Accommodation When existing schemas change on the basis of new information
Actor-observer bias or difference When we tend to make more personal attributions for the behavior of others than we do for ourselves and to make more situational attributions for our own behavior than for the behavior of others
Additive task A task where the inputs of each group member are added together to create the group performance, and the expected performance of the group is the sum of group members’ individual inputs
Adjourning stage When group members prepare for the group to end
Affect heuristic The tendency to rely on automatically occurring affective responses to stimuli to guide our judgments of them
Affect The feelings we experience as part of our everyday lives
Affective forecasting Our attempts to predict how future events will make us feel
Aggression Behavior that is intended to harm another individual who does not wish to be harmed
Agreeableness A tendency to be good natured, cooperative, and trusting
Altruism Any behavior that is designed to increase another person’s welfare, and particularly those actions that do not seem to provide a direct reward to the person who performs them
Altruistic or prosocial personality An individual difference variable that relates to the likelihood of helping others across many different situations
Anchoring and adjustment The tendency to weight initial information too heavily and thereby insufficiently move our judgment away from it
Anxious/ambivalent attachment style When children become overly dependent on the parents and continually seek more affection from them than they can give
Arbitration A type of third-party intervention that avoids negotiation as well as the necessity of any meetings between the parties in conflict
Assimilation A process in which our existing knowledge influences new conflicting information to better fit with our existing knowledge, thus reducing the likelihood of schema change
Associational learning When an object or event comes to be associated with a natural response, such as an automatic behavior or a positive or negative emotion
Attachment style Individual differences in how people relate to others in close relationships
Attitude is a knowledge representation that includes primarily our liking or disliking of a person, thing, or group
Attitude strength The importance of an attitude, as assessed by how quickly it comes to mind
Attribution The process of assigning causes to behaviors
Attributional style The type of attributions that we tend to make for events that occur to us.
Authoritarianism An individual difference variable characterized by a tendency to prefer things to be simple rather than complex and to hold traditional values
Automatic cognition Thinking that occurs out of our awareness, quickly, and without taking much effort
Autonomy-oriented help The belief that, given the appropriate tools, recipients can help themselves
Availability heuristic The tendency to make judgments of the frequency of an event, or the likelihood that an event will occur, on the basis of the ease with which the event can be retrieved from memory
Avoidant attachment style When children are unable to relate to the parents at all, becoming distant, fearful, and cold
Bait-and-switch technique A persuasion attempt in which the target is offered one product at a very low price and yet the product at the low price is not actually available
Base rates The likelihood that events occur across a large population
Basking in the reflected glory When we use and advertise our ingroups’ positive achievements to boost our self-esteem
Behavioral measures Measures designed to directly assess what people do
Bias blind spot The tendency to believe that our own judgments are less susceptible to the influence of bias than those of others
Black sheep effect The strong devaluation of ingroup members who threaten the positive image and identity of the ingroup
Blaming the victim Interpreting the negative outcomes that occur to others internally so that it seems that they deserved them
Bogus pipeline procedure A procedure, designed to elicit more honest responses, in which an experimenter first convinces participants that they have access to their “true” beliefs
Catharsis The idea that engaging in less harmful aggressive actions will reduce the tendency to aggress later in a more harmful way
Causal attribution The process of trying to determine the causes of people’s behavior
Central traits Characteristics that have a very strong influence on our impressions of others
Charismatic leaders Leaders who are enthusiastic, committed, and self-confident; who tend to talk about the importance of group goals at a broad level; and who make personal sacrifices for the group
Coercive power The ability to dispense punishments
Cognitive accessibility The extent to which a schema is activated in memory and thus likely to be used in information processing
Cognitive dissonance The discomfort that occurs when we respond in ways that we see as inconsistent
Cognitive heuristics Information-processing rules of thumb that enable us to think in ways that are quick and easy but that may sometimes lead to error
Cognitive reappraisal Altering an emotional state by reinterpreting the meaning of the triggering situation or stimulus
Collective action The attempts on the part of one group to change the social status hierarchy by improving the status of their own group relative to others
Collectivism Cultural norms that indicate that people should be more fundamentally connected with others and thus are more oriented toward interdependence
