Psychology Final

Chapter 11 Social Psychology: studies how your thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by the presence of other people and by the social and physical environment. Social Cognition: studies how we form impressions of others, how we interpret the meaning of other people’s behavior, and how our behavior is affected by our attitudes. Person Perception: an active and subjective process that occurs in a interpersonal context; is influenced by subjective perceptions, social norms, personal goals, and self-perception. Person perception often involves using mental shortcuts−social categorization, implicit personality theories. Attribution: Explaining the behavior of others reflects common cognitive biases and explanatory patterns; fundamental attribution error, blaming the victim, hindsight bias, self-serving bias, and self-effacing bias. Attitudes: A learned tendency to evaluate an object, person, or issue in a particular way; can have cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components; although attitudes typically influence behavior, sometimes our behavior influences our attitude. When a person’s behavior conflicts with his or her attitude, cognitive dissonance may be the result. Prejudice: A negative attitude toward people who belong to a specific social group. Stereotypes: form of social categorization in which a cluster of characteristics is attributed to all members of social group or category; stereotypes are fostered by in-group and out-group thinking, and the out-group homogeneity effect; in-group bias occurs when we attribute positive qualities to members of our own group. Muzafer Sherif: Robbers cave experiment demonstrated that intergroup conflict can be decreased when groups engage in a cooperative effort. Social influence: social psychology research area that investigates how our behavior is affected by situational factors and other people. Conformity: when you adjust your opinions, judgments, or behavior so that it matches other people, or the norms of a