Social Influence Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards for Stage 2 Psychology - Social Influence.

Obedience

A form of social influence that involves performing an action under the orders of an authority figure.

Compliance

Changing your behavior at the request of another person.

Conformity

Altering your behavior to go along with the rest of the group.

Dispositional Factors

Internal factors and personal qualities of a person, such as genetics and personality traits.

Situational Factors

Elements in the environment that influence behavior, such as work and school.

Deindividuation

Losing your individuality and going along with the group's behavior.

Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment

Occurs when Participants also lost touch with reality that they were participants in a psychological study, and started to believe it was an actual prison.

Conformity

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

Compliance

Publicly, but not privately, going along with majority influence to gain approval.

Identification

Public and private acceptance of majority influence in order to gain group acceptance. Mid-level conformity.

Internalisation

Public and private acceptance of majority influence, through adoption of the majority group’s belief system. Deepest level of conformity.

Normative Social Influence (NSI)

When a person conforms to be accepted or belong to a group.

Informational Social Influence (ISI)

When a person conforms to gain knowledge, or because they believe that someone else is ‘right.’

Ethnocentric Bias

When an individual is culturally biased towards their own culture.

Attitude

A learned tendency to evaluate things in a certain way.

Tricomponent/ABC Model of Attitudes

A description of any attitude in terms of three related components: Affective (feelings), Behavioural (action/behaviour), and Cognitive (beliefs).

Affective Component of Attitude

Refers to the emotional reactions or feelings an individual has towards an object, person, group, event or issue.

Behavioral Component of Attitude

Refers to the actions or behaviours that we do in response to an object, person, group, event or issue.

Cognitive Component of Attitude

Refers to the beliefs or thoughts we have about an object, person, group, event or issue.

Persuasion

The process of changing our attitude toward something based on some kind of communication from other people.

Central Route (Elaboration Likelihood Model)

The central route of persuasion is about making the audience think carefully about the message to evaluate the information.

Peripheral Route (Elaboration Likelihood Model)

The peripheral route focuses on ‘peripheral cues’ meaning it relies on association with positive characteristics such as positive emotions, celebrity endorsement, or images of beauty and pleasure.

Norm of Reciprocity

People will return a favor when one is granted to them.

Door in the Face

Begins with an initial large request, suggestion to do something or purchase something.

Foot in the Door

Begins with small reasonable request i.e. a small favour or buy a small item, only to later request a larger favour or purchase

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive discomfort arising from holding two or more inconsistent attitudes, behaviours or cognitions.

Measuring Attitudes

Main research methods include the following: Behaviour counts, Self reports, Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Behavior Counts

Objective quantitative method used to measure attitudes.

Self Reports

Written or spoken answers to questions or statements presented by the researcher.Can be quantitative (rating scales) or qualitative (surveys, interviews), but is always subjective

Implicit Association test (IAT)

The IAT is typically used to dig deeper than a self-report on issues associated with stereotyping, such as gender roles, racism, sexuality, ageism.

Stereotype

A specific belief or assumption about individuals based solely on their membership in a group, regardless of their individual characteristics.

Prejudice

A negative attitude (both cognitions and feelings) toward an individual based solely on someone’s membership in a particular social group.

Discrimination

An action toward an individual because they belong to a particular group.

Unintentional Biases

Automatic, unintentional, inbuilt attitudes that we use when we process information.

Stereotype Threat

Also known as the Pygmalion effect; How expectations can modify behaviour. If positive expectations are set, positive outcomes more likely. If negative expectations are set, negative outcomes more likely.

Tokenism

Deliberately giving trivial assistance to a minority group to be seen as inclusive or avoid accusations of prejudice and discrimination.

Self-Presentation

Refers to how people attempt to present themselves to control or shape how others (called the audience) view them.

Impression management

A conscious attempt to control how others perceive them .This is often achieved by controlling all the information shared in any social interaction

Self-Concept

Our private sense of self, who we are and what is it that makes us so.

Primacy effect

The phenomenon where information received at the beginning carries more weight than the information that follows

Recency effect

Refers to the phenomenon where the most recent information received carries more weight than information received prior

Schemas

Refers to our internal template of what we know and what to expect in any given situation

Prosocial behavior

Encompasses helping behaviour, altruism, and cooperation.