A
A priori causal theories Preexisting theories, acquired from culture or factors that are particularly prominent in conscious attention at the moment.
Accessibility The ease with which people can bring an idea into consciousness and use it in thinking.
Acculturation The process whereby individuals adapt their behavior in response to exposure to a new culture.
Action identification theory The theory that explains how people conceive of action—their own or others’—in ways that range from very concrete to very abstract.
Actor-observer effect The tendency to make internal attributions for the behavior of others and external attributions for our own behavior.
Adaptations Attributes that improve an individual’s prospects for survival and reproduction.
Affective aggression Harm done to another person that is elicited in response to some negative emotion.
Affective forecasting Predicting what one’s emotional reactions to potential future events will be.
Aggression Any physical or verbal behavior that is intended to harm another person or persons (or any living thing).
Altruism The desire to help another purely for his or her own sake, regardless of whether we derive any benefit.
Altruistic personality A collection of personality traits, such as empathy, that renders some people more helpful than others.
Ambivalent racism The influence on White Americans’ racial attitudes of two clashing sets of values: a belief in individualism and a belief in egalitarianism.
Ambivalent sexism The pairing of hostile beliefs about women with benevolent but patronizing beliefs about them.
Anxiety-buffer The idea that self-esteem allows people to face threats with their anxiety minimized.
Anxious–ambivalent Describes an attachment style characterized by a negative view of the self but a positive view of others, high anxiety, low avoidance, and intense but unstable relationships.
Appraisals What other people think about us.
Argument The true merits of the person, object, or position being advocated in the message.
Assimilation effects Occur when priming a schema (e.g., reckless) changes a person’s thinking in the direction of the primed idea (e.g., perceiving others as more reckless).
Assimilation The process whereby people gradually shift almost entirely from their former culture to the beliefs and ways of the new culture.
Associative networks Models for how pieces of information are linked together and stored in memory.
Assortative mating The idea that people are attracted to others who are similar to them in some kind of social hierarchy.
Attitude Evaluation of a stimulus; can range from positive to negative.
Attribution theory The view that people act as intuitive scientists when they observe other people’s behavior and infer explanations as to why those people acted the way they did.
Attributional ambiguity A phenomenon whereby members of stigmatized groups often can be uncertain whether negative experiences are based on their own actions and abilities or are the result of prejudice.
Audience The person or group receiving the message.
Authoritarian personality A complex of personality traits, including uncritical acceptance of authority, preference for well-defined power arrangements in society, adherence to conventional values and moral codes, and black-and-white thinking. Predicts prejudice toward outgroups in general.
Automatic processes Human thoughts or actions that occur quickly, often without the aid of conscious awareness.
Availability heuristic The tendency to assume that information that comes easily to mind (or is readily available) is more frequent or common.
Averageness effect The tendency to perceive a composite image of multiple faces that have been photographically averaged as more attractive than any individual face included in that composite.
Aversive racism Conflicting, often nonconscious, negative feelings about African Americans that Americans may have, even though most do in fact support principles of racial equality and do not knowingly discriminate.
B
Balance theory Theory proposing that the motivation to maintain consistency among one’s thoughts colors how people form new attitudes and can also drive them to change existing attitudes.
Basking in reflected glory Associating oneself with successful others to help bolster one’s own self-esteem.
Better than average effect The tendency to rank oneself higher than most people on positive attributes.
Bystander effect A phenomenon in which many people witness a need for help, and the knowledge that there are other witnesses makes it less likely that each particular witness will do anything to help.
C
Categories Mental “containers” in which people place things that are similar to each other.
Causal attribution The explanation that people use for what caused a particular event or behavior.
Central route to persuasion A style of processing a persuasive message by a person who has both the ability and the motivation to think carefully about the message’s argument. Attitude change depends on the strength of the argument.
Chameleon effect The tendency to mimic unconsciously the nonverbal mannerisms of someone with whom you are interacting.
Charismatic leader An individual in a leadership role who exhibits boldness and self-confidence and emphasizes the greatness of the in-group.
Chronically accessible schemas Schemas that are easily brought to mind because they are personally important and used frequently.
Cognitive appraisal theory The idea that our subjective experience of emotions is determined by a two-step process involving a primary appraisal of benefit or harm, and a secondary appraisal providing a more differentiated emotional experience.
Cognitive dissonance theory The idea that people have such distaste for perceiving inconsistencies in their beliefs, attitudes, and behavior that they will bias their own attitudes and beliefs to try to deny inconsistencies.
