Social thinking: involves thinking about others, especially when they engage in doing things that are unexpected

Attribution: giving credit to someone or something.

• Attribution theory: states that we have a tendency to give causal explanations for someone’s behavior, often by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition.

• Dispositional attribution: attributing someone’s behavior, thoughts, beliefs, etc. to the person’s traits and characteristics.  Ex. thinking someone is smart, lazy, etc.

• Situational attribution: attributing someone’s behavior, thought’s beliefs, etc. to environments factors outside of the person’s control.  Ex. it was the ref’s fault, the test was too hard, etc.

• Fundamental attribution error: the tendency to overemphasize dispositional factors and to underestimate situational factors when making attributions about the cause of another person's behavior.

• Just-world phenomenon: the tendency of people to believe the world is just, and people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

• Self-serving bias: taking credit for their successes while at the same time attributing their failures to external situations beyond their control.

• Self-fulfilling prophecy: having expectations about an individual that influence your behavior towards him or her, which in turn influences the way this person behaves towards you.

Attitudes: beliefs and feelings that guide behavior.

• Mere exposure effect (familiarity principle): people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them.

• Central route of persuasion: when people focus on factual info, logical arguments, and thoughtful analysis. Ex. buying a car and looking at the gas mileage, safety ratings, etc.

• Peripheral route of persuasion: when people focus on emotional appeals in incidental cues.  Ex. buying a car based on its color, sound system, etc.

• Foot-in-the-door: the persuasion strategy of getting a person to agree to a modest first request as a set-up for a later, much larger, request.

• Reciprocity: giving something to someone hoping you will get something back.

• Cognitive dissonance: the state of psychological tension, anxiety, and discomfort that occurs when a person’s attitude and behavior are inconsistent.  Most people modify attitudes to reduce the dissonance.

• Role playing: giving a person a specific role and having their attitude change based on the role they were given.  Ex. Zimbardo’s prison experiment.

Social influence: how attitudes, beliefs, decisions, and actions are molded by social influences.

• Chameleon effect: a person will unconsciously mimic or adopt behaviors, mannerisms, and actions of people or of an individual they are interacting with.

• Mood linkage: a person’s mood is based on the others of the group.

• Conformity: the tendency for people to adopt the behavior, attitudes, and beliefs of other members of a group.

• Normative Social Influence: influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid rejection. A person may respect normative behavior because there may be a severe price to pay if not respected.

• Informational Social Influence: occurs when one turns to the members of one's group to obtain accurate information. A person is most likely to use informational social influence in certain situations.

• Compliance: an act of conforming, especially in a weak and subservient way.  Usually someone asks you to conform.

• Obedience: obeying the direct orders of an authority or person of higher status.

• Individual resistance: one person can choose not to conform and can also have an effect on others.

Group influence: a type of conformity involving a person in a situation where they are unsure of the correct way to behave and will often look to others for cues concerning correct behavior.

• Norms: implicit or explicit rules that apply to all members of the group that govern acceptable behavior and attitudes.  Norms allow for smooth social interactions.  Violating these norms can be grounds for exclusion from the group.

• Roles: the position the person has in the group.  Leader?  Follower?  Helper?  These roles can be appointed or assumed.

• Social loafing: people making less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when they work alone, the “slackers”.

• Deindividuation: the losing of one’s self-awareness and personal responsibility that can occur when a person is part of a group whose members feel anonymous

• Social facilitation: the tendency for an individual’s performance to improve when simple or well-learned tasks are performed in the presence of others.

• Social impairment (inhibition): the tendency for an individual’s performance to decline when complex or poorly-learned tasks are performed in the presence of others.

• Group polarization: the tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members.  Ex. a group trying to plan prom but everyone has such elaborate ideas; no one can make a decision.

• Groupthink: phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an incorrect or deviant decision-making outcome.  Ex. Bay of Pigs, Congress and pork barrel spending.

