Personality, Social Interaction, and Culture

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers key concepts from the lecture on personality's interaction with social environments, sex differences in trait expression, and cultural influences on psychology.

Selection

The process by which an individual's personality characteristics influence the types of situations they choose to enter and remain in.

Evocation

The process by which an individual's personality characteristics elicit specific responses from others, or vice versa.

Manipulation

The ways in which people intentionally or automatically try to influence, alter, or exploit others and their environment.

Assortative mating

The phenomenon where individuals tend to enter into relationships with people who are similar to them in characteristics such as physical attractiveness, intellectual abilities, and personality traits.

Shyness

A personality trait characterized by feeling tense, worried, or anxious during social interactions and a tendency to avoid social situations.

Hostile attribution bias

The tendency to infer hostile intent on the part of others when faced with uncertain or ambiguous behavior.

Expectancy confirmation

A phenomenon where a person's beliefs about another's personality lead them to evoke actions from that person that are consistent with their initial beliefs.

Confirmation bias

The tendency to notice and search for information that confirms one's existing beliefs while ignoring information that disconfirms them.

Cognitive dissonance

The psychological discomfort experienced when there is an inconsistency between an individual's thoughts/beliefs and their behaviors.

Dark triad

A cluster of personality traits including Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy, often associated with exploitative manipulation.

Socialization theory

The theory that boys and girls become different because they are reinforced by parents, teachers, and media for gender-typed behaviors.

Bandura's social learning theory

Suggests that children learn gender-specific behaviors by observing the behaviors of same-sex others.

Social role theory

The idea that sex differences arise because men and women are distributed differently into occupational and family roles within society.

Hormonal theories

Theories suggesting that physiological differences, specifically levels of circulating testosterone, cause behavioral divergence between sexes.

Evolutionary psychology theory

The perspective that males and females differ only in domains where they have recurrently faced different adaptive problems related to survival and reproduction.

Altruism stats in crime

Men commit $90\,$ of homicides around the world and more violent crimes in general compared to women.

Evoked culture

Cultural phenomena and differences that are triggered in different ways by varying environmental conditions.

Transmitted culture

Representations such as ideas, values, and attitudes that originate in one person's mind and are transferred to others through interaction or observation.

Cultural universals

Features of personality, such as core emotions or the Big Five traits, that appear to be present in most or all human cultures.

Interdependence

A cultural task, common in non-Western Asian cultures, that emphasizes affiliation with and engagement in a larger group.

Independence

A cultural task, common in Western cultures, that focuses on differentiating oneself from the larger group.

Self-enhancement

The tendency to describe and present oneself using positive or socially valued attributes.

Culture of honor

A culture where insults are viewed as highly offensive public challenges that must be met with direct confrontation or physical aggression.