Behavioral Sciences 10: Social Thinking

Interpersonal Attraction

Is what makes people like each other. Influenced by physical attractiveness, similarity of thoughts and physical traits, self-disclosure, reciprocity, & proximity.

Aggression

A physical, verbal, or nonverbal behavior with the intention to cause harm or increase social dominance.

Attachment

An emotional bond to another person. Usually refers to the bond between a child and caregiver.

Secure Attachment

Requires a consistent caregiver. Child shows a strong preference for the caregiver compared to strangers.

Avoidant Attachment

Occurs when a caregiver has little or no response to a distressed child. Child shows no preference for the caregiver compared to strangers.

Ambivalent Attachment

Occurs when a caregiver has an inconsistent response to a child's distress, sometimes responding appropriately, sometimes neglectful. Child will become distressed when caregiver leaves and is ambivalent when he or she returns.

Disorganized Attachment

Occurs when a caregiver is erratic or abusive; the child shows no clear pattern of behavior in response to the caregiver's absence or presence.

Social Support

The perception or reality that one is cared for by a social network.

Emotional Support

Listening to, affirming, and empathizing with someone's feelings.

Esteem Support

Affirms the qualities and skills of the person.

Material Support

Providing physical or monetary support.

Informational Support

Providing useful information to a person.

Network Support

Providing a sense of belonging to a person.

Foraging

Searching for and exploiting food resources.

Mating System

Describes the way in which a group is organized in terms of sexual behavior. Monogamy - Exclusive mating relationships. Polygamy - One member of sex having multiple exclusive relationships with members of opposite sex. Polygyny - Male with multiple females. Polyandry - Female with multiple males. Promiscuity - No exclusivity

Mate Choice (Intersexual selection)

The selection of mate based on attraction and traits

Altruism

A helping behavior in which person's intent is benefit someone else at some cost him herself

Game Theory

Attempts explain decision making between individuals as if they are participating game

Inclusive Fitness

Measure organism's success population based how well propagates ITS OWN genes Inclusive fitness also includes ability those offspring then support others

Social Perception

The way by which we generate impressions about people in our social environment. It contains a perceiver, target and situation.

Social Capital

The practice of developing and maintaining relationships that form social networks willing to help each other

Implicit Personality Theory

When we look at somebody for the first time, we pick up on one of their characteristics. We then take that characteristic and assume other traits about the person based off of that one characteristic we first picked up on

Cognitive Biases

Primacy effect, recency effect, reliance on central traits, halo effect, just-world hypothesis, self-serving bias.

Attribution Theory

Focuses on the tendency for individuals to infer the causes of other people’s behavior.

Dispositional

Internal. Causes of a behavior are internal.

Situational

External. Surroundings or context cause behavior.

Correspondent Inference Theory

Focuses on the intentionality of a person’s behavior. When someone unexpectedly does something that either helps or hurts us, we form a dispositional attribution; we correlate the action to the person’s personality.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The bias toward making dispositional attributions rather than situational attributions in regard to the actions of others.

Attribution Substitution

Occurs when individuals must make judgments that are complex but instead substitute a simpler solution or heuristic.

Actor-Observer Bias

Tendency to attribute your own actions to external causes and others’ actions to dispositional causes.

Stereotypes

Cognitive. Occur when attitudes and impressions are made based on limited and superficial information.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

When stereotypes lead to expectations and those expectations create conditions that lead to confirmation of the stereotype.

Stereotype Threat

Concern or anxiety about confirming a negative stereotype about one’s social group.

Prejudice

Affective. An irrational positive or negative attitude toward a person, group, or thing prior to an actual experience.

Ethnocentrism

Refers to the practice of making judgments about other cultures based on the values and beliefs of one’s own culture.

Cultural Relativism

Refers to the recognition that social groups and cultures should be studied on their own terms.

Discrimination

Behavioral. When prejudicial attitudes cause individuals of a particular group to be treated differently from others.