AP Psychology Unit 4A: Social Psychology

1. Attributions: How people explain behavior and mental processes of themselves and others. 2. Dispositional attributions: explaning someone's behavior in terms of factors internal to the person, such as traits or preferences. 3. Situational attributions: explaining someone's behavior in terms of factors external to the person, such as their environment. 4. Explanatory style: a person's habitual way of explaining events, typically assessed along three dimensions: internal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific. 5. Optimistic explanatory style: accounting for negative events or situations with external, unstable, and specific explanations. 6. Pessimistic explanatory style: accounting for negative events or situations with internal, stable, and global explanations. 7. Actor/observer bias: the tendency to blame our actions on the situation and blame the actions of others on their personalities. 8. Fundamental attribution error: the tendency for observers, when analyzing another's behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition. 9. Self-serving bias: The tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner. 10. Internal locus of control: belief that you have personal control over your own behavior—you have agency over your life and actions. 11. External locus of control: You believe that events outside of your control drive your actions and the outcomes you receive. Examples could include god, fate, or luck. 12. Mere exposure effect: Repeated exposure to a stimulus over time, causes an individual to like the stimulus more. 13. Self-fulfilling prophecy: An expectation or belief that can influence your behaviors, thus causing the belief to come true. 14. Social comparison: evaluating one's abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others. 15. Upward social comparison: When we compare ourselves with those who we believe are better than us. 16. Downward social comparison: When we compare ourselves with those who we believe are worse off than us. 17. Relative deprivation: The perception by an individual that the amount of a desired resource (e.g., money, social status) they have is less than some comparison standard. 18. Stereotype: Generalized concept about a group. It's an oversimplified belief. 19. Cognitive load: The amount of a person's cognitive resources needed to carry out a particular cognitive task. 20. Prejudice: A negative attitude toward another person or group formed in advance of any experience with that person or group. 21. Discrimination: The unjust and differential treatment of the members of different age, gender, racial, ethnic, religious, national, ability identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic, and other groups at the individual level. 22. Implicit attitudes: Attitudes that individuals hold but may not be aware of or may not acknowledge. 23. Just-world phenomenon: The idea that the world is a fair and orderly place where what happens to people generally is what they deserve. 24. Out-group homegeneity bias: The tendency to assume that the members of other groups are very similar to each other, particularly in contrast to the assumed diversity of the membership of one's own group. 25. In-group bias: The tendency to favor one's own group, its members, its characteristics, and its products, particularly in reference to other groups. 26. Ethnocentrism: The practice of regarding one's own ethnic, racial, or social group as the center of all things. 27. Belief perseverance: tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them. 28. Confirmation bias: a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence. 29. Cognitive dissonance: an unpleasant state that arises when a person recognizes the inconsistency of his or her actions, attitudes, or beliefs. 30. Social norms: How we define expectations and roles for a members of a society in different individual and social situations. 31. Social influence theory: a theory that talks about how people are more likely to do whatever they see as being the norm. People change their behavior according to those around them. 32. Normative social influence: Individuals who have internalized their group's norms will strive to act in ways that are consistent with those norms. i.e. we want to fit in with others. 33. Informational social influence: Individuals tend to assume that the judgements or opinions of the group are correct. i.e. we believe that the group knows more than we do. 34. Persuasion: the process of creating, reinforcing, or changing people's beliefs or actions. 35. Elaboration likelihood model: a theory of how persuasive messages lead to attitude changes. 36. Central route persuasion: occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts. 37. Peripheral route persuasion: occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker's attractiveness. 38. Halo effect: The tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, country, brand, or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings. 39. Foot-in-the-door technique: Once a person agrees to a small request, they are more likely to agree to a larger request later. 40. Door-in-the-face technique: The persuader makes a large request (knowing it will be turned down, so the person will then agree to a relatively smaller (more reasonable) request. 41. Conformity: Adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard. 42. Obedience: A form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct commands, usually from someone in a position of authority. 43. Individualism: giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications. 44. Collectivism: giving priority to the goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly. 45. Multiculturalism: Believe distinct identities and cultural groups should be acknowledged, preserved, and supported in society. 46. Group polarization: Occurs when a group of like-minded people reinforce each other's opinions, positive or negative, and these opinions become more extreme as they're discussed. 47. Groupthink: A phenomenon that occurs when a group of well-intentioned people makes irrational or non-optimal decisions spurred by the urge to conform or the belief that dissent is impossible. 48. Diffusion of responsibility: When in a group, people feel less personality responsibility to act. 49. Social loafing: Psychological phenomenon where people are less productive when they're working as a team. 50. Deindividuation: The perceived loss of individuality and personal responsibility that can occur when someone participates as part of a group. 51. Social facilitation: The theory that people perform better when in the presence of others, like a coworker or an audience, on well learned or easy tasks. 52. False consensus effect: The tendency to overestimate how much others agree with us. 53. Superordinate goals: A goal that can be attained only if the members of two or more groups work together by pooling their skills, efforts, and resources. 54. Social traps: Any kind of situation in which people perform actions that have immediate rewards but hold negative consequences in the long term. The tragedy of the commons is an example. 55. Industrial-organizational (I/O) psychology: The scientific study of human behavior in organizations and the workplace. 56. Burnout: A psychological response to work stress that is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced feelings of personal accomplishment. 57. Altruism: unselfish regard for the welfare of others. 58. Prosocial behavior: positive, constructive, helpful behavior; the opposite of antisocial behavior. 59. Social debt: When people don't follow social rules, they feel guilt (maybe subconsciously), and that feeling motivates them to take action to feel better. 60. Social reciprocity norm: A social rule that maintains people should return favors and other acts of kindness. 61. Social responsibility norm: A societal expectation that people should engage in positive social behavior to contribute to the welfare of their community as a whole. 62. Bystander effect: a psychological phenomenon in which people are less likely to take action when in the presence of a large group of people. 63. Situational variables: Environmental factors that impact whether or not a person will help another person. 64. Attentional variables: Factors related to someone's conscious awareness of what is happening that impact whether or not a person will help another person.