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| Conducted the first official social psychology type experiment in 1897 on social facilitation. Found that cyclists performed better in a group than when they rode alone. |
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| Considered by many to be a founder. He applied Gestalt ideas to social behavior. Conceived field theory, which is the total of influcences upon individual behavior. Valence, vector, and barrier are forces in the life space. |
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| Founder of attribution theory, or the study of how people infer the causes of others' behavior and balance theory, or the study of how people make their own feelings. |
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| Actor-observer attributional divergence |
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| The tendency for the person who is doing the behavior to have a different perspective on the situation than a person watching the behavior. |
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| Interpreting one's own actions and motives in a positive way, blaming situations on failures and attributing successes to ourselves. |
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| Assuming that two unrelated things have a relationship. |
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| Believing that, after the fact, you knew something all along. |
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| Thinking that if someone has one good quality, then he has only good qualities. |
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| Occurs when one's expectations somehow draw out, or in a sense cause, the very behavior expected. |
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| Assuming most other people think like you do. |
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| Lee Ross (study of statements) |
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| Studied subjects who were first made to believe a statement then later told it was false. The subjects continued to believe the statement and came up with their own explanations. |
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| Richard Nisbett (awareness) |
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| Showed that we lack awareness for why we do what we do. |
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| Overestimating the general frequecy of things we are most familiar with. |
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| M.J. Lerner's just world bias |
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| Belief that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Leads to blaming the victim. |
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| Studied by Ellen Langer. Belief that you can control thing you actually have no influence on. Driving force behind the lottery, gambling, and superstition. |
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| Tendency to make simple explanations for complex events. People also hold onto original ideas about cause even when new factors emerge. |
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| Representativeness heuristic |
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| Using shortcut about typical assumptions to guess at an answer rather than relying on actual logic. |
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| Cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger) |
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| Suggests that it is uncomfortable for people to have beliefs that do not match their actions. After making a difficult decision, people are motivated to back their actions up by touting corresponding beliefs. The less the act is justified by circumstance, the more we feel the need to justify it by bringing our attitude in line with our behavior. |
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| Daryl Bem's self-perception theory |
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| Offers an alternative explanation to cognitive dissonance. Asserted that when people are unsure of their beliefs, they take their cues from their own behavior. |
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| Folows from self-perception theory. It is the tendency to assume that we must not want to do things that we are paid or compensated to do. A person who loves to sing and is then paid to do so will lose pleasure in singing. |
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| People act in order to obtain gain and avoid loss. |
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| Suggests that humans interact in ways that maximize reward and minimize costs. |
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| Behaving in ways that might make a good impression. |
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| Tendency for the presence of other to either enhance or hinder performance. Robert Zajonc found that the presence of others helps with easy tasks but hinders complex ones. |
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| Evaluating one's own actions, etc. by comparing them to those of others. Used as an argument against mainstreaming. |
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| Set of behavior norms that seem suitable for a particular person. |
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| If two criminal cohorts are detained separately and charged with crime, it is best for neither to talk. But because they are never sure what the other may do, remaining silent is a gamble requiring trust. Therefore, most people spill the beans. |
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| Describes two companies that can choose to cooperate or compete. Best strategy would be to cooperate and agree on high prices, but because one company cannot totally trust the other, they choose to compete. |
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| Morton Deutsch (cooperation and competition) |
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| Used the trucker game and prisoner's dilemma. |
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| Idea that people feel most comfortable in situations in which rewards and punishments are equal, fitting, or logical. Overbenefited people tend to feel guilty. |
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| Stanley Milgram's Stimulus-Overload theory |
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| Explains why urbanites are less prosocial than country people are; urbanites don't need any more interaction. |
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| Constanct exchange of influences beetween people-- a constant factor in our behavior. |
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Going along with real or perceived group pressure. People may go along publicly but not privately (compliance), or change actions to confrom (acceptance). One who speaks out is a dissenter. People most likely to conform when:
there is a majority opinion (unanimous)
majority has high status
situation is public
individual was not previously committed
Individual has low self-esteem
individual scores high on F-scale |
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| Refusal to confrom that may occur as a result of a blatant attempt to control. Also, people will often not conform if forewarned. |
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| Known for famous study in which subjects were ordered to administer painful shocks to others in adjacent room. These others were confederates. Conditions facilitating conformity were remoteness of victim, legitimate commander, and conformity of other subjects. Males went along about 66% of the time. Used to explain actions of Nazis. |
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| Philip Zimbardo (extension of Milgram's) |
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| Found that people who were wearing hoods were more likely to administer higher levels of shock. Also did the classic prison simulation experiment, where subjects could be transformed into sadistic prison guards. |
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| Solomon Asch (conformity experiments) |
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| Had subject listen to staged opinion of others about which lines on a board were equal. Subjects conformed to clearly incorrect opinion of others 33% of the time. Unanimity was the influential factor. |
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| Muzafer Sherif (autokinetic experiment) |
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| Used autokinetic experiment to showcase conformity, as peoples descriptions were influenced by other's. |
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| An individual speaker is most likely to change a listener's attitude if: |
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Definition
Speaker is an expert and/or trustworthy
Speaker is similar to the listener
Speaker is acceptable to the listener
Speaker is overheard rather than obviously trying to influence
Content is anecdotal, emotional, shocking
Speaker is part of two-person debate |
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| Elaboration likelihood model |
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| Petty and Cacioppo's model of persuasion suggests that people who are very involved in an issue listen to strength of arguments rather than superficial factors. |
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| Explains why persuasive communication from a source of low credibility may become more acceptable after the fact. |
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| McGuire's inoculation theory |
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| Asserts that people's beliefs are vulnerable if they have never been challenged. Challenge is like an inoculation. |
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| Occurs when individual identity or accountability is de-emphasized. This may be the result of mingling in a crowd, wearing uniforms, or otherwise adopting a mob rule. |
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| Showcased the bystander effect, as Kitty was murdered with hundreds of witnesses. |
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| Diffusion of responsibility |
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| Tendency that the larger the group, the less likely individuals in the group will act or take responsibility. Everyone waits for someone else to act (an example of deindividuation). |
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| Tendency to work less hard in a group as the result of a diffusion of responsibility. |
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| Found that antisocial behavior positively correlates with population density. He left broken-down cars in NYC and Palo Alto. The car in NYC was stripped within 10 minutes, while the car in Palo Alto was untouched for three days. |
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| Sherif's Robbers' cave experiment |
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| Shoed that gruop conflict is most effectively overcome by the need for cooperative attention to a higher subordinate goal. |
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| Contact (group interactions) |
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| Contact with opposing party decreases conflict. We fear what we do not know. |
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| Group polarization (Stoner) |
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| The concept that group discussion generally serves to strengthen the already dominant point of view. This explains the risky shift, or why groups take greater risks than individuals. |
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| Groupthink (Irving Janis) |
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| Likely to occur in a group that has unquestioned beliefs, pressure to conform, invulnerability, cnsors, cohesiveness within, isolation without, and a strong leader. |
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| Doll preference studies (the Clarks) |
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| Studies demonstrated the negative effects that gruop segregation had on African-American children's self-esteem. Used in Brown v. BoE in 1964. |
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| When two parties adapt to or are socialized by eachother. |
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