psy235 final vocab

Attitude

A way of thinking or feeling about a target that is often reflected in a person’s behavior. Examples of attitude targets are individuals, concepts, and groups.

Attraction

The psychological process of being sexually interested in another person. This can include, for example, physical attraction, first impressions, and dating rituals.

Blind to the research hypothesis

When participants in research are not aware of what is being studied.

Conformity

Changing one’s attitude or behavior to match a perceived social norm.

Culture of honor

A culture in which personal or family reputation is especially important.

Discrimination

Discrimination is behavior that advantages or disadvantages people merely based on their group membership.

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to emphasize another person’s personality traits when describing that person’s motives and behaviors and overlooking the influence of situational factors.

Hypothesis

A possible explanation that can be tested through research.

Levels of analysis

Complementary views for analyzing and understanding a phenomenon.

Need to belong

A strong natural impulse in humans to form social connections and to be accepted by others.

Obedience

Responding to an order or command from a person in a position of authority.

Observational learning

Learning by observing the behavior of others.

Prejudice

An evaluation or emotion toward people based merely on their group membership.

Reciprocity

The act of exchanging goods or services. By giving a person a gift, the principle of reciprocity can be used to influence others; they then feel obligated to give back.

Research confederate

A person working with a researcher, posing as a research participant or as a bystander.

Research participant

A person being studied as part of a research program.

Social attribution

The way a person explains the motives or behaviors of others.

Social cognition

The way people process and apply information about others.

Social influence

When one person causes a change in attitude or behavior in another person, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Social psychology

The branch of psychological science that is mainly concerned with understanding how the presence of others affects our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Stereotyping

A mental process of using information shortcuts about a group to effectively navigate social situations or make decisions.

Stigmatized group

A group that suffers from social disapproval based on some characteristic that sets them apart from the majority.

Anecdotal evidence

An argument that is based on personal experience and not considered reliable or representative.

Archival research

A type of research in which the researcher analyses records or archives instead of collecting data from live human participants.

Basking in reflected glory

The tendency for people to associate themselves with successful people or groups.

Big data

The analysis of large data sets.

​Complex experimental designs

An experiment with two or more independent variables.

Confederate

An actor working with the researcher. Most often, this individual is used to deceive unsuspecting research participants. Also known as a “stooge.”

Correlational research

A type of descriptive research that involves measuring the association between two variables, or how they go together.

Cover story

A fake description of the purpose and/or procedure of a study, used when deception is necessary in order to answer a research question.

Demand characteristics

Subtle cues that make participants aware of what the experimenter expects to find or how participants are expected to behave.

Dependent variable

The variable the researcher measures but does not manipulate in an experiment.

Ecological validity

The degree to which a study finding has been obtained under conditions that are typical for what happens in everyday life.

Electronically activated recorder (EAR)

A methodology where participants wear a small, portable audio recorder that intermittently records snippets of ambient sounds around them.

Experience sampling methods

Systematic ways of having participants provide samples of their ongoing behavior. Participants' reports are dependent (contingent) upon either a signal, pre-established intervals, or the occurrence of some event.

Field experiment

An experiment that occurs outside of the lab and in a real world situation.

​Hypothesis

A logical idea that can be tested.

Implicit association test (IAT)

A computer-based categorization task that measures the strength of association between specific concepts over several trials.

Independent variable

The variable the researcher manipulates and controls in an experiment.

Laboratory environments

A setting in which the researcher can carefully control situations and manipulate variables.

Manipulation check

A measure used to determine whether or not the manipulation of the independent variable has had its intended effect on the participants.

Naturalistic observation

Unobtrusively watching people as they go about the business of living their lives.

Operationalize

How researchers specifically measure a concept.

Participant variable

The individual characteristics of research subjects - age, personality, health, intelligence, etc.

Priming

The process by which exposing people to one stimulus makes certain thoughts, feelings or behaviors more salient.

Random assignment

Assigning participants to receive different conditions of an experiment by chance.

Samples of convenience

Participants that have been recruited in a manner that prioritizes convenience over representativeness.

Scientific method

A method of investigation that includes systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.

Social facilitation

When performance on simple or well-rehearsed tasks is enhanced when we are in the presence of others.

Social neuroscience

An interdisciplinary field concerned with identifying the neural processes underlying social behavior and cognition.

