Chapter 9: Social Psychology 

are evaluative, meaning that our feelings toward such things are necessarily positive or negative.

states that the more one is exposed to something, the more one will come to like it.

to persuasion involves deeply processing the content of the message; what about this potato chip is so much better than all the others?

on the other hand, involves other aspects of the message including the characteristics of the person imparting the message (the communicator).

is based on the idea that people are motivated to have consistent attitudes and behaviors.

conducted the classic experiment about cognitive dissonance in the late 1950s.

argues that after people refuse a large request, they will look more favorably upon a follow-up request that seems, in comparison, much more reasonable.

are at work when you feel compelled to send money to the charity that sent you free return address labels or when you cast your vote in the student election for the candidate that handed out those delicious chocolate chip cookies.

is another area of study within the field of social cognition.

put forth a theory that explains the kind of attributions people make based on three kinds of information

refers to how similarly the individual acts in the same situation over time.

refers to how similar this situation is to other situations in which we have watched Charley.

asks us to consider how others in the same situation have responded.

The tendency for people to overestimate the number of people who agree with them.

is the tendency to take more credit for good outcomes than for bad ones.

may be either negative or positive and can be applied to virtually any group of people (e.g., racial, ethnic, geographic).

is an undeserved, usually negative, attitude toward a group of people.

can lead to prejudice when negative stereotypes (those rude New Yorkers) are applied uncritically to all members of a group (she is from New York, therefore she must be rude) and a negative attitude results.

the belief that one’s culture (e.g., ethnic, racial) is superior to others, is a specific kind of prejudice.

is thought to stem from people’s belief that they themselves are good people.

states that contact between hostile groups will reduce animosity, but only if the groups are made to work toward a goal that benefits all and necessitates the participation of all.

camp study (also known as the Robbers Cave study) illustrates both how easily out-group bias can be created and how superordinate goals can be used to unite formerly antagonistic groups.

is when the aggressive act is intended to secure a particular end.

has no such clear purpose.

suggest that the expression of aggression is adaptive under certain circumstances.

the conditions under which people nearby are more and less likely to help someone in trouble.

has been an area of much research as well.

conducted one of the most interesting conformity experiments.

When the task being observed was a difficult one rather than a simple, well-practiced skill, being watched by others actually hurt performance

is the phenomenon when individuals do not put in as much effort when acting as part of a group as they do when acting alone.

is the tendency of a group to make more extreme decisions than the group members would make individually.

a term coined by Irving Janis, describes the tendency for some groups to make bad decisions.