Social Psychology
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Attributions: How people explain behavior and mental processes of themselves and others.
Dispositional attributions: Explaining someone's behavior in terms of factors internal to the person, such as traits or preferences.
Situational attributions: Explaining someone's behavior in terms of factors external to the person, such as their environment.
Explanatory style: A person's habitual way of explaining events, typically assessed along three dimensions: internal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific.
Optimistic explanatory style: Accounting for negative events or situations with external, unstable, and specific explanations.
Pessimistic explanatory style: Accounting for negative events or situations with internal, stable, and global explanations.
Actor/observer bias: The tendency to blame our actions on the situation and blame the actions of others on their personalities.
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.
Self-serving bias: The tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner.
Internal locus of control: Belief that you have personal control over your own behavior—you have agency over your life and actions.
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.
Mere exposure effect: Repeated exposure to a stimulus over time causes an individual to like the stimulus more.
Self-fulfilling prophecy: An expectation or belief that can influence your behaviors, thus causing the belief to come true.
Social comparison: Evaluating one's abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others.
Upward social comparison: When we compare ourselves with those who we believe are better than us.
Downward social comparison: When we compare ourselves with those who we believe are worse off than us.
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.
Stereotype: A generalized concept about a group. It's an oversimplified belief.
Cognitive load: The amount of a person's cognitive resources needed to carry out a particular cognitive task.
Prejudice: A negative attitude toward another person or group formed in advance of any experience with that person or group.
Discrimination: The unjust and differential treatment of members of different age, gender, racial, ethnic, religious, national, ability identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic, and other groups at the individual level.
Implicit attitudes: Attitudes that individuals hold but may not be aware of or may not acknowledge.
Just-world phenomenon: The idea that the world is a fair and orderly place where what happens to people is generally what they deserve.
In-group bias: The tendency to favor one's own group, its members, its characteristics, and its products, particularly in reference to other groups.
Ethnocentrism: The practice of regarding one's own ethnic, racial, or social group as the center of all things.
Belief perseverance: The tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them.
Confirmation bias: A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.
Cognitive dissonance: An unpleasant state that arises when a person recognizes the inconsistency of his or her actions, attitudes, or beliefs.
Social norms: How we define expectations and roles for members of a society in different individual and social situations.
Social influence theory: A theory that discusses how people are more likely to do whatever they see as being the norm. People change their behavior according to those around them.
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.
Informational social influence: Individuals tend to assume that the judgments or opinions of the group are correct; i.e., we believe that the group knows more than we do.
Persuasion: The process of creating, reinforcing, or changing people's beliefs or actions.
Elaboration likelihood model: A theory of how persuasive messages lead to attitude changes.
Central route persuasion: Occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.
Peripheral route persuasion: Occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker's attractiveness.
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 about them in other areas.
Foot-in-the-door technique: Once a person agrees to a small request, they are more likely to agree to a larger request later.
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.
Conformity: Adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.
Obedience: A form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct commands, usually from someone in a position of authority.
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.
Collectivism: Giving priority to the goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly.
Multiculturalism: The belief that distinct identities and cultural groups should be acknowledged, preserved, and supported in society.
Group polarization: Occurs when a group of like-minded people reinforce each other's opinions, positive or negative, leading to more extreme opinions.
Groupthink: A phenomenon that occurs when a group of well-intentioned individuals makes irrational or non-optimal decisions spurred by the urge to conform or the belief that dissent is impossible.
Diffusion of responsibility: When in a group, people feel less personal responsibility to act.
Social loafing: A psychological phenomenon where people are less productive when working in a team.
Deindividuation: The perceived loss of individuality and personal responsibility that can occur when someone participates as part of a group.
Social facilitation: The theory that people perform better in the presence of others on well learned or easy tasks.
False consensus effect: The tendency to overestimate how much others agree with us.
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.
Social traps: Any kind of situation in which people perform actions that have immediate rewards but hold negative consequences in the long term; an example is the tragedy of the commons.
Industrial-organizational (I/O) psychology: The scientific study of human behavior in organizations and the workplace.
Burnout: A psychological response to work stress characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced feelings of personal accomplishment.
Altruism: Unselfish regard for the welfare of others.
Prosocial behavior: Positive, constructive, helpful behavior; the opposite of antisocial behavior.
Social debt: When people don't follow social rules, they feel guilt (maybe subconsciously), which motivates them to take action to feel better.
Social reciprocity norm: A social rule that maintains that people should return favors and other acts of kindness.
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.
Bystander effect: A psychological phenomenon in which people are less likely to take action when in the presence of a large group of people.
Situational variables: Environmental factors that impact whether or not a person will help another person.
Attentional variables: Factors related to someone's conscious awareness that impact whether or not a person will help another