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Social Psychology: Key Concepts and Theories, Exams of Psychology

An overview of various concepts and theories in the field of social psychology. Topics include equity, imitation, middle-range theories, norms, reinforcement theory, role theory, schemas, social learning theory, social psychology, symbolic interaction theory, theoretical perspectives, attachment, career, life events, moral development, normative life stages, observational learning, punishment, self-reinforcement, socialization, stress, accounts, frame, front regions, game, self discrepancy, self esteem, self presentation, self schema, prosocial behaviors, social responsibility norm, targets, equitable relationships, interpersonal attraction, loneliness, love story, matching hypothesis, mere exposure effect, norm of homogamy, illusion of out group homogeneity, intergroup conflict, realistic group conflict theory, and social identity theory of intergroup behavior.

Typology: Exams

2023/2024

Available from 03/14/2024

DrShirleyAurora
DrShirleyAurora 🇺🇸

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Human Behavior

cognitive processes - the mental activities of an individual, including perception,memory, reasoning, problem solving and decision making. cognitive structure - any form of organization among a person's concepts and beliefs cognitive theory - a theoretical perspective based on the premise that an individual's mental activites such as perception, memory, and reasonong are important determinants of behavior conditioning - a process of learning in which if a person performs a particualar response and if this reponse is then reinforced the response is strengthened. equity - in exchange theory, a state of affairs that prevails in a dyad or group when people receive awards in proportion to the contibutions they make toward the attainment of group goals. evolutionary psychology - the theoretical perspective positing that predispositions toward some social behaviors are passed gentetically from generation to generation and shaped by the process of natural selection. imitiation - a process of learning in which the learner watches another person's response and observes whether that person recieves reinforcement middle-range theories -

narrowed, focused theoretical framework that explains the conditions that produce some specific social behavior norms - in groups, a standard or rule that specifies how members are expected to behave under given circumstances. Expectations concerning which behaviors are acceptable and which are unacceptable for specific persons in specific situations. principles of cognitive consistency - in cognitive theory, a principle maintaining that if a person holds serveral ideas that are incongruous or inconsistent with one another, he or she will experience discomfort with one another, he or she will experience discomfort or conflict and will subsequently change one or more of the ideas to render them consistent reinforcement - any favorable outcome or consequence that results from a behavioral response by a person. It strengthens the response, it increases the probability it will be repeated. reinforcement theory - a theoretical perspective based on the premise that social behavior is governed by external events, especially rewards and punishments role - a set of functions to be performed by a person on behalf of a group of which he or she is a memeber. A cluster of rules indicationg the set of duties to be performed by a member occupying a given position within a group. The set of expectations governing the behavior of an occupant of a specific position within social structure. role theory - a theorectical perspective based on the premise that a substancial portion of observable, day to day social behavior is simply persons carrying out role expectations schemas -

a well-organized structure of cognitions about some social entity as a person, group, role, event and it includes information about its attitudes and about its relations with others. self - the individual viewed as both the active source and the passive object of reflexive behavior significant others - people whose views and attitudes are very important and worthy of consideration. the reflected views of a significant other have great influence on the individuals self concept and self regulation social exchange theory - a theorectical perspective, based on the principle of reienforcement, that assumes that people will choose whatever action maximizes and minimizes the costs. social learning theory - a theorectical perspective maintaing that one person the learner can aquire new responses without enacting them simply by observing the behavior of another person the model. This learning processis called imitation, is distinguished by the fact that the learner performs a response nor recieves any reinforcement social psychology - the field that systematically studies the nature and causes of human social behavior symbolic interaction theory - a theoretical perspective based on the premise that human nature and social order are products of communication among people theoretical perspectives - theories that make broad assumptions about human nature and offer general explanations of a wide range of diverse behaviors theory -

a set of interrelated propositions that organizes and explains a set of observed facts; a network of hypotheses that may be used as a baises for prediction. attachment - a warm close relationship with an adult that provides an infant with a sense of security and stimuation birth cohort - a group of people born during the same time period of one or several years and who are therefore all exposed to particular historical events at approximately the same age boarderwork - interaction across gender boundaries that is based on and strengthens such boundaries career - a sequence of roles-each role with its own set of activities that a person enacts during his or her life time. The most important are in the domains of family and friends, education and work. cultural routines - recurrent and predictiable activites that are basic to day to day social life. extrinsically motivated behavior - a behavior that results from the motivation to obtain a reward or to avoid a punishment controlled by someone else gender role - the behavioral expectations associated with gender instrumental conditioning - the process through which an individual learns a behavior in response to a stimulus to obtain a reward or avoid a punishment

