Social Psychology Lecture Notes

Flashcards about social psychology including concepts such as attribution theory, attitudes, social influence, group influence, social relations, and conflict resolution.

Attribution

Giving credit to someone or something.

Attribution theory

We have a tendency to give causal explanations for someone’s behavior, often by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition.

Dispositional attribution

Attributing someone’s behavior, thoughts, beliefs, etc. to the person’s traits and characteristics.

Situational attribution

Attributing someone’s behavior, thought’s beliefs, etc. to environments factors outside of the person’s control.

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to overemphasize dispositional factors and to underestimate situational factors when making attributions about the cause of another person's behavior.

Just-world phenomenon

The tendency of people to believe the world is just, and people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

Saliency bias

Situational factors are less salient (noticeable) than dispositional factors. As a result, people focus on personality traits rather than the less social context.

Self-serving bias

Taking credit for their successes while at the same time attributing their failures to external situations beyond their control.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Having expectations about an individual that influence your behavior towards him or her, which in turn influences they way this person behaves towards you.

Attitudes

Beliefs and feelings that guide behavior.

Mere exposure effect (familiarity principle)

People tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them.

Central route of persuasion

When people focus on factual info, logical arguments, and thoughtful analysis.

Peripheral route of persuasion

When people focus on emotional appeals in incidental cues.

Foot-in-the-door

The persuasion strategy of getting a person to agree to a modest first request as a set-up for a later, much larger, request.

Reciprocity

Giving something to someone hoping you will get something back.

Cognitive dissonance

The state of psychological tension, anxiety, and discomfort that occurs when a person’s attitude and behavior are inconsistent.

Role playing

Giving a person a specific role and having his/her attitude change based on the role s/he was given.

Social influence

How attitudes, beliefs, decisions, and actions are molded by social influences.

Chameleon effect

A person will unconsciously mimic or adopt behaviors, mannerisms, and actions of people or of an individual with s/he is interacting.

Mood linkage

A person’s mood is based on the others of the group.

Conformity

The tendency for people to adopt the behavior, attitudes, and beliefs of other members of a group.

Normative Social Influence

Influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid rejection.

Informational Social Influence

Occurs when one turns to the members of one's group to obtain accurate information.

Compliance

An act of conforming, especially in a weak and subservient way; usually someone asks you to conform.

Obedience

Obeying the direct orders of an authority or person of higher status.

Individual resistance

One person can chose not to conform and can also have an effect on others.

Group influence

A type of conformity involving a person in a situation where s/he is unsure of the correct way to behave and will often look to others for cues concerning correct behavior.

Norms

Implicit or explicit rules that apply to all members of the group that govern acceptable behavior and attitudes. Norms allow for smooth social interactions.

Roles

The position the person has in the group. Leader? Follower? Helper? These roles can be appointed or assumed.

Social loafing

People making less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when they work alone, the “slackers”.

Deindividuation

The losing of one’s self-awareness and personal responsibility that can occur when a person is pare of a group whose members feel anonymous.

Social facilitation

The tendency for an individual’s performance to improve when simple or well-learned tasks are performed in the presence of others.

Social impairment (inhibition)

The tendency for an individual’s performance to decline when complex or poorly-learned tasks are performed in the presence of others.

Group polarization

The tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members.

Groupthink

Phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an incorrect or deviant decision-making outcome.

Minority influence

The minority of a group can have an effect on the group.

Social Relations

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

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.

Discrimination

The differential treatment of others, usually negative.

Ingroups

People with whom one shares a common identity.

Outgroups

Those perceived as different from one’s in-group.

Ingroup Bias

The tendency to favor one’s own group.

Stereotypes

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

Scapegoat theory

People look for someone to blame when things go wrong, usually fueled by prejudice.

Jigsaw classroom

A method of organizing classroom activity that makes students dependent on each other to succeed. Higher achieving kids are usually paired with lower achieving kids.

Ethnocentrism

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

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.

Altruism

Putting your own welfare aside to help others.

Bystander effect

Individuals are less likely to assist in an emergency situation when other people are present.

Diffusion of responsibility

People are less likely to take action or feel a sense of responsibility in the presence of a large group of people.

Reciprocity norm

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

Aggression

Behavior that is intended to cause harm.

Instrumental aggression

Aggression that is caused by the satisfaction of obtaining a goal.

Hostile aggression

Results when a person feels pain, anger, or frustration.

Frustration-aggression principle

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

Attraction

Being drawn to a person.

Conflict & Peacemaking

Working with each other to overcome problems.

Non-zero sum game

Both group participants all gain or suffer together.

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.

Mirror-image perceptions

Each side views itself as ethical and peaceful and views the other as evil and aggressive.

Superordinate goals

Shared goals that override differences among people that cannot be achieved without a joint effort.

Conciliation (GRIT)

A bargaining strategy used by both sides to help maintain the peace. GRIT stands for Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension reduction.

Fritz Heider

Proposed the Attribution Theory.

Robert Rosenthal & Lenore Jacobson

Studied the self-fulfilling prophecy through the “Oak Hill” experiment.

Jane Elliot

Divided her class into blue eyes and brown eyes to teach her kids about discrimination.

Leon Festinger

Proposed the idea of cognitive dissonance that suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and beliefs in harmony and to avoid disharmony (or dissonance).

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.

Walter Lippman

Coined the term “stereotype”.

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.

Muzafer Sherif

Ran the Robbers Cave Experiment in which 11- and 12- year-old boys were randomly assigned into two groups. The groups were pitted against each other and turned into rivals. Sherif used superordinate goals to reduce hostility between the two groups.

Bibb Latane & John Darley

Created situations to test bystander intervention and the diffusion of responsibility in non-emergency situations.

Elliot Aronson & Marti Gonzales

Devised the jigsaw classroom to help raise the self-efficacy of minority children.

Norman Triplett

Studied social facilitation and social impairment.