Social Psychology
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Social Psychology - Leaderboard
Social Psychology - Details
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125 questions
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| Attitude | A relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or event or symbols. |
| Attitude formation | The process of forming our attitudes, mainly from our own experiences, the influence of others and our emotional reactions. |
| Acquiescent response set | Tendency to agree with items in an attitude questionnaire. This leads to an ambiguity in interpretation if a high score on an attitude questionnaire can be obtained only by agreeing with all or most items. |
| Automatic activation | According to Fazio, attitudes that have strong evaluative link to situational cues are likely to come automatically to mind from memory. |
| Balance theory | According to Heider people prefer attitudes that are consistent with each other, over those that are inconsistent. A person (P) tires to maintain consistency in attitudes to, and relationships with, other people (O) and elements of the environment(X). |
| Bogus pipeline technique | A measurement technique that leads people to believe that a 'lie detector' can monitor their emotional responses, thus measuring their true attitudes. |
| Cognition | The knowledge, beliefs, thoughts and ideas that people have about themselves and their environment. |
| Cognitive algebra | Approach to the study of impression formation that focuses on how people combine attributes that have valence into an overall positive or negative impression. |
| Cognitive consistency theories | A group of attitude theories stressing that people try to maintain internal consistency, order and agreement among their varying cognitions. |
| Expectancy-value model | Direct experience with an attitude object informs a person how much that object should be liked or disliked in the future. |
| Guttman scale | A scale that contains either favourable or unfavourable statements arranged hierarchically. Agreement with strong statements implies agreement with weaker ones; disagreement with weaker ones implies disagreement with stronger one. |
| Ideology | A systematically interrelated set of beliefs whose primary function is explanation. It circumscribes thinking, making it difficult for the holder to escape from the mould. |
| Implicit association test | Reaction-time test to measure attitudes - particularly unpopular attitudes that people might conceal. |
| Impression management | Peoples use of various strategies to get other people to view them in a positive light. |
| Information integration theory | The idea that a person's attitude can be estimated by averaging across the positive and negative ratings of the object. |
| Information processing | The evaluation of information; in relation to attitude, the means by which people acquire knowledge and form and change attitudes. |
| Likert scale | Scale that evaluates how strongly people agree/disagree with favourable/unfavourable statements about an attitude object. Initially many items are tested. After item analysis, only those items that correlate with each other are retained. |
| Mere exposure effect | Repeated exposure to an object results in greater attraction to that object. |
| Modelling | Tendency for a person to reproduce the actions, attitudes and emotional responses exhibited by a real-life or symbolic model. |
| Multiple act criteria | Term for a general behavioural index based on an average or combination of specific behaviours. |
| One-component attitude model | An attitude consists of affect towards or evaluation of the object. |
| Two-component attitude model | An attitude consists of a mental readiness to act. It also guides judgemental (evaluative) responses. |
| Three-component attitude model | An attitude consists of cognitive, affective and behaviourable components. |
| Priming | Activation of accessible categories or schemas in memory that influence how we process new information. |
| Protection motivation theory | Adopting a healthy behaviour requires cognitive balancing between the perceived threat of illness and one's capacity to cope with the health regimen. |
| Relative homogeneity effect | Tendency to see outgroup members as all the same, and ingroup members as more differentiates. |
| Self-efficacy | Expectations that we have about our capacity to succeed in particular tasks. |
| Self-perception theory | Bem's idea that we gain knowledge of ourselves only by making self-attribution. We infer out own attitudes from our behaviour. |
| Social representation | Collectively elaborated explanations of unfamiliar and complex phenomena that transform them into a simple form. |
| Sociocognitive model | An attitude theory highlighting an evaluative component. knowledge of an object is represented in memory along with a summary of how to appraise it. |
| Spreading attitude effect | A liked or disliked person (or attitude object) may affect not only the evaluation of a second person directly associated but also others merely associated with the second person. |
| Terror management theory | The notion that the most fundamental human motivation is to reduce the terror of the inevitability of death. Self-esteem may be centrally implicated in effective terror management. |
