Social Psychology 10e by Kassin, Fein, Markus

Social Psychology 10e by Kassin, Fein, Markus is the 10th edition of the Social Psychology textbook authored by Saul Kassin, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Steven Fein, Williams College, and Hazel Rose Markus, Stanford University, and published by Cengage Learning in 2017.

• Adversarial model. A dispute-resolution system in which the prosecution and defense present opposing sides of the story.
• Affective forecasting. The process of predicting how one would feel in response to future emotional events.
• Aggression. Behavior intended to harm another individual.
• Altruistic. Motivated by the desire to improve another's welfare.
• Ambivalent sexism. A form of sexism characterized by attitudes about women that reflect both negative, resentful beliefs and feelings and affectionate and chivalrous but potentially patronizing beliefs and feelings.
• Applied research. Research whose goal is to make applications to the world and contribute to the solution of social problems.
• Appraisal. The process by which people make judgments about the demands of potentially stressful events and their ability to meet those demands.
• Assessment center. A structured setting in which job applicants are exhaustively tested and judged by multiple evaluators.
• Attachment style. The way a person typically interacts with significant others.
• Attitude. A positive, negative, or mixed reaction to a person, object, or idea.
• Attitude scale. A multiple-item questionnaire designed to measure a person's attitude toward some object.
• Attribution theory. A group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of behavior.
• Audience inhibition. Reluctance to help for fear of making a bad impression on observers.
• Availability heuristic. The tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances of it come to mind.
• Aversive racism. Racism that concerns the ambivalence between fair-minded attitudes and beliefs, on the one hand, and unconscious and unrecognized prejudicial feelings and beliefs, on the other hand.
• Base-rate fallacy. The finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information presented in the form of numerical base rates.
• Basic research. Research whose goal is to increase the understanding of human behavior, often by testing hypotheses based on a theory.
• Bask in reflected glory (BIRG). To increase self-esteem by associating with others who are successful.
• Behavioral economics. An interdisciplinary subfield that focuses on how psychology -- particularly social and cognitive psychology -- relates to economic decision making.
• Behavioral genetics. A subfield of psychology that examines the role of genetic factors in behavior.
• Belief in a just world. The belief that individuals get what they deserve in life, an orientation that leads people to disparage victims.
• Belief perseverance. The tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited.
• Biased sampling. The tendency for groups to spend more time discussing shared information (information already known by all or most group members) than unshared information (information known by only one or a few group members).
• Bogus pipeline. A phony lie-detector device that is sometimes used to get respondents to give truthful answers to sensitive questions.
• Bogus pipeline technique. A procedure in which research participants are (falsely) led to believe that their responses will be verified by an infallible lie detector.
• Brainstorming. A technique that attempts to increase the production of creative ideas by encouraging group members to speak freely without criticizing their own or others' contributions.
• Bystander effect. The effect whereby the presence of others inhibits helping.
• Catharsis. A reduction of the motive to aggress that is said to result from any imagined, observed, or actual act of aggression.
• Central route to persuasion. The process by which a person thinks carefully about a communication and is influenced by the strength of its arguments.
• Central traits. Traits that exert a powerful influence on overall impressions.
• Cognitive dissonance theory. The theory holding that inconsistent cognitions arouse psychological tension that people become motivated to reduce.
• Collective effort model. The theory that individuals will exert effort on a collective task to the degree that they think their individual efforts will be important, relevant, and meaningful for achieving outcomes that they value.
• Collectivism. A cultural orientation in which interdependence, cooperation, and social harmony take priority over personal goals.
• Communal relationship. A relationship in which the participants expect and desire mutual responsiveness to each other's needs.
• Companionate love. A secure, trusting, stable partnership.
• Compliance. Changes in behavior that are elicited by direct requests.
• Confederate. Accomplice of an experimenter who, in dealing with the real participants in an experiment, acts as if he or she is also a participant.
• Confirmation bias. The tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs.
• Conformity. The tendency to change our perceptions, opinions, or behavior in ways that are consistent with group norms.
• Confound. A factor other than the independent variable that varies between the conditions of an experiment, thereby calling into question what caused any effects on the dependent variable.
• Construct validity. The extent to which the measures used in a study measure the variables they were designed to measure and the manipulations in an experiment manipulate the variables they were designed to manipulate.
• Contact hypothesis. The theory that direct contact between hostile groups will reduce intergroup prejudice under certain conditions.
• Contingency model of leadership. The theory that leadership effectiveness is determined both by the personal characteristics of leaders and by the control afforded by the situation.
