Social Psychology vocabulary

The study of the causes and consequences of sociality.

Behavior whose purpose is to harm another.

A principle stating that animals aggress only when their goals are thwarted.

Behavior by two or more individuals that leads to mutual benefit.

A collection of people who have something in common that distinguishes them from others.

A positive or negative evaluation of another person based on their group membership.

Positive or negative behavior toward another person based on their group membership.

An experiment in which participants are asked to turn over two cards to test a rule of the form "If P, then Q".

Experiment in which one player divides a monetary prize into two parts and offers one part to a second player who can either accept or reject the offer.  If second player rejects the offer, both players get nothing.

A phenomenon that occurs when immersion in a group causes people to become less aware of their individual values.

The tendency for individuals to feel diminished responsibility for their actions when they are surrounded by other who are acting the same way.

Behavior that benefits another without benefiting oneself.

The process by which evolution selects for individuals who cooperate with their relatives.

Behavior that benefits another with the expectation that those benefits will be returned in the future.

The tendency for liking to increase with the frequency of exposure.

An experience involving feelings of euphoria, intimacy and intense sexual attraction.

The cost-benefit ratio that people believe they deserve or could attain in another relationship.

The hypothesis that people remain in relationships only as long as they perceive a favorable ratio of costs to benefits.

An experience involving affection, trust and concern for a partner's well-being.

A state of affairs in which the cost-benefit ratios of two partners are roughly equal.

The ability to control another person's behavior.

A customary standard for behavior that is widely shared by members of a culture.

A phenomenon that occurs when another person's behavior provides information about what is appropriate.

The unwritten rule that people should benefit those who have benefited them.

A strategy that uses reciprocating concessions to influence behavior.

The tendency to do what others do simply because others are doing it.

The tendency to do what powerful people tell us to do.

An enduring positive or negative evaluation of an object or event.

An enduring piece of knowledge about an object or event.

A phenomenon that occurs when a person's behavior provides information about what is good or right.

A phenomenon that occurs when a person's attitudes or beliefs are influenced by a communication from another person.

The process by which attitudes or beliefs are changed by appeals to reason.

The process by which attitudes or beliefs are changed by appeals to habit or emotion.

A technique that involves a small request followed by a larger request.

An unpleasant state that arises when a person recognizes the inconsistency of his or her actions, attitudes, or beliefs

The process by which people come to understand others.

The process by which people draw inferences about others based on their knowledge of the categories to which others belong.

A phenomenon that occurs when observers perceive what they expect to perceive.

The tendency for people to cause what they expect to see.

The tendency for people who are faced with disconfirming evidence to modify their stereotypes rather than abandon them.

An inference about the cause of a person's behavior.

The tendency to make a dispositional attribution even when a person's behavior was caused by the situation.

The tendency to make situations attributions for our own behaviors while making dispositional attributions for the identical behavior of others.