Commitment The feelings and actions that keep partners working together to maintain the relationship
Common ingroup identity The experience of social identity that occurs when differences in social grouping at one level are reduced by perceived similarities on a second, superordinate category
Communal relationships Close relationships in which partners suspend their need for equity and exchange, giving support to the partner in order to meet his or her needs, and without consideration of the costs to themselves
Companionate love Love that is based on friendship, mutual attraction, common interests, mutual respect, and concern for each other’s welfare
Compensatory (or averaging) task A task where the group input is combined such that the performance of the individuals is averaged rather than added
Competition The attempt to gain as many of the limited rewards as possible for ourselves, while reducing the likelihood of success for the other parties
Conceptual variables The characteristics that we are trying to measure
Conditioning The ability to connect stimuli (things or events in the environment) with responses (behaviors or other actions)
Confirmation bias The tendency for people to seek out and favor information that confirms their expectations and beliefs
Conflict When parties are involved in violence and hostility
Conformity The change in beliefs, opinions, and behaviors as a result of our perceptions about what other people believe or do
Conjunctive task When the group performance is determined by the ability of the group member who performs most poorly
Conscientiousness A tendency to be responsible, orderly, and dependable
Consensus information When a situation seems to be the cause of a behavior if the situation creates the same behavior in most people
Consistency information When a situation seems to be the cause of a behavior if the situation always produces the behavior in the target
Contact hypothesis The idea that intergroup contact will reduce prejudice
Contingency model of leadership effectiveness A model of leadership effectiveness that focuses on both person variables and situational variables
Contributions dilemma When the short-term costs of a behavior lead individuals to avoid performing it, and this may prevent the long-term benefits that would have occurred if the behaviors had been performed
Controlled cognition When we deliberately size up and think about something; for instance, another person
Cooperation Behavior that occurs when we trust the people or groups with whom we are interacting and are willing to communicate and share with the others
Correlational research Research designed to search for and test hypotheses about the relationships between two or more variables
Correspondence bias When we attribute behaviors to people’s internal characteristics, even in heavily constrained situations
Counterfactual thinking The tendency to think about events according to what might have been
Covariation principle When a given behavior is more likely to have been caused by the situation if that behavior covaries (or changes) across situations
Cover story A false statement of what the research was really about
Criterion task A task where the group can see that there is a clearly correct answer to the problem that is being posed
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
Culture of honor A social norm that condones and even encourages responding to insults with aggression
Cyberbullying Aggression inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices
Defensive attribution When we make attributions that defend ourselves from the notion that we could be the victim of an unfortunate outcome, and often also that we could be held responsible as the victim
Deindividuation The loss of individual self-awareness and individual accountability in groups
Dependency-oriented help When the recipient feels that the implication of the helping is that he or she is are unable to care for himself or herself
Dependent variable The variable that is measured after the manipulations have occurred
Depressive realism The tendency for people who are depressed to make social judgments about the future that are less positively skewed and often more accurate than those who do not have depression
Desensitization The tendency to become used to, and thus less influenced by, a stimulus
Devil’s advocate An individual who is given the job of expressing conflicting opinions and forcing the group (in a noncombative way) to fully discuss all the alternatives
Diffusion of responsibility When we assume that others will take action and therefore we do not take action ourselves
Discrimination Unjustified negative behaviors toward members of outgroups based on their group membership
Disjunctive task When the group’s performance is determined by the best group member
Disorganized attachment style A blend of anxious and avoidant attachment styles
Displaced aggression When negative emotions caused by one person trigger aggression toward a different person
Distinctiveness information When a situation seems to be the cause of a behavior if the behavior occurs when the situation is present but not when it is not present
Distributive fairness Our judgments about whether or not a party is receiving a fair share of the available rewards
Divisible task When each of the group members working on the job can do a separate part of the job at the same time
Dominant response The action that we are most likely to emit in any given situation.
