BSci Terms

Foot In The Door Phenomenon

A psychological phenomenon where people are more likely to agree to a larger request after they have already agreed to a small request. This technique is often used in persuasion and compliance strategies.

Cognitive Dissonance

The mental discomfort experienced when holding two or more contradictory beliefs or values. This often leads individuals to change their attitudes or behaviors to reduce the dissonance.

Role Playing

The acting out of a particular role or scenario to better understand behaviors or to practice skills. Role playing is often used in therapy, training, and educational settings to enhance learning and empathy.

Informational Social Influence

A type of social influence that occurs when individuals conform to others' beliefs or behaviors because they assume those others possess accurate information, especially in uncertain situations.

Normative Social Influence

A type of social influence that leads individuals to conform in order to be accepted or liked by a group, often resulting in public compliance without private acceptance.

Milgram Experiment

A series of psychological experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s to study obedience to authority, where participants were instructed to administer electric shocks to another person. Individual conducting the shocks experienced cognitive dissonance.

Social Facilitation

Improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others.

Social Loafing

Tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable.

Deindividuation

The loss of self-awareness and self-restrain occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.

Group Polarization

The beliefs and attitudes we bring to a group grow stronger when we discuss them with like-minded others.

Groupthink

When desire for harmony in decision making overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.

Microaggression

A subtle, often unintentional, comment or behavior that expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a marginalized group.

Just-World Phenomenon

A cognitive bias where people believe that the world is inherently fair and that individuals get what they deserve.

Ingroup Bias

The tendency for people to favor and give preferential treatment to members of their own group over those in an outgroup.

Scapegoat Theory

A theory that proposes when things go south, finding a group or person to blame can provide a target for negative emotions.

Other-Race Effect

A psychological phenomenon where people are generally better at recognizing and remembering faces of their own race compared to faces of other races.

Mere Exposure Effect

A psychological phenomenon where people tend to develop a preference for things simply because they are familiar with them.

Social Responsibility Norm

A principle in social psychology that suggests individuals have a moral obligation to help others who are dependent on them or in need, without expecting anything in return.

Bystander Effect

A social psychological theory that explains why individuals are less likely to help a person in need when other people are present.

Equity

The idea of fairness in the distribution of resources, responsibilities, and outcomes among individuals or groups.

Social Exchange Theory

A psychological and sociological framework that explains human relationships in terms of costs and benefits.

Reciprocity Norm

A social rule that suggests people should return favors or acts of kindness that others have done for them.

Diffusion of Responsibility

A psychological phenomenon where individuals feel less personal responsibility to take action when others are present.

Fundamental Attribution Error

A common cognitive bias in social psychology where people tend to overemphasize personality traits and underemphasize situational factors when explaining others' behavior.

Altruism

Unselfish concern for others welfare, often involving personal sacrifice.

Mirror Image Perceptions

A psychological phenomenon where two opposing sides in a conflict view each other in similar but opposite ways.

Social Traps

Situations in which individuals or groups act in ways that are immediately rewarding but ultimately harmful to themselves or others in the long run.

Observational Learning

A type of learning that occurs by watching others and imitating their behavior.

Associative Learning

A fundamental type of learning in which an individual forms a connection between two stimuli or between a behavior and a consequence.

Respondent Behavior

Involuntary, automatic responses to specific stimuli.

Shaping

A behavioral technique used in operant conditioning where successive approximations of a desired behavior are reinforced until the target behavior is achieved.

Cognitive Learning

A type of learning that involves active engagement of mental processes such as thinking, memory, problem-solving, and attention.

Classical Conditioning

A type of associative learning where a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a meaningful stimulus, eventually triggering a similar response

Operant Conditioning

A type of learning where behavior is influenced by its consequences.

Conditioned Stimulus

A previously neutral stimulus that, after being repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US), begins to trigger a conditioned response (CR) on its own.

Unconditioned Stimulus

A stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response without any prior learning.

Conditioned Response

A learned reaction to a conditioned stimulus (CS) that occurs after the CS has been repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US).

Unconditioned Response

An automatic, natural reaction to an unconditioned stimulus (US)—it occurs without any prior learning.