Social or behavioral priming

A field of research that investigates how the activation of one social concept in memory can elicit changes in behavior, physiology, or self-reports of a related social concept without conscious awareness.

Survey research

A method of research that involves administering a questionnaire to respondents in person, by telephone, through the mail, or over the internet.

Terror management theory (TMT)

A theory that proposes that humans manage the anxiety that stems from the inevitability of death by embracing frameworks of meaning such as cultural values and beliefs.

WEIRD cultures

Cultures that are western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic.

Ambulatory assessment

An overarching term to describe methodologies that assess the behavior, physiology, experience, and environments of humans in naturalistic settings.

Daily Diary method

A methodology where participants complete a questionnaire about their thoughts, feelings, and behavior of the day at the end of the day.

Day reconstruction method (DRM)

A methodology where participants describe their experiences and behavior of a given day retrospectively upon a systematic reconstruction on the following day.

Ecological momentary assessment

An overarching term to describe methodologies that repeatedly sample participants’ real-world experiences, behavior, and physiology in real time.

Ecological validity

The degree to which a study finding has been obtained under conditions that are typical for what happens in everyday life.

Electronically activated recorder, or EAR

A methodology where participants wear a small, portable audio recorder that intermittently records snippets of ambient sounds around them.

Experience-sampling method

A methodology where participants report on their momentary thoughts, feelings, and behaviors at different points in time over the course of a day.

External validity

The degree to which a finding generalizes from the specific sample and context of a study to some larger population and broader settings.

Full-cycle psychology

A scientific approach whereby researchers start with an observational field study to identify an effect in the real world, follow up with laboratory experimentation to verify the effect and isolate the causal mechanisms, and return to field research to corroborate their experimental findings.

Generalize

Generalizing, in science, refers to the ability to arrive at broad conclusions based on a smaller sample of observations. For these conclusions to be true the sample should accurately represent the larger population from which it is drawn.

Internal validity

The degree to which a cause-effect relationship between two variables has been unambiguously established.

Linguistic inquiry and word count

A quantitative text analysis methodology that automatically extracts grammatical and psychological information from a text by counting word frequencies.

Lived day analysis

A methodology where a research team follows an individual around with a video camera to objectively document a person’s daily life as it is lived.

White coat hypertension

A phenomenon in which patients exhibit elevated blood pressure in the hospital or doctor’s office but not in their everyday lives.

Adaptations

Evolved solutions to problems that historically contributed to reproductive success.

Error management theory (EMT)

A theory of selection under conditions of uncertainty in which recurrent cost asymmetries of judgment or inference favor the evolution of adaptive cognitive biases that function to minimize the more costly errors.

Evolution

Change over time. Is the definition changing?

Gene Selection Theory

The modern theory of evolution by selection by which differential gene replication is the defining process of evolutionary change.

Intersexual selection

A process of sexual selection by which evolution (change) occurs as a consequences of the mate preferences of one sex exerting selection pressure on members of the opposite sex.

Intrasexual competition

A process of sexual selection by which members of one sex compete with each other, and the victors gain preferential mating access to members of the opposite sex.

Natural selection

Differential reproductive success as a consequence of differences in heritable attributes.

Psychological adaptations

Mechanisms of the mind that evolved to solve specific problems of survival or reproduction; conceptualized as information processing devices.

Sexual selection

The evolution of characteristics because of the mating advantage they give organisms.

​Sexual strategies theory

A comprehensive evolutionary theory of human mating that defines the menu of mating strategies humans pursue (e.g., short-term casual sex, long-term committed mating), the adaptive problems women and men face when pursuing these strategies, and the evolved solutions to these mating problems.

Collectivism

The cultural trend in which the primary unit of measurement is the group. Collectivists are likely to emphasize duty and obligation over personal aspirations.

Cross-cultural psychology (or cross-cultural studies)

An approach to researching culture that emphasizes the use of standard scales as a means of making meaningful comparisons across groups.

Cross-cultural studies (or cross-cultural psychology)

An approach to researching culture that emphasizes the use of standard scales as a means of making meaningful comparisons across groups.

Cultural differences

An approach to understanding culture primarily by paying attention to unique and distinctive features that set them apart from other cultures.

Cultural intelligence

The ability and willingness to apply cultural awareness to practical uses.

Cultural psychology​

An approach to researching culture that emphasizes the use of interviews and observation as a means of understanding culture from its own point of view.

