Social Psych (Social Perception)

Social Psychology

The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another

Spotlight effect

The belief that others are paying more attention to our appearance and behavior than they really are.

Illusion of transparency

The illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by others.

Self-concept

What we know and believe about ourselves.

self-schema

Beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information

social comparison

Evaluating one’s opinions and abilities by comparing oneself with others.

individualism

The concept of giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications.

independent self

Construing one’s identity as an autonomous self.

collectivism

Giving priority to the goals of one’s group (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly.

planning fallacy

The tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task.

impact bias

Overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events.

dual attitude system

Differing implicit (automatic) and explicit (consciously controlled) attitudes toward the same object. Verbalized explicit attitudes may change with education and persuasion; implicit attitudes change slowly, with practice that forms new habits.

self-esteem

A person’s overall self-evaluation or sense of self-worth.

terror management theory

Proposes that people exhibit self-protective emotional and cognitive responses (including adhering more strongly to their cultural worldviews and prejudices) when confronted with reminders of their mortality.

longitudinal study

Research in which the same people are studied over an extended period of time.

narcissism

an inflated sense of self.

self-efficacy

A sense that one is competent and effective, distinguished from self-esteem, which is one’s sense of self-worth.

self-serving bias

The tendency to perceive oneself favorably.

self-serving attributions

A form of self-serving bias; the tendency to attribute positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to other factors.

defensive pessimism

The adaptive value of anticipating problems and harnessing one’s anxiety to motivate effective action.

false consensus effect

The tendency to overestimate the commonality of one’s opinions and one’s undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors.

false uniqueness effect

The tendency to underestimate the commonality of one’s abilities and one’s desirable or successful behaviors.

self-handicapping

Protecting one’s self-image with behaviors that create a handy excuse for later failure.

self-presentation

The act of expressing oneself and behaving in ways designed to create a favorable impression or an impression that corresponds to one’s ideals.

self-monitoring

Being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting one’s performance to create the desired impression.

System 1

The intuitive, automatic, unconscious, and fast way of thinking. Also known as automatic processing.

System 2

The deliberate, controlled, conscious, and slower way of thinking. Also known as controlled processing

priming

Activating particular associations in memory.

embodied cognition

The mutual influence of bodily sensations on cognitive preferences and social judgments.

automatic thinking

“Implicit” thinking that is effortless, habitual, and without awareness; roughly corresponds to “intuition.” Also known as System 1.

controlled thinking

“Explicit” thinking that is deliberate, reflective, and conscious. Also known as System 2.

Schemas

are mental concepts or templates that intuitively guide our perceptions and interpretations. Whether we hear someone speaking of religious sects or sex depends on how we automatically interpret the sound.

overconfidence phenomenon

The tendency to be more confident than correct — to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs.

confirmation bias

A tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions.

heuristics

A thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments.

representativeness heuristic

The tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling (representing) a typical member.

availability heuristic

A cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory. If instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace.

counterfactual thinking

Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn’t.

illusory correlation

Perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists.

regression toward the average

The statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to return toward their average.

belief perseverance

Persistence of one’s initial conceptions, such as when the basis for one’s belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives.

misinformation effect

Incorporating “misinformation” into one’s memory of the event after witnessing an event and receiving misleading information about it.

attribution theory

The theory of how people explain others’ behavior — for example, by attributing it either to internal dispositions (enduring traits, motives, and attitudes) or to external situations.

dispositional attribution

Attributing behavior to the person’s disposition and traits.

situational attribution

Attributing behavior to the environment.

misattribution

Mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source

spontaneous trait inference

An effortless, automatic inference of a trait after exposure to someone’s behavior.

fundamental attribution error

The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others’ behavior.

self-fulfilling prophecy

A belief that leads to its own fulfillment

behavioral confirmation

A type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people’s social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations.

prejudice

A preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members.

stereotype

A belief about the personal attributes of a group of people. Stereotypes are sometimes overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information (and sometimes accurate).

discrimination

Unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members.

social dominance orientation

A motivation to have one’s group dominate other social groups.

authoritarian personality

A personality that is disposed to favor obedience to authority and intolerance of outgroups and those lower in status.