• Coping. Efforts to reduce stress.
• Corporal punishment. Physical force (such as spanking or hitting) intended to cause a child pain, but not injury, for the purpose of controlling or correcting the child's behavior.
• Correlation coefficient. A statistical measure of the strength and direction of the association between two variables.
• Correlational research. Research designed to measure the association between variables that are not manipulated by the researcher.
• Counterfactual thinking. The tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not.
• Covariation principle. A principle of attribution theory that holds that people attribute behavior to factors that are present when a behavior occurs and are absent when it does not.
• Cross-cultural research. Research designed to compare and contrast people of different cultures.
• Cross-race identification bias. The tendency for people to be more accurate at recognizing members of their own racial group than of other groups.
• Cultivation. The process by which the mass media (particularly television) construct a version of social reality for the public.
• Culture. A system of enduring meanings, beliefs, values, assumptions, institutions, and practices shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
• Culture of honor. A culture that emphasizes honor and social status, particularly for males, and the role of aggression in protecting that honor.
• Cybervetting. A controversial new practice by which employers use the internet to get informal, non-institutional data about applicants that they did not choose to share.
• Cycle of violence. The transmission of domestic violence across generations.
• Dark Triad. A set of three traits that is associated with higher levels of aggressiveness: Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism.
• Death qualification. A jury-selection procedure used in capital cases that permits judges to exclude prospective jurors who say they would not vote for the death penalty.
• Debriefing. A disclosure, made to participants after research procedures are completed, in which the researcher explains the purpose of the research, attempts to resolve any negative feelings, and emphasizes the scientific contribution made by the participants' involvement.
• Deception. In the context of research, a method that provides false information to participants.
• Deindividuation. The loss of a person's sense of individuality and the reduction of normal constraints against deviant behavior.
• Dependent variable. In an experiment, a factor that experimenters measure to see if it is affected by the independent variable.
• Depressive explanatory style. A habitual tendency to attribute negative events to causes that are stable, global, and internal.
• Desensitization. Reduction in emotion-related physiological reactivity in response to a stimulus.
• Dialecticism. An Eastern system of thought that accepts the coexistence of contradictory characteristics within a single person.
• Diffusion of responsibility. The belief that others will or should take the responsibility for providing assistance to a person in need.
• Discrimination. Behavior directed against persons because of their membership in a particular group.
• Displacement. Aggressing against a substitute target because aggressive acts against the source of the frustration are inhibited by fear or lack of access.
• Distraction-conflict theory. A theory that the presence of others will produce social facilitation effects only when those others distract from the task and create attentional conflict.
• Door-in-the-face technique. A two-step compliance technique in which an influencer prefaces the real request with one that is so large that it is rejected.
• Downward social comparison. The defensive tendency to compare ourselves with others who are worse off than we are.
• Dual-process model of persuasion. The theory that people can be influenced by a persuasive communication either through a careful consideration of arguments or by responding to superficial cues.
• Egoistic. Motivated by the desire to improve one's own welfare.
• Elaboration. The process of thinking about and scrutinizing the arguments contained in a persuasive communication.
• Embodied cognition. An interdisciplinary subfield that examines the close links between our minds and the positioning, experiences, and actions of our bodies.
• Emotion-focused coping. Cognitive and behavioral efforts to reduce the distress produced by a stressful situation.
• Empathy. Understanding or vicariously experiencing another individual's perspective and feeling sympathy and compassion for that individual.
• Empathy-altruism hypothesis. The proposition that empathic concern for a person in need produces an altruistic motive for helping.
• Endowment effect. The tendency for people to inflate the value of objects, goods, or services they already own.
• Equity theory. The theory that people are most satisfied with a relationship when the ratio between benefits and contributions is similar for both partners.
• Escalation effect. The tendency for people to persist in failing investments to avert loss, which causes losses to mount.
• Evaluation apprehension theory. A theory that the presence of others will produce social facilitation effects only when those others are seen as potential evaluators.
• Evaluative conditioning. The process by which we form an attitude toward a neutral stimulus because of its association with a positive or negative person, place, or thing.
• Evolutionary psychology. A subfield of psychology that uses the principles of evolution to understand human social behavior.
• Exchange relationship. A relationship in which the participants expect and desire strict reciprocity in their interactions.
• Excitation transfer. The process whereby arousal caused by one stimulus is added to arousal from a second stimulus and the combined arousal is attributed to the second stimulus.
