Exam 2 Review: Social Psychology

Practice flashcards covering key definitions and studies from Lesson 6 to Lesson 9 including conformity, persuasion, group influence, and prejudice.

Conformity

The tendency to adjust one’s attitude, beliefs, or behaviors to align with an external influence such as normative or informational influences, groups, or authority figures.

Compliance

The tendency to adjust one’s behavior in response to a direct or indirect request while retaining attitudes and beliefs that disagree with the request; often motivated by reciprocity or social capital.

Obedience

The tendency to adjust one’s behavior in response to a request from an authority figure, relying on a recognized hierarchy and a perception of a legitimate authority.

Acceptance

The internalization and adoption of social influences.

Reactance

An aversive emotional state triggered by a perceived threat to your freedom to determine your own attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

Informational Influence

A psychological phenomenon where people conform to a group because they believe the group has more accurate information, primarily driven by the need to be right.

Normative Influence

A psychological phenomenon where people conform to group expectations, behaviors, or beliefs to gain social capital, such as approval, being liked, or avoiding rejection.

Cohesiveness

A group dynamic where members stick together and remain united to achieve common goals or prevent breakdown, characterized by solidarity and mutual attraction.

Mass Hysteria

A psychological phenomenon where a group experiences a spontaneous occurrence of irrational behaviors, unfounded fears, or psychosomatic symptoms with no organic cause.

Muzafer Sherif’s Autokinetic Phenomenon Experiment

An early experiment on norm formation where participants' estimates of the movement of a stationary pinpoint of light converged to become a cohesive group estimate.

Asch Conformity Studies

A study demonstrating that individuals conform to a group $75\%$ of the time even when denying objective reality, such as incorrectly judging line lengths due to social pressure.

Milgram Obedience Studies

Studies that examined why people obey moral or objectionable demands, demonstrating that participants would shock confederates with electricity when instructed by a perceived legitimate authority.

Persuasion

The intentional process of using communication to influence a person’s attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors without the use of coercion.

Central Route to Persuasion

A cognitive process where persuasion is achieved through active deep thinking through the logic and facts of an argument.

Need for Cognition

The intrinsic motivation and tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful thinking.

Peripheral Route to Persuasion

A form of persuasion that uses superficial cues, such as a presenter’s attractiveness or charisma, as mental shortcuts instead of deep thinking.

Attractiveness

The likeability of a speaker based on their appearance, personality, status, or charisma.

Credibility

The perceived believability and reliability of the speaker.

Channel of Communication

The medium or pathway (verbal or non-verbal) through which information is transmitted.

Two-step Flow of Communication

A model of transmission positing that media influences opinion leaders, who then influence the general public.

Counterargument

A viewpoint or reasoning that challenges an original statement.

Attitude Inoculation

A psychological phenomenon in which individuals build resistance to persuasion by being exposed to weak, refutable arguments.

Foot-in-the-door Technique

A technique that achieves compliance for a large request by getting the person to comply with smaller requests first.

Door-in-the-face Technique

A technique where an extreme request is intentionally made to be denied, followed by proposing the much more sensible, desired request.

Primacy Effect

A cognitive bias where information presented first has a disproportionate effect on thought formation compared to later information.

Recency Effect

A cognitive bias where information presented at the end has a disproportionate effect on thought formation compared to information in the middle.

Sleeper Effect

A phenomenon where a persuasive message paired with a 'discounting cue' has little immediate impact but becomes highly persuasive over time.

Group

Two or more individuals who interact, share a common identity, and influence one another with a sense of mutual dependence and shared goals.

Deindividuation

A state where individuals in a large group lose self-awareness and personal identity due to anonymity and diffused responsibility, leading to impulsive behavior.

Self-awareness

The ability to recognize yourself as an individual separate from your environment, acting as a bridge between internal states and the external social world.

Pluralistic Ignorance

A phenomenon where individuals privately disagree with perceived group norms but publicly conform because they incorrectly assume others agree.

Groupthink

A phenomenon where the desire for harmony results in irrational decision-making, as members prioritize consensus and suppress dissenting opinions.

Evaluation Apprehension

The anxiety or concern an individual experiences when they believe they are being judged by an audience.

Social Comparison

The psychological process of evaluating one's own abilities, opinions, and traits by measuring them against others.

Social Facilitation

The tendency to perform better on simple tasks but worse on complex tasks in the presence of others due to increased physiological arousal.

Social Loafing

The tendency for individuals to put in less effort toward a common goal when working in a group because personal accountability is diluted.

Free Riders

Individuals who benefit from a collective or group effort without contributing their fair share of work, cost, or time.

Leadership

A dynamic process of social influence rather than just a position of formal authority.

Task Leadership

A goal-oriented style focused on organizing, directing, and completing specific assignments to meet group objectives through productivity and clear roles.

Social Leadership

A form of influence that guides others through empathy, communication, and interpersonal relationships, relying on emotional intelligence and shared values.

Transformational Leadership

A behavioral model where leaders inspire and motivate followers to transcend self-interests for the collective good.

Bias

A systematic error in thinking, judgment, or perception that skews how information is processed and how others are interacted with.

Ingroup Bias

A cognitive bias where individuals favor, trust, and positively evaluate members of their own group compared to outsiders.

Outgroup Homogeneity Effect/Bias

A cognitive bias where people view members of groups they do not belong to as being highly similar to one another.

Own-race Bias

The tendency to more easily recognize and remember faces of one's own racial group than those of another race.

Group-serving Bias

The tendency to attribute a group's successes to internal traits and its failures to external, situational factors.

Social Identity

The portion of an individual's self-concept derived from their membership in social groups such as nationality, religion, or occupation.

Prejudice

A rigid, typically negative attitude or prejudgment directed toward members of a specific group, involving affects and feelings.

Stereotype

Generalized beliefs about the traits and behaviors of a social group that serve as the cognitive backbone of prejudice.

Discrimination

The behavioral component of bias characterized by unfair, differential treatment of individuals based on their group membership.

Authoritarian Personality

A profile characterized by extreme obedience to authority, strict adherence to norms, and hostility toward out-groups.

Social Dominance Orientation

A personality trait measuring an individual's preference for hierarchical social structures and inequality between groups.

Just-world Phenomenon

A cognitive bias leading people to assume that individuals get what they deserve, often resulting in victim-blaming.

Realistic Group Conflict Theory

A framework stating that intergroup hostility and prejudice arise from competition over scarce resources like jobs, territory, or power.

Subtyping

A cognitive mechanism that preserves a broad stereotype by creating a specialized subcategory for individuals who contradict that stereotype.

Subgrouping

The cognitive process of breaking a broader social group into smaller, differentiated clusters based on similarities and differences.

Stereotype Threat

The psychological pressure and anxiety that performance might confirm a negative stereotype about one's group, often leading to underperformance.