Social Psychology Exam Preparation Flashcards (Chapters 5-11)

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key social psychology concepts and theorists from Chapters 5 to 11, including attitudes, persuasion, social influence, group dynamics, and intergroup behaviour, and prejudice.

Attitude (Gordon Allport, 1935)

The most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary American social psychology; a pervasive mental state that helps interpret events and understand relationships.

One-Component Model

Louis Thurstone's model defining attitude as the degree of positive or negative affect (emotional reaction) toward an object.

Three-Component (CAB) Model

The most popular model of attitude structure, consisting of Cognitive (thoughts), Affective (feelings), and Behavioural (actions) components.

Sociocognitive Model

Pratkanis and Greenwald's model defining attitude as an evaluation of an object of thought, emphasizing judgment over affect.

Balance Theory

Fritz Heider's theory proposing that people find inconsistent beliefs aversive and are motivated to restore consistency within a P-O-X triad (Person, Other, Object).

Information Integration Theory

Norman Anderson's theory that people use cognitive algebra to mentally average values attached to various pieces of information when constructing an attitude.

Mere Exposure Effect

Zajonc's finding that repeated exposure to an object results in an increased liking for it, strongest during initial exposures.

Evaluative Conditioning

A process where a neutral object is paired with positive or negative stimuli, causing the attitude toward the neutral object to change.

Spreading Attitude Effect

Walther's (2002) concept that if 'A' is disliked and 'B' is associated with 'A', then 'B' also becomes less liked as evaluation ripples outward.

Thurstone Scale

An explicit attitude measurement using an 11-point scale with 22 items, where the score is the average scale value of endorsed items.

Likert Scale

A measurement tool where respondents indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with statements, usually on a 5-point scale.

Bogus Pipeline

A fake 'lie detector' used in research to discourage participants from concealing socially unacceptable attitudes.

Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA)

Fishbein and Ajzen's theory that specific attitudes and subjective norms lead to behavioural intention, which then leads to behaviour.

Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)

Ajzen and Fishbein's extension of TRA that adds 'Perceived Behavioural Control' as a direct influence on intention and behaviour.

Attitude Specificity Correlation

The statistical finding that general attitudes (e.g., birth control, $r = .08$) predict behaviour poorly compared to specific attitudes (e.g., using birth control pills in the next two years, $r = .57$).

Sleeper Effect

A persuasion phenomenon where the impact of a message increases over time as the quality of the argument eventually outweighs the memory of a low-credibility source.

Protection-Motivation Theory

A theory suggesting that fear appeals are effective only if they include information on how to cope with or avoid the threat.

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

Petty and Cacioppo's dual-process model featuring the Central Route (effortful analysis) and the Peripheral Route (reliance on cues like attractiveness).

Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM)

Chaiken's model featuring Systematic Processing (careful analysis) and Heuristic Processing (use of cognitive shortcuts like 'statistics don't lie').

Foot-in-the-Door Technique

A compliance strategy where a small request is made first to gain agreement, followed by a larger, related request.

Door-in-the-Face Technique

A compliance strategy where a large, unreasonable request is made first (to be refused), followed by a smaller, more reasonable request.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Festinger's theory of an unpleasant state of psychological tension resulting from holding inconsistent cognitions, motivating the individual to restore consistency.

Effort Justification

A dissonance paradigm where putting high effort toward a small reward leads an individual to re-evaluate the achievement as more valuable.

Induced Compliance Paradigm

Festinger and Carlsmith's study where participants given a small reward ($1$) to lie changed their attitude more than those given a large reward ($20$).

Inoculation

Building resistance to persuasion by exposing individuals to a weak version of a counter-attitudinal message, allowing them to practice counter-arguments.

Agentic State

Milgram's concept describing a state where individuals transfer personal responsibility to an authority figure and act as their unquestioning agents.

Informational Influence

Social influence based on accepting information from others as evidence about reality, often resulting in true internal change.

Normative Influence

Social influence based on conforming to others' expectations to gain social approval, leading to surface compliance rather than cognitive change.

Conversion Effect

The outcome of minority influence where the majority undergoes private, internal attitude change that surfaces after a delay.

Entitativity

The property that makes a group appear to be a distinct, coherent, and bounded entity.

Social Loafing

A reduction in individual effort when working on a collective task compared to working alone, often due to output equity or anonymity.

Drive Theory (Social Facilitation)

Zajonc's theory that the mere presence of others increases arousal, which strengthens the dominant response (improving easy tasks and impairing difficult ones).

Infra-Humanization

The tendency to attribute uniquely human, 'secondary' emotions to the ingroup while viewing the outgroup as more animal-like.

Stereotype Threat

Steele and Aronson's concept that awareness of a negative stereotype regarding one's group creates anxiety, which then impairs task performance and confirms the stereotype.

Minimal Group Paradigm

Henri Tajfel's research method showing that even arbitrary, meaningless categorization is sufficient to trigger ingroup favouritism.

Intergroup Emotions Theory

A theory suggesting that in group contexts, the self is a 'collective-self,' where harm to the ingroup triggers negative emotions and discrimination against the outgroup.

Deindividuation

The process of losing one's individualized identity in a group, which can lead to unsocialised or anti-social behaviour due to reduced personal responsibility.

Contact Hypothesis

Gordon Allport's idea that prejudice can be reduced by equal status contact between groups pursuing common goals with institutional support.