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• Social Psychology

  • Scientific in nature
  • Commitment to gathering and evaluating information about the world (including social behaviour) in as careful, precise, and error-free a manner as possible
  • Commitment to obtaining and evaluating such information in a manner that is as free from bias as possible
  • Commitment to accepting findings as accurate only to the extent they have been verified over and over again
  • Commitment to changing one's views
• Casual people watching

  • Does not meet the definition of social psychology
  • Lacks precision and replicability
  • Observations may be biased
• Objectivity

  A commitment to obtaining and evaluating information in a manner that is as free from bias as possible
• Skepticism

  A commitment to accepting findings as accurate only to the extent they have been verified over and over again
• Open-mindedness

  A commitment to changing one's views
• Social Psychology

  The scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual, feelings and thoughts in social situations
• Non-scientific fields make assertions based on intuition, faith and unobservable forces
• Common sense suggests a confusing and inconsistent picture of human behaviour
• Faith in scientific methods yields more conclusive evidence
• Aspects of behaviour affected by social psychology

  • The actions and characteristics of other persons
  • Cognitive processes
  • Environmental variables
  • Biological factors
• Social experiences and environmental factors can influence behaviour through epigenetic processes that turn genes on or off
• Evolutionary psychology

  Suggests that our species has been subject to the process of biological evolution and possesses a large number of evolved psychological mechanisms that help deal with important problems relating to survival
• Components of the process of evolution

  • Variation
  • Inheritance
  • Selection
• The evolutionary perspective does not suggest that we inherit specific patterns of social behaviour, rather it contends that we inherit tendencies or predispositions that may be apparent in our overt actions, depending on the environment
• Correspondent inference

  A theory that asks how we use information about others' behaviour as a basis for inferring their traits
• Correspondent inference theory

  • We tend to focus on the types of actions that are most likely to prove informative
  • We are likely to consider behaviour as corresponding to a person's traits
  • We pay attention to actions that produce noncommon effects, which are conditions that can be caused by one specific factor but not by others
• Kelley's covariation theory

  A theory of attribution that considers consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness in explaining how people attribute causes to behaviour
• Factors in Kelley's covariation theory

  • Consensus
  • Consistency
  • Distinctiveness
• Internal cause

  When consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness are high
• External factors

  Influence how people behave, such as culture, society, and danger
• Perceptions can influence behaviour, such as Mrs. being friendly because she is obligated by a code of conduct
• Conditions for freely chosen behaviour

  • Behaviour is freely chosen
  • Behaviour yields distinctive noncommon effects
  • Behaviour is low in social desirability or violates social norms
• Correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error)

  The tendency to perceive others' actions as caused by their personality traits rather than external factors
• Actor-observer effect

  The tendency to attribute one's own behaviour to situational causes but others' behaviour to personality traits
• Self-serving bias

  The tendency to attribute positive outcomes to internal causes and negative outcomes to external causes
• Proximity

  Spatial awareness, personal bubble, exposure, and physical closeness with others
• Importance of proximity

  • Builds trust and forms impressions
  • Helps build intimacy
  • Closer proximity leads to more mutual connection
• Repeated exposure effect

  The tendency to like something more the more we are exposed to it
• Physical attractiveness

  A combination of characteristics that are perceived as pretty or handsome
• Being attractive is associated with being perceived as pretty, clever, and likable, while being unattractive is associated with being perceived as ugly and dumb
• Factors of physical attractiveness

  • Extent to which a person is overweight
  • Degree of similarity to the observer
  • Extent to which the observer likes the person
• Similarity-dissimilarity effect

  The tendency to respond positively to those who are similar to ourselves and negatively to those who are not similar
• Matching hypothesis

  The view that people choose partners who are similar to themselves in physical attractiveness, even though they may prefer very attractive partners
• Similarity hypothesis

  The essence of friendship starts with similarities with others
• Calculation of attraction

  The number of topics on which two people express similar views divided by the total number of topics on which they have communicated
• Balance theory

  • Explains how we organize likes and dislikes
  • Balance is a pleasant experience, imbalance is unpleasant, and non-balance is neutral
• Social comparison theory

  Suggests that people compare themselves to others as a way to evaluate their own views and their normality
• Social skills

  • Social perception
  • Interpersonal influence
  • Social adaptability
  • Expressiveness
• Personality traits related to liking

  • Openness
  • Conscientiousness
  • Agreeableness
  • Extraversion
  • Emotional stability
• People high in agreeableness and extraversion receive higher ratings of interpersonal attractiveness