Cognitive misers A term that conveys the human tendency to avoid expending effort and cognitive resources when thinking and to prefer seizing on quick and easy answers to questions.
Cognitive reappraisal The cognitive reframing of a situation to minimize one’s emotional reaction to it.
Cognitive response approach to persuasion Occurs when people’s attitude is influenced not only by what they think about the message but also by their confidence in those thoughts and beliefs.
Cognitive system A conscious, rational, and controlled system of thinking.
Collectivistic culture A culture in which the emphasis is on interdependence, cooperation, and the welfare of the group over that of the individual.
Collective action Efforts by groups to resist and change the status quo in the service of group goals.
Colorblind ideology The idea that group identities should be ignored and that people should be judged solely on their individual merits, thereby avoiding any judgment based on group membership.
Commitment Partners’ investment of time, effort, and resources in their relationship with the expectation that it will continue indefinitely.
Common ingroup identity A recategorizing of members of two or more distinct groups into a single, overarching group.
Communal orientation Situation in which people don’t distinguish between what’s yours and what’s mine.
Comparison level for alternatives The perceived quality of alternatives to the current relationship.
Comparison level The expectation of how rewarding a relationship should be.
Compensation After a blow to self-esteem in one domain, people often shore up their overall sense of self-worth by bolstering how they think of themselves in an unrelated domain.
Complementary stereotypes Both positive and negative stereotypes that are ascribed to a group as a way of justifying the status quo.
Conceptual replication The repetition of a study with different operationalizations of the crucial variables but yielding similar results.
Confederate A supposed participant in a research study who actually is working with experimenters, unknown to the real participants.
Confirmation bias The tendency to view events and people in ways that fit how we want and expect them to be.
Conformity The phenomenon whereby an individual alters his or her beliefs, attitudes, or behavior to bring them in accordance with those of a majority.
Confound A variable other than the conceptual variable intended to be manipulated that may be responsible for the effect on the dependent variable, making alternative explanations possible.
Construal level theory The theory that people focus more on concrete details when thinking about the near future, but focus more on abstract meaning when thinking about the distant future.
Construct validity The degree to which the dependent measure assesses what it intends to assess or the manipulation manipulates what it intends to manipulate.
Contrast effects Occur when priming a schema (e.g., reckless) changes a person’s thinking in the opposite direction of the primed idea (e.g., perceiving others as less reckless).
Controlled processes Human thoughts or actions that occur more slowly and deliberatively, and are motivated by some goal that is often consciously recognized.
Conversion theory The explanation that people are influenced by a minority because the minority’s distinctive position better captures their attention.
Correlation coefficient A positive or negative numerical value that shows the direction and the strength of a relationship between two variables.
Correlational method Research in which two or more variables are measured and compared to determine to what extent if any they are associated.
Correspondent inference The tendency to attribute to the actor an attitude, desire, or trait that corresponds to the action.
Covariation principle The tendency to see a causal relationship between an event and an outcome when they happen at the same time.
Cover story An explanation of the purpose of the study that is different from the true purpose.
Cultural animals Humans are animals who view reality through a set of symbols provided by the culture in which they are raised.
Cultural diffusion The transfer of inventions, knowledge, and ideas from one culture to another.
Cultural evolution The process whereby cultures develop and propagate according to systems of belief or behavior that contribute to the success of a society.
Cultural knowledge A vast store of information, accumulated within a culture, that explains how the world works and why things happen as they do.
Cultural perspective A view that focuses on the influence of culture on thought, feeling, and behavior.
Cultural transmission The process whereby members of a culture learn explicitly or implicitly to imitate the beliefs and behaviors of others in that culture.
Cultural traumas Tragic historical examples of cultural disruptions, some of which have led to complete cultural disintegration.
Cultural worldview Human-constructed shared symbolic conception of reality that imbues life with meaning, order, and permanence.
Culture A set of beliefs, attitudes, values, norms, morals, customs, roles, statuses, symbols, and rituals shared by a self-identified group, a group whose members think of themselves as a group.
D
Debriefing At the end of a study, the procedure in which participants are assessed for suspicion and then receive a gentle explanation of the true nature of the study in a manner that counteracts any negative effects of the study experience.
Dehumanization The tendency to hold stereotypic views of outgroup members as animals rather than humans.