| Theory of planned behaviour | Modification by Ajzen of the theory of reasoned action. It suggests that predicting a behaviour from an attitude measure is improved if people believe they have control over that behaviour. |
| Theory of reasoned action | Fishbein and Ajzen model of the links between attitude and behaviour. A major feature is the proposition that the best way to predict a behaviour is to ask whether the person intends to do it. |
| Values | A higher order concept thought to provide a structure for organising attitudes. |
| Action research | The simultaneous activities of undertaking social science research, involving participants in the process and addressing a social problem. |
| Attitude change | Any significant modification of an individual's attitude. In the persuasion process this involves the communicator, the communication, the medium used, and the characterisation of the audience. |
| Cognitive consistency theories | A group of attitude theories stressing that people try to maintain internal consistency, order and agreement among their carious cognitions. |
| Cognitive dissonance | State of psychological tension, produced by simultaneously having two opposing cognitions. People are motivated to reduce the tension, often by changing or rejecting one of the cognitions. |
| Compliance | Superficial, public and transitory change in behaviour and expressed attitudes in response to requests, coercion or group pressure. |
| Disconfirmation bias | The tendency to notice, refute and regard as weak, arguments that contradict our prior beliefs. |
| Door-in-the-face tactic | Multiple request technique to gain compliance, in which the focal request is preceded by a larger request that is bound to be refused. |
| Effort justification | A special case of cognitive dissonance: inconsistency is experienced when a person makes a considerable effort to achieve a modest goal. |
| Elaboration-likelihood model | Petty and Cacioppo's model of attitude change: when people attend to a message carefully, they use a central route to process it; otherwise they use a peripheral route. This model competes with the heuristic-systematic model. |
| Foot-in-the-door tactic | Multiple request technique to gain compliance, in which the focal request is preceded by a smaller request that is bound to be accepted. |
| Forewarning | Advanced knowledge that one is to be the target of a persuasion attempt. Forewarning often produces a resistance to persuasion. |
| Heuristic-systematic model | Chaiken's model of attitude change: when people attend to a message carefully, they use systematic processing; otherwise they process information by using heuristics. This model competes with the elaboration-likelihood model. |
| Induced compliance | A special case of cognitive dissonance: inconsistency is experienced when a person is persuaded to behave in a way that is contrary to an attitude. |
| Ingratiation | Strategic attempt to get someone to like you in order to obtain compliance with a request. |
| Inoculation | A way of making people resistance to persuasion. By providing them with a diluted counter-argument, they can build up an effective refutations to a layer, stronger argument. |
| Low-ball tactic | Technique for inducing compliance in which a person who agrees to a request still feels committed after finding out that their are hidden costs. |
| Mindlessness | The act of agreeing to a request without giving it a thought. A small request is likely to be agreed to, even if a spurious reason is provided. |
| Moderator variable | A variable that qualifies an otherwise simple hypothesis with a view to improve predicative power. |
| Multiple requests | Tactic for gaining compliance using a two step procedure: the first request functions as a set-up for the second, real request. |
| Post-decisional conflict | The dissonance associated with behaving in a counter-attitudinal way. Dissonance can be reduced by bringing the attitude into line with their behaviour. |
| Reactance | Brehm's theory that people try to protect their freedom to act. when they perceive that this freedom has been curtailed, they will act to regain it. |
| Reciprocity principle | The law of 'doing unto others as they do unto you'. It can refer to an attempt to gain compliance by first doing someone a favour, or to mutual aggression or attraction. |
| Representativeness heuristic | A cognitive short-cut in which instances are assigned to categories or types on the basis of overall similarity or resemblance to the category. |
| Selective-exposure hypothesis | People tend to avoid potentially dissonant information. |
| Self-affirmation theory | The theory that people reduce the impact of threat to their self-concept by focusing on and affirming their competence in some other area. |
| Self-perception theory | Bem's idea that we gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-attributions: we infer our own attitudes from our behaviour. |
| Sleeper effect | The impact of a persuasive message can increase over time when a discounting cue, such as an invalidating source, can no longer be recalled. |
| Terror management theory | The notion that the most fundamental human motivation is to reduce the terror of the inevitability of death. Self-esteem may be centrally implicated in effective terror management. |