Door-in-the-face technique A persuasion tactic that involves making an unreasonably large request before making the (intended) smaller request
Downward social comparison When we attempt to create a positive image of ourselves through favorable comparisons with others who are worse off than we are
Dual-concern model of cooperation and competition A model of individuals relating to social dilemmas, or other forms of conflict, in different ways, depending on their underlying personal orientations or as influenced by the characteristics of the situation that orient them toward a given concern
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
Emotional or impulsive aggression Aggression that occurs with only a small amount of forethought or intent and that is determined primarily by impulsive emotions
Emotions Brief, but often intense, mental and physiological feeling states
Empathy An affective response in which a person understands, and even feels, another person’s distress and experiences events the way the other person does
Empirical Based on the collection and systematic analysis of observable data
Entitativity The perception, either by the group members themselves or by others, that the people together are a group
Entity theorists People who tend to believe that others’ traits are fundamentally stable and incapable of change
Evolutionary adaptation The assumption that human nature, including much of our social behavior, is determined largely by our evolutionary past
Exchange relationships Relationships in which each of the partners keeps track of his or her contributions to the partnership
Experimental confederate A person who is actually part of the experimental team but who pretends to be another participant in the study
Experimental research Research designs that include the manipulation of a given situation or experience for two or more groups of individuals who are initially created to be equivalent, followed by a measurement of the effect of that experience.
Expert power Power based on the possession of valid and accurate information and that leads to private acceptance in followers.
Extended-contact hypothesis The prediction that people who have friends from other social groups will be more accepting of all members of those groups
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
False consensus bias The tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people hold similar views to our own
False consciousness The acceptance of one’s own low status as part of the proper and normal functioning of society
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
Feelings of social identity The positive self-esteem that we get from our group memberships
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
Fixed-sum outcome When a gain for one side necessarily means a loss for the other side or sides
Foot-in-the-door technique A persuasion attempt in which we first get the target to accept a rather minor request, and then ask for a larger request
Forewarning Reminding an individual that an attempt to persuade may be forthcoming, with the expectation that the reminder will reduce persuasion
Forming stage When the members of the group come together and begin their existence as a group
Framing effects occur when people’s judgments about different options are affected by whether they are framed as resulting in gains or losses.
Frustration The emotion that results from feeling that we are not obtaining the important goals that we have set for ourselves
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) A neuroimaging technique that uses a magnetic field to create images of brain structure and function
Fundamental attribution error When we tend to overestimate the role of person factors and overlook the impact of situations in explaining a behavior
Global attributions Those attributions that we feel apply broadly
Group attribution error The tendency to make attributional generalizations about entire outgroups based on a very small number of observations of individual members
Group polarization When, after discussion, the attitudes held by the individual group members become more extreme than they were before the group began discussing the topic
Group process The events that occur while the group is working together on the task
Group-serving bias (or ultimate attribution error) The tendency to make internal attributions about our ingroups’ successes, and external attributions about their setbacks, and to make the opposite pattern of attributions about our outgroups
Groupthink When a group that is made up of members who may actually be very competent and thus quite capable of making excellent decisions nevertheless ends up making a poor one as a result of a flawed group process and strong conformity pressures
Halo effect The influence of a global positive evaluation of a person on perceptions of their specific traits
Harm-based morality The belief that harming others, either physically or by violating their rights, is wrong
Harvesting dilemma A social dilemma that leads people to overuse an existing public good
Hindsight bias The tendency to think that we could have predicted something that we probably would not have been able to predict
Illusion of group effectivity The tendency to overvalue the level of productivity of our ingroups
Implicit Association Test (IAT) A procedure designed to elicit implicit beliefs and attitudes
Incremental theorists People who believe that personalities change a lot over time and who therefore are more likely to make situational attributions for events.