Deindividuation A tendency to lose one’s sense of individuality when in a group or crowd.
Demand characteristics Aspects of a study that give away its purpose or communicate how the participant is expected to behave.
Descriptive norm A belief about what most people typically do.
Diffusion of responsibility A situation in which the presence of others prevents any one person from taking responsibility (e.g., for helping).
Discounting principle The tendency to reduce the importance of any potential cause of another’s behavior to the extent that other potential causes exist.
Discrimination Negative behavior toward an individual solely on the basis of that person’s membership in a particular group.
Disidentification The process of disinvesting in any area in which one’s group traditionally has been underrepresented or negatively stereotyped.
Dismissive avoidant Describes an avoidant attachment style characterized by a negative view of both self and others, high anxiety and avoidance, and distant relationships.
Displaced aggression Aggression directed to a target other than the source of one’s frustration.
Dispositions Consistent preferences, ways of thinking, and behavioral tendencies that manifest across varying situations and over time.
Domain-general adaptations Attributes that are useful for dealing with various challenges across different areas of life.
Domain-specific adaptations Attributes that evolved to meet a particular challenge but that are not particularly useful when dealing with other types of challenges.
Door-in-the-face effect Phenomenon whereby people are more likely to comply with a moderate request after they have first been presented with and refused to agree to a much larger request.
Downward comparison Comparing oneself with those who are worse off.
Downward counterfactuals Imagined worse alternative outcomes to something that actually happened.
Dramaturgical perspective Using the theater as a metaphor, the idea that people, like actors, perform according to a script. If we all know the script and play our parts well, then like a successful play, our social interactions flow smoothly and seem meaningful, and each actor benefits.
Dual process theories Theories that are used to explain a wide range of phenomena by positing two ways of processing information.
E
Ease of retrieval effect Process whereby people judge how frequently an event occurs on the basis of how easily they can retrieve examples of that event.
Effort justification The phenomenon whereby people reduce dissonance by convincing themselves that what they suffered for is actually quite valuable.
Ego depletion The idea that ego strength becomes depleted by extended bouts of self-control.
Ego The aspect of self that directs your thoughts and actions.
Elaboration likelihood model A theory of persuasion that proposes that persuasive messages can influence attitudes by two different routes, central or peripheral.
Empathy gap The underestimation of other people’s experience of physical pain as well as the pain of social rejection.
Empathy-altruism model The idea that people provide help to others to get certain psychological payoffs.
Entitativity The degree to which a collection of people feels like a cohesive group.
Equity theory The idea that people are motivated to maintain a sense of fairness or equity, whereby both partners feel that the proportion of outcomes (rewards) to inputs (costs) that each receives is roughly equal.
Eros Freud’s term for what he proposed is the human inborn instinct to seek pleasure and to create.
Ethnocentrism Viewing the world through our own cultural value system and thereby judging actions and people based on our own culture’s views of right and wrong and good and bad.
Evolution The concept that different species are descended from common ancestors but have evolved over time, acquiring different genetic characteristics as a function of different environmental demands.
Evolutionary perspective A view that humans are a species of animal and that their social behavior is a consequence of particular evolved adaptations.
Excitation transfer theory The idea that leftover arousal caused by an initial event can intensify emotional reactions to a second event.
Existential perspective A view that focuses on the cognitive, affective, and behavioral consequences of basic aspects of the human condition such as the knowledge of mortality, the desire for meaning, and the precarious nature of identity.
Expectancy-value theory The theory that effort is based on the value or desirability of the goal, multiplied by the person’s assessment of how likely it is that she will be able to attain the goal.
Experiential associations Mental links between two concepts that are experienced close together in time or space.
Experiential system An unconscious, intuitive, and automatic system of thinking.
The experimental method A study in which a researcher manipulates a variable, referred to as the independent variable, measures possible effects on another variable, referred to as the dependent variable, and tries to hold all other variables constant.
Experimenter bias The possibility that the experimenter’s knowledge of the condition a particular participant is in could affect her behavior toward the participant and thereby introduce a confounding variable to the independent variable manipulation.
Explicit attitudes Attitudes people are consciously aware of through the cognitive system.
External validity The judgment that a research finding can be generalized to other people, in other settings, at other times.
F
Facial feedback hypothesis The idea that changes in facial expression elicit emotions associated with those expressions.
False consensus A general tendency to assume that other people share our own attitudes, opinions, and preferences.
