Glossary

When existing schemas change on the basis of new information

We tend to make more personal attributions for the behavior of others than we do for ourselves, and to make more situational attributions for our own behavior than for the behavior of others.

Inputs of each group member are added together to create the group performance,

Group members prepare for the group to end.

feelings we experience as part of our everyday lives.

A tendency to rely on automatically occurring affective responses to stimuli to guide our judgments of them.

Predicting how one will feel in the future after some event or decision.

Our attempts to predict how future events will make us feel.

Any behavior intended to harm another person who does not want to be harmed.

Behavior that is intended to harm another individual who does not wish to be harmed.

A core personality trait that includes such dispositional characteristics as being sympathetic, generous, forgiving, and helpful, and behavioral tendencies toward harmonious social relations and likeability.

A tendency to be good natured, cooperative, and trusting.

A motivation for helping that has the improvement of another’s welfare as its ultimate goal, with no expectation of any benefits for the helper.

Any behavior that is designed to increase another person’s welfare, and particularly those actions that do not seem to provide a direct reward to the person who performs them.

Some people are indeed more helpful than others across a variety of situations.

the region in the limbic system that is primarily responsible for regulating our perceptions of, and reactions to, aggression and fear.

The accessibility of the initial information frequently prevents this adjustment from occurring—leading us to weight initial information too heavily and thereby insufficiently move our judgment away from it.

a psychological disorder that may be accompanied by a number of physical symptoms, including diarrhea, upset stomach, sweaty hands, shortness of breath, poor concentration, and general agitation

Become overly dependent on the parents and continually seek more affection from them than they can give.

A political system with policies that promote segregation of the basis of race. The word means “apartness” in Afrikaans, and the system was in use in South Africa from the 1950s through the 1990s.

A type of third-party intervention that avoids negotiation as well as the necessity of any meetings between the parties in conflict.

changes in bodily sensations, including increased blood pressure, heart rate, perspiration, and respiration.

An egoistic theory proposed by Piliavin et al. (1981) that claims that seeing a person in need leads to the arousal of unpleasant feelings, and observers are motivated to eliminate that aversive state, often by helping the victim. A cost–reward analysis may lead observers to react in ways other than offering direct assistance, including indirect help, reinterpretation of the situation, or fleeing the scene.

a process in which our existing knowledge influences new conflicting information to better fit with our existing knowledge, thus reducing the likelihood of schema change.

when an object or event comes to be associated with a natural response, such as an automatic behavior or a positive or negative emotion.

Individual differences in how people relate to others in close relationships.

A way of thinking or feeling about a target that is often reflected in a person’s behavior. Examples of attitude targets are individuals, concepts, and groups.

The importance of an attitude, as assessed by how quickly it comes to mind.

The psychological process of being sexually interested in another person. This can include,
for example, physical attraction, first impressions, and dating rituals.

The process of assigning causes to behaviors.

The type of attributions that we tend to make for the events that occur to us.

a tendency to prefer things to be simple rather than complex and to hold traditional values

The ability, typically developed in adolescence, to derive substantive conclusions about the self from analyzing one’s own personal experiences.

A behavior or process has one or more of the following features: unintentional, uncontrollable, occurring outside of conscious awareness, and cognitively efficient.

Automatic biases are unintended, immediate, and irresistible.

Thinking that occurs out of our awareness, quickly, and without taking much effort

Reflects the helper’s view that, given the appropriate tools, recipients can help themselves.

A heuristic in which the frequency or likelihood of an event is evaluated based on how easily instances of it come to mind.

The tendency to make judgments of the frequency of an event, or the likelihood that an event will occur, on the basis of the ease with which the event can be retrieved from memory.

Aversive racism is unexamined racial bias that the person does not intend and would reject, but that avoids inter-racial contact.

Unable to relate to the parents at all, becoming distant, fearful, and cold.

Which occurs when someone advertises a product at a very low price. When you visit the store to buy the product, however, you learn that the product you wanted at the low price has been sold out.

The likelihood that events occur across a large population.

are emotions that are based primarily on the arousal produced by the SNS and that do not require much cognitive processing. These include: anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.

When we use and advertise our ingroups' positive achievements to boost our self-esteem.

Many people in close relationships, as do most people in their everyday lives, tend to inflate their own self-worth. They rate their own positive behaviors as better than their partner’s, and rate their partner’s negative behaviors as worse than their own. Try to give your partner the benefit of the doubt—remember that you are not perfect either.

Every relationship has conflict. This is not unexpected or always bad. Working through minor conflicts can help you and your partner improve your social skills and make the relationship stronger

Measures designed to directly assess what people do.

Tendency to believe that our own judgments are less susceptible to the influence of bias than those of others.

A broad taxonomy of personality trait domains repeatedly derived from studies of trait ratings in adulthood and encompassing the categories of (1) extraversion vs. introversion, (2) neuroticism vs. emotional stability, (3) agreeable vs. disagreeableness, (4) conscientiousness vs. nonconscientiousness, and (5) openness to experience vs. conventionality. By late childhood and early adolescence, people’s self-attributions of personality traits, as well as the trait attributions made about them by others, show patterns of intercorrelations that confirm with the five-factor structure obtained in studies of adults.

An unreasonable opinion or prejudice against a category of people.

The strong devaluation of ingroup members who threaten the positive image and identity of the ingroup.

Interpreting the negative outcomes that occur to others internally so that it seems that they deserved them.

Blatant biases are conscious beliefs, feelings, and behavior that people are perfectly willing to admit, are mostly hostile, and openly favor their own group.

When participants in research are not aware of what is being studied.

