Unit 4 - Social Psychology and Personality Notes

Unit 4 - Social Psychology and Personality

Dispositional Attribution

  • Definition: Attributing behavior to the person's personality rather than situational factors.

Situational Attribution

  • Definition: Attributing behaviors to factors external to an actor, such as the task, other people, or luck.

Explanatory Style

  • Definition: One's habitual way of explaining life events.

    • Optimistic Explanatory Style:

    • Definition: Tendency to explain unfavorable events with attributions that are unstable, temporary, and controllable.

    • Pessimistic Explanatory Style:

    • Definition: Tendency to interpret and explain negative events as internally based and as a constant, stable quality.

Actor/Observer Bias

  • Definition: The tendency to blame our actions on the situation and blame the actions of others on their personalities.

Fundamental Attribution Error

  • Definition: The tendency for observers, when analyzing another's behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.

Self-Serving Bias

  • Definition: The tendency to perceive oneself favorably.

Locus of Control

  • Internal Locus of Control:

    • Definition: The perception that you control your own fate.

  • External Locus of Control:

    • Definition: The perception that chance or outside forces beyond your control determine your fate.

Mere Exposure Effect

  • Definition: The phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases the liking of them.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

  • Definition: An expectation that causes you to act in ways that make that expectation come true.

Social Comparison

  • Upward Social Comparison:

    • Definition: Comparing ourselves to people who are better than we are with regard to a particular trait or ability.

  • Downward Social Comparison:

    • Definition: Comparing ourselves to people who are worse than we are with regard to a particular trait or ability.

Relative Deprivation

  • Definition: The perception that one is worse off than those with whom one compares oneself.

Stereotype

  • Definition: A generalized belief about a group of people.

Cognitive Load

  • Definition: The amount of a person's mental resources needed to carry out a particular task.

Prejudice

  • Definition: An unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members.

Discrimination

  • Definition: Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members.

Implicit Attitudes

  • Definition: Attitudes that influence a person's feelings and behavior at an unconscious level.

Just-World Phenomenon

  • Definition: The tendency for people to believe the world is fair and that people therefore get what they deserve.

Out-group Homogeneity Effect

  • Definition: The tendency to see members of out-groups as very similar to one another.

In-Group Bias

  • Definition: Tendency to favor individuals within our group over those from outside our group.

Ethnocentrism

  • Definition: Belief in the superiority of one's ethnic group.

Belief Perseverance

  • Definition: Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

Confirmation Bias

  • Definition: A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.

Cognitive Dissonance

  • Definition: An unpleasant state that arises when a person recognizes the inconsistency of his or her actions, attitudes, or beliefs.

Social Norms

  • Definition: A group's expectations regarding what is appropriate and acceptable for its members' attitudes and behaviors.

Social Influence Theory

Normative Social Influence

  • Definition: Influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval.

Informational Social Influence

  • Definition: The influence of other people that results from taking their comments or actions as a source of information about what is correct, proper, or effective.

Persuasion

  • Definition: The process of creating, reinforcing, or changing people's beliefs or actions.

Groupthink

  • Definition: The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.

Diffusion of Responsibility

  • Definition: Reduction in feelings of personal responsibility in the presence of others.

Social Loafing

  • Definition: The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable.

Deindividuation

  • Definition: The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.

Social Facilitation

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

False Consensus Effect

  • Definition: The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors.

Superordinate Goals

  • Definition: Shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

  • Definition: A theory of how persuasive messages lead to attitude changes.

    • Central Route Persuasion:

    • Definition: Attitude change path in which interested people focus on arguments and facts.

    • Peripheral Route Persuasion:

    • Definition: Attitude change path in which people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker's attractiveness.

Halo Effect

  • Definition: The tendency to draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic.

Foot-in-the-Door Technique

  • Definition: Persuasive technique involving making a small request before incrementally increasing later requests.

Door-in-the-Face Technique

  • Definition: Persuasive technique involving making an unreasonably large request before making the small request we're hoping to have granted.

Social Trap

  • Definition: A situation in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing their self-interest, become caught in mutually destructive behavior.

Industrial-Organizational Psychology

  • Definition: The application of psychological concepts and methods to optimizing human behavior in workplaces.

Burnout

  • Definition: A state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion created by long-term involvement in an emotionally demanding situation.

Altruism

  • Definition: Unselfish regard for the welfare of others.

Prosocial Behavior

  • Definition: Positive, constructive, helpful behavior.

Social Debt

  • Definition: An emotional state that builds up guilt from negative social interactions.

Conformity

  • Definition: Adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.

Obedience

  • Definition: Changing one's behavior at the command of an authority figure.

Individualism

  • Definition: Giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity accordingly.

Collectivism

  • Definition: Giving priority to the goals of one's group and defining one's identity accordingly.

Multiculturalism

  • Definition: The practice of valuing and respecting differences in culture.

Group Polarization

  • Definition: Tendency of group members to move to an extreme position after discussing an issue as a group.

Social Reciprocity Norm

  • Definition: An expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them.

Social Responsibility Norm

  • Definition: An expectation that people will help those dependent upon them.

Bystander Effect

  • Definition: The finding that a person is less likely to provide help when there are other people nearby.

Situational Variables

  • Definition: Features of an environment that affect the degree to which individuals yield to group pressures.

Attentional Variables

  • Definition: A factor that directly influences where someone focuses their attention.

Psychodynamic Theory

  • Definition: A theory of behavior that emphasizes internal conflicts, motives, and unconscious forces and their influence on behavior.