Fearfully avoidant Describes an avoidant attachment style characterized by a negative view of both self and others, high anxiety and avoidance, and distant relationships, in which the person doesn’t feel worthy, doesn’t trust others, and fears rejection.
Field research Research that occurs outside the laboratory, for example, in schools, office buildings, medical clinics, football games, or even in shopping malls or on street corners.
Flow The feeling of being completely absorbed in an activity that is appropriately challenging to one’s skills.
Foot-in-the-door effect Phenomenon whereby people are more likely to comply with a moderate request after having initially complied with a smaller request.
Free choice paradigm A laboratory situation in which people make a choice between two alternatives, and after they do, attraction to the alternatives is assessed.
Frustration-aggression hypothesis Originally the idea that aggression is always preceded by frustration and that frustration inevitably leads to aggression. Revised to suggest that frustration produces an emotional readiness to aggress.
Fundamental attribution error (FAE) The tendency to attribute behavior to internal or dispositional qualities of the actor and consequently underestimate the causal role of situational factors.
Fusiform face area A region in the temporal lobe of the brain that helps us recognize the people we know.
G
Gain-loss theory A theory of attraction that posits that liking is highest for others when they increase their positivity toward you over time.
Goals Cognitions that represent outcomes that we strive for in order to meet our needs and desires.
Group polarization A tendency for group discussion to shift group members toward an extreme position.
Groupthink A tendency toward flawed group decision making when group members are so intent on preserving group harmony that they fail to analyze a problem completely.
H
Halo effect A tendency to assume that people with one positive attribute (e.g., who are physically attractive) also have other positive traits.
Hedonism The human preference for pleasure over pain.
Heuristics Mental short cuts, or rules of thumb, that are used for making judgments and decisions.
Hierarchy of goals The idea that goals are organized hierarchically from very abstract goals to very concrete goals, with the latter serving the former.
Hostile attribution bias The tendency to attribute hostile intent to others’ actions, even when others’ intentions are innocent.
Hypothesis An “if-then” statement that follows logically from a theory and specifies how certain variables should be related to each other if the theory is correct.
I
Illusion of transparency The tendency to overestimate another’s ability to know our internal thoughts and feelings.
Illusory correlation A tendency to assume an association between two rare occurrences, such as being in a minority group and performing negative actions.
Implementation-intentions Mental rules that link particular situational cues to goal-directed behaviors.
Implicit attitudes Automatic associations based on previous learning through the experiential system.
Implicit prejudice Negative attitudes or affective reactions associated with an outgroup, for which the individual has little or no conscious awareness and which can be automatically activated in intergroup encounters.
Impressions Schemas people have about other individuals.
Independent self-construal Viewing self as a unique active agent serving one’s own goals.
Individualistic culture A culture in which the emphasis is on individual initiative, achievement, and creativity over maintenance of social cohesion.
Individual mobility strategy whereby individuals work within the system to achieve their own goals rather than those of the group.
Induced compliance paradigm A laboratory situation in which participants are induced to engage in a behavior that runs counter to their true attitudes.
Induced hypocrisy paradigm A laboratory situation in which participants are asked to advocate for an opinion they already believe in, but then are reminded about a time when their actions ran counter to that opinion, thereby arousing dissonance.
Informational influence Occurs when we use others as a source of information about the world.
Infrahumanization The perception that outgroup members lack qualities viewed as unique to human beings, such as language, rational intelligence, and complex social emotions.
Ingroup bias A tendency to favor groups we belong to more than those that we don’t.
Injunctive norm A belief about what behaviors are generally approved of or disapproved of in one’s culture.
Institutional discrimination Unfair restrictions on opportunities for certain groups of people through institutional policies, structural power relations, and formal laws.
Instrumental aggression Harm done to another person that serves some other goal.
Integration The process whereby people retain aspects of their former culture while internalizing aspects of a new host culture.
Interaction A pattern of results in which the effect of one independent variable on the dependent variable depends on the level of a second independent variable.
Interdependence theory The idea that satisfaction, investments, and perceived alternatives are critical in determining commitment to a particular relationship.
Interdependence Situation in which what each person does significantly influences what the partner does over long periods of time.
Interdependent self-construal Viewing self primarily in terms of how one relates to others and contributes to the greater whole.
Intergroup anxiety theory Theory proposing that intergroup prejudice leads individuals to experience anxiety when they think of or interact with members of an outgroup.