• Minority influence: the minority of a group can have an effect on the group.  Ex. The juror in Twelve Angry Men.

Social Relations: how people relate to one another which doesn’t always have to be positive.

• Treatment of group members: we treat people in a group depending on how we perceive that person and the group.

• Prejudice: a learned prejudgment toward people solely based on their membership in a specific social group.  The prejudice can be positive or negative but most research focuses on the causes and consequences of negative prejudice.

• Discrimination: the differential treatment of others, usually negative.

• Ingroups: people with whom one shares a common identity. 

• Outgroups: those perceived as different from one’s in-group. 

• Ingroup Bias: the tendency to favor one’s own group.

• Stereotypes: generalized beliefs about a certain group, sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized. 

• Scapegoat theory: people look for someone to blame when things go wrong, usually fueled by prejudice.  Ex.  After 9/11, Americans lashing out at Arab-Americans, the US putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

• Ethnocentrism: the tendency to consider other cultures, customs, and values as inferior to one’s own.  

• Contact theory: lessening the tensions between two groups by putting them together on an equal playing field.  Usually the two groups have a goal to reach and they have to work together to reach that goal.

Altruism: putting your own welfare aside to help others.

• Social Exchange Theory: Our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs.

• Social–Responsibility Norm: Tells us to help others when they need us even though they may not repay us in kind.

• Social Trap: A situation in which a person acts to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole.

• Bystander effect: individuals are less likely to assist in an emergency situation when other people are present.  Ex. the murder of Kitty Genovese.

• Diffusion of responsibility: explains the bystander effect: people are less likely to take action or feel a sense of responsibility in the presence of a large group of people.  Ex. in the case of Kitty Genovese, people assumed others called the police.

• Reciprocity norm: people are more likely to help someone if they are going to get something out of it.

Aggression: behavior that is intended to cause harm.

• Instrumental aggression:  aggression that is caused by the satisfaction of obtaining a goal.  Ex. fighting in a store to get the “must have” Christmas present.

• Hostile aggression: results when a person feels pain, anger, or frustration.  Ex. road rage

• Frustration-aggression principle: a principle in which frustration (caused by the blocking of an attempt to achieve a desired goal) creates anger, which can generate aggression.

Attraction: being drawn to a person.

• Proximity: Geographic nearness is a powerful predictor of friendship. Repeated exposure to stimuli increases their attraction

• Physical Attractiveness: Once proximity affords contact the next most important thing in attraction is physical appearance.

• Similarity: Having similar views between individuals causes the bond of attraction to strengthen.

• Passionate Love: An aroused state of intense positive absorption in another usually present at the beginning of a love relationship.

• Companionate Love: Deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined.

• Equity: A condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it.

• Self-Disclosure: Revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others.

Conflict & Peacemaking: working with each other to overcome problems.

• Non-zero sum game: both group participants all gain or suffer together.

• Social trap: a term used by psychologists to describe a situation in which a group of people act to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole.

• Mirror-image perceptions: each side views itself as ethical and peaceful and views the other as evil and aggressive.

• Superordinate goals: shared goals that override differences among people that cannot be achieved without a joint effort.

• Conciliation (GRIT): a bargaining strategy used by both sides to help maintain the peace.  GRIT stands for Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension reduction.  Researchers have found that reciprocal conciliatory acts can begin the process of reducing tensions between hostile groups.

Key People

Fritz Heider: proposed the Attribution Theory.

Philip Zimbardo:  studied role playing through the Stanford prison experiment.

Solomon Asch: ran the conformity experiment involving people.

Stanley Milgram: ran the obedience experiment with the “teachers” and the “learners” in which the “learners” were “shocked” every time they gave a wrong answer.  2/3 of the “teachers” shocked people to a death level.  

Kitty Genovese: the woman who kept calling for help as she was being stabbed and no one would help her.  Her murder focused public attention on the reasons why bystanders failed to come to her rescue.