Pysch unit 1 terms and concepts

Explain how people think about others & themselves 

and the interplay between actions, thoughts, and other people

Explain the mechanisms of social cognition, including applying attribution theory to explain motives.

Discuss attitude formation and change.

Explain how people respond to the presence, expectations, and actions of others, including explaining aggression, attraction, and altruism

1. Explain how individuals respond to expectations of others.

2. Predict the impact of the presence of others on individual behavior. 

3. Describe the variables that contribute to altruism, aggression, and attraction.

easy to criticize others, harder to criticize ourselves

story you tell yourself to explain why events/actions occur

“people get what they deserve”

a cognitive structure of organized information, or representations, about social norms and collective patterns of behavior within society.

attributions (how we interpret stuff, cognitive framework for organizing and interpreting information)

behavior that is attributed to external factors

• when a person believes that an event is caused by factors that are outside of themselves.

a person who blames the weather for their bike's flat tire or a student who tells their teacher they did not turn in their homework because their dog ate it.

Blaming others for personal attributes over situational ones

a pattern of behavior that is expected of a person in a given setting or group

a person's knowledge of what is culturally expected in a particular setting

For instance, when people enter a new setting—like an elevator—they rely on past experiences and cultural expectations to guide their behavior. These factors form a mental blueprint known as a social script

generalizing one positive attribute to a whole person, business, group, etc.

A common halo effect example is attractiveness, and the tendency to assign positive qualities to an attractive person. For example, you might see a physically beautiful person and assume they are generous, smart, or trustworthy

explaining your own success from personal, blaming features through situational ones self

A classic example of the self serving bias is a student who receives an A on an exam and attributes their success to their intelligence and hard work. However, if they receive a lower grade, they blame the teacher or some aspect of the test.

how we think about ourselves and others

Social cognition refers to the processes that enable us to interpret social information and behave appropriately in a social environment.

• social social information processing relies initially on attending to and perceiving relevant cues.

For example, a teenager goes to a party and notices that the people who are drinking alcohol are slurring their speech and being more argumentative and louder than those who were not drinking alcohol.

Dispositional attribution is when we perceive an event to be caused by an internal factor.

(based on personal demeanor/personal trends)

According to the attribution theory, Ms. Norbury believes that Cady is purposely failing her tests because she is trying to get a boyfriend. She uses a dispositional cause to explain her behavior.

overestimating how many share your opinion

(example - believing that all people think that saving the environment is important because you feel that way)

The door-in-the-face technique is a persuasive strategy that involves making a large, unreasonable request first, followed by a smaller, more acceptable one. The idea is that the contrast between the two requests makes the second one seem more reasonable and appealing, increasing the likelihood of compliance.

is when two beliefs are inconsistent, individuals experience negatively arousing cognitive conflict (called dissonance). Because the dissonance is aversive, the individuals try to reduce it by changing one or the other beliefs.

You want to be healthy, but you don't exercise regularly or eat a nutritious diet. You feel guilty as a result.

Leon Festinger, (born May 8, 1919) New York City), American cognitive psychologist, best known for his theory of cognitive dissonance, according to which inconsistency between thoughts, or between thoughts and actions, leads to discomfort (dissonance), which motivates changes in thoughts or behaviours. Festinger also made important contributions to the study of group behaviour, self-evaluation, and attitude change.

In psychology, an attitude refers to a set of emotions, beliefs, and behaviors toward a particular object, person, thing, or event. Attitudes are often the result of experience or upbringing. They can have a powerful influence over behavior and affect how people act in various situations

The central route to persuasion is a logic-driven approach, using data and facts to convince people of an argument or product's worthiness.

• Persuasion that uses this approach assumes that the target audience is motivated and analytical when presented with the message.

Persuasion that uses this approach assumes that the target audience is motivated and analytical when presented with the message.

The peripheral route to persuasion occurs when a person is persuaded by something other than the argument that's central to the merits of the product or idea being put forth,

• while the central route to persuasion occurs when a person is persuaded by the actual argument about the merits of the product or idea.

Instead of focusing on the facts and a product's quality, the peripheral route relies on association with positive characteristics such as positive emotions and celebrity endorsement. For example, having a popular athlete advertise athletic shoes is a common method used to encourage young adults to purchase the shoes.

The elaboration likelihood model explains how people can be persuaded to change their attitudes. When people are invested in a topic and have the time and energy to think over an issue, they're more likely to be persuaded through the central route.

The foot-in-the-door technique is a compliance tactic that assumes agreeing to a small request increases the likelihood of agreeing to a second, larger request. So, initially, you make a small request, and once the person agrees to this, they find it more difficult to refuse a bigger one

For example, asking someone if they will participate in a survey about the environment when you are actually planning to sell them solar panels. People commonly perceive foot in the door as objectionable when your second request has nothing to do with the first.

Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs when a group of individuals reaches a consensus without critical reasoning or evaluation of the consequences or alternatives. Groupthink is based on a common desire not to upset the balance of a group of people.

• groupthink, mode of thinking in which individual members of small cohesive groups tend to accept a viewpoint or conclusion that represents a perceived group consensus, whether or not the group members believe it to be valid, correct, or optimal.

conformity, the process whereby people change their beliefs, attitudes, actions, or perceptions to more closely match those held by groups to which they belong or want to belong or by groups whose approval they desire. Conformity has important social implications and continues to be actively researched.

Conformity experiments. Asch is best known for his conformity experiments. His main finding was that peer pressure can change opinion and even perception. Asch found the majority of the participants succumbed at least once to the pressure and went with the majority.