In this procedure, the experimenter first convinces the participants that he or she has access to their “true” beliefs, for instance, by getting access to a questionnaire that they completed at a prior experimental session.

The phenomenon whereby people intervene to help others in need even if the other is a complete stranger and the intervention puts the helper at risk.

The idea that engaging in less harmful aggressive actions will reduce the tendency to aggress later in a more harmful way.

Greek term that means to cleanse or purge. Applied to aggression, catharsis is the belief that acting aggressively or even viewing aggression purges angry feelings and aggressive impulses into harmless channels.

The process of trying to determine the causes of people’s behavior.

Persuasion that employs direct, relevant, logical messages.

Characteristics that have a very strong influence on our impressions of others.

The tendency for individuals to nonconsciously mimic the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one’s interaction partners.

Leaders who are enthusiastic, committed, and self-confident; who tend to talk about the importance of group goals at a broad level; and who make personal sacrifices for the group.

Power that is based on the ability to create negative outcomes for others, for instance by bullying, intimidating, or otherwise punishing.

The extent to which a schema is activated in memory and thus likely to be used in information processing.

The discomfort that occurs when we respond in ways that we see as inconsistent.

Altering an emotional state by reinterpreting the meaning of the triggering situation or stimulus.

Attempts on the part of one group to change the social status hierarchy by improving the status of their own group relative to others.

Knowledge that is shared among members of a group about the historical experiences of that group.

Feelings of self-worth that are based on evaluation of relationships with others and membership in social groups.

The idea that a person's self-worth is influenced by the treatment of and perceptions about a group to which that person belongs.

The cultural trend in which the primary unit of measurement is the group. Collectivists are likely to emphasize duty and obligation over personal aspirations.

Cultural norms that indicate that people should be more fundamentally connected with others and thus are more oriented toward interdependence.

A belief that racism is a past-- rather than a current-- phenomenon. Also, the idea that the best way to eliminate discrimination is to ignore categorical differences between people and their experiences.

The feelings and actions that keep partners working together to maintain the relationship.

The attempt to reduce prejudice by creating a superordinate categorization.

The tendency for groups to spend more time discussing information that all members know (shared information) and less time examining information that only a few members know (unshared).

A collective product or service that is freely available to all individuals of a society, but is vulnerable to overuse and degradation.

A game in which members of a group must balance their desire for personal gain against the deterioration and possible collapse of a resource.

Close relationships in which partners suspend their need for equity and exchange, giving support to the partner in order to meet his or her needs, and without consideration of the costs to themselves.

As love that is based on friendship, mutual attraction, common interests, mutual respect, and concern for each other’s welfare.

The group input is combined such that the performance of the individuals is averaged rather than added.

Attempt to gain as many of the limited rewards as possible for ourselves, and at the same time we may work to reduce the likelihood of success for the other parties.

Characteristics that we are trying to measure.

The ability to connect stimuli (things or events in the environment) with responses (behaviors or other actions).

the tendency for people to seek out and favor information that confirms their expectations and beliefs,

The parties involved engage in violence and hostility.

The change in beliefs, opinions, and behaviors as a result of our perceptions about what other people believe or do.

Changing one’s attitude or behavior to match a perceived social norm.

The group performance is determined by the ability of the group member who performs most poorly.

A tendency to be responsible, orderly, and dependable.

Creates the same behavior in most people.

A situation seems to be the cause of a behavior if the situation always produces the behavior in the target. For instance, if I always start to cry at weddings, then it seems as if the wedding is the cause of my crying.

The idea that intergroup contact will reduce prejudice.

A model of leadership effectiveness that focuses on both person variables and situational variables.

When the short-term costs of a behavior lead individuals to avoid performing it, and this may prevent the long-term benefits that would have occurred if the behaviors had been performed.

When we deliberately size up and think about something, for instance, another person.

The coordination of multiple partners toward a common goal that will benefit everyone involved.

Search for and test hypotheses about the relationships between two or more variables.

When we attribute behaviors to people's internal characteristics, even in heavily constrained situations.

A decision-making process that compares the cost of an action or thing against the expected benefit to help determine the best course of action.

The tendency to think about events according to what might have been.

A given behavior is more likely to have been caused by the situation if that behavior covaries (or changes) across situations.

A false statement of what the research was really about.

The group can see that there is a clearly correct answer to the problem that is being posed.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a critical framework that emerged as an intervention in the 1970s to explain how racism and other tools of oppression shape law and society. Building on the pioneering work of activists and legal scholars like Derrick Bell, Kimberle Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, and Mari Matsuda, CRT has influenced social scientists in fields outside of legal studies including education, sociology, public health, and psychology. The framework provides a foundation for understanding racism as systemic, the ideologies that reinforce and maintain racist structures, and the value of perspectives and theories grounded in the experiences of oppressed and marginalized peoples. For an introduction to CRT, we recommend Delgado & Stefancic, 2012. To learn more about the intersections of psychology and CRT see Jones, 1998; Adams & Salter, 2011, and Salter & Adams, 2013.

An approach to researching culture that emphasizes the use of standard scales as a means of making meaningful comparisons across groups.

An approach to researching culture that emphasizes the use of standard scales as a means of making meaningful comparisons across groups.

An approach to understanding culture primarily by paying attention to unique and distinctive features that set them apart from other cultures.

The ability and willingness to apply cultural awareness to practical uses.

An approach to researching culture that emphasizes the use of interviews and observation as a means of understanding culture from its own point of view.

The principled objection to passing overly culture-bound (i.e., “ethnocentric”) judgements on aspects of other cultures.

Learned guides for how to behave appropriately in a given social situation. These reflect cultural norms and widely accepted values.

An approach to understanding culture primarily by paying attention to common features that are the same as or similar to those of other cultures.