| Third person effect | Most people think that they are less influenced than others by advertisements. |
| Agentic state | A frame of mind thought by Milgram to characterise unquestioning obedience, in which people transfer personal responsibility to the person giving orders. |
| Attribution | The process of assigning a cause to our own behaviour and that of others. |
| Autokinesis | Optical illusion in which a pinpoint of light shining in complete darkness appears to move about. |
| Compliance | Superficial, public and transitory change in behaviour and expressed attitude in response requests, coercion or group pressure. |
| Conformity | Deep-seated, private and enduring change in behaviour and attitudes due to group pressure. |
| Confirmation bias | Tendency for social psychology to treat group influences as a one-way process in which individuals or minorities always conform to majorities. |
| Conversion effect | When minority influences brings about a sudden and dramatic internal and private change in the attitude of a majority. |
| Dual-process dependency model | General model of social influences in which two separate processes operate - dependency on others for social approval and for information about reality. |
| Frame of reference | Complete range of subjectively conceivable positions that relevant people can occupy in a particular context on some attitudinal or behavioural dimension. |
| Informational influence | An influence to accept information from another as evidence about reality. |
| Membership group | Kelley's term for a group to which we belong by some objective external criterion. |
| Metacontrast principle | The prototype of a group is that position within the group that has the largest ratio of "differences to ingroup positions" to "differences to outgroup positions". |
| Minority influence | Social influence processes whereby the numerical or power minorities change the attitudes of the majority. |
| Normative influence | An influence to conform to the positive expectation of others, to gain social approval or to avoid social disapproval. |
| Norms | Attitudinal and behavioural uniformities that define group membership and differentiate between groups. |
| Power | Capacity to influence others while resisting their attempts to influence. |
| Reference group | Kelley's term for a group that is psychologically significant for our behaviour and attitudes. |
| Referent informational influence | Pressure to conform to a group norm that defines oneself as a group member. |
| Social identity theory | Theory of group membership and intergroup relations based on self-categorisation, social comparison and the construction of a shared self-definition in terms of ingroup-defining properties. |
| Social impact | The effect other people have on our attitudes and behaviour, usually as a consequence of factors such as group size, and temporal and physical immediacy. |
| Social influence | Process whereby attitudes and behaviour are influenced by the real or implied presence of others. |
| Mere presence | Refers to an entirely passive and unresponsive audience that is only physically present. |
| Audience effect | Impact on individual task performance of the presence of others. |
| Cognitive dissonance | State of psychological tension, produced by simultaneously having two opposing congitions. People are motivated to reduce the tension, often by changing or rejecting one of the cognitions. |
| Cohesiveness | The property of a group that affectively binds people, as group members, to one another and to the group as a whole, giving the group a sense of solidarty and oneness. |
| Communication network | Set of rules governing the possibility or ease of communication between different roles in a group. |
| Coordination loss | Deterioration in group performance compared with individual performance, due to problems in coordinating behaviour. |
| Correspondence bias | A general attribution bias people have an inflated tendency to see behaviour as corresponding to stable underlying personality attributes. |
| Diffuse status characteristics | Information about a persons abilities that are only obliquely relevant to the groups task, and derive mainly from large-scale category membership outside the group. |
| Distraction-conflict theory | The physical presence of the same mebers of the same species is distracting and produce conflict between attending to the task and attending to the audience. |
| Drive theory | Zajonc's theory that the physical presence of members of the same species instinctively causes arousal that motivates performance of habitual behaviour patterns. |
| Entitativity | The property of a group that makes it seem like a coherent, distinct and unitary element. |
| Ethnomethodology | Method devised by Garfinkel, involving the violation of hidden norms to reveal their presence. |
| Evaluation apprehension model | The argument that the physical presence of members of the same species cause drive because people have learnt to be apprehensive about being evaluated. |
| Expectation states theory | Theory of the emergence of roles as a consequence of people's status-based expectation about others performance. |
| Frame of reference | Complete range of subjectively conceivable positions that relevant people can occupy in that context on some attitudinal or behavioural dimension. |