Affect The feelings we experience as part of our everyday lives

Attitude is a knowledge representation that includes primarily our liking or disliking of a person, thing, or group

Behavioral measures Measures designed to directly assess what people do

Collectivism Cultural norms that indicate that people should be more fundamentally connected with others and thus are more oriented toward interdependence

Correlational research Research designed to search for and test hypotheses about the relationships between two or more variables

Cover story A false statement of what the research was really about

Culture A group of people, normally living within a given geographical region, who share a common set of social norms, including religious and family values and moral beliefs

Dependent variable The variable that is measured after the manipulations have occurred

Electroencephalography (EEG) A technique that records the electrical activity produced by the brain’s neurons through the use of electrodes that are placed around the research participant’s head

Emotions Brief, but often intense, mental and physiological feeling states

Evolutionary adaptation The assumption that human nature, including much of our social behavior, is determined largely by our evolutionary past

External validity The extent to which relationships can be expected to hold up when they are tested again in different ways and for different people

Factorial research designs Experimental designs that have two or more independent variables

Falsifiable When the outcome of the research can demonstrate empirically either that there is support for the hypothesis (i.e., the relationship between the variables was correctly specified) or that there is actually no relationship between the variables or that the actual relationship is not in the direction that was predicted

Field experiments Experimental research studies that are conducted in a natural environment

Fitness The extent to which having a given characteristic helps the individual organism to survive and to reproduce at a higher rate than do other members of the species who do not have the characteristic

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) A neuroimaging technique that uses a magnetic field to create images of brain structure and function

Hindsight bias The tendency to think that we could have predicted something that we probably would not have been able to predict

Implicit Association Test (IAT) A procedure designed to elicit implicit beliefs and attitudes

Ingroup Those we view as being similar and important to us and with whom we share close social connections

Internal validity The extent to which changes in the dependent variable in an experiment can confidently be attributed to changes in the independent variable

Kin selection Strategies that favor the reproductive success of one’s relatives, sometimes even at a cost to the individual’s own survival

Meta-analysis A statistical procedure in which the results of existing studies are combined to determine what conclusions can be drawn on the basis of all the studies considered together

Mood The positive or negative feelings that are in the background of our everyday experiences

Other-concern The motivation to affiliate with, accept, and be accepted by others=

Pearson correlation coefficient A statistic used to summarize the association, or correlation, between two variable

Reciprocal altruism A mutual, and generally equitable, exchange of benefits

Research hypothesis A specific prediction about the relationship between the variables of interest and about the specific direction of that relationship

Schema A knowledge representation that includes information about a person, group, or situation

Self-concern The motivation to protect and enhance the self and the people who are psychologically close to us

Self-report measures Measures in which individuals are asked to respond to questions posed by an interviewer or on a questionnaire

Social cognition An understanding of how our knowledge about our social worlds develops through experience and the influence of these knowledge structures on memory, information processing, attitudes, and judgment.

Social exchange The idea that, if we help other people now, they will return the favor should we need their help in the future

Social influence The process through which other people change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and through which we change theirs

Social neuroscience The study of how our social behavior both influences and is influenced by the activities of our brain

Social norms The ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members and perceived by them as appropriate

Social psychology The scientific study of how we feel about, think about, and behave toward the people around us and how our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are influenced by those people

Third variables Variables that are not part of the research hypothesis but that cause both the predictor and the outcome variable and thus produce the observed correlation between them