Internal validity The judgment that for a particular experiment it is possible to conclude that the manipulated independent variable caused the change in the measured dependent variable.
Ironic processing The idea that the more we try not to think about something, the more those thoughts enter our mind and distract us from other things.
J
Just world beliefs The idea that good things will happen to the worthy and bad things will happen to the unworthy.
Justification suppression model The idea that people endorse and freely express stereotypes in part to justify their own negative affective reactions to outgroup members.
K
Kin selection The idea that natural selection led to greater tendencies to help close kin than to help those with whom we have little genetic relation.
L
Linguistic intergroup bias A tendency to describe stereotypic behaviors (positive ingroup and negative outgroup) in abstract terms while describing counterstereotypic behaviors (negative ingroup and positive outgroup) in concrete terms.
Literal immortality A culturally shared belief that there is some form of life after death for those who are worthy.
Locus of causality Attribution of behavior to either an aspect of the actor (internal) or to some aspect of the situation (external).
Loneliness The feeling that one is deprived of human social connections.
Longitudinal studies Studies in which variables are measured in the same individuals over two or more periods of time, typically over months or years.
Long-term memory Information from past experience that may or may not be currently activated.
Looking glass self The idea that significant people in our lives reflect back to us (much like a looking glass, or mirror) who we are by how they behave toward us.
Lowballing Occurs when after agreeing to an offer, people find it hard to break that commitment even if they later learn of some extra cost to the deal.
M
Master status The perception that a person will be seen only in terms of a stigmatizing attribute rather than as the total self.
Matching phenomenon The idea that people seek romantic relationships with others who are similar to them in physical attractiveness.
Mate guarding The process of preventing others from mating with one’s partner in order to avoid the costs of rearing offspring that do not help to propagate one’s genes.
Mating strategies Approaches to mating that help people reproduce successfully. People prefer different mating strategies depending on whether they are thinking about a short-term pairing or a long-term commitment.
Melting pot An ideological view holding that diverse peoples within a society should converge toward the mainstream culture.
Mere exposure effect Occurs when people hold a positive attitude toward a stimulus simply because they have been exposed to it repeatedly.
Metaphor A cognitive tool that allows people to understand an abstract concept in terms of a dissimilar, concrete concept.
Mindfulness The state of being and acting fully in the current moment.
Minimal deterrence Use of the minimal level of external justification necessary to deter unwanted behavior.
Minority influence The process by which dissenters (or numerical minorities) produce attitude change within a group, despite the extraordinary risk of social rejection and disturbance of the status quo.
Minority slowness effect Occurs when people who hold the minority position take longer to express their opinions.
Mirror neurons Certain neurons that are activated both when one performs an action oneself and when one simply observes another person perform that action.
Misattribution of arousal Ascribing arousal resulting from one source to a different source.
Misinformation effect The process by which cues that are given after an event can plant false information into memory.
Model of relational turbulence The idea that as partners make the transition from casual dating to more serious involvement in the relationship, they go through a turbulent period of adjustment.
Monitor The mental process that is on the lookout for signs of unwanted thoughts.
Mortality salience The state of being reminded of one’s mortality.
Motivation The process of generating and expending energy toward achieving or avoiding some outcome.
Multicultural ideology A worldview in which different cultural identities and viewpoints are acknowledged and appreciated.
Multiculturalism (cultural pluralism) An ideological view holding that cultural diversity is valued and that diverse peoples within a society should retain aspects of their traditional culture while adapting to the host culture.
Mutuality Partners’ acknowledgment that their lives are intertwined and that they think of themselves as a couple (“us”) instead of as two separate individuals (“me” and “you”).
N
Natural selection The process by which certain attributes are more successful in a particular environment and therefore become more represented in future generations.
Naturalistic fallacy A bias toward believing that biological adaptations are inherently good or desirable.
Need for cognition Differences between people in their need to think about things critically and analytically.
Need for structured knowledge A personality trait defined as a general preference for thinking about things in simple, clear-cut ways.
Needs Internal states that drive action that is necessary to survive or thrive.
Negative state relief hypothesis The idea that people help in order to reduce their own distress.
Neuroscience perspective The study of the neural processes that occur during social judgment and behavior. Neuroscience involves assessments of brain waves, brain imaging, and cardiovascular functioning.
Norm for social commitment Belief whereby once we make a public agreement, we tend to stick to it even if circumstances change.
