Social Psychology
Self-Esteem
People's evaluation of their own self worth-that is, the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent, and decent.
Social Cognition
How people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments or decisions.
Social Psychology
The scientific study of the way in which people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people.
Behaviorism
A school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment. The nurture aspect of "nature vs. nurture."
Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people's behavior is as a result of internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors.
Naïve Realism
The conviction that we perceive things "as they really are," underestimating how much we are interpreting or "spinning" what we see.
Social Influence
The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior.
Gestalt Psychology
A school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people's minds rather than the objective, physical attributes of the property.
Evolutionary Psychology
The attemt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection. The nature aspect of "nature vs. nurture."
Construal
The way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
An expectation of one's own or another person's behavior that comes true because of the tendency of the person holding it to act in ways that bring it about.
Accessibility
The extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people's minds and are therefore likely to be used when making judgments about the social world.
Analytic Thinking Style
A type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context; this type of thinking is common in Western cultures.
Schemas
Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember.
Automatic Thinking
Thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless.
Planning Fallacy
The tendency for people to be overly optimistic about how soon they will complete a project, even when they have failed to get similar projects done on time in the past.
Representative Heuristic
A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case.
Priming
The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept.
Availability Heuristic
A mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind.
Base Rate Information
Information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population.
Controlled Thinking
Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful.
Counterfactual Thinking
Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been.
Judgemental Heuristic
Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently.
Holistic Thinking Style
A type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other; this type of thinking is common in East Asian cultures (e.g., China, Japan, and Korea).
Covariation Model
A theory that states that to form an attribution about what caused a person's behavior, we systematically note the pattern between the presence or absence of possible causal factors and whether the behavior occurs.
Consistency Information
Information about the extent to which the behavior between one actor and one stimulus is the same across time and circumstances.
Primacy Effect
When it comes to forming impressions, the first traits we perceive in others influence how we view information that we learn about them later.
Self-Serving Attributions
Explanations for one's successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one's failures that blame external, situational factors.
Belief Perseverence
The tendency to stick with an initial judgment even in the face of new information that should prompt us to reconsider.
Attribution Theory
A description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people's behavior.
Internal Attribution
The inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character, or personality.
External Attribution
The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he or she is in;
the assumption is that most people would respond the same way in that situation.
Bias Blind Spot
The tendency to think that other people are more susceptible to attributional biases in their thinking than we are.
Decode
To interpret the meaning of the nonverbal behavior other people express, such as deciding that a pat on the back was an expression of condescension and not kindness.
Belief in a Just World
A form of defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people.
Affect Blends
Facial expressions in which one part of the face registers one emotion while another part of the face registers a different emotion.
Encode
To express or emit nonverbal behavior, such as smiling or patting someone on the back.
Social Perceptions
The study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people.
Perceptual Saliance
The seeming importance of information that is the focus of people's attention.
Distinctiveness Information
Information about the extent to which one particular actor behaves in the same way to different stimuli.
Two-Step Attribution Process
Analyzing another person's behavior first by making an automatic internal attribution and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behavior, after which one may adjust the original internal attribution.
Emblems
Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture; they usually have direct verbal translations, such as the OK sign.
Display Rules
Culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display.
Thin Slicing
Drawing meaningful conclusions about another person's personality or skills based on an extremely brief sample of behavior.
Consensus Definition
Information about the extent to which other people behave the same way toward the same stimulus as the actor does.
Nonverbal Communication
The way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words; nonverbal cues include facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position and movement, the use of touch, and gaze.
Self-Concept
The overall set of beliefs that people have about their personal attributes.
Upward Social Comparison
Comparing ourselves to people who are better than we are with regard to a particular trait or ability.
Self-Perception Theory
The theory that when our attitudes and feelings are uncertain or ambiguous, we infer these states by observing our behavior and the situation in which it occurs.
Social Comparison Theory
The idea that we learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to other people.
Downward Social Comparison
Comparing ourselves to people who are worse than we are with regard to a particular trait or ability.