internalization - the process through which initally external behavioral standards become internal or subsequently guide an individuals behavior. intrinsically motivated behavior - a behavior that results from the motivation to achieve an internal state that an individual finds rewarding. life course - an individual's progression through a series of socially defined age-linked social roles life events - an episode marking a transition point in the life course that provokes coping and readjustment moral development - the process through which children become capable of making moral judgements normative life stages - a discrete period in the life course during which individuals are expected to perform the set of activities associated with distint age related roles. normative transition - socially expected changes made by all or most members of a defined populations observational learning - the acquistion of behavior based on the observation of another persons's behavior and of its consequences for that person punishment -

a painful or discomforting stimulus that reduces the frequency with which the target behavior occurs self-reinforcement - an individual's use of internalized standards to judge his or her own behavior and reward the self shaping - the learning process in which an agent initally reinforces any behavior that remotely resembles the desired response and subsequently requires increasing correspondence between the learners behavior and the desired response before providing reinforcement socialization - the process through which individuals learn skills, knowledge, values, motives, and roles appropriate to their postion ina group or society stress - the condition in which the demands made on the person exceed the individuals ability to cope with them accounts - explanations people offer after they have preformed acts that threaten their social identites. There are two forms excuses that minimizes ones responsibilites and justifications that redefine acts in a more social acceptable manner aligning actions - actions people use to define their apparently questionable conduct as actually in line with cultrual norms, thereby repairing social identities restoring meaning to situations and reestablishing smooth interaction altercasting - tactics we use to impose roles and identites on others that produce outcomes to our advantage

back regions - a setting used to manage appearances where people allow themselves to violoate appearances while they prepare , rehearse and rehash performaces contingencies - characteristics of self or categories of outcomes on which a person stakes his or her self esteem cooling out - a response to repeated or glaring failures that gently persuades an offender to accept a less desirable though still reasonable alternative identity. definition of the situation - in symbolic interaction theory, a person's interpretation or construal of a situation and the objects in it. An agreement among persons about who they are appropriate in the setting and what their behaviors mean. disclaimer - a verbal assertion intended to ward off any negative implications of impending actions by defining these actions as irrelevant to one's established social identity. By using these a person suggests that although the impending acts may ordinarly imply a negitive identity, his or hers is an extraordinary case embarrassment - the feeling that people experience when interaction is disrupted because the identity they have claimed in an encounter is discredited. frame - a set of widely understood rules or conventions pertaining to a transient but repetitive situation that indicate which roles should be enacted and which behaviors are proper front regions -

a setting used to manage appearances where people carry out interaction performaces and exert efforts to maintain appropriate appearnaces game - Mead's second stage of social experience, in which children enter organized activities and learn to imagine the viewpoints of serveral other at the same time. generalized other - a conception of the attitudes and expectations held in common by the members of the organized groups with whom one interacts. group self-esteem - an individuals evaluation of its self as a member of a racial or ethnic group. identities - the categories people use to specify who they are that is to locate themselve relative to other people. identity control theory - proposes that an actor uses the social meaning of his or her identity as a reference point for assessing what is occurring in the situation identity degradation - a response to repeated or glaring failures that destroys the offenders current identity and transforms him or her into a lower social type ingratiation - the deliberate use of deception to increase a target persons liking for us in hopes of gaining tangible benefits that the target person controls. Techniques such as flattery, expressing agreement with the target person'd attitudes and exxaggerating ones own admirable qualites maybe used. looking glass self -

the term coined by cooley that describes the self-schema we create based on how we think we appear to others play - Mead's first stage of social expereince, in which young children imitate the activites of people around them role identities - individuals concept of self in specific social roles role taking - in symbolic interaction theory, the process of imaginatively occupying the position of another person and viewing the situation and the self from that persons perspective, the process of imagining the other attitude and anticipating that persons responses salience - the relative importance of a specific role identity to the individual's self- schema. It refers to the ordering of an individual's role identities according to their importance self-awareness - a state in which we take the self as the object of our attention and focus on our own appearance, actions, and thoughts self-disclosure - the process of revealing personal information to another person. it is sometimes used as an impression management tactic self discrepancy - the state in which a component of the individual's actual self is the opposite of a component of the ideal self or ought self. self esteem -

