Social Psychology 4e by Smith, Mackie, Claypool

Social Psychology 4e by Smith, Mackie, Claypool is the 4th edition of the textbook authored by Eliot R. Smith, Indiana University, Bloomington, Diane M. Mackie, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Heather M. Claypool, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and published in 2015 by Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business.

• Accessibility. The ease and speed with which information comes to mind and is used.
• Accessibility principle. The processing principle that the information that is most readily available generally has the most impact on thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
• Accommodation. The processes of responding to a negative action by the partner.
• Actor-observer effect. The idea that we attribute our own behaviors to situational causes while seeing others' acts as due to their inner characteristics.
• Aggression. Behavior intended to harm someone else.
• Altruism. Behavior intended to help someone else without any prospect of personal rewards for the helper.
• Ambivalent attitude. An attitude based on conflicting negative and positive information.
• Appraisal. An individual's interpretation of a self-relevant event or situation that directs emotional responses and behavior.
• Archival measures. Those based on examining traces of past behavior.
• Assimilation effect. An effect of a comparison standard or prime that makes the perceiver's judgment more similar to the standard.
• Association. A link between two or more mental representations.
• Attachment styles. People's basic securely attached, avoidant, or anxious orientation toward others in close relationships.
• Attitude. A mental representation that summarizes an individual's evaluation of a particular person, group, thing, action, or idea.
• Attitude change. The process by which attitudes form and change by the association of positive or negative information with the attitude object.
• Authoritarian personality. Based on Freudian ideas, people who are prejudiced because they cannot accept their own hostility, believe uncritically in the legitimacy of authority, and see their own inadequacies in others.
• Automatic. Refers to processes that operate spontaneously (without the perceiver's deliberate intent) and often efficiently and without awareness.
• BIRG (Bask In Reflected Glory). A way of boosting self-esteem by identifying oneself with the accomplishments or good qualities of fellow in-group members.
• Bystander effect. The finding that the presence of more bystanders consistently decreases the likelihood of any one person giving help.
• Causal attribution. A judgment about the cause of a behavior or other event.
• Classical conditioning. A form of learning in which a previously neutral stimulus, when paired with a stimulus that elicits an emotion or other response, itself comes to generate that response.
• Close relationship. A relationship involving strong and frequent interdependence in many domains of life.
• Coalition formation. When two or more parties pool their resources to obtain a mutual goal they probably could not achieve alone.
• Cognitive dissonance. An unpleasant state caused by people's awareness of inconsistency among important beliefs, attitudes, or actions.
• Cognitive processes. The ways in which our memories, perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and motives influence our understanding of the world and guide our actions
• Collectivist cultures. Those in which people tend to think of themselves as linked to others, and to define themselves in terms of their relationships to others.
• Commitment. The combined forces that hold the partners together in an enduring relationship.
• Communal relationship. A relationship in which people reward their partner out of direct concern and to show caring.
• Confederate. A research assistant playing a specific role in the study such as pretending to be just another participant.
• Conflict. A perceived incompatibility of goals between two or more parties.
• Conformity. The convergence of individuals' thoughts, feelings, or behavior toward a social norm.
• Conservatism principle. The processing principle that individuals' and groups' views of the world are slow to change and prone to perpetuate themselves.
• Construct validity. The extent to which the independent and dependent variables used in research correspond to the theoretical constructs under investigation.
• Construction of reality. The axiom that each person's view of reality is a construction, shaped both by cognitive processes (the ways our minds work) and by social processes (input from others either actually present or imagined).
• Constructs. Abstract and general concepts that are used in theories and that are not directly observable.
• Contact hypothesis. The theory that certain types of direct contact between members of hostile groups will reduce stereotyping and prejudice.
• Contingency theories of leadership. Theories holding that leader behaviors can differ and that different behaviors are most effective in specific leadership situations.
• Contrast effect. An effect of a comparison standard or prime that makes the perceiver's judgment more different from the standard.
• Cooperation. Two or more people working together toward a common goal that will benefit all involved.
• Correspondence bias. The tendency to infer an actor's personal characteristics from observed behaviors, even when the inference is unjustified because other possible causes of the behavior exist.
• Correspondent inference. The process of characterizing someone as having a personality trait that corresponds to his or her observed behavior.
