Chapter 1: What Is Social Psychology?

A comprehensive collection of vocabulary flashcards based on lecture notes for Chapter 1, covering basic definitions, historical milestones, research paradigms, and key subfields in social psychology.

Social psychology

The scientific study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context.

Social brain hypothesis

The hypothesis that humans evolved an unusually large brain relative to body size partly due to the complex demands of socializing, communicating, and navigating complex social interactions for survival.

The ABC's of Social Psychology

The core components of social psychological study representing Affect (feelings/emotions), Behavior (actions), and Cognition (thoughts/beliefs/attitudes).

Common Sense

Traditional, non-scientific beliefs and folk wisdom regarding human behavior that lack empirical evidence, are often oversimplified, and frequently contradict themselves (such as 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' versus 'out of sight, out of mind').

Norman Triplett

The researcher who conducted the first social psychology experiment in 1897, observing that bicycle racers performed better against others than alone and testing this phenomenon using children winding fishing reels.

Social facilitation

The phenomenon where the presence of others increases energy and alters performance, as first investigated by Norman Triplett in 1897.

Max Ringelmann

A researcher in the late 1920s who identified social loafing after discovering that individuals tend to exert less effort when working in a group than when working alone.

Social loafing

The tendency for individuals to put less effort into a task when working in a group compared to when working individually.

Milgram's obedience study

A famous study conducted during the 1960s to mid-1970s era of crisis and confidence that raised major ethical concerns regarding potential physical and psychological harm to participants subjected to simulated electric shocks.

An Era of Pluralism

A period in social psychology from the mid-1970s to the 1990s following a period of crisis, characterized by the adoption of diverse research methods, international and multicultural perspectives, and interdisciplinary subfields.

Open science

A set of modern research best practices involving shared and accessible data, materials, and methods, alongside larger sample sizes to make social psychological research more methodologically sound.

Cross-cultural research

Research designed to compare individuals from different cultures to evaluate the universal generality or cultural specificity of various social psychological findings.

Multicultural research

Research that examines racial, ethnic, and cultural groups within a single society.

Behavioral economics

An interdisciplinary field intersecting social psychology with economics to study how economic decisions are shaped by human social and cognitive processes.

Behavioral genetics

A subfield of study that examines the role of genetic factors in human social behavior.

Evolutionary psychology

A subfield that applies principles of evolution and natural selection to explain human social behavior.

Social neuroscience

The study of the relationship between neural and biological processes and social behavior, utilizing brain-imaging technologies such as PET, ERP, TMS, and fMRI.

Culture

A system of enduring meanings, beliefs, values, assumptions, institutions, and practices shared by a large group of people and transmitted across generations.