A pattern of shared meaning and behavior among a group of people that is passed from one generation to the next.

A culture in which personal or family reputation is especially important.

Aggression inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices.

Our everyday interactions with the environment that are essentially negative

A task in which an individual chooses from multiple allocations of resources to distribute between him- or herself and another person.

When we make attributions which defend ourselves from the notion that we could be the victim of an unfortunate outcome, and often also that we could be held responsible as the victim.

The loss of individual self-awareness and individual accountability in groups.

When the recipient feels that the implication of the helping is that they are unable to care for themselves.

The variable that is measured after the manipulations have occurred.

an affective disorder in which people experience sadness, low self-esteem, negative thoughts, pessimism, and apathy

Social judgments about the future are less positively skewed and often more accurate than those who do not have depression.

The perception of what most people do in a given situation.

The tendency to become used to, and thus less influenced by, a stimulus.

An individual who is given the job of expressing conflicting opinions and forcing the group (in a noncombative way) to fully discuss all the alternatives.

When deciding whether to help a person in need, knowing that there are others who could also provide assistance relieves bystanders of some measure of personal responsibility, reducing the likelihood that bystanders will intervene.

Occurs when we assume that others will take action, and therefore we do not take action ourselves.

The motivation to reach a particular outcome or judgment.

Discrimination is behavior that advantages or disadvantages people merely based on their group membership.

When the group’s performance is determined by the best group member,

A blend of the other two insecure styles.

When negative emotions caused by one person trigger aggression toward a different person.

When the situation is present but not when it is not present.

Our judgments about whether or not a party is receiving a fair share of the available rewards.

Each of the group members working on the job can do a separate part of the job at the same time.

The principles of social exchange make it clear that being nice to others leads them to be nice in return.

The action that we are most likely to emit in any given situation.

Negative cognitions and emotions have an extremely harmful influence on relationships (Gottman, 1994). Don’t let a spiral of negative thinking and negative behaviors get started. Do whatever you can to think positively.

The general expectation that people should return a favor.

When we attempt to create a positive image of ourselves through favorable comparisons with others who are worse off than we are.

Individuals will relate to social dilemmas, or other forms of conflict, in different ways, depending on their underlying personal orientations or as influenced by the characteristics of the situation that orient them toward a given concern.

A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates for how long one will feel an emotion (positive or negative) after some event.

Sigmund Freud’s conception of an executive self in the personality. Akin to this module’s notion of “the I,” Freud imagined the ego as observing outside reality, engaging in rational though, and coping with the competing demands of inner desires and moral standards.

A motivation for helping that has the improvement of the helper’s own circumstances as its primary goal.

A technique that records the electrical activity produced by the brain’s neurons through the use of electrodes that are placed around the research participant’s head.

Aggression that occurs with only a small amount of forethought or intent and that is determined primarily by impulsive emotions.

brief, but often intense, mental and physiological feeling states.

According to Batson’s empathy–altruism hypothesis, observers who empathize with a person in need (that is, put themselves in the shoes of the victim and imagine how that person feels) will experience empathic concern and have an altruistic motivation for helping.

An affective response in which a person understands, and even feels, another person’s distress and experiences events the way the other person does.

An altruistic theory proposed by Batson (2011) that claims that people who put themselves in the shoes of a victim and imagining how the victim feel will experience empathic concern that evokes an altruistic motivation for helping.

Based on the collection and systematic analysis of observable data.

The uniquely human form of learning that is taught by one generation to another.

The perception, either by the group members themselves or by others, that the people together are a group.

Tend to believe that people’s traits are fundamentally stable and incapable of change.

A form of scientific or academic racism in which observers interpret empirical data in ways that problematize or suggest the inferiority of racial and cultural Others, even when the data allow for equally viable alternative interpretations (Teo, 2010).

Being unduly guided by the beliefs of the culture you’ve grown up in, especially when this results in a misunderstanding or disparagement of unfamiliar cultures.

Research that emphasizes field data collection and that examines questions that attempt to understand culture from it's own context and point of view.

An implicit attitude task that assesses the extent to which an attitude object is associated with a positive or negative valence by measuring the time it takes a person to label an adjective as good or bad after being presented with an attitude object.

The assumption that human nature, including much of our social behavior, is determined largely by our evolutionary past.

Relationships in which each of the partners keeps track of his or her contributions to the partnership.

A person who is actually part of the experimental team but who pretends to be another participant in the study.

Research designs that include the manipulation of a given situation or experience for two or more groups of individuals who are initially created to be equivalent, followed by a measurement of the effect of that experience.

A type of informational influence based on the fundamental desire to obtain valid and accurate information, and where the outcome is likely to be private acceptance.

An attitude that is consciously held and can be reported on by the person holding the attitude.

The idea that prejudice can be reduced for people who have friends who are friends with members of the outgroup.

The extent to which relationships can be expected to hold up when they are tested again in different ways and for different people. Science relies primarily upon replication—that is, the repeating of research.

Experimental designs that have two or more independent variables.

The acceptance of one’s own low status as part of the proper and normal functioning of society.

The tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people hold similar views to our own.

That the outcome of the research can demonstrate empirically either that there is support for the hypothesis (i.e., the relationship between the variables was correctly specified) or that there is actually no relationship between the variables or that the actual relationship is not in the direction that was predicted.

The positive self-esteem that we get from our group memberships.

Are experimental research studies that are conducted in a natural environment,

an emotional and behavioral reaction to stress that increases the readiness for action

The extent to which having a given characteristic helps the individual organism to survive and to reproduce at a higher rate than do other members of the species who do not have the characteristic.