• Debriefing. Informing research participants -- as soon as possible after the completion of their participation in research -- about the purposes, procedures, and scientific value of the study, and discussing any questions participants may have.
• Deception. Keeping participants uninformed or actively misleading them about particular aspects of a study.
• Deindividuation. The psychological state in which group or social identity completely dominates personal or individual identity so that group norms become maximally accessible.
• Demand characteristics. Cues in a research setting that lead participants to make inferences about what researchers expect or desire and that therefore bias how the participants act.
• Dependent variable. A concrete measurement of a construct that is thought to be an effect of other constructs.
• Descriptive social norms. Agreed-upon mental representations of what a group of people think, feel, or do.
• Diffusion of responsibility. The effect of other people present on diminishing each individual's perceived responsibility for helping; one explanation for the bystander effect.
• Discounting. Reducing a belief in one potential cause of behavior because there is another viable cause.
• Discrimination. Any positive or negative behavior directed toward a social group and its members.
• Door-in-the-face technique. A technique in which the influencer makes an initial request so large that it will be rejected, and follows it with a smaller request that looks like a concession, making it more likely that the other person will concede in turn.
• EEG measures (electro-encephalographic measures). Measures that use electrical signals on the scalp to very accurately detect the times at which specific neural events occur.
• Effort justification effect. Attitude change that occurs to reduce the dissonance caused by freely choosing to exert considerable effort or suffering to achieve a goal.
• Egoism. Behavior motivated by the desire to obtain personal rewards.
• Elaboration. The generation of favorable or unfavorable reactions to the content of a persuasive appeal.
• Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). A model of persuasion that claims that attitude change occurs through either a peripheral route or a central route that involves elaboration, and that the extent of elaboration depends on motivation and capacity.
• Emotion-focused coping. Dealing with the negative emotions aroused by threats or stressors, often by suppressing emotions or distraction.
• Empathy-altruism model. The theory that feelings of empathic concern lead to a motive to help someone in need for his or her own sake.
• Evaluative conditioning. The process by which positive or negative attitudes are formed or changed by association with other positively or negatively valued objects.
• Exchange relationship. A relationship in which people offer rewards in order to receive benefits in return.
• Experimental research design. A research design in which researchers randomly assign participants to different groups and manipulate one or more independent variables.
• Explicit attitude. The attitude that people openly and deliberately express about an attitude object in self-report or by behavior.
• External validity. The extent to which research results can be generalized to other appropriate people, times, and settings.
• False consensus effect. The tendency to overestimate others' agreement with one's own opinions, characteristics, and behaviors.
• Field research. Research that takes place outside the laboratory.
• fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). Indirectly measures the activation levels of specific brain regions.
• Foot-in-the-door technique. A technique for increasing compliance with a large request by first asking people to go along with a smaller request, engaging selfperception processes.
• Frustration-aggression theory. A theory holding that any frustration -- defined as the blocking of an important goal -- inevitably triggers aggression.
• General Aggression Model. A theory that person and situation factors influence people's cognition, emotions, and arousal, which in turn influence interpretations of the situation and decisions about aggression.
• Group polarization. The process by which a group's initial average position becomes more extreme following group interaction.
• Group socialization. The cognitive, affective, and behavioral changes that occur as individuals join and leave groups.
• Groupthink. Group decision making that is impaired by the drive to reach consensus regardless of how the consensus is formed.
• Habit. A repeated behavior automatically triggered in a particular situation.
• Hostile aggression. Aggression that is driven by anger due to insult, disrespect, or other threats to self-esteem or social identity.
• Hypocrisy effect. Change in behavior that occurs to reduce the dissonance caused by freely choosing to publicly advocate a behavior that one does not actually perform oneself.
• Ideal self. A person's sense of what he or she would ideally like to be.
• Illusory correlation. A perceived association between two characteristics that are not actually related.
• Implementation intention. A plan to carry out a specific goal-directed behavior in a specific situation.
• Implicit attitude. Automatic and uncontrollable positive or negative evaluation of an attitude object.
• Implicit measures. Alternatives to self-report measures, such as priming measures or the IAT, which are based on difficult-to-control aspect of people's performance, such as their response speed or accuracy.
• Impression management function. The way an attitude contributes to connectedness by smoothing interactions and relationships.
• Independent variable. A concrete manipulation or measurement of a construct that is thought to cause other constructs.