• Executive functioning. The cognitive abilities and processes that allow humans to plan or inhibit their actions.
• Expectancy theory. The theory that workers become motivated when they believe that their efforts will produce valued outcomes.
• Experiment. A form of research that can demonstrate causal relationships because (1) the experimenter has control over the events that occur and (2) participants are randomly assigned to conditions.
• Experimental realism. The degree to which experimental procedures are involving to participants and lead them to behave naturally and spontaneously.
• Experimenter expectancy effects. The effects produced when an experimenter's expectations about the results of an experiment affect his or her behavior toward a participant and thereby influence the participant's responses.
• External validity. The degree to which there can be reasonable confidence that the results of a study would be obtained for other people and in other situations.
• Facial electromyograph (EMG). An electronic instrument that records facial muscle activity associated with emotions and attitudes.
• Facial feedback hypothesis. The hypothesis that changes in facial expression can lead to corresponding changes in emotion.
• False-consensus effect. The tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes, and behaviors.
• Foot-in-the-door technique. A two-step compliance technique in which an influencer sets the stage for the real request by first getting a person to comply with a much smaller request.
• Frustration-aggression hypothesis. The idea that (1) frustration always elicits the motive to aggress and (2) all aggression is caused by frustration.
• Fundamental attribution error. The tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the impact of situations on other people's behavior.
• General adaptation syndrome. A three-stage process (alarm, resistance, and exhaustion) by which the body responds to stress.
• Group. A set of individuals who interact over time and have shared fate, goals, or identity.
• Group cohesiveness. The extent to which forces push group members closer together, such as through feelings of intimacy, unity, and commitment to group goals.
• Group polarization. The exaggeration of initial tendencies in the thinking of group members through group discussion.
• Group support systems. Specialized interactive computer programs that are used to guide group meetings, collaborative work, and decision-making processes.
• Groupthink. A group decision-making style characterized by an excessive tendency among group members to seek concurrence.
• Hard-to-get effect. The tendency to prefer people who are highly selective in their social choices over those who are more readily available.
• Hawthorne effect. The finding that workers who were given special attention increased their productivity regardless of what actual changes were made in the work setting.
• Health psychology. The study of physical health and illness by psychologists from various areas of specialization.
• Hostile attribution bias. The tendency to perceive hostile intent in others.
• Hypothesis. A testable prediction about the conditions under which an event will occur.
• Identity fusion. A strong sense of "oneness" and shared identity with a group and its individual members.
• Idiosyncrasy credits. Interpersonal "credits" that a person earns by following group norms.
• Illusory correlation. An overestimate of the association between variables that are only slightly or not at all correlated.
• Immune system. A biological surveillance system that detects and destroys "nonself" substances that invade the body.
• Implicit Association Test (IAT). A covert measure of unconscious attitudes derived from the speed at which people respond to pairings of concepts -- such as black or white with good or bad.
• Implicit attitude. An attitude, such as prejudice, that one is not aware of having.
• Implicit egotism. A nonconscious form of self-enhancement.
• Implicit racism. Racism that operates unconsciously and unintentionally.
• Impression formation. The process of integrating information about a person to form a coherent impression.
• Independent variable. In an experiment, a factor that experimenters manipulate to see if it affects the dependent variable.
• Indirect altruism. A kind of reciprocal altruism in which an individual who helps someone becomes more likely to receive help from someone else
• Individualism. A cultural orientation in which independence, autonomy, and self-reliance take priority over group allegiances.
• Industrial/organizational psychology (I/O psychology). The study of human behavior in business and other organizational settings.
• Information integration theory. The theory that impressions are based on (1) perceiver dispositions and (2) a weighted average of a target person's traits.
• Informational influence. Influence that produces conformity when a person believes others are correct in their judgments.
• Informed consent. An individual's deliberate, voluntary decision to participate in research, based on the researcher's description of what will be required during such participation.
• Ingroup favoritism. The tendency to discriminate in favor of ingroups over outgroups.
• Ingroups. Groups with which an individual feels a sense of membership, belonging, and identity.
• Inoculation hypothesis. The idea that exposure to weak versions of a persuasive argument increases later resistance to that argument.
• Inquisitorial model. A dispute-resolution system in which a neutral investigator gathers evidence from both sides and presents the findings in court.
• Insufficient deterrence. A condition in which people refrain from engaging in a desirable activity, even when only mild punishment is threatened.
• Insufficient justification. A condition in which people freely perform an attitude-discrepant behavior without receiving a large reward.
