Social Psych Vocab

Attribution

Explaining the cause of behavior by blaming either a person's personality or the situation.

Dispositional attributions

Blaming a person's behavior entirely on their internal personality traits, character, or choices.

Situational attributions

Blaming a person's behavior on the external circumstances or environment they are currently in.

Explanatory style

A person's habitual, characteristic way of explaining the positive or negative events in their life.

Actor-Observer bias

The tendency to blame your own mistakes on the situation while blaming others' mistakes on their personality.

Fundamental attribution error

Overestimating personality and underestimating the situation when analyzing why someone else made a mistake.

Self-serving bias

Taking personal credit for your successes while completely blaming external circumstances for your failures.

Internal locus of control

Believing that your own personal choices, effort, and hard work entirely control your fate and success.

External locus of control

Believing that luck, fate, or outside forces control what happens to you rather than your own actions.

Mere exposure effect

Developing a preference or liking for something simply because you see or hear it repeatedly.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

An expectation or belief about someone that causes them to act in a way that makes the belief come true.

Social comparison

Evaluating your own abilities, opinions, and traits by comparing yourself directly to other people.

Relative deprivation

Feeling worse off, mistreated, or lacking something when you compare yourself to people who have more.

Stereotype

A generalized, oversimplified belief or assumption about a whole group of people.

Cognitive load

The total amount of mental effort and working memory being used by your brain at one time.

Prejudice

An unjustifiable, negative attitude, feeling, or assumption toward a specific group and its members.

Discrimination

An unjustifiable, negative behavior or action directed toward a specific group and its members.

Implicit attitudes

Automatic, unconscious feelings, evaluations, or stereotypes we hold toward specific groups without realizing it.

Just-world phenomenon

The belief that the world is inherently fair and that people always get exactly what they deserve.

Out-group homogeneity bias

The tendency to view an outside group as all identical while seeing your own group as diverse.

Ingroup bias

The tendency to favor, protect, and show preference to people who belong to your own group.

Ethnocentrism

Believing your own culture, country, or ethnic group is superior to all others.

Belief perseverance

Clinging to your initial beliefs even after they have been completely disproven by factual evidence.

Confirmation Bias

Only searching for and noticing information that proves you right while ignoring evidence that proves you wrong.

Cognitive Dissonance

The mental discomfort and tension you feel when your behavior does not match your internal beliefs.

Social norms

Unwritten, accepted, and expected rules about how people should behave within a group or society.

Social influence theory

The concept that other people can directly change or shape your behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.

Normative social influence

Changing your behavior just to fit in, gain social approval, and avoid being rejected by a group.

Informational social influence

Changing your behavior because you look to a group for guidance when you are confused or unsure what to do.

Persuasion

The process of changing someone's attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors using communication and arguments.

Central route persuasion

Changing someone's attitude by focusing purely on logic, facts, and the strength of the actual message.

Peripheral route persuasion

Changing someone's attitude using superficial cues like emotions, attractiveness, or celebrity endorsements.

Halo effect

A bias where your overall impression of someone causes you to assume they have other positive traits.

Foot-in-the-door technique

Getting someone to agree to a small request first to make them more likely to agree to a larger request later.

Door-in-the-face technique

Making a large, unreasonable request that gets rejected so that a smaller, actual request seems acceptable.

Conformity

Adjusting your behavior, thinking, or answers to match a group standard or social expectations.

Obedience

Changing your behavior or actions in response to a direct order or command from an authority figure.

Individualism

A cultural focus on prioritizing personal goals, independence, and personal identity over group expectations.

Collectivism

A cultural focus on prioritizing group goals, social harmony, and family or community needs over individual desires.

Multiculturalism

Valuing, respecting, and encouraging different cultural identities and traditions within a single society.

Group polarization

The tendency for a group's shared beliefs to become much stronger and more extreme after discussing them together.

Groupthink

Agreeing with a bad group decision just to keep the peace and avoid conflict within the team.

Diffusion of responsibility

Feeling less personally responsible to take action in an emergency because other bystanders are present.

Social Loafing

Putting less effort into a task when working in a group than when working completely alone.

Deindividuation

Losing your self-awareness and self-restraint when immersed anonymously inside a large crowd.

Social facilitation

Performing better on simple or well-learned tasks when an audience is watching you.

Prosocial behavior

Any positive action intended to help, benefit, or care for other people.

Altruism

Unselfish concern for the welfare of others, helping with absolutely no expectation of a reward.

Social responsibility norm

A societal expectation that people should step up and help those who are dependent or need assistance.

The bystander effect

The phenomenon where a person is less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present.