• Individual mobility. The strategy of individual escape, either physical or psychological, from a stigmatized group.
• Individualist cultures. Those in which people are particularly likely to think of themselves as separate from other people and to define themselves in terms of their uniqueness.
• Informational influence. The process by which group norms are privately accepted to achieve or maintain mastery of reality.
• Informed consent. Consent voluntarily given by an individual who decides to participate in a study after being told what will be involved in participation.
• Injunctive social norms. Agreed upon mental representations of what people in a group should think, feel, or do.
• Instrumental aggression. Aggression serving mastery needs, used as a means to an end, to control other people, or to obtain valuable resources.
• Instrumental function. The way an attitude contributes to mastery by guiding our approach to positive objects and our avoidance of negative objects.
• Insufficient justification effect. Attitude change that occurs to reduce dissonance caused by attitude-discrepant behavior that cannot be attributed to external reward or punishment.
• Intention. A commitment to reach a desired outcome or desired behavior.
• Interdependence. Each group member's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors influence the others'.
• Internal validity. The extent to which it can be concluded that changes in the independent variable actually caused changes in the dependent variable in a research study.
• Interventions. Practical steps taken to change people's behavior or to solve social problems.
• Intimacy. A positive emotional bond that includes understanding and support.
• Knowledge function. The way an attitude contributes to mastery by organizing, summarizing, and simplifying experience with an attitude object.
• Leadership. A process in which one or more group members are permitted to influence and motivate others to help attain group goals.
• Love. Thoughts, feelings, and actions that occur when a person wishes to enter or maintain a close relationship with a specific person.
• Low-ball technique. A technique in which the influencer secures agreement with a request but then increases the cost of honoring the commitment.
• Manipulate. Intentionally varying some factor as the independent variable in an experimental research design.
• Mental representation. A body of knowledge that an individual has stored in memory.
• Mere exposure. Exposure to a stimulus without any external reward, which creates familiarity with the stimulus and generally makes people feel more positively about it.
• Meta-analysis. A systematic technique for locating studies on a particular topic and summarizing their results.
• Metacognition. Thoughts about thoughts or about thought processes.
• Minimal intergroup situation. A research situation in which people are categorized, on an arbitrary or trivial basis, into groups that have no history, no conflicts of interest, and no stereotypes.
• Moral exclusion. Viewing out-groups as subhuman and outside the domain in which the rules of morality apply.
• Negative-state relief model. The theory that most people hate to watch others suffer, so the ultimate goal of their help is not to aid the person in need for his or her sake, but to reduce the helper's own distress.
• Negotiation. The process by which parties in conflict communicate and influence each other to reach agreement.
• Nonexperimental research design. A research design in which both the independent and dependent variables are measured.
• Norm of obedience to authority. The shared view that people should obey those with legitimate authority.
• Norm of reciprocity. The shared view that people are obligated to return to others the goods, services, and concessions they offer to us.
• Norm of social commitment. The shared view that people are required to honor their agreements and obligations.
• Norm of social responsibility. A norm that those able to take care of themselves have a duty and obligation to assist those who cannot.
• Normative influence. The process by which group norms are privately accepted to achieve or maintain connectedness and a valued social identity.
• Observational measures. Those based on directly watching and recording people's behavior, including online behavior.
• Ostracism. Being ignored and excluded from a group.
• Ought self. A person's sense of what he or she is obligated to be, or should be.
• Out-group homogeneity effect. The tendency to see the out-group as relatively more homogeneous and less diverse than the in-group.
• Performance measures. Those that ask participants to perform some task as well as they can.
• Perseverance bias. The tendency for information to have a persisting effect on our judgments even after it has been discredited.
• Persuasion. The process of forming, strengthening, or changing attitudes by communication.
• Persuasion heuristic. Association of a cue that is positively or negatively evaluated with the attitude object, allowing the attitude object to be evaluated quickly and without much thought.
• Pervasiveness of social influence. The axiom that other people influence virtually all of our thoughts, feelings, and behavior, whether those others are physically present or not.
• Physiological measures. Those based on measurement of some physiological process such as heart rate or muscle movements.
• Pluralistic ignorance. Occurs when everyone publicly conforms to an apparent norm that no one in fact privately accepts.
• Post-decisional regret effect. Attitude change that occurs to reduce the dissonance caused by freely making a choice or decision.