Extrinsic Motivation
The desire to engage in an activity because of external rewards or pressures, not because we enjoy the task or find it interesting.
Fixed Mindset
The idea that we have a set amount of an ability that cannot change.
Introspection
The process whereby people look inward and examine their own thoughts, feelings, and motives.
Casual Theories
Theories about the causes of one's own feelings and behaviors; often we learn such theories from our culture (e.g., "absence makes the heart grow fonder").
Two-Factor Theory of Emotion
The idea that emotional experience is the result of a two-step self-perception process in which people first experience physiological arousal and then seek an appropriate explanation for it.
Independent View of Self
A way of defining oneself in terms of one's own internal thoughts, feelings, and actions and not in terms of the thoughts, feelings, and actions of other people.
Self Control
The ability to subdue immediate desires to achieve long-term goals.
Misattribution of Arousal
The process whereby people make mistaken inferences about what is causing them to feel the way they do.
Intrinsic Motivation
The desire to engage in an activity because we enjoy it or find it interesting, not because of external rewards or pressures.
Performance-Contingent Rewards
Rewards that are based on how well we perform a task.
Social Tuning
The process whereby people adopt another person's attitudes.
Self-Handicaping
The strategy whereby people create obstacles and excuses for themselves so that if they do poorly on a task, they can avoid blaming themselves.
Taskcontingent Rewards
Rewards that are given for performing a task, regardless of how well the task is done.
Growth Mindset
The idea that our abilities are malleable qualities that we can cultivate and grow.
Impression Management
The attempt by people to get others to see them as they want to be seen.
Self-Awareness Theory
The idea that when people focus their attention on themselves, they evaluate and compare their behavior to their internal standards and values.
Overjustification Effect
The tendency for people to view their behavior as caused by compelling extrinsic reasons, making them underestimate the extent to which it was caused by intrinsic reasons.
Interdependent View of the Self
A way of defining oneself in terms of one's relationships to other people, recognizing that one's behavior is often determined by the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others.
Implementation Intentions
People's specific plans about where, when, and how they will fulfill a goal.
Ingratiation
The process whereby people flatter, praise, and generally try to make themselves likable to another person, often of higher status.
Lowballing
An unscrupulous strategy whereby a salesperson induces a customer to agree to purchase a product at a low cost, subsequently claims it was an error, and then raises the price; frequently, the customer will agree to make the purchase at the inflated price.
Self-Affirmation Theory
The idea that people can reduce threats to their self-esteem by affirming themselves in areas unrelated to the source of the threat.
Internal Justification
The reduction of dissonance by changing something about oneself (e.g., one's attitude or behavior).
Hypocrisy Induction
The arousal of dissonance by having individuals make statements that run counter to their behaviors and then reminding them of the inconsistency between what they advocated and their behavior; the purpose is to lead individuals to more responsible behavior.
Self-Evaluation Maintenance Theory
The idea that people experience dissonance when someone close to us outperforms us in an area that is central to our self-esteem. This dissonance can be reduced by becoming less close to the person, changing our behavior so that we now outperform them, or deciding that the area is not that important to us after all.
Narcissism
The combination of excessive self-love and a lack of empathy toward others.
Cognitive Dissonance
The discomfort that people feel when two cognitions (beliefs, attitudes) conflict, or when they behave in ways that are inconsistent with their conception of themselves.
External Justification
A reason or an explanation for dissonant personal behavior that resides outside the individual (e.g., to receive a large reward or avoid a severe punishment).
Justification of Effort
The tendency for individuals to increase their liking for something they have worked hard to attain.
Postdecision Dissonance
Dissonance aroused after making a decision, typically reduced by enhancing the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and devaluating the rejected alternatives.
Terror Management Theory
The theory that holds that self-esteem serves as a buffer, protecting people from terrifying thoughts about their own mortality.
Insufficient Punishment
The dissonance aroused when individuals lack sufficient external justification for having resisted a desired activity or object, usually resulting in individuals devaluing the forbidden activity or object.
Counterattitudinal Behavior
Acting in a way that runs counter to one's private belief or attitude.