Cultural relativism

The principled objection to passing overly culture-bound (i.e., “ethnocentric”) judgements on aspects of other cultures.

Cultural script

Learned guides for how to behave appropriately in a given social situation. These reflect cultural norms and widely accepted values.

Cultural similarities

An approach to understanding culture primarily by paying attention to common features that are the same as or similar to those of other cultures

Culture

A pattern of shared meaning and behavior among a group of people that is passed from one generation to the next.

Enculturation

The uniquely human form of learning that is taught by one generation to another.

Ethnocentric bias (or ethnocentrism)

Being unduly guided by the beliefs of the culture you’ve grown up in, especially when this results in a misunderstanding or disparagement of unfamiliar cultures.

Ethnographic studies

Research that emphasizes field data collection and that examines questions that attempt to understand culture from it's own context and point of view.

Independent self

The tendency to define the self in terms of stable traits that guide behavior.

Individualism

The cultural trend in which the primary unit of measurement is the individual. Individualists are likely to emphasize uniqueness and personal aspirations over social duty.

Interdependent self

The tendency to define the self in terms of social contexts that guide behavior.

Observational learning

Learning by observing the behavior of others.

Open ended questions

Research questions that ask participants to answer in their own words.

Ritual

Rites or actions performed in a systematic or prescribed way often for an intended purpose. Example: The exchange of wedding rings during a marriage ceremony in many cultures.

Self-construal

The extent to which the self is defined as independent or as relating to others.

Situational identity

Being guided by different cultural influences in different situations, such as home versus workplace, or formal versus informal roles.

Standard scale

Research method in which all participants use a common scale—typically a Likert scale—to respond to questions.

Value judgment

An assessment—based on one’s own preferences and priorities—about the basic “goodness” or “badness” of a concept or practice.

Value-free research

Research that is not influenced by the researchers’ own values, morality, or opinions.

Attachment behavioral system

A motivational system selected over the course of evolution to maintain proximity between a young child and his or her primary attachment figure.

Attachment behaviors

Behaviors and signals that attract the attention of a primary attachment figure and function to prevent separation from that individual or to reestablish proximity to that individual (e.g., crying, clinging).

Attachment figure

Someone who functions as the primary safe haven and secure base for an individual. In childhood, an individual’s attachment figure is often a parent. In adulthood, an individual’s attachment figure is often a romantic partner.

Attachment patterns

(also called “attachment styles” or “attachment orientations”) Individual differences in how securely (vs. insecurely) people think, feel, and behave in attachment relationships.

Strange situation

A laboratory task that involves briefly separating and reuniting infants and their primary caregivers as a way of studying individual differences in attachment behavior.

Authoritative

A parenting style characterized by high (but reasonable) expectations for children’s behavior, good communication, warmth and nurturance, and the use of reasoning (rather than coercion) as preferred responses to children’s misbehavior.

Conscience

The cognitive, emotional, and social influences that cause young children to create and act consistently with internal standards of conduct.

Effortful control

A temperament quality that enables children to be more successful in motivated self-regulation.

Family Stress Model

A description of the negative effects of family financial difficulty on child adjustment through the effects of economic stress on parents’ depressed mood, increased marital problems, and poor parenting.

Gender schemas

Organized beliefs and expectations about maleness and femaleness that guide children’s thinking about gender.

Goodness of fit

The match or synchrony between a child’s temperament and characteristics of parental care that contributes to positive or negative personality development. A good “fit” means that parents have accommodated to the child’s temperamental attributes, and this contributes to positive personality growth and better adjustment.

Security of attachment

An infant’s confidence in the sensitivity and responsiveness of a caregiver, especially when he or she is needed. Infants can be securely attached or insecurely attached.

Social referencing

The process by which one individual consults another’s emotional expressions to determine how to evaluate and respond to circumstances that are ambiguous or uncertain.

Temperament

Early emerging differences in reactivity and self-regulation, which constitutes a foundation for personality development.

Theory of mind

Children’s growing understanding of the mental states that affect people’s behavior.

Autobiographical reasoning

The ability, typically developed in adolescence, to derive substantive conclusions about the self from analyzing one’s own personal experiences.