Independent variable The situation that is created by the experimenter through the experimental manipulations
Individualism Cultural norms, common in Western societies, that focus primarily on self-enhancement and independence
Informational social influence The change in opinions or behavior that occurs when we conform to people who we believe have accurate information
Ingroup favoritism The tendency to respond more positively to people from our ingroups than we do to people from outgroups
Ingroup Those we view as being similar and important to us and with whom we share close social connections
Injunctive norms Rules that specify how group members are expected to behave.
Inoculation A mild attack on the attitude position designed to help the potential target create counterarguments to the potential persuasive attempt, with the expectation that subsequent persuasion will be reduced
Instrumental or cognitive aggression Aggression that is intentional and planned
Insufficient justification The perception that a threat or reward that is in fact sufficient to get the person to engage in or avoid a behavior is not sufficient
Integrative outcome When a solution can be found that benefits all the parties
Intellective task A task that involves the ability of the group to make a decision or a judgment
Interdependence A state in which the group members depend on each other for successful performance of the group goals
Internal validity The extent to which changes in the dependent variable in an experiment can confidently be attributed to changes in the independent variable
Internalized prejudice When individuals turn prejudice directed toward them by others onto themselves
Interpersonal attraction The strength of our liking or loving for another person
Jigsaw classroom An approach to learning in which students from different racial or ethnic groups work together, in an interdependent way, to master material
Judgmental task A task for which there is no clearly correct answer to the problem
Just world belief The belief that people get what they deserve in life
Just world hypothesis The tendency to make attributions based on the belief that the world is fundamentally just
Kin selection Strategies that favor the reproductive success of one’s relatives, sometimes even at a cost to the individual’s own survival
Labeling bias When we are labeled, and others’ views and expectations of us are affected by that labeling
Leadership The ability to direct or inspire others to achieve goals
Learned helplessness The tendency to continually make external, stable, and global attributions for our behavior
Learning The relatively permanent change in knowledge that is acquired through experience
Legitimate power Authority that comes from a belief on the part of those being influenced that the person has a legitimate right to demand obedience
Looking-glass self When part of how we see ourselves comes from our perception of how others see us
Lowball technique A persuasion attempt in which the persuader promises the target something desirable, with the intention of getting the target to imagine himself or herself engaging the desired behavior, before indicating that the desirable offer is actually not possible
Macbeth effect The observation that people tend to want to cleanse themselves when they perceive that they have violated their own ethical standards
Majority influence When the beliefs held by the larger number of individuals in the current social group prevail
Maximizing task A task that involves performance that is measured by how rapidly the group works or how much of a product they are able to make
Mediation Helping to create compromise by using third-party negotiation
Mere exposure effect The tendency to prefer stimuli (including, but not limited to, people) that we have seen frequently
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
Mindguard Someone whose job it is to help quash dissent and to increase conformity to the leader’s opinions
Minority influence When the beliefs held by the smaller number of individuals in the current social group prevail
Misattribution of arousal When people incorrectly label the source of the arousal that they are experiencing
Mood The positive or negative feelings that are in the background of our everyday experiences
Mood congruence effects When we are more able to retrieve memories that match our current mood
Mood-dependent memory The tendency to better remember information when our current mood matches the mood we were in when we encoded that information
Moral reasoning The manner in which one makes ethical judgments
Morality beliefs The set of social norms that describe the principles and ideals, as well as the duties and obligations, that we view as appropriate and that we use to judge the actions of others and to guide our own behavior
Narcissism A personality trait characterized by overly high self-esteem, self-admiration, and self-centeredness
Need for cognition The tendency to think carefully and fully about our experiences, including the social situations we encounter
Negative attributional style The tendency to explain negative events by referring to our own internal, stable, and global qualities
Negotiation The process by which two or more parties formally work together to attempt to resolve a perceived divergence of interest in order to avoid or resolve social conflict
Nonphysical aggression Aggression that does not involve physical harm
Nonverbal behavior Any type of communication that does not involve speaking, including facial expressions, body language, touching, voice patterns, and interpersonal distance
Normative social influence Conformity that occurs when we express opinions or behave in ways that help us to be accepted or that keep us from being isolated or rejected by others
