SPY - Social Psychology Module Overview

 

Social Psychology

Social Psychology is the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to others. In this unit, you will explore the connections between humans. You will learn how to analyze the power of a social situation on an individual's behavior. You will investigate the multitude of ways that advertisements, peers, and authority figures influence the behaviors and thought processes of individuals. You will also learn how to gain the affection of others and begin to understand what factors affect your own attraction for or dislike of others. For better or for worse, humans are social beings who are strongly influenced by others; this unit of study gives you the opportunity to understand how you are influenced by and an influencer on others.

Essential Questions

• How can the presence of others affect a person's behavior and thought processes?
• How can a person's actions affect their attitudes?
• How do humans explain the behavior of others?
• When are people most and least likely to help or hurt others?
• What makes one person attractive to another person?
• Why do we conform?
• Why do we obey authority figures?

Key Words

1. social psychology - the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another
2. attribution theory - suggests how we explain someone's behavior: by crediting either the situation or the person's disposition
3. fundamental attribution error - the tendency for observers, when analyzing another's behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition
4. dispositional attribution - assuming that an observed behavior was caused by a person's personality
5. situational attribution - assuming that an observed behavior was caused by the situation
6. cognitive dissonance theory - the theory that humans act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) they feel when two thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent; for example, when one becomes aware that an attitude does not match an action, a person reduces the resulting dissonance by changing the attitude
7. foot-in-the-door phenomenon - the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request
8. attitudes - belief-based feelings that predispose a person to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events
9. affiliation - a cultural association with others because of a feeling of closeness or similarity  
10. attraction - the feeling of being drawn to someone and desiring their company
11. mere-exposure effect - the phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of the stimuli
12. reward theory of attraction - people like those whose behavior is rewarding to them
13. bystander effect - the tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present
14. diffusion of responsibility - the feeling that responsibility is shared amongst all the bystanders, thus leading a bystander to feel less responsibility to do anything
15. pluralistic ignorance - the tendency to guess what everyone else is thinking and go along with it
16. altruism - unselfish regard for the welfare of others
17. social exchange theory - the theory that social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs
18. reciprocity norm - an expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them
19. social responsibility norm - an expectation that people will help those who are dependent upon them
20. obedience - complying with the demands of an authority figure
21. conformity - the tendency to act or think like the other members of a group
22. sanctions - a punishment given to a member of a group who violates the norms of the group
23. normative social influence - influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval
24. informational social influence - influence resulting from one's willingness to accept other's opinions about reality
25. social facilitation - stronger responses on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others
26. social impairment - weaker responses on difficult tasks in the presence of others
27. social loafing - the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal when individually accountable
28. deindividuation - the loss of self awareness and self restraint that occurs when group members feel anonymous and aroused
29. group polarization - the enhancement of a group's prevailing preferences through discussion within the group
30. groupthink - the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for group harmony overrides a realistic appraisal of alternative decisions
31. minority influence - when an individual or small group consistently expresses an opinion that changes the opinion of the majority

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