Big Five

A broad taxonomy of personality trait domains repeatedly derived from studies of trait ratings in adulthood and encompassing the categories of (1) extraversion vs. introversion, (2) neuroticism vs. emotional stability, (3) agreeable vs. disagreeableness, (4) conscientiousness vs. nonconscientiousness, and (5) openness to experience vs. conventionality. By late childhood and early adolescence, people’s self-attributions of personality traits, as well as the trait attributions made about them by others, show patterns of intercorrelations that confirm with the five-factor structure obtained in studies of adults.

Ego

Sigmund Freud’s conception of an executive self in the personality. Akin to this module’s notion of “the I,” Freud imagined the ego as observing outside reality, engaging in rational though, and coping with the competing demands of inner desires and moral standards.

Identity

Sometimes used synonymously with the term “self,” identity means many different things in psychological science and in other fields (e.g., sociology). In this module, I adopt Erik Erikson’s conception of identity as a developmental task for late adolescence and young adulthood. Forming an identity in adolescence and young adulthood involves exploring alternative roles, values, goals, and relationships and eventually committing to a realistic agenda for life that productively situates a person in the adult world of work and love. In addition, identity formation entails commitments to new social roles and reevaluation of old traits, and importantly, it brings with it a sense of temporal continuity in life, achieved though the construction of an integrative life story.

Narrative identity

An internalized and evolving story of the self designed to provide life with some measure of temporal unity and purpose. Beginning in late adolescence, people craft self-defining stories that reconstruct the past and imagine the future to explain how the person came to be the person that he or she is becoming.

Redemptive narratives

Life stories that affirm the transformation from suffering to an enhanced status or state. In American culture, redemptive life stories are highly prized as models for the good self, as in classic narratives of atonement, upward mobility, liberation, and recovery.

Reflexivity

The idea that the self reflects back upon itself; that the I (the knower, the subject) encounters the Me (the known, the object). Reflexivity is a fundamental property of human selfhood.

Self as autobiographical author

The sense of the self as a storyteller who reconstructs the past and imagines the future in order to articulate an integrative narrative that provides life with some measure of temporal continuity and purpose.

Self as motivated agent

The sense of the self as an intentional force that strives to achieve goals, plans, values, projects, and the like.

Self as social actor

The sense of the self as an embodied actor whose social performances may be construed in terms of more or less consistent self-ascribed traits and social roles.

Self-esteem

The extent to which a person feels that he or she is worthy and good. The success or failure that the motivated agent experiences in pursuit of valued goals is a strong determinant of self-esteem.

Social reputation

The traits and social roles that others attribute to an actor. Actors also have their own conceptions of what they imagine their respective social reputations indeed are in the eyes of others.

The Age 5-to-7 Shift

Cognitive and social changes that occur in the early elementary school years that result in the child’s developing a more purposeful, planful, and goal-directed approach to life, setting the stage for the emergence of the self as a motivated agent.

The “I”

The self as knower, the sense of the self as a subject who encounters (knows, works on) itself (the Me).

The “Me”

The self as known, the sense of the self as the object or target of the I’s knowledge and work.

Theory of mind

Emerging around the age of 4, the child’s understanding that other people have minds in which are located desires and beliefs, and that desires and beliefs, thereby, motivate behavior.

Affective forecasting

Predicting how one will feel in the future after some event or decision.

Attitude

A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor.

Automatic

A behavior or process has one or more of the following features: unintentional, uncontrollable, occurring outside of conscious awareness, and cognitively efficient.

Availability heuristic

A heuristic in which the frequency or likelihood of an event is evaluated based on how easily instances of it come to mind.

Chameleon effect

The tendency for individuals to nonconsciously mimic the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one’s interaction partners.

Directional goals

The motivation to reach a particular outcome or judgment.

Durability bias

A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates for how long one will feel an emotion (positive or negative) after some event.

Evaluative priming​ task

An implicit attitude task that assesses the extent to which an attitude object is associated with a positive or negative valence by measuring the time it takes a person to label an adjective as good or bad after being presented with an attitude object.

Explicit attitude

An attitude that is consciously held and can be reported on by the person holding the attitude.

Heuristics

A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that reduces complex mental problems to more simple rule-based decisions.

Hot cognition

The mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings.

Impact bias

A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates the strength or intensity of emotion one will experience after some event.

Implicit Association Test

An implicit attitude task that assesses a person’s automatic associations between concepts by measuring the response times in pairing the concepts.

Implicit attitude

An attitude that a person cannot verbally or overtly state.