Norming stage When the appropriate norms and roles for the group are developed
Not invented here bias When group members overvalue their own group’s ideas and products over those of other groups
Observational learning When people learn by observing the behavior of others
Observational research Research that involves making observations of behavior and recording those observations in an objective manner
Operant learning The principle that experiences that are followed by positive emotions (reinforcements or rewards) are likely to be repeated, whereas experiences that are followed by negative emotions (punishments) are less likely to be repeated
Operational definition The particular method that we use to measure a variable of interest
Optimistic bias The tendency to believe that positive outcomes are more likely to happen than negative ones, particularly in relation to ourselves versus others
Optimistic explanatory style A way of explaining current outcomes affecting the self in a way that leads to an expectation of positive future outcomes
Other-concern The motivation to affiliate with, accept, and be accepted by others
Outcome bias A tendency to look at the outcome too much when we evaluate decision making
Outgroup homogeneity The tendency to view members of outgroups as more similar to each other than we see members of ingroups
Overconfidence bias The tendency to be overconfident in our own skills, abilities, and judgments
Overjustification The viewing of our behavior as caused by the situation, leading us to discount the extent to which our behavior was actually caused by our own interest in the activity
Passionate love The kind of love that we experience when we are first getting to know a romantic partner
Pearson correlation coefficient A statistic used to summarize the association, or correlation, between two variables
Performing stage When group members establish a routine and effectively work together
Person perception The process of learning about other people
Personal (or internal or dispositional) attribution When we decide that the behavior was caused primarily by the person
Personal distress The negative emotions that we may experience when we view another person’s suffering
Personality theories of leadership Explanations of leadership based on the idea that some people are simply “natural leaders” because they possess personality characteristics that make them effective
Personality traits The specific and stable personality characteristics that describe an individual
Physical aggression Aggression that involves harming others physically
Planning fallacy The tendency to overestimate the amount that we can accomplish over a particular time frame
Pluralistic ignorance When people think that others in their environment have information that they do not have and when they base their judgments on what they think the others are thinking
Positive attributional style Ways of explaining events that are related to high self-esteem, including a tendency to explain negative events experienced by referring to external, unstable, and specific qualities
Postdecisional dissonance The feeling of regret that may occur after we make an important decision
Pre-giving technique A persuasion tactic that relies on the norm of reciprocity
Prefrontal cortex The part of the brain that lies in front of the motor areas of the cortex and that helps us remember the characteristics and actions of other people, plan complex social behaviors, and coordinate our behaviors with those of others
Prejudice An unjustifiable negative attitude toward an outgroup or toward the members of that outgroup
Prescriptive norms Rules which tell the group members what to do
Primacy effect The tendency for information that we learn first to be weighted more heavily than is information that we learn later
Priming A technique in which information is temporarily brought into memory through exposure to situational events, which can then influence judgments entirely out of awareness
Principle of attitude consistency A principle that states that for any given attitude object, the ABCs of affect, behavior, and cognition are normally in line with each other
Prisoner’s dilemma game A laboratory simulation that models a social dilemma in which the goals of the individual compete with the goals of another individual (or sometimes with a group of other individuals)
Private acceptance Real change in opinions on the part of the individual
Private self-consciousness The tendency to introspect about our inner thoughts and feelings
Procedural fairness Beliefs about the fairness (or unfairness) of the procedures used to distribute available rewards among parties
Process gain When groups work better than we would expect, given the individuals who form them
Process loss When groups perform more poorly than we would expect, given the characteristics of the members of the group
Processing fluency The ease with which we can process information in our environments
Production blocking When only one person can speak at a time, and this can cause people to forget their ideas because they are listening to others, or to miss what others are saying because they are thinking of their own ideas
Projection bias The tendency to assume that others share our cognitive and affective states
Proscriptive norms Rules which tell the group members what not to do
Proximity-liking The tendency for people to become better acquainted with, and more fond of, each other when the social situation brings them into repeated contact
Psychological reactance The strong emotional response that we experience when we feel that our freedom of choice is being taken away
