Chapter 11

Branch of psychology that studies how a person's thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by the presence of other people and by the social and physical environment.

An individual's unique sense of identity that has been influenced by social, cultural, and psychological experiences; your sense of who you are in relation to other people.

The mental processes people use to make sense out of their social environment.

The effects of situational factors and other people on an individual's behavior.

• Based largely on looking at other people's faces but also evalutates the other person's attractiveness, likeability, competence, trustworthiness, and aggressiveness.
• Also influenced by four key components:
• 1. The characteristics of the person you are trying to size up.
• 2. Your own self-perception.
• 3. Your goals in the situation.
• 4. The specific situation in which the process occurs.

The "rules," or expectations, for appropriate behavior in a particular social situation.

the mental process of categorizing people into groups(or social categories) on the basis of their shared characteristics.

Deliberate, conscious mental processes involved in perceptions, judgements, decisions, and reasoning.

Automatic, nonconscious mental processes that influence perceptions, judgments, decisions, and reasonings.

A network of assumptions or beliefs about the relationships among various types of people, traits, and behaviors.

Steirotypes

• process of inferring the cause of someone's behavior includeing your own.
• strongly influence your thoughts and feelings about other people.

the tendency to attribute the behavior of others to internal, personal characteristics, while ignoring or underestimating the effects of external situational factors, an attribution bias that is common in individualistic cultures.

The innocent victim of a crime, disaster, or serious illness is blamed for having somehow caused the misfortune or for not having tacken steps to prevent it..

tendency to overestimate one's ability to have forseen or predicted the outcome of an event.

the assumption that the world is fair and that therefore people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

the tendency to attribute successful outcomes of one's own behavior to internal causes and unsuccessful outcomes to external, situational causes.

• A learned tendency to evaluate some object, person, or issue in a particular way; such evaluations may be positive, negative, or ambivalent.
• Attitude can have a cognitive, affective, or behavioral component.
• -Cognitive: Your thoughts or conclusions about a given topic or object.
• -Affective: An attitude may have an emotional effect on people.
• -Behavior: attitudes are relected in action.

Cognitive Dissonance

An unpleasant state of psychological tension or arousal that occurs when two thoughts or perceptions are inconsistent, typically results from the awareness that attitudes and behavior are in conflict.

A negative attitude toward people who belong to a specific social group.

a cluster of characteristics that are associated with all members of a specific social group, often including qualitites that are unrelated to the objective criteria that define the group.

a social group to which one belongs.

a social group to which one does not belong.

the tendency to see members of outgroups as very similar to one another.

the tendency to judge the behavior of in group members favorably and out group members unfavorable.

the belief that one's own culture or ethnic group is superior to all others and the related tendency to use one's own culture as a standard by which to judge other cultures.

Adjusting your opinions, judgements, or behavior so that it matches the opinions, judgements or behavior of other people, or the norms of a social group or situation.

behavior that is motivated by the desire to gain social acceptance and approval.

behavior that is motivated by the desire to be correct.

• is the performance of a behavior in response to a direct command.
• [Stanley Milgram's "Shock Generator" Machine]

• -The "Feel Good, Do Good" effect.
• -Feeling Guilty.
• -Seeing others who are willing to help.
• -Perceiving the other person as deserving help.
• -Knowing how to help.
• -A personalized relationship.

• -The presence of other people.
• -Being in a big city, or a small town.
• -Vague or ambiguous situations.
• -When the personal costs for helping outweigh the benefits.

Helping another person with no expectatino of personal reward or benefit.

any behavior that helps another, whether the underlying motive is self-serving or selfless.

A phenomenon in which the greater the number or people present, the less likely each individual is to help someone in distress.

A phenomenon in which the presence of other people makes it less likely that any individual will help someone in distress because the obligation to intervene is shared among all the onlookers.