Sequences of behavior that occur in exactly the same fashion, in exactly the same order, every time they are elicited.

A gain for one side necessarily means a loss for the other side or sides.

Obtaining a small, initial commitment.

A persuasion attempt in which we first get the target to accept a rather minor request, and then we ask for a larger request.

giving people a chance to develop a resistance to persuasion by reminding them that they might someday receive a persuasive message, and allowing them to practice how they will respond to influence attempts

When the members of the group come together and begin their existence as a group.

When people's judgments about different options are affected by whether they are framed as resulting in gains or losses.

A situation in which one or more individuals benefit from a common-pool resource without paying their share of the cost.

This is an example of a glossary term.

When we feel that we are not obtaining the important goals that we have set for ourselves.

Neuroimaging technique that uses a magnetic field to create images of brain structure and function.

The tendency to emphasize another person’s personality traits when describing that person’s
motives and behaviors and overlooking the influence of situational factors

When we tend to overestimate the role of person factors and overlook the impact of situations.

the three distinct phases of physiological change that occur in response to long-term stress: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion

are those that we feel apply broadly.

A tendency to make attributional generalizations about entire outgroups based on a very small number of observations of individual members.

The solidarity or unity of a group resulting from the development of strong and mutual interpersonal bonds among members and group-level forces that unify the group, such as shared commitment to group goals.

When, after discussion, the attitudes held by the individual group members become more extreme than they were before the group began discussing the topic.

The tendency for members of a deliberating group to move to a more extreme position, with the direction of the shift determined by the majority or average of the members’ predeliberation preferences.

The events that occur while the group is working together on the task.

Also make trait attributions in ways that benefit their ingroups, just as they make trait attributions that benefit themselves.

A tendency to make internal attributions about our ingroups' successes, and external attributions about their setbacks, and to make the opposite pattern of attributions about our outgroups.

When a group that is made up of members who may actually be very competent and thus quite capable of making excellent decisions nevertheless ends up making a poor one as a result of a flawed group process and strong conformity pressures.

A set of negative group-level processes, including illusions of invulnerability, self-censorship, and pressures to conform, that occur when highly cohesive groups seek concurrence when making a decision.

The influence of a global positive evaluation of a person on perceptions of their specific traits.

That harming others, either physically or by violating their rights, is wrong.

A social dilemma leads people to overuse an existing public good.

Relationships in which the partners have positive moods and in which the partners are not bored tend to last longer

A component of the prosocial personality orientation; describes individuals who have been helpful in the past and, because they believe they can be effective with the help they give, are more likely to be helpful in the future.

Prosocial acts that typically involve situations in which one person is in need and another provides the necessary assistance to eliminate the other’s need.

A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that reduces complex mental problems to more simple rule-based decisions.

The tendency to think that we could have predicted something that we probably would not have been able to predict.

The tendency to perceive ambiguous actions by others as aggressive.

The tendency to assume that people will react to potential conflicts with aggression.

The tendency to perceive social interactions in general as being aggressive.

The mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings.

a physiological response to stress involving interactions among the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal glands

A possible explanation that can be tested through research.

Sometimes used synonymously with the term “self,” identity means many different things in psychological science and in other fields (e.g., sociology). In this module, I adopt Erik Erikson’s conception of identity as a developmental task for late adolescence and young adulthood. Forming an identity in adolescence and young adulthood involves exploring alternative roles, values, goals, and relationships and eventually committing to a realistic agenda for life that productively situates a person in the adult world of work and love. In addition, identity formation entails commitments to new social roles and reevaluation of old traits, and importantly, it brings with it a sense of temporal continuity in life, achieved though the construction of an integrative life story.

Tendency to overvalue the level of productivity of our ingroups.

A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates the strength or intensity of emotion one will experience after some event.

Frequently used to assess stereotypes and prejudice.

An attitude that a person cannot verbally or overtly state.

Measures of attitudes in which researchers infer the participant’s attitude rather than having the participant explicitly report it.

Who believe that personalities change a lot over time and who therefore are more likely to make situational attributions for events.

The tendency to define the self in terms of stable traits that guide behavior.

The situation that is created by the experimenter through the experimental manipulations.

The cultural trend in which the primary unit of measurement is the individual. Individualists are likely to emphasize uniqueness and personal aspirations over social duty.

Cultural norms, common in Western societies, that focus primarily on self-enhancement and independence.

Conformity that results from a concern to act in a socially approved manner as determined by how others act.

The change in opinions or behavior that occurs when we conform to people who we believe have accurate information.

Those we view as being similar and important to us and with whom we share close social connections.

The tendency to respond more positively to people from our ingroups than we do to people from outgroups.

How group members are expected to behave.

Involves building up defenses against persuasion by mildly attacking the attitude position.

Aggression that is intentional and planned.

When the social situation actually causes our behavior, but we do not realize that the social situation was the cause.

A solution can be found that benefits all the parties.

Involves the ability of the group to make a decision or a judgment

The extent to which the group members are mutually dependent upon each other to reach a goal.

The tendency to define the self in terms of social contexts that guide behavior.

The tendency for White (or dominant group) engagement in racial progress to emerge when it aligns with the interests of the dominant group.

The tendency for relations between groups to be less cooperative than relations between individuals.

The extent to which changes in the dependent variable in an experiment can confidently be attributed to changes in the independent variable.

When individuals turn prejudice directed toward them by others onto themselves.

The strength of our liking or loving for another person.

The idea that social identities can overlap. For instance, a person could be "Canadian", "Indigenous" and "a woman".

To learning in which students from different racial or ethnic groups work together, in an interdependent way, to master material.

There is no clearly correct answer to the problem.

Beliefs that people get what they deserve in life.