• Integrative agreement. A negotiated resolution to a conflict in which all parties obtain outcomes that are superior to what they would have obtained from an equal division of the contested resources.
• Integrity tests. Questionnaires designed to test a job applicant's honesty and character.
• Interactionist perspective. An emphasis on how both an individual's personality and environmental characteristics influence behavior.
• Internal validity. The degree to which there can be reasonable certainty that the independent variables in an experiment caused the effects obtained on the dependent variables.
• Interrater reliability. The degree to which different observers agree on their observations.
• Intimate relationship. A close relationship between two adults involving emotional attachment, fulfillment of psychological needs, or interdependence.
• Jigsaw classroom. A cooperative learning method used to reduce racial prejudice through interaction in group efforts.
• Jury nullification. The jury's power to disregard, or "nullify," the law when it conflicts with personal conceptions of justice.
• Kin selection. Preferential helping of genetic relatives, which results in the greater likelihood that genes held in common will survive.
• Learned helplessness. A phenomenon in which experience with an uncontrollable event creates passive behavior in the face of subsequent threats to well-being.
• Leniency bias. The tendency for jury deliberation to produce a tilt toward acquittal.
• Loneliness. A feeling of deprivation about existing social relations.
• Lowballing. A two-step compliance technique in which the influencer secures agreement with a request but then increases the size of that request by revealing hidden costs.
• Matching hypothesis. The proposition that people are attracted to others who are similar in physical attractiveness.
• Mere exposure effect. The phenomenon whereby the more often people are exposed to a stimulus, the more positively they evaluate that stimulus.
• Mere presence theory. The proposition that the mere presence of others is sufficient to produce social facilitation effects.
• Meta-analysis. A set of statistical procedures used to review a body of evidence by combining the results of individual studies to measure the overall reliability and strength of particular effects.
• Mind perception. The process by which people attribute humanlike mental states to various animate and inanimate objects, including other people.
• Minority influence. The process by which dissenters produce change within a group.
• Misinformation effect. The tendency for false postevent misinformation to become integrated into people's memory of an event.
• Modern racism. A form of prejudice that surfaces in subtle ways when it is safe, socially acceptable, and easy to rationalize.
• Multicultural research. Research designed to examine racial and ethnic groups within cultures.
• Mundane realism. The degree to which the experimental situation resembles places and events in the real world.
• Need for affiliation. The desire to establish and maintain many rewarding interpersonal relationships.
• Need for closure. The desire to reduce cognitive uncertainty, which heightens the importance of first impressions.
• Need for cognition (NC). A personality variable that distinguishes people on the basis of how much they enjoy effortful cognitive activities.
• Negative state relief model. The proposition that people help others in order to counteract their own feelings of sadness.
• Nonverbal behavior. Behavior that reveals a person's feelings without words, through facial expressions, body language, and vocal cues.
• Normative influence. Influence that produces conformity when a person fears the negative social consequences of appearing deviant.
• Normative model of leadership. The theory that leadership effectiveness is determined by the amount of feedback and participation that leaders invite from workers.
• Obedience. Behavior change produced by the commands of authority.
• Operational definition. The specific procedures for manipulating or measuring a conceptual variable.
• Outgroup homogeneity effect. The tendency to assume that there is greater similarity among members of outgroups than among members of ingroups.
• Outgroups. Groups with which an individual does not feel a sense of membership, belonging, or identity.
• Overjustification effect. The tendency for intrinsic motivation to diminish for activities that have become associated with reward or other extrinsic factors.
• Passionate love. Romantic love characterized by high arousal, intense attraction, and fear of rejection.
• Peremptory challenge. A means by which lawyers can exclude a limited number of prospective jurors without the judge's approval.
• Performance appraisal. The process of evaluating an employee's work within the organization.
• Peripheral route to persuasion. The process by which a person does not think carefully about a communication and is influenced instead by superficial cues.
• Personal attribution. Attribution to internal characteristics of an actor, such as ability, personality, mood, or effort.
• Persuasion. The process by which attitudes are changed.
• Pluralistic ignorance. The state in which people in a group mistakenly think that their own individual thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are different from those of the others in the group.
• Polygraph. A mechanical instrument that records physiological arousal from multiple channels; it is often used as a lie-detector test.
• Pornography. Explicit sexual material.
• Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A condition in which a person experiences enduring physical and psychological symptoms after an extremely stressful event.
• Prejudice. Negative feelings toward persons based on their membership in certain groups.
• Primacy effect. The tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later.
• Priming. The tendency for recently used or perceived words or ideas to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information.
