Social Psychology Core Concepts Flashcards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key social psychology topics including persuasion, conformity, attitude formation, social judgments, and the social self across five source lectures.

Persuasion

The process by which a message induces changes in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.

Central Route to Persuasion

A route to persuasion that occurs when people are motivated and able to think about an issue, focusing deeply on cogent arguments to produce enduring behavior change.

Peripheral Route to Persuasion

A route to persuasion that occurs when people focus on incidental cues that trigger automatic acceptance without much thinking, often leading to temporary attitude change.

Sleeper Effect

A delayed impact of a message that occurs when an initially discounted message becomes effective, as we remember the message but forget the reason for discounting it.

Primacy Effect

The principle that, other things being equal, information presented first usually has the most influence.

Recency Effect

The principle that information presented last sometimes has the most influence, though recency effects are less common than primacy effects.

Two-Step Flow of Communication

The process by which media influence often occurs through opinion leaders, who in turn influence others.

Need for Cognition

The motivation to think and analyze social information.

Cult

A group typically characterized by distinctive rituals and beliefs related to its devotion to a god or a person, isolation from the surrounding culture, and a charismatic leader.

Social Implosion

The process where a group separates its members from previous social support systems and isolates them, leading to internal collapse or total dependence.

Attitude Inoculation

Exposing people to weak attacks upon their attitudes so that when stronger attacks come, they will have refutations available to defend their beliefs.

Gullibility

The tendency to believe others too easily and accept claims without sufficient evidence.

Cynicism

A general belief that people are often selfish, dishonest, or motivated by self-interest rather than good intentions.

Conformity

A change in behavior or belief as the result of real or imagined group pressure.

Compliance

A type of conformity that involves publicly acting in accord with an implied or explicit request while privately disagreeing.

Obedience

A type of conformity that involves acting in accord with a direct order or command.

Acceptance

Conformity that involves both acting and believing in accord with social pressure.

Cohesiveness

A "we feeling" representing the extent to which members of a group are bound together, such as by attraction for one another.

Normative Influence

Conformity based on a person's desire to fulfill others' expectations, often to gain acceptance and be liked.

Informational Influence

Conformity occurring when people accept evidence about reality provided by other people out of a desire to be right.

Reactance

A motive to protect or restore one's sense of freedom that arises when someone threatens their freedom of action.

Attitude

A favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something or someone, often rooted in beliefs and exhibited in feelings (Affect), behaviors (Behavior), and thoughts (Cognition).

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

A computer-driven assessment of implicit attitudes that uses reaction times to measure automatic associations between attitude objects and evaluative words.

Principle of Aggregation

The concept that an attitude predicts an individual's average or repeated pattern of behavior over time far better than a single isolated action.

Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon

The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.

Low-ball Technique

A persuasion tactic where an individual is induced to agree to an initial deal, after which the requester increases the cost or makes the deal less attractive.

Self-Presentation Theory

The theory suggesting that we express attitudes that make us appear consistent and present ourselves in a favorable way to make a good impression.

Cognitive Dissonance

The mental discomfort or tension felt when two thoughts, beliefs, or actions are inconsistent with each other.

Self-Perception Theory

The theory that when our attitudes are weak or unclear, we observe our own freely chosen behavior to infer our internal feelings and beliefs.

Overjustification Effect

The result of offering unnecessary rewards to get people to do what they already enjoy doing, leading them to attribute their behavior to the external reward rather than intrinsic interest.

System 1

The intuitive, automatic, unconscious, and fast way of thinking.

System 2

The deliberate, controlled, conscious, and slower way of thinking.

Priming

The awakening or activating of specific associations in memory, which influences how new information is processed.

Belief Perseverance

The tendency to continue believing something even after the initial evidence supporting it has been completely disproven.

Attribution

The process by which individuals explain the causes of behavior, attributing it either to internal personal traits or external situational factors.

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

The tendency to overestimate personal dispositional factors and underestimate situational factors when explaining other people's behavior.

Heuristics

Thinking strategies that enable quick and efficient mental judgments.

Self-Concept

The sum total of an individual's thoughts and beliefs about themselves that answers the question "Who am I?".

Self-Esteem

An overall sense of self-worth used to appraise personal traits and abilities.

Social Comparison Theory

Leon Festinger's 1954 theory stating that people evaluate their own abilities, achievements, and opinions by comparing themselves with others.

Looking-Glass Self

Charles Cooley's concept that individuals partly form their self-concept through how they perceive others view them.

Spotlight Effect

The tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people notice and evaluate our appearance, mistakes, and actions.

Illusion of Transparency

The illusion that our concealed internal emotions, anxiety, or nervousness can easily be detected by others.

Sociometer Theory

Mark Leary's theory that self-esteem functions like a gauge monitoring social acceptance and alerting us to potential social rejection.

Dark Triad

A group of three negative personality traits—Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy—characterized by self-focus, manipulation, and lack of empathy.

Machiavellianism

A personality trait marked by manipulativeness, deceitfulness, cynical views, high self-interest, and treating others as means to an end.

Self-Efficacy

Albert Bandura's concept defining a person's belief in their capability to successfully perform a specific task or achieve a goal.

Locus of Control

Julian Rotter's concept regarding whether people believe outcomes in their lives are determined by their own internal actions or by external forces.

Learned Helplessness

Martin Seligman's term for the passive hopelessness learned when human or animal subjects perceive no control over repeated uncontrollable bad events.

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency to perceive oneself favorably by taking credit for personal successes while blaming external factors for failure.

Better-Than-Average Effect

A form of self-serving bias wherein individuals evaluate themselves as superior to the average person in subjective and desirable traits.

Self-Handicapping

Creating obstacles or excuses prior to a task so that potential failure can be blamed on external factors rather than lack of ability.

Self-Monitoring

The ability to observe and adjust one's behavior in response to external social situations and context.