the evaluative component of the self concept, the positive and negitive evaluations people have of themselves self presentation - all conscious and unconscious attempts by people to control the images of the self they project in social interactions self schema - the organized structure of information that people have about themselves; the primary influence on the processing of information about the self. signifcant others - peoples whose views and attitudes are very important and worthy of consideration. the reflected views have great influence on the individuals self concept and self regulation situated identity - a conception held by a person in a situation that indicated who he or she is in relation to the other people involved in that situation situated self - the subsets of self concept that constitutes the self people recognize in a particular situation. Selected from the person various identities, qualities, and self evaluations, it depends on the demands of the situation. social identity - a definition of the self in terms of the defining characteristics of a social group. stigma - personal characteristics that others view as insurmountable handicaps preventing competent morally trustworthy behavior supplication -

an impression management tactic that involves convincing a target person that you are needy and deserving tactical impression management - the selective use of self-presentation tactics by a person who wishes to manipulate the impressions that others form of him or her. Social perception - constructing an understanding of the world from the data we get through our senses. Attribution - observing others behavior and then infer backward to the causes-intentions, abilities, traits, motives, and situational pressures-that explain why people act the way that they do. Categorization: - the tendency to perceive stimuli as members of groups or classes than as isolated unique entities. Prototype: - the tendency to perceive stimuli as members of groups or classes than as isolated unique entities. Stereotypes: - schemas regarding the members of a particular social group or social category. Stereotype threat: - when a member of a group believes that there is a real threat of being judges based on group stereotypes. Trait centrality:. - when a trait has a large impact on the overall impression we form of that person

Primacy effect: - observers forming an impression of a person give more weight to information received early in a sequence than to information received later Recency effect: - the most recent information we acquire exerts the strongest influence on our impressions Heuristics: - provided a quick way of selecting schemas that often help us make an effective choice amid considerable uncertainty. Dispositional attribution: - the decision an observer makes to attribute a behavior to the internal state of the person who performed it. Situational attribution: - the decision an observer makes to attribute a behavior to the person's environment. Principle of covariation: - attributing the behavior to the factor that is both present when the behavior occurs and absent when the behavior fails to occur. Fundamental attribution error: - the tendency to overestimate the importance of personal factors and to underestimate situational influences as causes of behavior Focus of attention bias: - the tendency to overestimate the causal impact of whomever or whatever we focus our attention on.

Actor- observer difference: - the bias in attribution whereby actors tend to see their own behavior as due to the characteristics of the external situation, whereas observes tend to attribute actors behavior to the actors internal personal characteristics Self-serving bias: - the tendency for people to take personal credit for acts that yield positive outcomes and to deflect blame for bad outcomes by attributing them to external causes. Halo effect: - tendency of our overall liking for a person to influence our assessment of more specific traits of that person. The halo effect can produce inaccuracy in our ratings of others traits and performance. Aggression: - behavior that is intended to harm another person and that others want to avoid Aggressive pornography: - Explicit depiction-in film, video, photograph, or story of sexual activity in which force is threatened or used to coerce a person to engage in sex Altruism: - actions performed voluntarily with the intention of helping someone else that entail no expectation of receiving a reward or benefit in return (except possibly an internal feeling of having done a good deed for someone) Bystander effect: - the tendency for bystander in an emergency to help less often and less quickly as the number of bystanders present increases Bystander intervention: - in an emergency situation, a quick response by a person witnessing the emergency to help another who is endangered by events.

Catharsis: - the reduction of aggressive arousal by means of performing aggressive acts. The catharsis hypothesis states that we can purge ourselves of hostile emotions by intensely experiencing these emotions while performing aggression. Egoism:. - helping behavior motivated by a helper's own sense of self-gratification Empathy: - an emotional response to others as if we ourselves were in that person's situation; feeling pleasure at another's pleasure and plain at another's pain Frustration: - the blocking of goal direct activity. According to the frustration-aggression hypothesis, frustration leads to aggression Frustration-aggression hypothesis. - : the hypothesis that every frustration leads to some form of aggression and every aggressive act is due to some prior frustration Helping: - any behavior that has the consequences of providing some benefit to or improving the well- being of another person. Nonaggressive pornography: - explicit depictions in film, video, photography, or story of adults engaging in consenting sexual activity. Norm of reciprocity: - a social norm stating that people should help those who have previously helped them and not help those who have denied them help for no legitimate reason.

