Social Psychology

• Evaluative beliefs


  Beliefs that can be stated as good or bad
• Intentional beliefs


  Power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs
• Informational beliefs


  Refers to a type of social influence in which individuals modify their behavior, opinions, or beliefs based on the information they receive from others
• Rational beliefs


  Empirically verifiable; one can support it with evidence
• Low-balling


  Technique designed to gain compliance by making a very attractive initial offer to induce a person to accept the offer and then making the terms less favorable
• Foot-in-the-door technique


  Compliance tactic that aims at getting a person to agree to a large request by having them agree to a modest request first
• Door-in-the-face technique


  Persuasive strategy that involves making a large, unreasonable request first, followed by a smaller, more acceptable one
• Not-so-free-sample


  When a salesperson gives you a little bottle of cologne or a complementary makeup application
• Reciprocal concessions technique


  Powerful persuasion strategy that involves making a larger request first, then offering a smaller one as a compromise
• Sleeper effect


  An initially convincing message from an unreliable source becomes more persuasive with the passage of time
• Primacy effect


  Cognitive bias referring to an individual's tendency to better remember the first piece of information they encounter than the information they receive later on
• Recency effect


  Cognitive bias in which those items, ideas, or arguments that came last are remembered more clearly than those that came first
• Cognitive dissonance


  Discomfort a person feels when their behavior does not align with their values or beliefs
• Attitude inoculation


  Technique used to make people immune to attempts to change their attitude by first exposing them to small arguments against their position
• 3 Components of Attitude

  • Affective Component
  • Cognitive Component
  • Behavioral Component
• Implicit attitudes


  Evaluations that occur without conscious awareness towards an attitude object or the self
• Explicit attitudes


  Attitudes that are at the conscious level, are deliberately formed and are easy to self-report
• Two-factor theory of emotion

  Emotion is due to two factors: physiological arousal and cognitive processes
• Egocentric bias


  Tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective and/or have a higher opinion of oneself than reality
• Facial feedback hypothesis


  Individuals' emotional experiences are influenced by their facial expressions
• Theory of Planned Behavior


  Assumes that individuals act rationally, according to their attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control
• Dual process theory


  Provides an account of how thought can arise in two different ways: implicit (automatic), unconscious process and explicit (controlled), conscious process
• Central route to persuasion


  Method of convincing others to take an action or make a decision based on facts and evidence of the merits of the outcome
• Peripheral route persuasion


  Persuasion which does not rely on the intrinsic merits of an argument, but on cues around trustworthiness, emotions, and group identity
• Self-perception theory


  People become aware of certain attitudes by observing their own behavior
• Self-affirmation theory


  When individuals are faced with information that threatens their self-integrity, the response is often defensive in nature to preserve the sense of self
• Classical conditioning


  Involves the pairing of two stimulus events, typically a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS), and an unconditioned stimulus (US)
• Operant conditioning


  Organisms learn from the consequences of their behavior through a series of punishments and reinforcements
• Conformity


  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
• Compliance


  When an individual changes his or her behavior in response to an explicit or implicit request made by another person
• Obedience


  A form of social influence that involves acting on the orders of an authority figure
• Reactance


  Motivation to regain a freedom after it has been lost or threatened, leading people to resist the social influence of others
• Social contagion


  Ubiquitous process by which information, such as attitudes, emotions, or behaviors, are rapidly spread throughout a group from one member to others without rational thought and reason
• Herd mentality


  Tendency for people's behavior or beliefs to conform to those of the group they belong to
• Mass hysteria


  Outbreak of unusual and uncharacteristic behaviors, thoughts and feelings, or health symptoms shared among a group of people
• Mass psychogenic illness


  When people in a group start feeling sick at the same time even though there is no physical or environmental reason for them to be sick
• Injunctive norm


  Perception of people's "attitudes" about a behavior, where the desire for social recognition motivates the norm
• Descriptive norms


  Beliefs about what others do, driving behaviour or practice when a person engages in a particular behaviour because they think others in their community and social circle do the same
• Formal norms


  Established, written rules
• Informal norms


  Not written or codified, but generally understood by the society