A tendency to make attributions based on the belief that the world is fundamentally just.

Strategies that favor the reproductive success of one’s relatives, sometimes even at a cost to the individual’s own survival.

According to evolutionary psychology, the favoritism shown for helping our blood relatives, with the goals of increasing the likelihood that some portion of our DNA will be passed on to future generations.

When we are labeled, and others' views and expectations of us are affected by that labeling.

The ability to direct or inspire others to achieve goals.

Continually make external, stable, and global attributions for their behavior.

Power vested in those who are appointed or elected to positions of authority.

Complementary views for analyzing and understanding a phenomenon.

Part of how we see ourselves comes from our perception of how others see us.

Promises the customer something desirable, such as a low price on a car, with the intention of getting the person to imagine himself or herself engaging in the desired behavior.

The observation that people tend to want to cleanse themselves when they perceive that they have violated their own ethical standards.

When the beliefs held by the larger number of individuals in the current social group prevail.

To treat a person or group as socially inferior, peripheral, or unimportant.

These lines from “Buffalo Soldier” by Bob Marley and the Wailers provide a brief statement of the Marley Hypothesis: the suggestion that White denial of racism reflects a collectively cultivated ignorance of the role that racism has played in U.S. society throughout its history.

Involves performance that is measured by how rapidly the group works or how much of a product they are able to make. 

Helping to create compromise by using third-party negotiation.

The tendency to prefer stimuli (including, but not limited to, people) that we have seen frequently.

The message contained either strong arguments (persuasive data and statistics about the positive effects of the exams at other universities) or weak arguments (relying only on individual quotations and personal opinions).

A statistical procedure in which the results of existing studies are combined to determine what conclusions can be drawn on the basis of all the studies considered together.

Whose job it is to help quash dissent and to increase conformity to the leader’s opinions.

The beliefs held by the smaller number of individuals in the current social group prevail.

when people incorrectly label the source of the arousal that they are experiencing.

A minority group whose members are perceived as achieving a higher degree of socioeconomic success than the population average.

The positive or negative feelings that are in the background of our everyday experiences.

When we are more able to retrieve memories that match our current mood.

The tendency to be better able to recall memories that have a mood similar to our current mood.

A tendency to better remember information when our current mood matches the mood we were in when we encoded that information.

The manner in which one makes ethical judgments.

The set of social norms that describe the principles and ideals, as well as the duties and obligations, that we view as appropriate and that we use to judge the actions of others and to guide our own behavior.

A form of bias that can result from having a directional goal in which one is skeptical of evidence despite its strength because it goes against what one wants to believe.

A personality trait characterized by overly high self-esteem, self-admiration, and self-centeredness.

An internalized and evolving story of the self designed to provide life with some measure of temporal unity and purpose. Beginning in late adolescence, people craft self-defining stories that reconstruct the past and imagine the future to explain how the person came to be the person that he or she is becoming.

The desire to come to a decision that will resolve ambiguity and conclude an issue.

The tendency to think carefully and fully about our experiences.

A strong natural impulse in humans to form social connections and to be accepted by others.

The tendency to explain negative events by referring to their own internal, stable, and global qualities.

An egoistic theory proposed by Cialdini et al. (1982) that claims that people have learned through socialization that helping can serve as a secondary reinforcement that will relieve negative moods such as sadness.

The process by which two or more parties formally work together to attempt to resolve a perceived divergence of interest in order to avoid or resolve social conflict

Aggression that does not involve physical harm.

Any type of communication that does not involve speaking, including facial expressions, body language, touching, voice patterns, and interpersonal distance.

Conformity that results from a concern for what other people think of us.

When we express opinions or behave in ways that help us to be accepted or that keep us from being isolated or rejected by others.

When the appropriate norms and roles for the group are developed.

When group members overvalue their own group's ideas and products over those of other groups.

Responding to an order or command from a person in a position of authority

Learning by observing the behavior of others

People learn by observing the behavior of others.

Research that involves making observations of behavior and recording those observations in an objective manner.

Research questions that ask participants to answer in their own words.

The principle that experiences that are followed by positive emotions (reinforcements or rewards) are likely to be repeated, whereas experiences that are followed by negative emotions (punishments) are less likely to be repeated.

particular method that we use to measure a variable of interest

a general tendency to expect positive outcomes

A tendency to believe that positive outcomes are more likely to happen than negative ones, particularly in relation to ourselves versus others.

A way of explaining current outcomes affecting the self in a way that leads to an expectation of positive future outcomes,

Excluding one or more individuals from a group by reducing or eliminating contact with the person, usually by ignoring, shunning, or explicitly banishing them.

The motivation to affiliate with, accept, and be accepted by others.

A component of the prosocial personality orientation; describes individuals who have a strong sense of social responsibility, empathize with and feel emotionally tied to those in need, understand the problems the victim is experiencing, and have a heightened sense of moral obligations to be helpful.

Naturally, tend to look too much at the outcome when we evaluate decision-making,

The tendency to view members of outgroups as more similar to each other than we see members of ingroups.

A social category or group with which an individual does not identify.

A tendency to be overconfident in our own skills, abilities, and judgments.

When we view our behavior as caused by the situation, leading us to discount the extent to which our behavior was actually caused by our own interest in it.

The division of the autonomic nervous system that is involved in resting, digesting, relaxing, and recovering.

The kind of love that we experience when we are first getting to know a romantic partner.

Used to summarize the association, or correlation, between two variables.

When group members establish a routine and effectively work together.

Persuasion that relies on superficial cues that have little to do with logic.

The process of learning about other people.

When we decide that the behavior was caused primarily by the person.