Norm of reciprocity An explanation for why we give help: if I help you today, you might be more likely to help me tomorrow.
Normative influence Occurs when we use others to know how to fit in.
O
Obedience Any action engaged in to fulfill the direct order or command of another person.
Objectification theory Theory proposing that the cultural value placed on women’s appearance leads people to view women more as objects and less as full human beings.
Operational definition A specific, concrete method of measuring or manipulating a conceptual variable.
Operator The mental process that actively pushes any signs of the unwanted thoughts out of consciousness.
Outgroup homogeneity effect The tendency to view individuals in outgroups as more similar to each other than they really are.
Overjustification effect The tendency for salient rewards or threats to lead people to attribute the reason, or justification, for engaging in an activity to an external factor, which thereby undermines their intrinsic motivation for and enjoyment of the activity.
P
Parasocial relationships Individuals’ relationships with people in the media: celebrities, television characters, and athletes.
Parental investment The time and effort that parents must invest in each child they produce.
Peripheral cues Aspects of the communication that are irrelevant (that is, peripheral) to the true merits of the person, object, or position advocated in the message (e.g., a speaker’s physical attractiveness when attractiveness is irrelevant to the position).
Peripheral route to persuasion A style of processing a persuasive message by a person who is not willing or able to put effort into thinking carefully about the message’s argument. Attitude change depends on the presence of peripheral cues.
Person-group discrimination discrepancy The tendency for people to estimate that they personally experience less discrimination than is faced by the average member of their group.
Persuasion Intentional effort to change other people’s attitudes in order to change their behavior.
Pluralistic ignorance A situation in which all bystanders glance at each other as they try to decide whether there is anything to be worried about, but no one actually does anything.
Positive illusions Idealized perceptions of romantic partners that highlight their positive qualities and downplay their faults.
Possible selves Images of what the self might become in the future.
Power distance Variation in the extent to which members of a culture or organization (especially those with less power) accept an unequal distribution of power.
Prefrontal cortex The region of the brain that regulates impulsive behavior.
Prejudice A negative attitude toward an individual solely on the basis of that person’s presumed membership in a particular group.
Prevention focus People’s general tendency to think and act in ways oriented toward the avoidance of negative outcomes.
Primacy effect The idea that initially encountered information has a disproportionate influence on attitudes (e.g., the first speaker in a policy debate influences the audience’s policy approval).
Priming The process by which exposure to a stimulus in the environment increases the salience of a schema.
Private acceptance Conforming by altering private beliefs as well as public behavior.
Projection Assigning to others those traits that people fear they possess themselves.
Promotion focus People’s general tendency to think and act in ways oriented toward the approach of positive outcomes.
Propinquity effect The increased likelihood of forming relationships with people who are physically close by.
Prosocial behavior An action by an individual that is intended to benefit another individual or set of individuals.
Prosopagnosia The inability to recognize familiar faces.
Prototype/willingness model of health behavior The idea that willingness refers specifically to a person’s openness to being influenced by social circumstances, so that when it comes to opportunistic behaviors, one’s willingness is the best predictor of behavior.
Psychological need A mechanism for regulating behavior to acquire the tangible or intangible resources necessarily for survival and well-being.
Psychological reactance theory Theory proposing that people value thinking and acting freely. Therefore, situations that threaten their freedom arouse discomfort and prompt efforts to restore freedom.
Public compliance Conforming only outwardly to fit in with a group without changing private beliefs.
Q
Quasi-experimental designs Type of research in which groups of participants are compared on some dependent variable, but for practical or ethical reasons, the groups are not formed on the basis of random assignment.
R
Random assignment A procedure in which participants are assigned to conditions in such a way that each person has an equal chance of being in any condition of an experiment.
Realistic group conflict theory asserts that the initial negative feelings between groups are often based on a real conflict or competition regarding scarce resources.
Recency effect Occurs when recently encountered information primarily influences attitudes (e.g., a commercial viewed just before shopping influences a shopper’s choices).
Reference group A group with which an individual strongly identifies.
Reflected appraisals What we think other people think about us.
Rejection identification theory The idea that people can offset the negative consequences of being targeted by discrimination by feeling a strong sense of identification with their stigmatized group.
Relative deprivation A theory stating that disadvantaged groups are less aware of and bothered by their lower status because of a tendency to compare their outcomes only with others who are similarly deprived.
Representativeness heuristic The tendency to overestimate the likelihood that a target is part of a larger category if it has features that seem representative of that category.
