Social Psychology: Genes, Culture, Gender, Conformity, Persuasion, and Group Influence

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the core concepts, theories, and models from Social Psychology Chapters 5 through 8: Genes, Culture, and Gender; Conformity and Obedience; Persuasion; and Group Influence.

Natural Selection

The evolutionary process by which heritable traits that best enable organisms to survive and reproduce in particular environments are passed to ensuing generations.

Evolutionary Psychology

The study of the evolution of cognition and behavior using principles of natural selection.

Sex

The two biological categories of male and female.

Gender

In psychology, the characteristics, whether biological or socially influenced, that we associate with males and females.

Transgender

Someone whose psychological sense of being male or female differs from their birth sex.

Testosterone

A hormone more prevalent in males than females that is linked to dominance and aggression.

Androgynous

Capable of both assertiveness and nurturance, a state often reached as people mature to middle age and beyond.

Culture

The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.

Epigenetics

The study of environmental influences on gene expression that occur without DNA change.

Norms

Standards for accepted and expected behavior that prescribe "proper" behavior and describe what is considered "normal."

Personal Space

The buffer zone we like to maintain around our bodies.

Gender Role

A set of behavior expectations (norms) for males and females constructed by culture.

Empathy

The vicarious experience of another’s feelings; putting oneself in another’s shoes.

Precarious Manhood

A psychological phenomenon in which men experience an ongoing fear of losing their social power or status.

Aggression

Physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone.

Interaction

A relationship in which the effect of one factor (such as biology) depends on another factor (such as environment).

Social-Role Theory of Gender Differences

A theoretical framework illustrating how socialization and biological influences create a division of labor between the sexes, shaping gender-role expectations and skills that ultimately produce gender differences in behavior.

Conformity

A change in behavior or belief as the result of real or imagined group pressure.

Acceptance

A variety of conformity that involves both acting and believing in accord with social pressure.

Compliance

A variety of conformity that involves publicly acting in accord with an implied or explicit request while privately disagreeing.

Obedience

A specific type of compliance involving acting in accord with a direct order or command.

Varieties of Conformity Framework

A conceptual diagram showing that conformity encompasses acceptance and compliance, with obedience nested as an explicit subset of compliance.

Autokinetic Phenomenon

Self-motion; the apparent movement of a stationary point of light in the dark, utilized by Muzafer Sherif to study norm formation.

Mass Hysteria

Suggestibility to problems that spreads throughout a large group of people.

Asch's Conformity Procedure

A classic experiment testing group pressure where a participant chooses which comparison line matches a standard line while surrounded by confederates giving unanimous wrong answers.

Cohesiveness

A "we feeling"; the extent to which members of a group are bound together.

Normative Influence

Conformity based on a person’s desire to fulfill others’ expectations, often to gain acceptance and avoid rejection; springs from the desire to be liked.

Informational Influence

Conformity occurring when people accept evidence about reality provided by other people; springs from the desire to be right.

Reactance

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

Persuasion

The process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors.

Central Route to Persuasion

A route to persuasion that occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts, leading to more enduring change.

Peripheral Route to Persuasion

A route to persuasion that occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker’s attractiveness, triggering automatic acceptance without much thinking.

Hurdles of the Persuasion Process

A sequential cognitive model illustrating that for a message to produce action, the recipient must successively pay attention to, comprehend, believe, remember, and behave accordingly to the message.

Credibility

Believability; a characteristic of a communicator who is perceived as both an expert and trustworthy.

Sleeper Effect

A delayed impact of a message that occurs when an initially discounted message becomes effective because people remember the message but forget the reason for discounting it.

Attractiveness

Having qualities that appeal to an audience, commonly manifesting as physical appeal or similarity to the audience.

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 persuasion tactic where people who agree to an initial request will often still comply when the requester ups the ante, whereas individuals receiving only the costly request are less likely to comply.

Door-in-the-Face Technique

A persuasion strategy where after someone first turns down a large, unreasonable request, the same requester counteroffers with a smaller, more reasonable request.

Primacy Effect

The principle that, other things being equal, information presented first usually has the most influence.

Recency Effect

The phenomenon wherein information presented last sometimes has the most influence, typically when time separates messages and the response occurs immediately after the second message.

Channel of Communication

The way a message is delivered—whether face-to-face, in writing, on film, or via another medium.

Two-Step Flow of Communication

The process by which media influence often occurs through opinion leaders, who in turn influence others.

Life Cycle Explanation

An explanation of age effects proposing that attitudes change progressively as people grow older.

Generational Explanation

An explanation of age effects proposing that attitudes do not change as individuals age, but rather older people hold onto the attitudes they adopted when they were young.

Need for Cognition

The motivation to think, analyze, and engage in effortful cognitive processing.

Attitude Inoculation

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

Counterarguments

Reasons generated to explain why a persuasive message might be wrong.

Group

Two or more people who, for longer than a few moments, interact with and influence one another and perceive one another as "us."

Social Facilitation

Originally, the tendency of people to perform simple or well-learned tasks better when others are present; currently, the strengthening of dominant (prevalent, likely) responses in the presence of others.

Social Arousal and Dominant Responses Model

A causal model demonstrating that the presence of others elicits arousal, which strengthens dominant responses, thereby enhancing easy behavior and impairing difficult behavior.

Evaluation Apprehension

Concern for how others are evaluating us, which intensifies the enhancement of dominant responses.

Social Loafing

The tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their effort toward a common goal than when they are individually accountable.

Free Riders

People who benefit from a group but give little in return.

Deindividuation

Loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension occurring in group situations that foster responsiveness to group norms, good or bad.

Self-Awareness

A self-conscious state in which attention focuses on oneself, making people more sensitive to their own attitudes, dispositions, and self-control.

Group Polarization

Group-produced enhancement of members’ preexisting tendencies, resulting in a strengthening of the members' average inclination rather than a division.

Risky Shift Phenomenon

The tendency for group decisions, as well as individual decisions following brief group discussion, to be riskier than the average prior decision.

Social Comparison

Evaluating one’s opinions and abilities by comparing oneself with others.

Pluralistic Ignorance

A false impression of what most other people are thinking or feeling, or how they are responding.

Groupthink

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 (Janis, 1971).

Mindguards

Individuals who protect a leader or group members from information that would call into question the effectiveness or morality of the group’s decisions.

Minority Slowness Effect

A tendency for people with minority views to express those views less quickly than do people in the majority.

Task Leadership

A leadership style that organizes work, sets standards, and focuses directly on goal attainment.

Social Leadership

A leadership style that builds teamwork, mediates interpersonal conflict, and provides social support.

Transformational Leadership

Leadership enabled by a leader’s vision and inspiration that exerts significant influence and motivates high commitment.