GRE Psych - Social

In-group bias

Favoring the group one belongs to over out-groups.

Deindividuation

The loss of self-awareness and restraint in groups, often promoting impulsive behavior.

Stereotype

A generalized belief about the members of a social group.

Asch conformity experiment

A study in which participants gave obviously wrong answers to match a unanimous majority.

Just-world hypothesis

The belief that people get what they deserve, which can lead to blaming victims.

Social comparison theory

Evaluating one’s own abilities and opinions by comapring with others, especially similar ones.

Mere exposure effect

Increased liking for stimuli simply from repeated exposure.

Self-serving bias

Crediting successes to oneself and blaming failures on the situation.

Groupthink

When a group’s desire for harmony overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

When an expectation prompts behavior that makes the expectation come true.

Social facilitation

Improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others.

Fundamental attribution error

Overestimating dispositional causes and underestimating situational ones when explaining others’ behavior.

Obedience

Following the orders of an authority figure.

Peripheral route to persuasion

Persuasion through surface cues like attractiveness rather than argument quality.

Prejudice

A negative attitude toward a group and its members.

Foot-in-the-door technique

Gaining compliance with a large request by first securing a small one.

Social loafing

Reduced individual effort when working in a group than when working alone.

Door-in-the-face technique

Gaining compliance by first making a large request that is refused, then a smaller one.

Central route to persuasion

Persuasion through careful evaluation of strong arguments.

Conformity

Adjusting behavior or beliefs to match a group standard.

Stanford prison experiment

Zimbardo’s study showing how assigned social roles can drive cruel behavior.

Diffusion of responsibility

Reduced sense of personal accountability when others are present.

Superordinate goals

Shared aims that require cooperation between groups and reduce conflict.

Milgram obedience study

Demonstration that ordinary people will obey an authority’s order to harm a stranger.

Out-group homogeneity

Perceiving members of another group as more alike than they really are.

Discrimination

Unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members.

Bystander effect

The more people present at an emergency, the less likely any one helps.

Robbers Cave experiment

Sherif’s study showing superordinate goals reduce intergroup conflict.

Actor-observer bias

Attributing out own behavior to the situation but others’ behavior to disposition.

Reactance

A response to rules or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms.

Normative influence

The desire to fulfill others’ expectations, often to gain social acceptance.

Social penetration theory

Posits that as relationships develop, interpersonal communication moves from relatively shallow, non-intimate levels to deeper, more intimate ones, primarily through the process of self-disclosure.

False consensus effect

Cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate the extent to which other people share their beliefs and views.

Covariation model

An attribution theory in which people make causal inferences to explain why other people and ourselves behave in a certain way.

Group polarization

Tendency for groups to show a shift towards the extremes of decision-making when compared to decisions made by individuals.

Self-concept

A general term for how someone thinks about, evaluates, or perceives themselves.

Social identity theory

Argues that social identity underpins intergroup behavior and sees this as qualitatively distinct from interpersonal behavior.

Social exchange theory

Assumes that we will always act in our own self-interest, trying to maximize rewards and minimize costs in our social interactions.

Kin selection

A type of natural selection in which individuals engage in altruistic behavior towards their relatives, thus ensuring the survival of shared genes.

Altruism

Conceptualized as a motivational state that a person possesses with the goal of increasing the welfare of another person.

Attitude

An evaluation of people, objects, or ideas.

Norms of reciprocity

The idea that if someone does something nice for you, you should do something nice for them.

Attribution theory

Addresses how we understand behaviors and the causes of events.

What are the three kinds of information Harold Kelley proposed we use to make attributions?

Consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus

Contact theory

The theory of minimizing prejudice through cooperation with other groups.

Frustration-aggression hypothesis

Asserts that frustration makes us more likely to become aggressive, and when we can’t vent our aggression at the source of the frustration, we act out our aggression on someone or something else.

What are the four factors involved in deciding whether you may like someone?

Proximity/propinquity, attractiveness, similarity, and reciprocal liking.

Social impairment

Shows that we may perform difficult tasks more poorly than we normally would if we were doing them without being observed.

Group norms

The implicit and/or explicit rules of behavior that go along with belonging to a group.

Field theory

Our personalities are dynamic and derived from the many interacting influences in our lives.

Balance theory

States that people want to maintain psychological stasis, so there is an urge to preserve attitudes through time.

Halo effect

The belief that because a person has a good trait, all their traits must also be good.

Base rate fallacy

Using irrelevant information and ignoring relevant information to make a decision or hypothesis.

Self-perception theory

Suggests that people form their attitudes, emotions, and internal states by observing their own behavior and the situation it happens in.

Overjustification effect

The process in which an external reward decreases an individual's intrinsic motivation to perform a specific task.

Gain-loss theory

States that a negative opinion turned into a positive one will result in a stronger relationship rather than a positive initial opinion.

What are the two facets of self-presentation?

Self-monitoring and impression management.

Stimulus overload theory

Believes that people in densely populated areas are less prosocial because they have excessive stimuli and can’t handle any more.

Equity theory

Asserts that we are most comfortable in situations where both rewards and punishments are equitable or logical.

Differentiate compliance and acceptance

Compliance is when one comforms publicly but maintains a dissenting belief, while acceptance occurs when one conforms and does not have dissenting feelings.

Sleeper effect

Shows confidence in a message from a source that is less credible will become stronger over time, so an undecided voter may be more strongly swayed.

Inoculation theory

States that untested beliefs are vulnerable, but beliefs that have been challenged and defended persevere.

Excitation-transfer theory

Argues that physiological arousal will transfer to unrelated areas.

Objective self-awareness

The ability to attend to our thoughts, actions, feelings, and selves.

Peter Principle

Believes that people will get promoted at work until they reach a level where they become incompetent, and will ultimately remain in that position.

According to Elaine Hatfield, what are the two types of love?

1. Passionate love: accompanied by physiological arousal, characterized by a longing for another

2. Companionate love: love for people whose lives are deeply connected with our own

According to Paul Ekman, what are the six basic emotions all humans have?

Happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise.

Facial Action Coding System (FACS)

Used to analyze facial expressions and sort them into emotion categories.

Hawthorne effect

The phenomenon where people increase workplace productivity if they believe they are being watched.

What were the phases of group dynamics observed during Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment?

In-group phase, friction phase, and integration phase

Role theory

Believes that people have an understanding of the roles they are supposed to fill and change their behavior to fit those roles.

Empathy-altruism hypothesis

When we see someone else suffering, we will experience an empathic response and be more likely to help, even if helping the other person is for selfish reasons.

Drive-reduction theory

Suggests that physiological needs create a state of tension (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need and reduce the tension.

Incentive theory

Suggests that people are motivated by a desire for rewards or incentives, rather than by internal states or needs.

What are the five levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

Physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization

Self-determination theory

Posits that people are motivated to grow and change by three innate and universal psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Gender schema theory

Suggests that individuals form a cognitive framework based on gender-related information.

Inclusive fitness

The sum of an individual’s own reproductive success and its impact on the reproduction of relatives.