• Prisoner's dilemma. A type of dilemma in which one party must make either cooperative or competitive moves in relation to another party. The dilemma is typically designed so that the competitive move appears to be in one's selfinterest, but if both sides make this move, they both suffer more than if they had both cooperated.
• Private conformity. The change of beliefs that occurs when a person privately accepts the position taken by others.
• Private self-consciousness. A personality characteristic of individuals who are introspective, often attending to their own inner states.
• Proactive aggression. Aggressive behavior whereby harm is inflicted as a means to a desired end (also called instrumental aggression).
• Proactive coping. Up-front efforts to ward off or modify the onset of a stressful event.
• Problem-focused coping. Cognitive and behavioral efforts to alter a stressful situation.
• Process gain. The increase in group performance so that the group outperforms the individuals who make up the group.
• Process loss. The reduction in group performance due to obstacles created by group processes, such as problems of coordination and motivation.
• Prosocial behaviors. Actions intended to benefit others.
• Psychological reactance. The theory that people react against threats to their freedom by asserting themselves and perceiving the threatened freedom as more attractive.
• Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). A subfield of psychology that examines the links among psychological factors, the brain and nervous system, and the immune system.
• Public conformity. A superficial change in overt behavior without a corresponding change of opinion that is produced by real or imagined group pressure.
• Public self-consciousness. A personality characteristic of individuals who focus on themselves as social objects, as seen by others.
• Racism. Prejudice and discrimination based on a person's racial background, or institutional and cultural practices that promote the domination of one racial group over another.
• Random assignment. A method of assigning participants to the various conditions of an experiment so that each participant in the experiment has an equal chance of being in any of the conditions.
• Random sampling. A method of selecting participants for a study so that everyone in a population has an equal chance of being in the study.
• Reactive aggression. Aggressive behavior where the means and the end coincide; harm is inflicted for its own sake.
• Realistic conflict theory. The theory that hostility between groups is caused by direct competition for limited resources.
• Reciprocal altruism. Altruism that involves an individual helping another (despite some immediate risk or cost) and becoming more likely to receive help from the other in return
• Reciprocity. A mutual exchange between what we give and receive -- for example, liking those who like us.
• Relative deprivation. Feelings of discontent aroused by the belief that one fares poorly compared with others.
• Reluctant altruism. Altruistic kinds of behavior that result from pressure from peers or other sources of direct social influence.
• Resource dilemmas. Social dilemmas involving how two or more people will share a limited resource.
• Rumination. In the context of aggression, rumination involves repeatedly thinking about and reliving an anger-inducing event, focusing on angry thoughts and feelings, and perhaps even planning or imagining revenge.
• Scientific jury selection. A method of selecting juries through surveys that yield correlations between demographics and trial-relevant attitudes.
• Self-awareness theory. The theory that self-focused attention leads people to notice self-discrepancies, thereby motivating either an escape from self-awareness or a change in behavior.
• Self-concept. The sum total of an individual's beliefs about his or her own personal attributes.
• Self-disclosure. Revelations about the self that a person makes to others.
• Self-efficacy. A person's belief that he or she is capable of the specific behavior required to produce a desired outcome in a given situation.
• Self-esteem. An affective component of the self, consisting of a person's positive and negative self-evaluations.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy. The process by which one's expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations.
• Self-handicapping. Behaviors designed to sabotage one's own performance in order to provide a subsequent excuse for failure.
• Self-monitoring. The tendency to change behavior in response to the self-presentation concerns of the situation.
• Self-perception theory. The theory that when internal cues are difficult to interpret, people gain self-insight by observing their own behavior.
• Self-presentation. Strategies people use to shape what others think of them.
• Self-regulation. The process by which people control their thoughts, feelings, or behavior in order to achieve a personal or social goal.
• Self-schema. A belief people hold about themselves that guides the processing of self-relevant information.
• Sentencing disparity. Inconsistency of sentences for the same offense from one judge to another.
• Sexism. Prejudice and discrimination based on a person's gender, or institutional and cultural practices that promote the domination of one gender over another.
• Sexual orientation. A person's preference for members of the same sex (homosexuality), opposite sex (heterosexuality), or both sexes (bisexuality).
• Situational attribution. Attribution to factors external to an actor, such as the task, other people, or luck.
• Sleeper effect. A delayed increase in the persuasive impact of a noncredible source.
• Social categorization. The classification of persons into groups on the basis of common attributes.
• Social cognition. The study of how people perceive, remember, and interpret information about themselves and others.