Implicit measures of attitudes

Measures of attitudes in which researchers infer the participant’s attitude rather than having the participant explicitly report it.

Mood-congruent memory

The tendency to be better able to recall memories that have a mood similar to our current mood.

Motivated skepticism

A form of bias that can result from having a directional goal in which one is skeptical of evidence despite its strength because it goes against what one wants to believe.

Need for closure

The desire to come to a decision that will resolve ambiguity and conclude an issue.

Planning fallacy

A cognitive bias in which one underestimates how long it will take to complete a task.

Primed

A process by which a concept or behavior is made more cognitively accessible or likely to occur through the presentation of an associated concept.

Representativeness heuristic

A heuristic in which the likelihood of an object belonging to a category is evaluated based on the extent to which the object appears similar to one’s mental representation of the category.

Schema

A mental model or representation that organizes the important information about a thing, person, or event (also known as a script).

Social cognition

The study of how people think about the social world.

Stereotypes

Our general beliefs about the traits or behaviors shared by group of people.

Automatic empathy

A social perceiver unwittingly taking on the internal state of another person, usually because of mimicking the person’s expressive behavior and thereby feeling the expressed emotion.

False-belief test

An experimental procedure that assesses whether a perceiver recognizes that another person has a false belief—a belief that contradicts reality.

Folk explanations of behavior

People’s natural explanations for why somebody did something, felt something, etc. (differing substantially for unintentional and intentional behaviors).

Intention

An agent’s mental state of committing to perform an action that the agent believes will bring about a desired outcome.

Intentionality

The quality of an agent’s performing a behavior intentionally—that is, with skill and awareness and executing an intention (which is in turn based on a desire and relevant beliefs).

Joint attention

Two people attending to the same object and being aware that they both are attending to it.

Mimicry

Copying others’ behavior, usually without awareness.

Mirror neurons

Neurons identified in monkey brains that fire both when the monkey performs a certain action and when it perceives another agent performing that action.

Projection

A social perceiver’s assumption that the other person wants, knows, or feels the same as the perceiver wants, know, or feels.

Simulation

The process of representing the other person’s mental state.

Synchrony

Two people displaying the same behaviors or having the same internal states (typically because of mutual mimicry).

Theory of mind

The human capacity to understand minds, a capacity that is made up of a collection of concepts (e.g., agent, intentionality) and processes (e.g., goal detection, imitation, empathy, perspective taking).

Visual perspective taking

Can refer to visual perspective taking (perceiving something from another person’s spatial vantage point) or more generally to effortful mental state inference (trying to infer the other person’s thoughts, desires, emotions).

Counterfactual thinking

Mentally comparing actual events with fantasies of what might have been possible in alternative scenarios.

Downward comparison

Making mental comparisons with people who are perceived to be inferior on the standard of comparison.

Dunning-Kruger Effect

The tendency for unskilled people to be overconfident in their ability and highly skilled people to underestimate their ability.

Fixed mindset

The belief that personal qualities such as intelligence are traits that cannot be developed. People with fixed mindsets often underperform compared to those with “growth mindsets”

Frog Pond Effect

The theory that a person’s comparison group can affect their evaluations of themselves. Specifically, people have a tendency to have lower self-evaluations when comparing themselves to higher performing groups.

Growth mindset

The belief that personal qualities, such as intelligence, can be developed through effort and practice.

Individual differences

Psychological traits, abilities, aptitudes and tendencies that vary from person to person.

Local dominance effect

People are generally more influenced by social comparison when that comparison is personally relevant rather than broad and general.

Mastery goals

Goals that are focused primarily on learning, competence, and self-development. These are contrasted with “performance goals” that are focused on the quality of a person’s performance.

N-Effect

The finding that increasing the number of competitors generally decreases one’s motivation to compete.

Personality

A person’s relatively stable patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior.

Proximity

The relative closeness or distance from a given comparison standard. The further from the standard a person is, the less important he or she considers the standard. When a person is closer to the standard he/she is more likely to be competitive.

Self-enhancement effect

The finding that people can boost their own self-evaluations by comparing themselves to others who rank lower on a particular comparison standard.

Self-esteem

The feeling of confidence in one’s own abilities or worth.

Self-evaluation maintenance (SEM)

A model of social comparison that emphasizes one’s closeness to the comparison target, the relative performance of that target person, and the relevance of the comparison behavior to one’s self-concept.

