Social and Cognitive Psychology

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency for people to overemphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations.

Social Psychology

Psychology that studies the effects of social variables and cognitions on individual behavior and social interaction.

Social Context

How someone reacts to something depending on their immediate social environment.

Situationism

view that says environmental conditions influence people's behavior as much or more than their personal disposition does

Dispositionism

view that says internal factors (genes, traits, character qualities) influence our behavior more than the situation we are in

Social Roles

One of several socially defined patterns of behavior that are expected of persons in a given setting or group.

Social Norms

The unwritten rules of behavior that are considered acceptable in a group or society.

Conformity

The tendency for people to adapt their behaviors, attitudes, and opinions to fit the actions of other members of a group.

Asch effect

A form of conformity in which a group majority influences individual judgments.

Social Reality

An individual's subjective interpretation of other people and of relationships with them.

Reward Theory of Attraction

The theory that says we like those who give us maximum rewards or benefit at minimum costs.

Cognitive Dissonance

A highly motivating state in which people have conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes resulting in psychological discomfort.

Self Serving BIas

The tendency for people to attribute their successes to internal factors and their failures to external factors.

Encoding

the process in which you move information—the raw material, the "stuff" that you will remember—into your memory system.

Serial Position effect

The tendency to recall the first and last items on the list more easily.

Storage

The retention of information, the very core of memory.

Sensory Memory

the brief, initial encoding of sensory information in the memory system.

Short-Term Memory

Part of your memory system that contains information you are consciously aware of before it is either stored more permanently or forgotten.

Long Term Memory

The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. It can hold memories without conscious effort.

Retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage.

Recall

the type of retrieval we usually think of as "memory"— searching for information that was previously stored.

Recognition

a type of retrieval in which you must identify items you previously learned.

Context

the environment in which you encode or retrieve information.

Cognition

the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses

Memory

a system that encodes, stores and retrieves information

Interference

a retrieval problem that occurs when one memory gets in the way of another.