• Social comparison theory. The theory that people evaluate their own abilities and opinions by comparing themselves to others.
• Social dilemma. A situation in which a self-interested choice by everyone will create the worst outcome for everyone.
• Social dominance orientation. A desire to see one's ingroup as dominant over other groups and a willingness to adopt cultural values that facilitate oppression over other groups.
• Social exchange theory. A perspective that views people as motivated to maximize benefits and minimize costs in their relationships with others.
• Social facilitation. A process whereby the presence of others enhances performance on easy tasks but impairs performance on difficult tasks.
• Social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE). A model of group behavior that explains deindividuation effects as the result of a shift from personal identity to social identity.
• Social identity theory. The theory that people favor ingroups over outgroups in order to enhance their self-esteem.
• Social impact theory. The theory that social influence depends on the strength, immediacy, and number of source persons relative to target persons.
• Social learning theory. The theory that behavior is learned through the observation of others as well as through the direct experience of rewards and punishments.
• Social loafing. A group-produced reduction in individual output on tasks where contributions are pooled.
• Social neuroscience. The study of the relationship between neural and social processes.
• Social norm. A general rule of conduct reflecting standards of social approval and disapproval.
• Social perception. A general term for the processes by which people come to understand one another.
• Social psychology. The scientific study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context.
• Social role theory. The theory that small gender differences are magnified in perception by the contrasting social roles occupied by men and women.
• Social support. The helpful coping resources provided by friends and other people.
• Sociometer Theory. The theory that self-esteem is a gauge that monitors our social interactions and sends signals us as to whether our behavior is acceptable to others.
• Stereotype. A belief or association that links a whole group of people with certain traits or characteristics.
• Stereotype content model. A model proposing that the relative status and competition between groups influence group stereotypes along the dimensions of competence and warmth.
• Stereotype threat. The experience of concern about being evaluated based on negative stereotypes about one's group.
• Stigmatized. Being persistently stereotyped, perceived as deviant, and devalued in society because of membership in a particular social group or because of a particular characteristic.
• Stress. An unpleasant state of arousal in which people perceive the demands of an event as taxing or exceeding their ability to satisfy or alter those demands.
• Stressor. Anything that causes stress.
• Structured interview. An interview in which each job applicant is asked a standard set of questions and evaluated on the same criteria.
• Subject variable. A variable that characterizes preexisting differences among the participants in a study.
• Subjective well-being (SWB). One's happiness, or life satisfaction, as measured by self-report.
• Subliminal presentation. A method of presenting stimuli so faintly or rapidly that people do not have any conscious awareness of having been exposed to them.
• Sunk cost principle. The economic rule of thumb that only future costs and benefits, not past commitments, should be considered in making a decision.
• Superordinate goal. A shared goal that can be achieved only through cooperation among individuals or groups.
• System justification theory. A theory that proposes that people are motivated (at least in part) to defend and justify the existing social, political, and economic conditions.
• Terror Management Theory. The theory that humans cope with the fear of their own death by constructing worldviews that help to preserve their self-esteem.
• That's-not-all technique. A two-step compliance technique in which the influencer begins with an inflated request, then decreases its apparent size by offering a discount or bonus.
• Theory. An organized set of principles used to explain observed phenomena.
• Theory of planned behavior. The theory that attitudes toward a specific behavior combine with subjective norms and perceived control to influence a person's actions.
• Transactional leader. A leader who gains compliance and support from followers primarily through goal setting and the use of rewards.
• Transactive memory. A shared system for remembering information that enables multiple people to remember information together more efficiently than they could do so alone.
• Transformational leader. A leader who inspires followers to transcend their own needs in the interest of a common cause.
• Triangular theory of love. A theory proposing that love has three basic components -- intimacy, passion, and commitment -- that can be combined to produce eight subtypes.
• Two-factor theory of emotion. The theory that the experience of emotion is based on two factors: physiological arousal and a cognitive interpretation of that arousal.
• Type A personality. A pattern of behavior characterized by extremes of competitive striving for achievement, a sense of time urgency, hostility, and aggression.
• Voir dire. The pretrial examination of prospective jurors by the judge or opposing lawyers to uncover signs of bias.
• Weapon-focus effect. The tendency for the presence of a weapon to draw attention and impair a witness's ability to identify the culprit.
• Weapons effect. The tendency that the likelihood of aggression will increase by the mere presence of weapons.
• What-is-beautiful-is-good stereotype. The belief that physically attractive individuals also possess desirable personality characteristics.