Compliance is when an individual changes his or her behavior in response to an explicit or implicit request made by another person. Compliance is often referred to as an active form of social influence in that it is usually intentionally initiated by a person.

Some examples of compliance include: A child cleaning up their room because their parent asked them to. A student helping another student with their homework when asked. Buying an item because a saleperson encourages you to do so.

Obedience, in human behavior, is a form of "social influence in which a person yields to explicit instructions or orders from an authority figure".

children must follow what their parents tell them to do, employees have to obey the orders of their boss and as an extreme example, soldiers have to absolutely follow the instructions of their leaders in the army.

Stanley Milgram was a social psychologist best-remembered for his now infamous obedience experiments. His research demonstrated how far people will go to obey authority. His experiments are also remembered for their ethical issues, which contributed to changes in regulation for experiments performed today.

The Milgram experiment, and the replications and related experiments that followed it, showed that contrary to expectations, most people will obey an order given by an authority figure to harm someone, even if they feel that it's wrong, and even if they want to stop.

Normative Social Influence is where a person conforms in order to be accepted and belong to a group. They do this because it is socially rewarding and/or to avoid social rejection (e.g. ridicule for not 'fitting in').

Fashion choices are often impacted by normative social influence. To feel accepted by a particular crowd, men and women often dress similarly to individuals in that group. Fashion conformity promotes social cohesion within the group and can be a result of both conscious and unconscious motivations.

Informational social influence refers to the tendency to conform to what others are doing or saying because we perceive them as a source of accurate information, particularly in ambiguous or uncertain situations.

A simple example of informational social influence is voting for a political party that your friends do because you're not entirely sure what to believe, but you trust your friends' moral judgments.

1971 Stanford prison experiment, which demonstrated the power of social situations to influence people's behavior.

• It was intended to measure the effect of role-playing, labeling, and social expectations on behaviour over a period of two weeks. However, mistreatment of prisoners escalated so alarmingly that principal investigator Philip G. Zimbardo terminated the experiment after only six days.

Stereotype threat refers to the risk of confirming negative stereotypes about an individual's racial, ethnic, gender, or cultural group which can create high cognitive load and reduce academic focus and performance.

when female students are given a math exam and told that the exam is diagnostic of their own intellectual abilities, negative stereotypes of women as less capable mathematicians can actually negatively impact their performance on the exam.

A self-fulfilling prophecy is an expectation or belief that can influence your behaviors, thus causing the belief to come true. The idea behind a self-fulfilling prophecy, also known as the Pygmalion effect, is that your belief about what will happen drives the actions that make that outcome ultimately come to pass.

Here is an example: A teacher thinks that all Chinese students are good at maths. The teacher signals to Chinese students that high marks are expected. The Chinese students eventually believe that they are good at maths and put in more effort.

Social facilitation: a phenomenon where people show increased levels of effort and performance when in the presence of others—whether it be real, imagined, implied or virtual—compared to their effort and performance levels when they are alone.

Social inhibition is a conscious or subconscious avoidance of a situation or social interaction. With a high level of social inhibition, situations are avoided because of the possibility of others disapproving of their feelings or expressions.

Being the person at a party who prefers to sit with the host's dog instead of introducing yourself to new people may be considered social inhibition.

The bystander effect occurs when the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in an emergency situation, against a bully, or during an assault or other crime. The greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is for any one of them to provide help to a person in distress. People are more likely to take action in a crisis when there are few or no other witnesses present.

Diffusion of responsibility refers to the fact that as the number of bystanders increases, the personal responsibility that an individual bystander feels decreases.

Social loafing is a term used in social psychology. It's what happens when someone puts in less effort when they're judged as part of a group. This level of effort is lower compared to when the same person is working alone or judged individually. When working alone, many people tend to put in more effort.

providing help for someone even if there is no reward

For example, giving your lunch away is altruistic because it helps someone who is hungry, but at a cost of being hungry yourself.

behavior that intends to harm

people make decisions by consciously or unconsciously measuring the costs and rewards of a relationship or action, ultimately seeking to maximize their reward.

Reciprocity norm is the rule of human interaction that says people need to reciprocate the action of another person. Simply, this means that when a person is given a gift (which can take any number of forms) by another, the person must repay the gift.

The norm of reciprocity can influence our behavior when we sense a moral obligation to return a favor. For example, when a stranger holds a door open for us, we thank them. This internal reciprocity encourages us to repay a debt not because people expect us to, but because we want to reward a particular behavior.

the theory, proposed in 1939 by John Dollard and colleagues, that (a) frustration always produces an aggressive urge and (b) aggression is always the result of prior frustrations.

For example, if a man is disrespected and humiliated at his work, but cannot respond to this for fear of losing his job, he may go home and take his anger and frustration out on his family.

Proximity is the physical distance between individuals. The mere exposure effect suggests that an increase in proximity leads to individuals finding each other more attractive.

actors influencing attraction such as similarity, proximity (physical or functional), familiarity, and reciprocity, that influence with whom we develop relationships.

people are attracted to people similar to themselves

The matching hypothesis is a theory of interpersonal attraction which argues that relationships are formed between two people who are equal or very similar in terms of social desirability. This is often examined in the form of level of physical attraction.

The theory postulates that achievement-related choices are motivated by a combination of people's expectations for success and subjective task value in particular domains. For example, children are more likely to pursue an activity if they expect to do well and they value the activity.

The mere exposure effect in psychology, or the familiarity principle, is the idea that people tend to prefer things that are familiar. This means that having already encountered something creates a preference for it.

frustration inevitably leads to aggression, and any act of aggression is due to frustration.