disagreeing.

Acceptance

Conformity that involves both acting and believing in accord with social pressure.

Autokinetic Phenomenon

The apparent movement of a stationary point of light in the dark, utilized by Muzafer Sherif to study social norm formation.

Normative Influence

Conformity based on a person's desire to fulfill others' expectations, often to gain acceptance or avoid rejection.

Informational Influence

Conformity occurring when people accept evidence about reality provided by other people, driven by the desire to be right.

Reactance

A motive to protect or restore one's sense of freedom that arises when someone threatens their freedom of action.

Central Route to Persuasion

Persuasion that occurs when interested, motivated people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable, analytical thoughts.

Peripheral Route to Persuasion

Persuasion that occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker's attractiveness or emotional associations.

Sleeper Effect

A delayed impact of a message that occurs when an initially discounted message later becomes effective because the source is forgotten while the content remains.

Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon

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

Lowball Technique

A tactic for getting people to agree to something wherein people who agree to an initial request often still comply when the requester increases the cost.

Door-in-the-Face Technique

A strategy for gaining a concession in which, after someone turns down a large request, the requester counters with a more reasonable, smaller request.

Two-Step Flow of Communication

The process by which media influence often occurs through opinion leaders, who in turn analyze and transmit information to the broader public.

Attitude Inoculation

Exposing people to weak attacks upon their attitudes so that when stronger attacks come, they already have refutations and counterarguments available.

Social Loafing

The tendency for people to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward a common goal than when individually accountable.

Deindividuation

Loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension that occurs in group situations fostering responsiveness to group norms.

Group Polarization

Group-produced enhancement of members' preexisting tendencies, strengthening the average inclination rather than splitting the group.

Pluralistic Ignorance

A false impression of what most other people are thinking or feeling, or how they are responding, such that each person assumes others agree with a norm they privately reject.

Groupthink

Irving Janis's term for the mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action.

The ABCs of Attitudes

The tripartite model of attitudes consisting of Affect (feelings), Behavior tendency (inclination to act), and Cognition (beliefs).

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

A computer-driven assessment that uses reaction times to measure people's automatic, unconscious associations between attitude objects and evaluative words.

Theory of Planned Behavior

Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein's model stating that one's attitude toward a behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control together shape behavioral intentions, which guide actual behavior.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Leon Festinger's theory that tension arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions, motivating attitude change to reduce internal discomfort.

Self-Perception Theory

Daryl Bem's theory that when our attitudes are uncertain or ambiguous, we infer them much as an external observer would, by examining our own behavior and the context in which it occurs.

Overjustification Effect

The result of bribing people to do what they already enjoy doing; they may then view their action as externally controlled rather than intrinsically appealing.

Prejudice

A preconceived negative evaluation of some group and its individual members, operating as an attitude made up of affective feelings, behavioral tendencies, and cognitive beliefs.

Stereotype

A belief about the personal attributes of a group of people, often overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information.

Discrimination

Unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its individual members.

Social Dominance Orientation

A motivation to have one's group dominate other social groups, viewing society in hierarchies.

Authoritarian Personality

A personality that is disposed to favor obedience to authority and intolerance of outgroups and those lower in status.

Realistic Group Conflict Theory

The theory that prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources such as jobs, housing, or status.

Outgroup Homogeneity Effect

The perception of outgroup members as more similar to one another than are ingroup members ('they are alike; we are diverse').

Stereotype Threat

A disruptive concern, when facing a negative stereotype, that one will be evaluated based on that negative stereotype, causing immediate performance decrements.

Hostile Aggression

Aggression that springs from anger and whose ultimate goal is to injure someone.

Instrumental Aggression

Aggression that aims to injure someone, but only as a means to some other end.

Weapons Effect

The tendency of weapons, as aggressive cues, to increase aggressive thoughts and retaliatory behaviors.

Ostracism

Acts of excluding or ignoring individuals, which activates the same brain regions as physical pain and impairs self-regulation.

Mere-Exposure Effect

Robert Zajonc's finding that novel stimuli tend to be liked more after repeated, unreinforced exposure.

Matching Phenomenon

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

Two-Factor Theory of Emotion

Schachter and Singer's formulation stating that psychological arousal multiplied by its situational cognitive label yields emotional experience ($\text{Arousal} \times \text{Label} = \text{Emotion}$).

Companionate Love

The affection and deep attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply intertwined, supported biologically by oxytocin.

Equity

A condition in which the outcomes people receive from a relationship are proportional to what they contribute to it.

Disclosure Reciprocity

The tendency for one person's intimacy of self-disclosure to match that of a conversational partner.

Altruism

A motive to increase another's welfare without conscious regard for one's self-interests.

Reciprocity Norm

An expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them.

Social-Responsibility Norm

An expectation that people will help those dependent upon them who need help, regardless of future exchanges.

Kin Selection

The evolutionary principle that altruism is favored when directed toward close genetic relatives who share one's genes.

Bystander Effect

The finding that an individual is less likely to provide help when other bystanders are present, driven by decreased noticing, misinterpretation, and diffusion of responsibility.

Social Trap

A situation in which conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing its self-interest, become caught in mutually destructive behavior.

Tragedy of the Commons

Garrett Hardin's model wherein individuals consume more than their fair share of a shared, finite resource, causing the resource's eventual collapse.

Superordinate Goal

A shared goal that necessitates cooperative effort and overrides differences among conflicting parties, as demonstrated in Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment.

Integrative Agreements

Win-win agreements that reconcile both parties' interests to their mutual benefit, resulting in more enduring conflict resolution than simple compromise.

GRIT

Charles Osgood's strategy of 'Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension reduction', designed to de-escalate international or intergroup tensions via announced, verifiable reciprocal conciliatory steps.