Download Social Perception

Social Psychology Terms
The terms you need to know for the test over chapters 20 & 21
Group Behavior
 Social facilitation - When a person performs better in front of a group.
 Social Loafing - Not doing your best in a group because you think others will do more.
 Evaluation Apprehension - Concern for what others think of you; reason you perform
better in front of a group.
 Risky Shift - When a person is willing to do things with a group they would not do alone.
 Diffusion of responsibility - Feeling you are less responsible when with a group.
 First-shift scheme - In decision-making, the first to switch to an alternate opinion brings
several people with them.
 Polarization - When group attitudes become stronger after they discuss and act upon the
shared attitudes.
 Deindividuation - Loss of self-awareness and self-restraint, and loss of sense of
responsibility when in a group.
 Self-fulfilling prophecy - When a person lives up to a belief about himself or herself.
 Groupthink - When the desire to be part of a group prevents a person from seeing other
alternatives.
Helping & Moral Behavior
 Prosocial Behavior - Any behavior that helps another person.
 Alturism - Sacrificing your own welfare to help another person.
 Bystander Effect - Obviously neglecting someone needing help because of diffusion of
responsibility.
 Lawrence Kohlberg - Three-stage theory on how moral reasoning develops.
 Moral Dilemma - Do you allow someone to die in order to save others?
 Preconventional Reasoning - Behavior is determined by avoiding punishment or getting
a reward. Typical of children.
o Avoiding Punishment – Doing what is necessary to avoid punishment
o Satisfying Needs – Doing what is necessary to satisfy one’s needs
 Conventional Reasoning - Primary concern is to fit in and play the role of a good citizen.
Strong desire to follow rules.
o Winning Approval – Seeking and maintaining the approval of others using
conventional standards of right and wrong
o Law and Order – Moral judgments based on maintaining social order. High regard
for authority.
 Postconventional Reasoning - Based on your own moral standards of goodness.
Developed in adulthood.
o Social Order – Obedience to accepted laws. Judgments based on personal values.
o Universal Ethics – Morality of individual conscience, not necessarily in agreement
with others.
Conformity & Obedience
 Social Norms - Guidelines for what people should or should not do in a situation.
 Explicit Norms - Spoken or written rules – dress codes or traffic laws.
 Implicit Norms - Unspoken or unwritten rules – you don’t pass gas in math class but you
might when with friends.
 Asch’s Line Experiment - Found people would knowingly give the wrong answer to
conform to the group.
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Foot-in-the-door Effect - Tendency for people to give in to major demands after they have
already given in to minor ones.
Socialization - People have been taught to be obedient to authority since childhood. To do
otherwise conflicts deeply with society’s rules.
Milgram’s Shock Experiment - Found most people would obey an authority figure to do
something hurtful to another if authority figure accepted responsibility.
Buffers - You are more likely to follow orders, even immoral ones, if you cannot see the
consequences of your actions.
Need for acceptance - This is a reason for conformity. People who stand out draw
negative attention to themselves.
Normative Social Influence - This is a reason for conformity. People who stand out draw
negative attention to themselves.
Informational Social Influence – Another reason for conformity. People conform to
avoid being seen as wrong.
Aggression
 Sociobiology View - Aggression seems to help animals reproduce and survive.
 Some cultures encourage independence and competitiveness, and this fosters
aggression.
 Psychoanalytic View - Aggression comes from frustration and repressed feelings to harm
people who don’t meet our demands.
 Cognitive View - Aggressive behavior is a choice made by people. It reflects their values
and thinking.
 Learning View - Aggression is reinforced because when a person gets what they want using
aggression they will use that technique again.
 Sociocultural View - Some cultures encourage independence and competitiveness, and
this fosters aggression.
 Catharsis - Taking your aggression out in a more acceptable way, like on a punching bag.
 Zimbardo’s Prison Study - Found good people will become aggressive in the right
environment.
 Role Playing – People often lose themselves in this causing them to become more
aggressive and dehumanizing to other people than they normally would.
Attraction
 Universal of Beauty - Smiling people, big eyes, high cheekbones; even infants stare at
faces with these qualities.
 Body shape preference - Varies greatly from culture to culture.
 Attractiveness Bias - Stereotypically rated higher on intelligence, competence, and
morality.
 Baby face bias - People with round heads, big eyes, and small jawbones are believed to be
more honest and helpless.
 Matching hypothesis - We choose partners who are similar to ourselves in attractiveness.
 Brain reward - Ventral striatum predicts reward, and is activated when an attractive
person makes eye contact with us.
 Reciprocity - When a person likes us back.
 Triangular love model - Seven types of relationships characterized by intimacy,
commitment, and passion.
Social Perception
 Person perception – The mental processes used in making judgments about people.
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Social Categorization - Ignores a person’s unique qualities and makes a conclusion about
a person based on limited information.
Primacy Effect - First impressions are lasting impressions; dress up for a job interview.
Recency Effect - Recent interactions with a person cause you to change your opinion about
them.
Attribution Theory - We often explain our own behavior differently than we explain the
behavior of other people; can lead to errors.
Fundamental Attribution Error - Tendency to give to much weight to personality factors
and not enough weight to situational factors when observing someone’s behavior.
Actor-Observer Bias - When you think a person is rude because the only time you saw the
person was when they were impolite to another; forming a judgment on one behavioral
observation.
Self-Serving bias - “When I get good grades it is because I am smart. When I don’t it is
because the teacher is bad.”
Self-Effacing Bias - “When something bad happens it is always my fault. When something
good happens it is luck.”
Just-World Bias - People get what they deserve and they deserve what they get.
Blaming the Victim - “She deserved to be mugged for being in that neighborhood after
dark.” Their misfortune is their own fault.
Physical Contact - Waitresses received higher tips when making change with their
customers this way.
Eye Contact - This can be used to convey truthfulness, eagerness or attention, or to show
anger.
Attitudes & Prejudice
 Attitudes - Positive or negative evaluation of a person, object or idea.
 Cognitive Dissonance - When our attitudes are inconsistent with their actions; sometimes
leads to change in attitudes.
 Insufficient-justification Effect - When you lie about your attitude to make up for
cognitive dissonance. Group said a boring task was fun when only paid $1 to do it.
 Prejudice - Unjustifiable attitude to a group or a member; usually negative.
 Stereotype - Oversimplified belief about a group that is certainly not true about all people
in that group. Tall people are good basketball players.
 Ingroup Bias - Tendency to favor one’s own group even at the expense of others.
 Justifying Economic Status - Belief that people with less money are lazy and do not work
as hard.
 Out-Group Homogeneity Effect - Tendency to see people who are not part of our group
as being very similar, when we see people of our own group as varied.
 Discrimination - Unfair treatment of a person because they are part of a particular group.
 Social Learning - Children will imitate their parents’ attitudes and parents will reinforce
these attitudes in their children.
 Victimization - After being discriminated against, a person may put down another group
that is worse off in order to gain power.
 Scapegoat Theory - Blaming a complex problem on an undeserving group.
 Robbers Cave - Prejudice was overcome when groups cooperate to achieve a common goal.
 Devine’s Automaticity Theory - Stereotypes about African Americans are so prevalent
that we all hold them; we must actively push them back to act in a non-prejudice way.
Additional Questions to Consider – Use your chart, powerpoints and textbook to answer:
Why do people conform?
What factors will increase and decrease helping behavior?
What did Darley and Latane’s study on helping behavior show?
Why were the results of the Milgram experiment disturbing?
How does cognitive dissonance lead to attitude change?