Social category

Any group in which membership is defined by similarities between its members. Examples include religious, ethnic, and athletic groups.

Social comparison

The process by which people understand their own ability or condition by mentally comparing themselves to others.

Upward comparisons

Making mental comparisons to people who are perceived to be superior on the standard of comparison.

Cultural display rules

These are rules that are learned early in life that specify the management and modification of emotional expressions according to social circumstances. Cultural display rules can work in a number of different ways. For example, they can require individuals to express emotions “as is” (i.e., as they feel them), to exaggerate their expressions to show more than what is actually felt, to tone down their expressions to show less than what is actually felt, to conceal their feelings by expressing something else, or to show nothing at all.

Interpersonal

This refers to the relationship or interaction between two or more individuals in a group. Thus, the interpersonal functions of emotion refer to the effects of one’s emotion on others, or to the relationship between oneself and others.

Intrapersonal

This refers to what occurs within oneself. Thus, the intrapersonal functions of emotion refer to the effects of emotion to individuals that occur physically inside their bodies and psychologically inside their minds.

Social and cultural

Society refers to a system of relationships between individuals and groups of individuals; culture refers to the meaning and information afforded to that system that is transmitted across generations. Thus, the social and cultural functions of emotion refer to the effects that emotions have on the functioning and maintenance of societies and cultures.

Social referencing

This refers to the process whereby individuals look for information from others to clarify a situation, and then use that information to act. Thus, individuals will often use the emotional expressions of others as a source of information to make decisions about their own behavior.

Affect

Feelings that can be described in terms of two dimensions, the dimensions of arousal and valence (Figure 2). For example, high arousal positive states refer to excitement, elation, and enthusiasm. Low arousal positive states refer to calm, peacefulness, and relaxation. Whereas “actual affect” refers to the states that people actually feel, “ideal affect” refers to the states that people ideally want to feel.

Culture

Shared, socially transmitted ideas (e.g., values, beliefs, attitudes) that are reflected in and reinforced by institutions, products, and rituals.

Emotions

Changes in subjective experience, physiological responding, and behavior in response to a meaningful event. Emotions tend to occur on the order of seconds (in contract to moods which may last for days).

Feelings

A general term used to describe a wide range of states that include emotions, moods, traits and that typically involve changes in subjective experience, physiological responding, and behavior in response to a meaningful event. Emotions typically occur on the order of seconds, whereas moods may last for days, and traits are tendencies to respond a certain way across various situations.

Independent self

A model or view of the self as distinct from others and as stable across different situations. The goal of the independent self is to express and assert the self, and to influence others. This model of self is prevalent in many individualistic, Western contexts (e.g., the United States, Australia, Western Europe).

Interdependent self

A model or view of the self as connected to others and as changing in response to different situations. The goal of the interdependent self is to suppress personal preferences and desires, and to adjust to others. This model of self is prevalent in many collectivistic, East Asian contexts (e.g., China, Japan, Korea).

Social constructivism

Social constructivism proposes that knowledge is first created and learned within a social context and is then adopted by individuals.

Universalism

Universalism proposes that there are single objective standards, independent of culture, in basic domains such as learning, reasoning, and emotion that are a part of all human experience.

Central route to persuasion

Persuasion that employs direct, relevant, logical messages.

Fixed action patterns (FAPs)

Sequences of behavior that occur in exactly the same fashion, in exactly the same order, every time they are elicited.

Foot in the door

Obtaining a small, initial commitment.

Gradually escalating commitments

A pattern of small, progressively escalating demands is less likely to be rejected than a single large demand made all at once.

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts that enable people to make decisions and solve problems quickly and efficiently.

Peripheral route to persuasion

Persuasion that relies on superficial cues that have little to do with logic.

Psychological reactance

A reaction to people, rules, requirements, or offerings that are perceived to limit freedoms.

Social proof

The mental shortcut based on the assumption that, if everyone is doing it, it must be right.

The norm of reciprocity

The normative pressure to repay, in equitable value, what another person has given to us.

The rule of scarcity

People tend to perceive things as more attractive when their availability is limited, or when they stand to lose the opportunity to acquire them on favorable terms.

The triad of trust

We are most vulnerable to persuasion when the source is perceived as an authority, as honest and likable.

Trigger features

Specific, sometimes minute, aspects of a situation that activate fixed action patterns.