Public compliance A superficial change in behavior (including the public expression of opinions) that is not accompanied by an actual change in one’s private opinion
Public goods Benefits that are shared by a community at large and that everyone in the group has access to, regardless of whether or not they have personally contributed to the creation of the goods
Public self-consciousness The tendency to focus on our outer public image and to be particularly aware of the extent to which we are meeting the standards set by others
Random assignment to conditions Determining separately for each participant which condition he or she will experience through a random process
Realistic group conflict When groups are in competition for objectively scarce resources
Recency effect When information that comes later is given more weight
Reciprocal altruism A mutual, and generally equitable, exchange of benefits
Reciprocity norm A social norm reminding us that we should follow the principles of reciprocal altruism
Reconstructive memory bias When we remember things that match our current beliefs better than those that don’t and reshape those memories to better align with our current beliefs
Referent power Influence based on identification with, attraction to, or respect for the power-holder
Relational or social aggression Intentionally harming another person’s social relationships
Representativeness heuristic When we base our judgments on information that seems to represent, or match, what we expect will happen, while ignoring more informative base-rate information
Reputation management A form of long-term self-presentation, where individuals seek to build and sustain specific reputations with important audiences
Research hypothesis A specific prediction about the relationship between the variables of interest and about the specific direction of that relationship
Reward power The ability to distribute positive or negative rewards
Role stress When individuals experience incompatible demands and expectations within or between the roles that they occupy, which often negatively impacts their ability to be successful in those roles
Schema A knowledge representation that includes information about a person, group, or situation
Secure attachment style When children perceive their parents as safe, available, and responsive caregivers and are able to relate easily to them
Self Our sense of personal identity and of who we are as individuals
Self-affirmation theory When people try to reduce the threat to their self-concept posed by feelings of self-discrepancy by focusing on and affirming their worth in another domain, unrelated to the issue at hand
Self-awareness The extent to which we are currently fixing our attention on our own self-concept
Self-awareness theory When we focus our attention on ourselves, the tendency for us to compare our current behavior against our internal standards
Self-complexity The extent to which individuals have many different and relatively independent ways of thinking about themselves
Self concept A knowledge representation that contains knowledge about us, including our beliefs about our personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles, as well as the knowledge that we exist as individuals
Self-concept clarity The extent to which one’s self-concept is clearly and consistently defined
Self-concern The motivation to protect and enhance the self and the people who are psychologically close to us
Self-consciousness When our self-concept becomes highly accessible because of our concerns about being observed and potentially judged by others
Self-disclosure The tendency to communicate frequently, without fear of reprisal, and in an accepting and empathetic manner
Self-discrepancy theory The tendency to experience distress when we perceive a discrepancy between our actual and ideal selves
Self-efficacy The belief in our ability to carry out actions that produce desired outcomes
Self-esteem The positive (high self-esteem) or negative (low self-esteem) feelings that we have about ourselves
Self-evaluation maintenance theory When our self-esteem can be threatened when someone else outperforms us, particularly if that person is close to us and the performance domain is central to our self-concept
Self-fulfilling prophecy A process that occurs when our expectations about others lead us to behave toward those others in ways that make our expectations come true
Self-handicapping When we make statements or engage in behaviors that help us create a convenient external attribution for potential failure
Self-labeling When we adopt others’ labels explicitly into our self-concept
Self-monitoring The tendency to be both motivated and capable of regulating our behavior to meet the demands of social situations
Self-perception The process of using our perceptions of our behavior to help us determine our attitudes toward an attitude object
Self-presentation The tendency to present a positive self-image to others, with the goal of increasing our social status
Self-reference effect When information that is processed in relationship to the self is particularly well remembered
Self-regulation The process of setting goals and using our cognitive and affective capacities to reach those goals
Self-report measures Measures in which individuals are asked to respond to questions posed by an interviewer or on a questionnaire
Self-schema A variety of different cognitive aspects of the self
Self-serving attributions Attributions that help us meet our desire to see ourselves positively
Self-serving bias The tendency to attribute our successes to ourselves, and our failures to others and the situation
