Social Psychology (lower-level)

The branch of psychology that studies the effect of social variables on individual behavior, attitudes, perceptions, and motives; also studies group and intergroup phenomena

How we process information about other peope

The process by which people organize the social environment by categorizing themselves and others into groups

Conceptualization of the self as part of an encompassing social relationship; recognizing that one's behavior is determined, contingent on, and, to a large extent organized by what the actor perceives to be the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others

Informal rules of acceptable behavior

Formal rules of acceptable behavior

The types of explanations people generate for other people's behavior, and how those explanations come about

Explanations people come up with for another person's behavior, based on internal qualities of that person

Explanations people come up with for another person's behavior, based on factors external to the person

Judgments about the causes of outcomes

The dual tendency of observers to underestimate the impact of situational factors and to overestimate the influence of dispositional factors on a person's behavior

The theory that observers tend to attribute others' behavior to dispositions, but their own behavior to situations

The theory that if you behave in a way that's in consistent with one of your attitudes, you will tend to find an explanation for that behavior to dispel the tension the conflict creates

A class of attributional biases in which people tend to take credit for their successes and deny responsibility for their failures

A situation that occurs when a person's prior knowledge, attitudes, or values distort the reasoning process by influencing the person to accept invalid arguments

Direct and indirect pressure exerted by others to change someone's attitudes or behavior

Getting someone to comply with a small request before making a larger request

Making a request so big that it will be rejected, before making a smaler request that seems reasonable

Getting someone to commit to doing something and then increasing the cost or effort involved

The process by which an individual's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are conditioned by what is conceived to be what other people might perceive

What did Solomon Asch's experiment in the 1950s show?

Group effects that arise from individuals' desire to be liked, accepted, and approved of by others

Group effects that arise from individuals' desire to be correct and right and to understand how best to act in a given situation

Doing what an authority figure tells you to do

What did the Milgram experiment at Yale study?

What percentage of participants in Milgram's experiment obediently followed instructions to inflict pain on another, even when in conflict with their conscience?

In Dr. Blass's analysis of Milgram-type experiments, what did he find as the consistent percentage of subjects willing to deliver lethal shocks to another when ordered to do so?

In recreations of the Milgram experiment, what three factors reduced likelihood of obedience?

The theory that states that once a person sees themselves as an instrument for carrying out the actions of another, he no longer sees himself as responsible for his actions and becomes obedient

Power that is based on a person's knowledge and skills (as they relate to the situation at hand)

Behaviors intended to hurt others

The idea that aggression is always triggered by frustration and that frustration always leads to aggression

Signals of aggression (props or behavior)

The condition where a person who has already been provoked will develop a higher level of aggression in the presence of aggressive cues, such as guns and knives

What increases the likelihood that a child will become aggressive after seeing it modeled on television?

Cognition-based and goal-directed aggression carried out with premeditated thought, to achieve specific aims

Emotion-driven aggression produced in reaction to situations in the "heat of the moment."

The learned, relatively stable tendency to respond to people, concepts, and events in an evaluative way

Deliberate efforts to change attitudes

A learned attitude toward a target object, involving negative affect (dislike or fear), negative beliefs that justify the attitude, and a behavioral intention to avoid, control, dominate, or eliminate the target object

Generalizations about a group of people in which the same characteristics are assigned to all members of a group

The idea that people observe themselves in order to figure out the reasons they act as they do; people infer what their internal states are by perceiving how they are acting in a given situation.

Behaviors that are carried out with the goal of helping other people

Prosocial behaviors a person carries out without considering his or her own safety or interests

Willingness to assist a person in need of help

In emergency situations, the larger the number of bystanders, the less responsibility any one bystander feels to help

Result of diffusion of responsibility in an emergency

An emotional experience ethat involves a subjective grasp of another person's feelings

The idea that empathy has the power to motivate altruism

The idea that our goal in life is to maximize our rewards while minimizing our costs

Theory that human relationships are formed by using a subjective cost-benefit analysis and the comparison of alternatives

The idea that we're obligated to help those who need assistance

The idea that we're obligated to help those who have helped us

The idea that people perform altruistic behaviors because they expect that others will perform altruistic behaviors for them in turn

The idea that the genes of those predisposed to help their relatives would spread throughout the species over time, leading to the bias of helping those more related to you

Implicit rules and expectations for group members to follow

Implicit rules and expectations for specific members within the group

Patterns of liking within the group, and also differences in prestige or status

The study of how group processes change individual functioning

The way in which groups behave towards and perceive each other

The tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the decisions that would be made by the members acting alone

The tendency of a decision-making group to filter out undesirable input so that a consensus may be reached, especially if it is in line with the leader's viewpoint

The tendency for people to perform better on simple tasks (or tasks at which they are expert or that have become autonomous) when under the eye of others, rather than while they are alone or working alongside other people

The tendency of individuals to slack in a group when work is pooled and individual performance is not being evaluated

A particular description of a choice; the perspective from which a choice is described or framed affects how a decision is made and which option is ultimately exercised

The mutual affirmation of conscious views of reality

The groups with which people do not identify

An evaluation of one's own group as better than others

These processes encourage extreme behaviors towards the out-group

Immersion in a group to the point at which the individual ceases to be seen as such

The beliefs that people have about each other when interacting

The negative reaction of people to an individual or group because of some assumed inferiority or source of difference that is degraded