According to Batson’s empathy–altruism hypothesis, observers who take a detached view of a person in need will experience feelings of being “worried” and “upset” and will have an egoistic motivation for helping to relieve that distress.

The negative emotions that we may experience when we view another person’s suffering.

The students were told either that the new exam would begin before they graduated (high personal relevance) or that it would not begin until after they had already graduated (low personal relevance).

Explanations of leadership based on the idea that some people are simply “natural leaders” because they possess personality characteristics that make them effective.

The specific and stable personality characteristics that describe an individual (“I am friendly,” “I am shy,” “I am persistent”).

Observable traits, such as hair or eye color, that are result of genetic and environmental interactions.

Aggression that involves harming others physically.

A cognitive bias in which one underestimates how long it will take to complete a task.

A tendency to overestimate the amount that we can accomplish over a particular time frame.

Relying on the actions of others to define an ambiguous need situation and to then erroneously conclude that no help or intervention is necessary.

When people think that others in their environment have information that they do not have and when they base their judgments on what they think the others are thinking.

Ways of explaining events that are related to high self-esteem and a tendency to explain the negative events they experience by referring to external, unstable, and specific qualities.

a medical syndrome that includes symptoms of anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares, and social withdrawal.

The feeling of regret that may occur after we make an important decision (Brehm, 1956). However, the principles of dissonance predict that once you make the decision—and regardless of which car you choose.

The ability or official authority to decide what is best for others. The ability to decide who will have access to resources. The capacity to exercise control over others.

Relies on the norm of reciprocity. In this case, a charitable organization might mail you a small, unsolicited gift, followed by a request for a monetary donation. Having received the gift, many people feel a sense of obligation to support the organization in return, which is, of course, what they are counting on!

the part of the brain that lies in front of the motor areas of the cortex and that helps us remember the characteristics and actions of other people, plan complex social behaviors, and coordinate our behaviors with those of others

An evaluation or emotion toward people based merely on their group membership.

Tell the group members what to do.

The tendency for information that we learn first to be weighted more heavily than is information that we learn later.

A process by which a concept or behavior is made more cognitively accessible or likely to occur through the presentation of an associated concept.

A technique in which information is temporarily brought into memory through exposure to situational events, which can then influence judgments entirely out of awareness.

A classic paradox in which two individuals must independently choose between defection (maximizing reward to the self) and cooperation (maximizing reward to the group).

A laboratory simulation that models a social dilemma in which the goals of the individual compete with the goals of another individual (or sometimes with a group of other individuals).

Real change in opinions on the part of the individual.

The tendency to introspect about our inner thoughts and feelings.

A system of “automatic advantages and unearned assets available only to dominant groups of people”

Beliefs about the fairness (or unfairness) of the procedures used to distribute available rewards among parties.

When groups work better than we would expect, given the individuals who form them,

When groups perform more poorly than we would expect, given the characteristics of the members of the group.

The ease with which we can process information in our environments.

Only one person can speak at a time, and this can cause people to forget their ideas because they are listening to others, or to miss what others are saying because they are thinking of their own ideas.

The tendency to assume that others share our cognitive and affective states.

Tell them what not to do.

Social behavior that benefits another person.

A measure of individual differences that identifies two sets of personality characteristics (other-oriented empathy, helpfulness) that are highly correlated with prosocial behavior.

People tend to become better acquainted with, and more fond of, each other when the social situation brings them into repeated contact.

A reaction to people, rules, requirements, or offerings that are perceived to limit freedoms.

The strong emotional response that we experience when we feel that our freedom of choice is being taken away when we expect that we should have choice.

A superficial change in behavior (including the public expression of opinions) that is not accompanied by an actual change in one’s private opinion.

Benefits that are shared by a community at large and that everyone in the group has access to, regardless of whether or not they have personally contributed to the creation of the goods.

The tendency to focus on our outer public image and to be particularly aware of the extent to which we are meeting the standards set by others.

Inflicting pain or removing pleasure for a misdeed. Punishment decreases the likelihood that a behavior will be repeated.

A system of advantage and disadvantage based on social, historical, and cultural constructions of race and ethnicity (Jones, 1997/1998; Tatum 1997; Wellman 1993).

Determining separately for each participant which condition he or she will experience through a random process,

The principle that people will make logical decisions based on maximizing their own gains and benefits.

When groups are in competition for objectively scarce resources.

In which information that comes later is given more weight.

The idea that if we help other people now, they will return the favor should we need their help in the future.

The act of exchanging goods or services. By giving a person a gift, the principle of reciprocity
can be used to influence others; they then feel obligated to give back.

A social norm reminding us that we should follow the principles of reciprocal altruism.

remember things that match our current beliefs better than those that don’t and reshape those memories to better align with our current beliefs

Life stories that affirm the transformation from suffering to an enhanced status or state. In American culture, redemptive life stories are highly prized as models for the good self, as in classic narratives of atonement, upward mobility, liberation, and recovery.

An ability to influence others because they can lead those others to identify with them.

The idea that the self reflects back upon itself; that the I (the knower, the subject) encounters the Me (the known, the object). Reflexivity is a fundamental property of human selfhood.

Intentionally harming another person’s social relationships, feelings of acceptance, or inclusion within a group.

Intentionally harming another person’s social relationships.

A heuristic in which the likelihood of an object belonging to a category is evaluated based on the extent to which the object appears similar to one’s mental representation of the category.

when we base our judgments on information that seems to represent, or match, what we expect will happen, while ignoring more informative base-rate information.

a form of long-term self-presentation, where individuals seek to build and sustain specific reputations with important audiences.

A person working with a researcher, posing as a research participant or as a bystander

Specific prediction about the relationship between the variables of interest and about the specific direction of that relationship.