Prosocial behaviors:. - a broad category of actions considered by society as being beneficial to others and as having positive social consequences. A wide variety of specific behaviors qualify as prosocial, including donations to charity, intervention in emergencies, cooperation, sharing, volunteering, sacrifice and the like Social responsibility norm: - a widely accepted social norm stating that individuals should help people who are dependent on them Targets: - in social influence, the person who is affected by a social influence attempt from the source. In aggression, the person toward whom an aggressive act is directed. Access display: - a signal (verbal or nonverbal) from one person indicating to another that further social interaction is permissible Accommodation: - a constructive response to a potentially destructive act by a partner in a romantic relationship Attitudinal similarity: - the sharing by two people of beliefs, opinions, likes, and dislikes Attractiveness stereotype: - the belief that "what is beautiful is good" and the assumption that an attractive person possesses other desirable qualities. Availables: - those persons with whom we come into contact and who constitute the pool of potential friends and lovers.

Comparison level: - a standard specifying the lowest level of outcomes a person will accept in light of available alternatives. The level of profit available to an individual in his or her best alternative relationship. Comparison level for alternatives: - a standard specifying the lowest level of outcomes a person will accept in light of available alternatives. The level of profit available to an individual in his or her best alternative relationship. Dyadic withdrawal: - the process of increasing reliance on one person for gratification and decreasing reliance on others Equitable relationships: a - relationship in which the outcomes received by each person are equivalent Interpersonal attraction:. - a positive attitude held by one person toward another person Loneliness:. - an unpleasant subjective experience that results from the lack of social relationships satisfying in either quantity or quality Love story:. - a script about what love should be like; it has characters, plot, and theme Matching hypothesis: - the hypothesis that each person looks for someone to date who is of approximately the same level of social desirability

Mere exposure effect: - repeated exposure to the same stimulus that produces a positive attitude toward it Norm of homogamy: - a social norm requiring that friends, lovers, and spouses be characterized by similarity in age, race, religion, and socioeconomic status. Passionate love: - a state of intense longing for union with another and intense physiological arousal. Romantic love ideal: - five beliefs regarding love: 1. in love at first sight, 2. that there is only one true love for each person, 3. that love conquers all. 4. That our beloved is nearly perfect, 5. That one should follow his or her own heart. Trust: - the belief that person is both honest benevolent. Arbitrator: - in situations of conflict, the neutral third party who has the power to decide how a conflict will be resolved Aversive event: - in intergroup relations, a situation or event caused by or attributed to an outside to an outside group that produces negative or undesirable outcomes for members of the target group Discrimination: - overt acts, occurring without apparent justification, that treat members of certain out-groups in an unfair or disadvantageous manner. Ethnocentrism:. -

in intergroup relations, the tendency to regard one's own group as the center of everything and to evaluate other groups in reference to it. The tendency to regards ones in group as superior to all out groups Illusion of out of group homogeneity:. - the tendency among in-group members to overestimate the extent to which out group members are homogeneous or all alike Intergroup conflict: - a state of affairs in which groups having opposing interests take antagonistic actions toward one another to control some outcome important to them. Intergroup contact hypothesis: - And hypothesis holding that in intergroup relations, increased interpersonal contact between groups will reduce stereotypes and prejudice and consequently reduce antagonism between groups Mediator - : a third party that helps groups in conflict to identify issues and agree on some resolution to the conflict. Mediators usually serve as advisors rather than as decision makers Realistic group conflict theory: - : a theory of intergroup conflict that explains the development and the resolution of conflict in terms of the goals of each group; its central hypothesis is that groups will engage in conflictive behavior when their goals involve opposition of interest Social identity theory of intergroup behavior: - a theory of intergroup relations based on the premise that people spontaneously categorize the social world into various groups and experience high self-esteem to the extent that the in groups to which they belong have more status than the out groups Superordinate goal: - in intergroup conflict, an objective held in common by all conflicting groups that cannot be achieved by any one group without support of the other.

Ultimate attribution error: - a perceptual bias occurring in intergroup relations. Negative behaviors by out-group members are attributed to stable internal factors such as undesirable personal traits or dispositions, but positive behaviors by out group members are attributed to unstable, external factors, such as situational pressures or luck. As a result in group observers will blame the out group for negative outcomes but will not give credit for positive outcomes. A set of interrelated propositions that organize and explain a set of facts or phenomena is referred to as a (n): - theory Sara's attempts to influence her friend Alex in becoming more environmentally conscious is an example of what core concern of social psychology? - The study of the impact of the individual on another individual on another individual Symbolic interaction theory argues that a person's behavior is - a result of communication and interaction with others The belief that people usually behave in ways that conform to expectations known as norms is a central tenet of which theoretical perspective? - role theory Conditioning is - the application of reinforcement Which social psychology theoretical perspective argues that inconsistent beliefs produce changes in behavior? - cognitive theory Knowledge structures in memory that organize all our knowledge about people or things are called - schemas

Rules specifying how a person should or should not behave are - norms