Social Psychology, Human Development, and Motivation

Social Psychology

The scientific study of other people's influence on human thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Bobo Doll Study

A landmark study by Albert Bandura in which children who observed an adult aggressively beating an inflatable clown doll imitated the violent behaviors without receiving any direct reward, punishment, or conditioning.

Conformity

The act of altering one's behavior to match the actions or expectations of other people.

Normative Influence

A reason for conformity where an individual goes along with the crowd in order to avoid looking foolish.

Informational Influence

A reason for conformity where an individual follows the behavior of a crowd because they assume the crowd possesses correct knowledge.

Asch Conformity Study

Research conducted in 1955 and 1956 demonstrating that participants would conform to a group consensus and give an obviously incorrect answer regarding line lengths, with the conformity effect becoming more powerful as group size increases.

Compliance

The tendency to agree to do something that is directly requested by someone else.

Low-balling

A compliance strategy where a person first agrees to a vague request, after which the terms are changed to make the commitment more expensive or time-consuming.

Foot-in-the-Door

A compliance technique where someone is persuaded to agree to a minor initial commitment, making them more likely to agree to subsequent, larger requests.

Door in the Face

A compliance technique where a requester begins by asking for an unreasonable, extreme commitment that will be refused, followed immediately by a smaller, reasonable request.

Stanley Milgram's Obedience Study

A 1960s study testing how far ordinary people would go in following authority figures' orders, showing that $70\%$ of participants administered electric shocks up to the fatal maximum of $450\,\text{Volts}$.

Bystander Effect

The phenomenon where individuals fail to offer assistance to a person in danger or distress when other observers are present.

Diffusion of Responsibility

A psychological factor underlying the bystander effect where each person assumes someone else will intervene, decreasing individual motivation to help as group size increases.

Deindividuation

A state of reduced self-awareness and reduced individuality that occurs when individuals become immersed in a crowd or group, leading to lowered responsibility and riskier behaviors.

Social Loafing

The tendency for people to exert less effort when working together in a group compared to when they are working individually, which can be mitigated when individual contributions are monitored.

Social Facilitation

The enhancement of an individual's productivity and performance in the presence of others when a task is easy, contrasted with impaired performance when a task is difficult.

Actor/Observer Discrepancy

The tendency to attribute one's own actions to situational circumstances while attributing other people's actions to their internal personalities.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The cognitive bias where an observer overemphasizes another person's internal personality traits and underestimates the impact of their external situation when explaining their behavior.

Mere Exposure Effect

The psychological phenomenon where repeated contact with an individual, idea, location, or object increases one's positive feelings toward it.

Matching Principle

The concept that individuals tend to form friendships and romantic partnerships with people who are physically similar, as well as similar in attitudes, interests, and personality.

Zimbardo Prison Experiment

A Stanford University study funded by the Navy where 24 psychologically healthy college students were randomly assigned as guards or prisoners, halted after only six days due to severe abuse and harassment.

Teratogen

Foreign substances, such as drugs, alcohol, bacteria, or viruses, that cross the placenta and adversely affect prenatal development in the embryo or fetus.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

A developmental disorder resulting from alcohol exposure during pregnancy, leading to permanent brain damage, cognitive defects, and behavioral impairments, with a U.S. prevalence of $0.2$ to $2.0$ per $1000$ births.

Grasping Reflex

An innate newborn reflex in which the hands and feet instinctively clench when touched.

Rooting Reflex

An automatic newborn reflex involving turning the head and sucking in response to contact with nipple-like surfaces.

Attachment

A strong, adaptive emotional bond between an infant and a caregiver that persists across time and changing circumstances.

Harlow Attachment Studies

A series of experiments by Harry Harlow demonstrating that infant Rhesus monkeys preferred the comfort of a cloth surrogate mother over a wire surrogate mother that provided milk, seeking the cloth mother when threatened.