Self-verification theory The tendency for people to often seek confirmation of their self-concept, whether it is positive or negative
Shared information bias When group members tend to discuss information that they all have access to while ignoring equally important information that is available to only a few of the members
Situational attribution When we determine that a behavior was caused primarily by the situation
Sleeper effect Attitude change that occurs over time when the content of a message is remembered but the source of the message is forgotten
Social categorization The natural cognitive process of placing individuals into social groups according to their social categories
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 comparison When we learn about our abilities and skills, about the appropriateness and validity of our opinions, and about our relative social status by comparing our own attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with those of others
Social conventional morality Norms that are seen as appropriate within a culture but that do not involve behaviors that relate to doing good or doing harm toward others
Social creativity The use of strategies that allow members of low-status groups to perceive their group as better than other groups
Social dilemma A situation in which the goals of the individual conflict with the goals of the group
Social dominance orientation (SDO) A personality variable that refers to the tendency to see and to accept inequality among different groups
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 facilitation The tendency to perform tasks better or faster in the presence of others
Social fairness norms Beliefs about how people should be treated fairly
Social group A set of individuals with a shared purpose and who normally share a positive social identity
Social identity The sense of our self that involves our memberships in social groups
Social identity theory The tendency to draw part of our sense of identity and self-esteem from the social groups that we belong to
Social impact The increase in the amount of conformity that is produced by adding new members to the majority group
Social influence The process through which other people change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and through which we change theirs
Social inhibition The tendency to perform tasks more poorly or slower in the presence of others
Social intelligence An ability to develop a clear perception of the situation using situational cues
Social loafing A group process loss that occurs when people do not work as hard in a group as they do when they are alone
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 power The ability of a person to create conformity even when the people being influenced may attempt to resist those changes
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
Social responsibility norm A social norm that we should try to help others who need assistance, even without any expectation of future paybacks
Social support refers to the comfort that we receive from the people around us—for instance, our family, friends, classmates, and coworkers
Specific attributions Those attributions that we see as more unique to particular events.
Spontaneous message processing When we focus on whatever is most obvious or enjoyable, without much attention to the message itself
Stable attributions Those attributions that we think will be relatively permanent
Stereotype The positive or negative beliefs that we hold about the characteristics of social group
Stereotype threat Performance decrements that are caused by the knowledge of cultural stereotypes
Storming stage When group members may attempt to make their own views known, expressing their independence and attempting to persuade the group to accept their ideas
Sunk costs bias When we choose to stay in situations largely because we feel we have put too much effort in to be able to leave them behind
Superordinate goals Goals that are very important and require the cooperative efforts and resources of more than one group to attain
Principle of attitude consistency For any given attitude object, the ABCs of affect, behavior, and cognition are normally in line with each other
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
Thoughtful message processing The careful consideration of whether a persuasion attempt is valid or invalid
Tit-for-tat strategy Initially making a cooperative choice and then simply matching the previous move of the opponent (whether cooperation or competition)
Trait ascription bias A tendency for people to view their own personality, beliefs, and behaviors as more variable than those of others
Transactional leaders Leaders who work with their subordinates to help them understand what is required of them and to get the job done
Transformational leaders Leaders who have a vision of where the group is going and attempt to stimulate and inspire their workers to move beyond their present status and to create a new and better future
Unitary task A task that has to be done all at once and cannot be divided up
Unrealistic optimism The tendency to be overly positive about the likelihood that negative things will occur to us and that we will be able to effectively cope with them if they do
Unstable attributions Those attributions that are expected to change over time
Upward social comparison When we compare ourselves with others who are better off than we are
Verbal aggression Yelling, screaming, swearing, and name calling
Violence Aggression that has extreme physical harm, such as injury or death, as its goal
What is beautiful is good stereotype The belief that external attractiveness signifies positive internal qualities