A person being studied as part of a research program.

When one person is able to influence others by providing them with positive outcomes.

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) focuses on value conflicts but endorses respect for obedience and authority in the service of group conformity.

Rites or actions performed in a systematic or prescribed way often for an intended purpose. Example: The exchange of wedding rings during a marriage ceremony in many cultures.

When individuals experience incompatible demands and expectations within or between the roles that they occupy, which often negatively impacts their ability to be successful in those roles.

People tend to perceive things as more attractive when their availability is limited, or when they stand to lose the opportunity to acquire them on favorable terms.

A mental model or representation that organizes the important information about a thing, person, or event (also known as a script).

A knowledge representation that includes information about a person or group.

Knowledge representations that include information about a person, group, or situation.

emotions that provide us with more complex feelings about our social worlds and that are more cognitively based.

Perceive their parents as safe, available, and responsive caregivers and are able to relate easily to them.

our sense of personal identity and of who we are as individuals.

The sense of the self as a storyteller who reconstructs the past and imagines the future in order to articulate an integrative narrative that provides life with some measure of temporal continuity and purpose.

The sense of the self as an intentional force that strives to achieve goals, plans, values, projects, and the like.

The sense of the self as an embodied actor whose social performances may be construed in terms of more or less consistent self-ascribed traits and social roles.

People will try to reduce the threat to their self-concept posed by feelings of self-discrepancy by focusing on and affirming their worth in another domain, unrelated to the issue at hand.

The extent to which we are currently fixing our attention on our own self-concept.

When we focus our attention on ourselves, we tend to compare our current behavior against our internal standards.

Self-categorization theory develops social identity theory’s point that people categorize themselves, along with each other into groups, favoring their own group.

The extent to which individuals have many different and relatively independent ways of thinking about themselves.

A knowledge representation that contains knowledge about us, including our beliefs about our personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles, as well as the knowledge that we exist as individuals.

The extent to which one's self-concept is clearly and consistently defined.

The motivation to protect and enhance the self and the people who are psychologically close to us.

When our self-concept becomes highly accessible because of our concerns about being observed and potentially judged by others.

The extent to which the self is defined as independent or as relating to others.

The tendency to communicate frequently, without fear of reprisal, and in an accepting and empathetic manner.

When we perceive a discrepancy between our actual and ideal selves, this is distressing to us.

The belief in our ability to carry out actions that produce desired outcomes.

The extent to which a person feels that he or she is worthy and good. The success or failure that the motivated agent experiences in pursuit of valued goals is a strong determinant of self-esteem.

The positive (high self-esteem) or negative (low self-esteem) feelings that we have about ourselves.

Our self-esteem can be threatened when someone else outperforms us, particularly if that person is close to us and the performance domain is central to our self-concept.

a process that occurs when our expectations about others lead us to behave toward those others in ways that make our expectations come true.

When we make statements or engage in behaviors that help us create a convenient external attribution for potential failure.

When we adopt others' labels explicitly into our self-concept.

The tendency to be both motivated and capable of regulating our behavior to meet the demands of social situations.

When we use our own behavior as a guide to help us determine our own thoughts and feelings.

The tendency to present a positive self-image to others, with the goal of increasing our social status.

Information that is processed in relationship to the self is particularly well remembered.

The process of setting goals and using our cognitive and affective capacities to reach those goals.

Measures in which individuals are asked to respond to questions posed by an interviewer or on a questionnaire.

A variety of different cognitive aspects of the self.

Attributions that help us meet our desire to see ourselves positively.

The tendency to attribute our successes to ourselves, and our failures to others and the situation.

People often seek confirmation of their self-concept, whether it is positive or negative.

Group members tend to discuss information that they all have access to, while ignoring equally important information that is available to only a few of the members.

Knowledge, expectations, conceptualizations, and other cognitive representations that members of a group have in common pertaining to the group and its members, tasks, procedures, and resources.

We may determine that the behavior was caused primarily by the situation.

Being guided by different cultural influences in different situations, such as home versus workplace, or formal versus informal roles.

Attitude change that occurs over time.

A pattern of small, progressively escalating demands is less likely to be rejected than a single large demand made all at once.

The way a person explains the motives or behaviors of others.

The natural cognitive process by which we place individuals into social groups.

The way people process and apply information about others.

The process of contrasting one’s personal qualities and outcomes, including beliefs, attitudes, values, abilities, accomplishments, and experiences, to those of other people.

When we learn about our abilities and skills, about the appropriateness and validity of our opinions, and about our relative social status by comparing our own attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with those of others.

Something that is not found in objective reality but it, instead, the result of a common shared understanding. Social constructs are defined and given meaning by a particular society.

Norms that are seen as appropriate within a culture but that do not involve behaviors that relate to doing good or doing harm toward others.

The use of strategies that allow members of low-status groups to perceive their group as better than other groups.

A situation in which the goals of the individual conflict with the goals of the group.

Occur when the members of a group, culture, or society are in potential conflict over the creation and use of shared public goods. Public goods are benefits that are shared by a community at large and that everyone in the group has access to, regardless of whether or not they have personally contributed to the creation of the goods

A personality variable that refers to the tendency to see and to accept inequality among different groups.

Social dominance orientation (SDO) describes a belief that group hierarchies are inevitable in all societies and even good, to maintain order and stability.

We frequently use each other to gain rewards and to help protect ourselves from harm, and helping is one type of benefit that we can provide to others.

The tendency to perform tasks better or faster in the presence of others.

Improvement in task performance that occurs when people work in the presence of other people.

Beliefs about how people should be treated fairly.

As a set of individuals with a shared purpose and who normally share a positive social identity.