Research The process whereby scientists observe events, look for patterns, and evaluate theories proposed to explain those patterns.
Reverse causality problem A correlation between variables x and y may occur because one causes the other, but it is often impossible to determine if x causes y or y causes x.
Reward model of liking Proposes that people like other people whom they associate with positive stimuli and dislike people whom they associate with negative stimuli.
Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) An ideology which holds that the social world is inherently dangerous and unpredictable and that maintaining security in life requires upholding society’s order, cohesion, and tradition. Predicts prejudice against groups seen as socially deviant or dangerous.
S
Salience The aspect of a schema that is active in one’s mind and, consciously or not, colors perceptions and behavior.
Schema A mental structure, stored in memory, that is based on prior knowledge.
Scientific method The process of developing, testing, and refining theories to understand the determinants of social behavior.
Scripts Schemas about an event that specify the typical sequence of actions that take place.
Securely attached Describes an attachment style characterized by a positive view of the self and others, low anxiety and avoidance, and satisfying, stable relationships.
Self-affirmation theory The idea that people respond less defensively to threats to one aspect of themselves if they think about another valued aspect of themselves.
Self-awareness theory The theory that aspects of the self—one’s attitudes, values, and goals—will be most likely to influence behavior when attention is focused on the self.
Self-compassion Being kind to ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, recognizing that imperfection is part of the human condition, and accepting rather than denying negative feelings about ourselves.
Self-complexity The extent to which an individual’s self-concept consists of many different aspects.
Self-concept A person’s knowledge about him- or herself, including one’s own traits, social identities, and experiences.
Self-concept clarity A clearly defined, internally consistent, and temporally stable self-concept.
Self-determination theory The idea that people function best when they feel that their actions stem from their own desires rather than from external forces.
Self-disclosure The sharing of information about oneself.
Self-discrepancy theory The theory that people feel anxiety when they fall short of how they ought to be, but feel sad when they fall short of how they ideally want to be.
Self-esteem A person’s evaluation of his of her value or self-worth.
Self-evaluation maintenance model The idea that people adjust their perceived similarity to successful others to minimize threatening comparisons and maximize self-esteem-supporting identifications.
Self-expansion model of relationships The idea that romantic relationships serve the desire to expand the self and grow.
Self-fulfilling prophecy The phenomenon whereby initially false expectations cause the fulfillment of those expectations.
Self-handicapping Placing obstacles in the way of one’s own success to protect self-esteem from a possible future failure.
Self-monitoring An individual difference in people’s desire and ability to adjust their self-presentations for different audiences.
Self-narrative A coherent life story that connects one’s past, present, and possible future.
Self-objectification A phenomenon whereby intense cultural scrutiny of the female body leads many girls and women to view themselves as objects to be looked at and judged.
Self-perception theory The theory that people sometimes infer their attitudes and attributes by observing their behavior and the situation in which it occurs.
Self-regulation The process of guiding one’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior to reach desired goals.
Self-regulatory perseveration theory of depression The theory that one way in which people can fall into depression is by persistent self-focus on an unattainable goal.
Self-schema An integrated set of memories, beliefs, and generalizations about an attribute that is part of one’s self-concept.
Self-verification Seeking out other people and social situations that support the way one views oneself in order to sustain a consistent and clear self-concept.
Semantic associations Mental links between two concepts that are similar in meaning or that are parts of the same category.
Serotonin A neurotransmitter that regulates our experience of negative affect.
Sexual objectification The tendency to think about women in a narrow way as objects rather than full humans, as if their physical appearance is all that matters.
Shooter bias The tendency to mistakenly see objects in the hands of Black men as guns.
Short-term memory Information and input that is currently activated.
Sleeper effect The phenomenon whereby people can remember a message but forget where it came from; thus, source credibility has a diminishing effect on attitudes over time.
Social cognition The way an individual understands his or her own social world.
Social cognition perspective A view that focuses on how people perceive, remember, and interpret events and individuals, including themselves, in their social world.
Social comparison theory The theory that people come to understand themselves partly by comparing themselves with similar others.
Social contagion The phenomenon whereby ideas, feelings, and behaviors seem to spread across people like wildfire.
Social dominance orientation An ideology in which the world is viewed as a ruthlessly competitive jungle where it is appropriate and right for powerful groups to dominate weaker ones.