Conformity

Changing one’s attitude or behavior to match a perceived social norm.

Descriptive norm

The perception of what most people do in a given situation.

Informational influence

Conformity that results from a concern to act in a socially approved manner as determined by how others act.

Normative influence

Conformity that results from a concern for what other people think of us.

Obedience

Responding to an order or command from a person in a position of authority.

Collective self-esteem

Feelings of self-worth that are based on evaluation of relationships with others and membership in social groups.

Common knowledge effect

The tendency for groups to spend more time discussing information that all members know (shared information) and less time examining information that only a few members know (unshared).

Group cohesion

The solidarity or unity of a group resulting from the development of strong and mutual interpersonal bonds among members and group-level forces that unify the group, such as shared commitment to group goals.

Group polarization

The tendency for members of a deliberating group to move to a more extreme position, with the direction of the shift determined by the majority or average of the members’ predeliberation preferences.

Groupthink

A set of negative group-level processes, including illusions of invulnerability, self-censorship, and pressures to conform, that occur when highly cohesive groups seek concurrence when making a decision.

Ostracism

Excluding one or more individuals from a group by reducing or eliminating contact with the person, usually by ignoring, shunning, or explicitly banishing them.

Shared mental model

Knowledge, expectations, conceptualizations, and other cognitive representations that members of a group have in common pertaining to the group and its members, tasks, procedures, and resources.

Social comparison

The process of contrasting one’s personal qualities and outcomes, including beliefs, attitudes, values, abilities, accomplishments, and experiences, to those of other people.

Social facilitation

Improvement in task performance that occurs when people work in the presence of other people.

Social identity theory

A theoretical analysis of group processes and intergroup relations that assumes groups influence their members’ self-concepts and self-esteem, particularly when individuals categorize themselves as group members and identify with the group.

Social loafing

The reduction of individual effort exerted when people work in groups compared with when they work alone.

Sociometer model

A conceptual analysis of self-evaluation processes that theorizes self-esteem functions to psychologically monitor of one’s degree of inclusion and exclusion in social groups.

Teamwork

The process by which members of the team combine their knowledge, skills, abilities, and other resources through a coordinated series of actions to produce an outcome.

Automatic

Automatic biases are unintended, immediate, and irresistible.

Aversive racism

Aversive racism is unexamined racial bias that the person does not intend and would reject, but that avoids inter-racial contact.

Blatant biases

Blatant biases are conscious beliefs, feelings, and behavior that people are perfectly willing to admit, are mostly hostile, and openly favor their own group.

Discrimination

Discrimination is behavior that advantages or disadvantages people merely based on their group membership.

Implicit Association Test

Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures relatively automatic biases that favor own group relative to other groups.

Model minority

A minority group whose members are perceived as achieving a higher degree of socioeconomic success than the population average.

Prejudice

Prejudice is an evaluation or emotion toward people merely based on their group membership.

Right-wing authoritarianism

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) focuses on value conflicts but endorses respect for obedience and authority in the service of group conformity.

Self-categorization theory

Self-categorization theory develops social identity theory’s point that people categorize themselves, along with each other into groups, favoring their own group.

Social dominance orientation

Social dominance orientation (SDO) describes a belief that group hierarchies are inevitable in all societies and even good, to maintain order and stability.

Social identity theory

Social identity theory notes that people categorize each other into groups, favoring their own group.

Stereotype Content Model

Stereotype Content Model shows that social groups are viewed according to their perceived warmth and competence.

Stereotypes

Stereotype is a belief that characterizes people based merely on their group membership.

Subtle biases

Subtle biases are automatic, ambiguous, and ambivalent, but real in their consequences.

Altruism

A desire to improve the welfare of another person, at a potential cost to the self and without any expectation of reward.

Common-pool resource

A collective product or service that is freely available to all individuals of a society, but is vulnerable to overuse and degradation.

Commons dilemma game

A game in which members of a group must balance their desire for personal gain against the deterioration and possible collapse of a resource.

Cooperation

The coordination of multiple partners toward a common goal that will benefit everyone involved.

Decomposed games

A task in which an individual chooses from multiple allocations of resources to distribute between him- or herself and another person.

Empathy

The ability to vicariously experience the emotions of another person.

Free rider problem

A situation in which one or more individuals benefit from a common-pool resource without paying their share of the cost.

