Social Psychology: Self-Justification, Social Cognition, and Persuasion

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering self-justification, cognitive dissonance, social cognition, heuristics, attribution theory, mass communication, propaganda, and persuasion based on the lecture materials.

Self-Justification

The desire human beings have to justify their own actions, beliefs, and feelings to maintain a positive self-image.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Leon Festinger's theory describing a state of psychological tension that occurs whenever an individual simultaneously holds two inconsistent cognitions or behaves inconsistently with a preexisting attitude.

Foot-in-the-Door Technique

A compliance strategy where securing agreement to a small initial request increases the likelihood that a person will later agree to a much larger request.

Lowballing

A sales strategy in which a commitment or down payment is secured before increasing the price, causing dissonance if the buyer considers walking away from the agreement.

Insufficient Justification

A condition where an individual behaves in a manner contrary to their attitude with minimal external justification, causing them to justify the behavior internally by changing their preexisting attitude.

Insufficient Punishment

The use of a mild threat that provides inadequate external justification for refraining from a desired activity, leading individuals to devalue the activity itself.

Justification of Effort

The tendency for individuals who work hard or endure unpleasant experiences to attain a goal to evaluate that goal more favorably than those who attain it easily.

Justification of Cruelty

The psychological process whereby individuals who cause harm to others reduce cognitive dissonance by derogating, dehumanizing, or blaming their victims.

Psychology of Inevitability

The tendency for people to make the best of unavoidable unpleasant situations by evaluating them more positively, or by denying imminent danger when no solution exists.

Social Cognition

An area of social psychology focused on how people understand, store, and apply information about themselves, other individuals, and social situations.

Cognitive Misers

The concept that humans possess limited mental resources to think rationally and therefore employ shortcuts to maximize cognitive efficiency with minimal effort.

Negativity Bias

An evolved human cognitive bias where negative events, experiences, and information exert a more powerful psychological impact than positive ones.

Loss Aversion

A behavioral phenomenon wherein individuals are more strongly motivated to avoid potential losses than to acquire equivalent gains.

Automatic Processing

Unconscious, implicit mental operations that guide routine behaviors and well-learned associations quickly in response to sensory input.

Controlled Processing

Conscious, explicit mental operations that systematically process novel or complex inputs sequentially and require time, focus, and energy.

Social Pain

Feelings of rejection, humiliation, or social exclusion that activate brain areas identical to those associated with physical pain.

Social Identity Theory

Henri Tajfel's theory stating that group memberships shape individuals' sense of belonging and self-worth, leading to in-group favoritism and exaggerated differences with out-groups.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate the influence of personality or dispositional factors and underestimate situational or environmental influences when explaining the behavior of others.

Dispositional Attribution

An explanation of an individual's behavior based on internal personality traits, motives, or personal characteristics.

Situational Attribution

An explanation of behavior rooted in external environmental forces, social roles, or contextual circumstances.

Explanatory Style

A habitual optimistic or pessimistic pattern of explaining one's successes and failures that creates narratives affecting future performance.

Contrast Effect

A change in how an object, person, or quality is evaluated when perceived directly in comparison to a similar item.

Social Comparison

The process by which individuals evaluate their own abilities, opinions, and achievements through comparisons with other people.

Schema

A cognitive mental framework or model, encompassing stereotypes, expectations, categories, and mind-sets, used to organize and retrieve information.

Priming

The process by which subtle cues from recent environmental events activate specific schemas, coloring subsequent perceptions in predictable ways.

Primacy Effect

The phenomenon where information presented first exerts a greater impact on final social judgments and impressions than information presented later.

Representativeness Heuristic

A mental shortcut used to make judgments or draw inferences based on how closely an item or person matches surface similarities of a prototype.

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut used to predict the likelihood, frequency, or risk of an event based on how easily relevant examples come to mind.

Affect Heuristic

A mental shortcut where evaluations, judgments, and decisions are determined primarily by immediate emotional feelings.

Reconstructive Memory

The process of recalling past events where memories are continually altered, filtered, and rebuilt using present concepts, desires, and current knowledge.

Persuasion

A process in which communication from one person changes the opinions, attitudes, or behavior of another person.

Opinion

A cognitive judgment regarding what an individual believes to be factual or true.

Attitude

A durable belief or opinion that integrates both an emotional charge and an evaluative component.

Media Contagion

The rapid and widespread transmission of emotions, behaviors, or copycat actions through a crowd or population driven by pervasive news coverage.

Filter Bubble

A personalized ecosystem of information generated by social media algorithms that caters to an individual's preexisting views and captures their attention.

Central Route to Persuasion

A persuasion process that entails systematic, deliberate thinking, careful examination of arguments, and consideration of relevant facts and data.

Peripheral Route to Persuasion

A persuasion process involving minimal cognitive elaboration, where individuals are influenced by simple, superficial, or irrelevant cues like attractiveness or rhyme.

Moral Emotions

Emotions that carry normative judgments and tend to unite like-minded groups, inspire immediate action, and exert powerful persuasive influence.

Reactance Theory

Jack Brehm's theory stating that individuals attempt to reassert and restore their personal freedom when they perceive a blatant or coercive persuasive attempt.

Inoculation Effect

William McGuire's model positing that exposing people to a weak counterargument against their belief and enabling them to refute it builds resistance against subsequent, stronger attacks.