Social dominance theory The theory that large societies create hierarchies, and that people have a general tendency to endorse beliefs that legitimatize that hierarchy.
Social exchange model An economic perspective that assumes that people approach relationships with an underlying motivation of self-interest.
Social exchange theory An approach that maintains that people provide help to someone else when the benefits of helping and the costs of not helping outweigh the potential costs of helping and the benefits of not helping.
Social facilitation theory The theory that the presence of others increases a person’s dominant response in a performance situation, the response that is most likely for that person for that particular task.
Social identity theory The theory that people define and value themselves largely in terms of the social groups with which they identify.
Social influence The effects of other people on an individual’s beliefs, attitudes, values, or behavior.
Social learning The capacity to learn from observing others.
Social loafing A tendency to exert less effort when performing as part of a collective or group than when performing as an individual.
Social proof A tendency to conform to what we believe respected others think and do.
Social psychology The scientific study of the causes and consequences of people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions regarding themselves and other people.
Social role theory The theory that gender differences in behavior, personality, and self-definition arise because of a long history of role distribution between the sexes.
Socialization Learning from parents and others what is desirable and undesirable conduct in a particular culture.
Sociometer model The idea that a basic function of self-esteem is to indicate to the individual how much he or she is accepted by other people.
Solo status A sense that one is unique in some specific manner in relation to other people in the current environment.
Somatic marker hypothesis The idea that changes in the body, experienced as emotion, guide decision making.
Source credibility The degree to which the audience perceives a message’s source as expert and trustworthy.
Source The person or group communicating the message.
Spotlight effect The belief that others are more focused on us than they actually are.
Stereotype threat The concern that one might do something to confirm a negative stereotype about one’s group either in one’s own eyes or the eyes of someone else.
Stereotypes Overgeneralized beliefs about the traits and attributes of members of a particular group.
Stigma consciousness The expectation of being perceived by other people, particularly those in the majority group, in terms of one’s group membership.
Superordinate goal A common problem or shared goal that groups work together to solve or achieve.
Symbolic immortality A culturally shared belief that, by being part of something greater and more enduring than our individual selves, some part of us will live on after we die.
Symbolic interactionism The perspective that people use their understanding of how significant people in their lives view them as the primary basis for knowing and evaluating themselves.
Symbolic racism A tendency to express negative biases held about a racial outgroup not at the group directly, but at social policies seen as benefiting that group.
System justification theory The theory that negative stereotypes get attached to groups partly because they help to explain and justify why some individuals are more advantaged than others.
T
Target empowerment model A model suggesting that targets of bias can employ strategies that deflect discrimination, as long as those methods aren’t perceived as confrontational.
Terror management theory To minimize fear of mortality, humans strive to sustain faith that they are enduringly valued contributors to a meaningful world and therefore transcend their physical death.
Thanatos Freud’s term for what he proposed is the human inborn instinct to aggress and to destroy.
Theory of planned behavior Theory proposing that attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control interact to shape people’s behavioral intentions.
Theory of symbolic self-completion The idea that when people perceive that a self-defining aspect is threatened, they feel incomplete, and then try to compensate by acquiring and displaying symbols that support their desired self-definition.
Theory An explanation for how and why variables are related to each other.
Third variable problem The possibility that two variables may be correlated but do not exert a causal influence on one another; rather, both are caused by some additional variable.
Transference A tendency to map on, or transfer, feelings for a person who is known onto someone new who resembles that person in some way.
Two-factor theory of emotion The theory that people’s emotions are the product of both their arousal level and how they interpret that arousal.
U
Ultimate attribution error The tendency to believe that bad actions by outgroup members occur because of their internal dispositions and good actions by them occur because of the situation, while believing the reverse for ingroup members.
Uncertainty-identity theory The theory that people join and identify with groups in order to reduce negative feelings of uncertainty about themselves and others.
Upward comparison Comparing oneself with those who are better off.
Upward counterfactuals Imagined alternative where the outcome is better than what actually happened.
Urban overload hypothesis The idea that city dwellers learn to cope with the sounds that arise from population density by shutting out these sounds.
W
Weapons effect The tendency for the presence of firearms to increase the likelihood of aggression, especially when people are frustrated.
Working models of relationships Global feelings about the nature and worth of close relationships and other people’s trustworthiness.
Working self-concept The portion of one’s self-schema that is currently activated and strongly influences thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Worldview defense The tendency to derogate those who violate important cultural ideals and to venerate those who uphold them.