Interindividual-intergroup discontinuity

The tendency for relations between groups to be less cooperative than relations between individuals.

Outgroup

A social category or group with which an individual does not identify.

Prisoner’s dilemma

A classic paradox in which two individuals must independently choose between defection (maximizing reward to the self) and cooperation (maximizing reward to the group).

Rational self-interest

The principle that people will make logical decisions based on maximizing their own gains and benefits.

Social identity

A person’s sense of who they are, based on their group membership(s).

Social value orientation (SVO)

An assessment of how an individual prefers to allocate resources between him- or herself and another person.

State of vulnerability

When a person places him or herself in a position in which he or she might be exploited or harmed. This is often done out of trust that others will not exploit the vulnerability.

Ultimatum game

An economic game in which a proposer (Player A) can offer a subset of resources to a responder (Player B), who can then either accept or reject the given proposal.

Agreeableness

A core personality trait that includes such dispositional characteristics as being sympathetic, generous, forgiving, and helpful, and behavioral tendencies toward harmonious social relations and likeability.

Altruism

A motivation for helping that has the improvement of another’s welfare as its ultimate goal, with no expectation of any benefits for the helper.

Arousal: cost–reward model

An egoistic theory proposed by Piliavin et al. (1981) that claims that seeing a person in need leads to the arousal of unpleasant feelings, and observers are motivated to eliminate that aversive state, often by helping the victim. A cost–reward analysis may lead observers to react in ways other than offering direct assistance, including indirect help, reinterpretation of the situation, or fleeing the scene.

Bystander intervention

The phenomenon whereby people intervene to help others in need even if the other is a complete stranger and the intervention puts the helper at risk.

Cost–benefit analysis

A decision-making process that compares the cost of an action or thing against the expected benefit to help determine the best course of action.

Diffusion of responsibility

When deciding whether to help a person in need, knowing that there are others who could also provide assistance relieves bystanders of some measure of personal responsibility, reducing the likelihood that bystanders will intervene.

Egoism

A motivation for helping that has the improvement of the helper’s own circumstances as its primary goal.

Empathic concern

According to Batson’s empathy–altruism hypothesis, observers who empathize with a person in need (that is, put themselves in the shoes of the victim and imagine how that person feels) will experience empathic concern and have an altruistic motivation for helping.

Empathy–altruism model

An altruistic theory proposed by Batson (2011) that claims that people who put themselves in the shoes of a victim and imagining how the victim feel will experience empathic concern that evokes an altruistic motivation for helping.

Helpfulness

A component of the prosocial personality orientation; describes individuals who have been helpful in the past and, because they believe they can be effective with the help they give, are more likely to be helpful in the future.

Helping

Prosocial acts that typically involve situations in which one person is in need and another provides the necessary assistance to eliminate the other’s need.

Kin selection

According to evolutionary psychology, the favoritism shown for helping our blood relatives, with the goals of increasing the likelihood that some portion of our DNA will be passed on to future generations.

Negative state relief model

An egoistic theory proposed by Cialdini et al. (1982) that claims that people have learned through socialization that helping can serve as a secondary reinforcement that will relieve negative moods such as sadness.

Other-oriented empathy

A component of the prosocial personality orientation; describes individuals who have a strong sense of social responsibility, empathize with and feel emotionally tied to those in need, understand the problems the victim is experiencing, and have a heightened sense of moral obligations to be helpful.

Personal distress

According to Batson’s empathy–altruism hypothesis, observers who take a detached view of a person in need will experience feelings of being “worried” and “upset” and will have an egoistic motivation for helping to relieve that distress.

Pluralistic ignorance

Relying on the actions of others to define an ambiguous need situation and to then erroneously conclude that no help or intervention is necessary.

Prosocial behavior

Social behavior that benefits another person.

Prosocial personality orientation

A measure of individual differences that identifies two sets of personality characteristics (other-oriented empathy, helpfulness) that are highly correlated with prosocial behavior.

Reciprocal altruism

According to evolutionary psychology, a genetic predisposition for people to help those who have previously helped them.

Functional distance

The frequency with which we cross paths with others.

Mere-exposure effect

The notion that people like people/places/things merely because they are familiar with them.

Perceived social support

A person’s perception that others are there to help them in times of need.

Proximity

Physical nearness.

Received social support

The actual act of receiving support (e.g., informational, functional).

Support support network

The people who care about and support a person.