Social Cognition, Self, and Personality

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts from PSYC 2115 lecture topics including social cognition, schema theory, heuristics, self-concept development, self-esteem, trait personality models, and the three self perspectives (actor, agent, author).

Social Cognition

The subfield of psychology focused on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations.

Schemas

Mental models built from previous experience and knowledge that help individuals quickly process and interpret how to act in various social situations.

Heuristics

Cognitive shortcuts or rules of thumb used to simplify decision-making and navigate complex social environments.

Representativeness Heuristic

A decision-making shortcut where the likelihood of an object or person belonging to a category is judged by how closely it resembles a typical prototype.

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut where individuals evaluate the frequency or likelihood of an event based on how easily specific instances come to mind.

Planning Fallacy

A cognitive bias causing individuals to underestimate the time, costs, and risks required to complete future tasks while overestimating the benefits.

Affective Forecasting

The process of predicting one's future emotional state and feelings regarding upcoming events.

Impact Bias

A specific bias in affective forecasting where individuals overestimate the intensity of their future emotional reactions to events.

Durability Bias

A specific bias in affective forecasting where individuals overestimate how long their future emotional responses will last.

Hot Cognition

Mental processes and reasoning that are directly influenced by an individual's desires, feelings, and affective states.

Mood-Congruent Memory

The psychological tendency to selectively recall memories that match one's current emotional state or mood.

Automaticity

Unconscious, involuntary, and effortless mental processes or behaviors that occur without intentional conscious control.

Chameleon Effect

The nonconscious mimicry of postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one's interaction partners.

Priming

The process of making an idea, concept, or behavior more cognitively accessible through prior exposure to strongly associated stimuli.

Attitude

A psychological tendency expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor.

Self-Concept

The fundamental cognitive component of the self, organized as a knowledge representation containing beliefs about one's personality traits, physical characteristics, skills, values, goals, and distinct existence.

Red Dot Test

A behavioral test of self-recognition passed around 18 to 24 months, where a child recognizes their reflection in a mirror by reaching to touch a mark placed on their face.

Self-Referent Effect

The memory phenomenon where information processed in relation to oneself is remembered significantly better than information processed structurally, phonemically, or semantically.

Self-Awareness

The extent to which an individual currently directs their conscious attention toward their own self-concept.

Self-Consciousness

A publicly induced state of self-awareness experienced when the self-concept becomes highly accessible due to concerns about being observed and evaluated by others.

Private Self-Consciousness

The introspective tendency to focus on inner thoughts, feelings, and personal standards to direct behavior.

Public Self-Consciousness

The social tendency to focus on outer appearance and the opinions of others to guide personal behavior.

Deindividuation

The loss of self-awareness and individual accountability that occurs in group settings or under conditions of anonymity.

Self-Esteem

An individual's overall positive or negative attitude toward themselves, functioning as both a fluctuating state and a stable personality trait.

Self-Complexity

The degree to which an individual possesses many distinct and relatively independent ways of thinking about themselves.

Social Status

The extent to which an individual is viewed positively, respected, and esteemed by others within a social group.

Self-Presentation

The behavioral tendency to project a positive self-image to others with the explicit goal of enhancing social status.

Self-Monitoring

The capacity and motivation to observe and regulate one's behavior to meet the environmental demands of specific social situations.

Narcissism

A personality trait defined by overly high self-esteem, self-admiration, self-centeredness, and dysfunctional interpersonal behaviors.

Social Comparison

The process of evaluating one's own attitudes, beliefs, and abilities by comparing them against those of other people to construct social reality.

Personality Traits

Enduring dimensions of individual difference characterized by consistency across situations, stability over time, and individual variation.

Five Factor Model

A trait taxonomy defining human personality across five broad dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

HEXACO Model

A personality trait model that adds Honesty-Humility as a sixth major dimension to the five standard personality factors.

Person-Situation Debate

The historical debate initiated by Mischel regarding whether internal personality traits or external situations exert a primary influence on human behavior.

Temperament

Early-emerging, biologically based individual differences in emotional reactivity and self-regulation observed during infancy and childhood.

Goodness of Fit

The degree of compatibility between a child's inherent temperament and the environmental demands and parenting practices surrounding them.

Reflexivity

A fundamental feature of human selfhood wherein the self reflects upon itself, enabling the 'I' (knower) to encounter and evaluate the 'Me' (known object).

Self as Social Actor

The perspective of selfhood emerging around age 2 that focuses on enacting social roles, displaying observable traits, and managing a social reputation.

Social Reputation

The public perception of an individual composed of their central personality traits and recognized social roles.

Theory of Mind

The developmental milestone emerging around ages 3 to 5 involving the understanding that behavior is driven by internal mental states such as desires, beliefs, and goals.

Self as Motivated Agent

The perspective of selfhood where individuals systematically select, pursue, and organize behavior around values, personal goals, and life plans.

Age 5-to-7 Shift

A developmental transition during which children become markedly more logical, systematic, and future-oriented in pursuing explicit goals.

Self as Autobiographical Author

The perspective of selfhood emerging in adolescence where individuals synthesize past experiences and future expectations into an integrated life narrative.

Narrative Identity

An internalized and evolving story of the self constructed to provide a life with temporal continuity, meaning, and unified purpose.

Autobiographical Reasoning

The cognitive process of analyzing episodic personal memories to derive abstract conclusions, insights, and semantic meaning about oneself.

Redemptive Narratives

A narrative identity pattern tracking a story arc from original suffering, adversity, or failure to a subsequent enhanced status or state.

Self-Compassion

A supportive self-attitude involving kindness, mindfulness, and common humanity when responding to personal flaws, stressors, or failures.

Self-Insight

The depth and accuracy of an individual's understanding of their own psychological patterns, motives, and behaviors.

Self-Conscious Emotions

Evaluative affective states including pride, shame, embarrassment, and guilt that require self-reflection against social or internal standards.