realistic group conflict theory

The theory that prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources.

social identity

The “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to “Who am I?” that comes from our group memberships.

ingroup

“Us”: a group of people who share a sense of belonging, a feeling of common identity.

outgroup

“Them”: a group that people perceive as distinctively different from or apart from their ingroup.

outgroup homogeneity effect

Perception of outgroup members as more similar to one another than are ingroup members. Thus “they are alike; we are diverse.”

own-race bias

The tendency for people to more accurately recognize faces of their own race. (Also called the cross-race effect or other-race effect.)

group-serving bias

Explaining away outgroup members’ positive behaviors; also attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions (while excusing such behavior by one’s own group).

just-world phenomenon

The tendency of people to believe that the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

subtyping

Accommodating individuals who deviate from one’s stereotype by thinking of them as “exceptions to the rule.”

subgrouping

Accommodating individuals who deviate from one’s stereotype by forming a new stereotype about this subset of the group.

stereotype threat

A disruptive concern, when facing a negative stereotype, that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype. Unlike self-fulfilling prophecies that hammer one’s reputation into one’s self-concept, stereotype threat situations have immediate effects.

self-perception

a person views themselves, including their characteristics and the judgments they make about those characteristics

over-justification effect

a psychological phenomenon where people lose interest in an activity after receiving a reward for doing it

impression management

the act of influencing how others perceive yo

above average affect

the tendency to overestimate one's abilities

impression motivation

The process by which people try to control the impressions others form of them, often by engaging in self-presentation strategies.

subjective dimensions

the personal views and interpretations that people use to understand the world around them

Dunning Kruger effect

a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities

Kelly attribution theory

• People use three types of information to make attributions: 

  • Consensus: Do others behave the same way? 

  • Distinctiveness: Does the person behave this way in different situations? 

  • Consistency: Does the person behave this way repeatedly over time? 

Cognitive load

the amount of information our working memory can process at any given time

defensive attribution

a cognitive bias that causes people to blame others for negative events to avoid feeling vulnerable or responsible

hostile media effect

when opposing partisans perceive identical news coverage of a controversial issue as biased against their own side.

base rate neglect

a cognitive bias that occurs when people don't consider the general likelihood of something when making estimates

(ex: airplane vs car travel)

thought suppression

the act of consciously trying to stop thinking about a particular thought

appraisal theory

a psychological theory that explains how people experience emotions in response to events and situations

ideal affect

the emotional state that someone wants to feel, and it's different from how they actually feel

situation selection

a strategy for regulating emotions by choosing situations that are likely to evoke pleasant feelings

situation modification

Occurs when people are already experiencing an event but try to change aspects of the external environment to alter their emotional experience.

For example, you might be nervous about giving a speech in class, so you ask your friends to sit in the front row so you can look at them.

attentional deployment

an emotion regulation strategy that involves shifting attentional focus within an emotional scene in order to modulate emotional experience

response modulation

Response modulation is a strategy for managing emotions that involves inhibiting outward signs of emotion.

For example: someone might inhibit anger to avoid confrontation

cognitive change

A change in how a person thinks, remembers, observes, and solves problems. It can also refer to how people attach emotional meaning to situations

affective forecasting

the process of predicting how a person will feel in the future

durability bias

is the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of future emotional states.

behavioral activation

Brief, evidence-based psychotherapy used to treat depression. It focuses on increasing engaging and rewarding activities in a person's life to improve their mood and overall well-being. 

minimal group paradigm

a social psychology research method that studies how people categorize themselves into groups and how those categories affect their behavior. It's often used to study the conditions that lead to discrimination between groups. 

mortality salience

the awareness that death is inevitable. It's a central concept in terror management theory

implicit bias

includes the subconscious feelings, attitudes, prejudices, and stereotypes an individual has developed due to prior influences and imprints throughout their lives

attributional ambiguity

a psychological state of uncertainty about the cause of an event or treatment. It can occur when there are multiple possible reasons for an outcome, or when someone is unsure if their treatment was due to prejudice. 

compensatory strategy

a behavioral or environmental change that helps people overcome a weakness or deficit.