The sense of our self that involves our memberships in social groups.

A person’s sense of who they are, based on their group membership(s).

Social identity theory notes that people categorize each other into groups, favoring their own group.

We draw part of our sense of identity and self-esteem from the social groups that we belong to.

The increase in the amount of conformity that is produced by adding new members to the majority group.

The process through which other people change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and through which we change theirs.

When one person causes a change in attitude or behavior in another person, whether intentionally or unintentionally

The tendency to perform tasks more poorly or slower in the presence of others.

An ability to develop a clear perception of the situation using situational cues.

A group process loss that occurs when people do not work as hard in a group as they do when they are alone.

The reduction of individual effort exerted when people work in groups compared with when they work alone.

The study of how our social behavior both influences and is influenced by the activities of our brain.

The ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members and perceived by them as appropriate.

The ability of a person to create conformity even when the people being influenced may attempt to resist those changes.

The mental shortcut based on the assumption that, if everyone is doing it, it must be right.

The branch of psychological science that is mainly concerned with understanding how the presence of others affects our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

The traits and social roles that others attribute to an actor. Actors also have their own conceptions of what they imagine their respective social reputations indeed are in the eyes of others.

We should try to help others who need assistance, even without any expectation of future paybacks.

The people with whom we interact every day.

The approval, assistance, advice, and comfort that we receive from those with whom we have developed stable positive relationships.

An assessment of how an individual prefers to allocate resources between him- or herself and another person.

A conceptual analysis of self-evaluation processes that theorizes self-esteem functions to psychologically monitor of one’s degree of inclusion and exclusion in social groups.

The message was supposedly prepared either by an expert source (the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, which was chaired by a professor of education at Princeton University) or by a nonexpert source (a class at a local high school).

are those causes that we see as more unique to particular events.

We focus on whatever is most obvious or enjoyable, without much attention to the message itself.

Those that we think will be relatively permanent.

Research method in which all participants use a common scale—typically a Likert scale—to respond to questions.

When a person places him or herself in a position in which he or she might be exploited or harmed. This is often done out of trust that others will not exploit the vulnerability.

The positive or negative beliefs that we hold about the characteristics of social group.

Stereotype Content Model shows that social groups are viewed according to their perceived warmth and competence.

Performance decrements that are caused by the knowledge of cultural stereotypes.

Our general beliefs about the traits or behaviors shared by group of people.

A mental process of using information shortcuts about a group to effectively navigate social
situations or make decisions.

A group that suffers from social disapproval based on some characteristic that sets them apart
from the majority.

Members may attempt to make their own views known, expressing their independence and attempting to persuade the group to accept their ideas.

the physical and psychological reactions that occur whenever we believe that the demands of a situation threaten our ability to respond to the threat

Subtle biases are automatic, ambiguous, and ambivalent, but real in their consequences.

When we choose to stay in situations largely because we feel we have put too much effort in to be able to leave them behind.

Goals that were both very important to them and yet that required the cooperative efforts and resources of both the Eagles and the Rattlers to attain.

the division of the autonomic nervous system that is involved in preparing the body to respond to threats by activating the organs and the glands in the endocrine system

Approaches to understanding racism that emphasize the roles that societal factors—historical, cultural, legal, political, and economic—have played in organizing who is at the top or bottom of a society’s racial hierarchy.

The process by which members of the team combine their knowledge, skills, abilities, and other resources through a coordinated series of actions to produce an outcome.

a behavioral reaction to stress that involves activities designed to create social networks that provide protection from threats.

The self as knower, the sense of the self as a subject who encounters (knows, works on) itself (the Me).

The self as known, the sense of the self as the object or target of the I’s knowledge and work.

Cognitive and social changes that occur in the early elementary school years that result in the child’s developing a more purposeful, planful, and goal-directed approach to life, setting the stage for the emergence of the self as a motivated agent.

The normative pressure to repay, in equitable value, what another person has given to us.

For any given attitude object, the ABCs of affect, behavior, and cognition are normally in line with each other.

We are most vulnerable to persuasion when the source is perceived as an authority, as honest and likable.

Emerging around the age of 4, the child’s understanding that other people have minds in which are located desires and beliefs, and that desires and beliefs, thereby, motivate behavior.

Variables that are not part of the research hypothesis but that cause both the predictor and the outcome variable and thus produce the observed correlation between them.

Occurs when we think about how the message relates to our own beliefs and goals and involves our careful consideration of whether the persuasion attempt is valid or invalid.

Initially making a cooperative choice and then simply matching the previous move of the opponent (whether cooperation or competition).

A tendency for people to view their own personality, beliefs, and behaviors as more variable than those of others.

Regular leaders who work with their subordinates to help them understand what is required of them and to get the job done.

Have a vision of where the group is going and attempt to stimulate and inspire their workers to move beyond their present status and to create a new and better future.

An approach that suggests that there are different types of love and that each is made up of different combinations of cognitive and affective variables, specified in terms of passion, intimacy, and commitment.

Specific, sometimes minute, aspects of a situation that activate fixed action patterns.

Has to be done all at once and cannot be divided up.

Tendency to be overly positive about the likelihood that negative things will occur to us and that we will be able to effectively cope with them if they do.

are expected to change over time.

When we compare ourselves with others who are better off than we are.

An assessment—based on one’s own preferences and priorities—about the basic “goodness” or “badness” of a concept or practice.

Research that is not influenced by the researchers’ own values, morality, or opinions.

Yelling, screaming, swearing, and name calling.

Aggression that has extreme physical harm, such as injury or death, as its goal.

Aggression intended to cause extreme physical harm, such as injury or death.

The belief that external attractiveness signifies positive internal qualities