Instinct

An inborn, fixed pattern of behavior that is biologically hardwired and typically emerges in response to specific stimuli.

Central Route Persuasion

A method of persuasion that relies on logical reasoning, critical thinking, and the quality of arguments to influence attitudes and behavior.

Peripheral Route Persuasion

Relies on logic and critical thinking, the peripheral route influences people through superficial cues rather than the strength of the message itself.

Dispositional Attribution

Refers to the tendency to explain someone’s behavior by attributing it to their internal characteristics, such as personality, motives, or attitudes, rather than to external or situational factors.

Situational Attribution

The process of explaining someone’s behavior by pointing to external factors—things in the environment or context—rather than internal traits or personality.

Personal Attribution

Same as dispositional attribution.

Heuristic

A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that people use to make decisions or solve problems quickly and efficiently.

Insight

A sudden realization or understanding of how to solve a problem or grasp a concept.

Algorithm

A step-by-step set of instructions or rules designed to perform a specific task or solve a particular problem.

Fixation

A persistent focus on a specific idea, object, or behavior, often to the point where it interferes with problem-solving or emotional development.

Confirmation Bias

A cognitive bias where people tend to seek out, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms their preexisting beliefs or expectations, while ignoring or dismissing evidence that contradicts them.

Belief Perseverance

A cognitive bias where people cling to their initial beliefs even after those beliefs have been discredited or contradicted by new evidence.

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut where people judge the likelihood or frequency of an event based on how easily examples come to mind.

Framing

The way information is presented or structured, which can significantly influence how people perceive, interpret, and respond to it—even if the underlying facts remain the same.

Functional Fixedness

A type of cognitive bias that limits a person’s ability to use an object or concept in a way that’s different from its traditional or intended use.

Source Amnesia

A memory phenomenon where a person can remember information but forgets where or how they learned it.

Spacing Effect

A cognitive phenomenon where learning is more effective when study sessions are spaced out over time, rather than crammed into one session (known as massed practice).

Misinformation Effect

A memory phenomenon where a person's recollection of an event becomes less accurate due to post-event information, especially if that information is misleading.

Deja Vu

The strange and brief feeling that you've experienced a situation before, even though it's happening for the first time.

Repression

A defense mechanism in which an individual unconsciously pushes threatening thoughts, memories, or desires out of conscious awareness. These repressed elements may influence behavior indirectly.

Encoding Failure

Occurs when information is not effectively processed into memory in the first place.

Proactive Interference

A memory phenomenon where older information interferes with the ability to learn or recall new information.

Retroactive Interference

Occurs when new information interferes with the ability to recall older information. It’s the opposite of proactive interference.

Anterograde Amnesia

A condition where a person cannot form new memories after the onset of the amnesia.

Retrograde Amnesia

A condition where a person loses memories of events that occurred before the onset of the amnesia.

Consolidation

The process by which short-term memories are stabilized and transformed into long-term memories.

Retrieval

The process of accessing and bringing stored information from memory into conscious awareness.

Reconstruction

The process of rebuilding a memory during retrieval, often by filling in gaps with general knowledge, expectations, or other memories.

Reconsolidation

The process by which previously stored memories are recalled and then modified or updated before being stored again.

Iconic Memory

A type of sensory memory that holds visual information for a very brief period—typically less than one second.

Sensory Memory

The initial stage of memory that briefly holds information from the senses (sight, sound, touch, etc.) for a very short duration—typically less than a second.

Automatic Processing

Refers to the unconscious encoding of information such as space, time, frequency, and well-learned material (like word meanings).

Effortful Processing

The active and conscious encoding of information that requires attention and deliberate effort.

Spacing Effect

The psychological phenomenon where information is better retained when learning is spread out over time (spaced) rather than crammed into a single session (massed practice).

Chunking

A memory strategy that involves grouping individual pieces of information into larger, more meaningful units (or "chunks") to make them easier to remember.

Testing Effect

The psychological phenomenon where retrieving information through testing improves long-term memory retention more effectively than simply re-studying the material.

Mnemonics

Memory aids or strategies that help encode, store, and retrieve information more easily, often by linking new information to familiar concepts, patterns, or imagery.

Implicit Memory

A type of long-term memory that influences thoughts and behaviors without conscious awareness.