Download Attitudes

Attitudes
Orientations that locate objects of thought on dimensions of judgment.
Attributions
Inferences that people draw about the causes of events, others’ behavior, and their own
behavior.
Bystander
effect
A paradoxical social phenomenon in which people are less likely to provide needed help
when they are in groups than when they are alone.
Channel
The medium through which a message is sent.
Cognitive
development
Transitions in youngsters’ patterns of thinking, including reasoning, remembering, and
problem solving.
Collectivism
Putting group goals ahead of personal goals and defining one’s identity in terms of the
groups one belongs to.
Commitment
An intent to maintain a relationship in spite of the difficulties and costs that may arise.
Companionate Warm, trusting, tolerant affection for another whose life is deeply intertwined with one’s
love
own.
Conformity
The tendency for people to yield to real or imagined social pressure.
Defensive
attribution
The tendency to blame victims for their misfortune, so that one feels less likely to be
victimized in a similar way.
Discrimination Behaving differently, usually unfairly, toward the members of a group.
External
attributions
Ascribing the causes of behavior to situational demands and environmental constraints.
Foot-in-theGetting people to agree to a small request to increase the chances that they will agree to a
door technique larger request later.
Fundamental
attribution
error
Observers’ bias in favor of internal attributions in explaining others’ behavior.
Group
Two or more individuals who interact and are interdependent.
Group
cohesiveness
The strength of the liking relationships linking group members to each other and to the
group itself.
Group
polarization
A phenomenon that occurs when group discussion strengthens a group’s dominant point of
view and produces a shift toward a more extreme decision in that direction.
Groupthink
A process in which members of a cohesive group emphasize concurrence at the expense of
critical thinking in arriving at a decision.
Illusory
correlation
A misperception that occurs when people estimate that they have encountered more
confirmations of an association between social traits than they have actually seen.
Individualism
Putting personal goals ahead of group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of
personal attributes rather than group memberships.
Ingroup
The group that people belong to and identify with.
Internal
attributions
Ascribing the causes of behavior to personal dispositions, traits, abilities, and feelings.
Interpersonal
attraction
Positive feelings toward another.
Intimacy
Warmth, closeness, and sharing in a relationship.
Lowball
technique
Getting someone to commit to an attractive proposition before revealing the hidden costs.
Matching
hypothesis
The idea that males and females of approximately equal physical attractiveness are likely
to select each other as partners.
Message
The information transmitted by a source.
Obedience
A form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct commands, usually from
someone in a position of authority.
Outgroup
People who are not part of the ingroup.
Passionate
love
A complete absorption in another that includes tender sexual feelings and the agony and
ecstasy of intense emotion.
Person
perception
The process of forming impressions of others.
Prejudice
A negative attitude held toward members of a group.
Receiver
The person to whom a message is sent.
Reciprocity
Liking those who show that they like you.
Reciprocity
norm
The rule that people should pay back in kind what they receive from others.
Self-serving
bias
The tendency to attribute one’s successes to personal factors and one’s failures to
situational factors.
Social loafing
A reduction in effort by individuals when they work in groups as compared to when they
work by themselves.
Social
psychology
The branch of psychology concerned with the way individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors are influenced by others.
Social roles
Widely shared expectations about how people in certain positions are supposed to behave.
Social
schemas
Organized clusters of ideas about categories of social events and people.
Source
The person who sends a communication.
Stereotypes
Widely held beliefs that people have certain characteristics because of their membership in
a particular group.