• Power. The ability to provide or withhold rewards or punishments from others.
• Prejudice. A positive or negative evaluation of a social group and its members.
• Primacy effect. A pattern in which early-encountered information has a greater impact than subsequent information; an example of the principle of cognitive conservatism.
• Priming. The activation of a mental representation to increase its accessibility and thus the likelihood that it will be used.
• Private conformity. Private acceptance of social norms.
• Problem-focused coping. Dealing with threats or stressors directly, often by reappraising the situation or by directly removing the threat.
• Prosocial behavior. Behavior intended to help someone else.
• Public conformity. Overt behavior consistent with social norms that are not privately accepted.
• Random assignment. The procedure of assigning participants to different experimental groups so that every participant has exactly the same chance as every other participant of being in any given group.
• Reactance. The motive to protect or restore a threatened sense of behavioral freedom.
• Reactive devaluation. Perceiving a proposed solution to a conflict negatively simply because the out-group offers it.
• Realistic conflict theory. The theory that intergroup hostility arises from competition among groups for scarce but valued material resources.
• Reference group. Those people accepted as an appropriate source of information for a judgment because they share the attributes relevant for making that judgment.
• Regulatory focus theory. A theory that people typically have either a promotion or prevention focus, shaping the ways they self-regulate to attain positive outcomes versus avoiding negative outcomes.
• Relative deprivation theory. The theory that feelings of discontent arise from the belief that other individuals or other groups are better off.
• Replication. Conducting new studies in an effort to provide evidence for the same theoretically predicted relations found in prior research.
• Research design. A plan that specifies how research participants will be selected and treated.
• Romantic love. Involves sexual feelings, a sense of intense longing for the partner, euphoric feelings of fulfillment and ecstasy when the relationship goes well, and anxiety and despair when it does not.
• Salience. The ability of a cue to attract attention in its context.
• Scientific Theory. A statement that satisfies three requirements: It is about constructs; it describes causal relations; and it is general in scope, although the range of generality differs for different theories.
• Seeking connectedness. The motivational principle that people seek support, liking, and acceptance from the people and groups they care about and value.
• Self-affirmation. Any action or event that enhances or highlights one's own sense of personal integrity, such as affirming one's most important values.
• Self-aspects. Summaries of a person's beliefs about the self in specific domains, roles, or activities.
• Self-awareness. A state of heightened awareness of the self, including our internal standards and whether we measure up to them.
• Self-categorization. The process of seeing oneself as a member of a social group.
• Self-complexity. The extent to which a person possesses many and diverse self-aspects.
• Self-concept. All of an individual's knowledge about his or her personal qualities.
• Self-enhancing bias. Any tendency to gather or interpret information concerning the self in a way that leads to overly positive evaluations.
• Self-esteem. An individual's positive or negative evaluation of himself or herself.
• Self-evaluation maintenance. A theory outlining the conditions under which people's self-esteem will be maintained or will suffer based on social comparisons to close or distant others.
• Self-expression. A motive for choosing behaviors that are intended to reflect and express the self-concept.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy. The process by which one person's expectations about another become reality by eliciting behaviors that confirm the expectations.
• Self-handicapping. Seeking to avoid blame for an expected poor performance, either by claiming an excuse in advance or by actively sabotaging one's own performance (for example, by failing to practice).
• Self-monitoring. A personality characteristic defined as the degree to which people are sensitive to the demands of social situations and shape their behaviors accordingly.
• Self-perception theory. The theory that we make inferences about our personal characteristics on the basis of our overt behaviors when internal cues are weak or ambiguous.
• Self-presentation. A motive for choosing behaviors intended to create in observers a desired impression of the self.
• Self-regulation. Efforts to control one's behavior in line with internal standards (selfguides) or external standards.
• Self-report measures. Those based on asking the individual about his or her thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.
• Self-schema. Core characteristics that a person believes characterize him or her across situations.
• Social categorization. The process of identifying individual people as members of a social group because they share certain features that are typical of the group.
• Social change. The strategy of improving the overall societal situation of a stigmatized group.
• Social comparison theory. The theory that people learn about and evaluate their personal qualities by comparing themselves to others.
• Social compensation. One group member working especially hard to compensate for another's low level of effort or performance.
• Social competition. The strategy of directly seeking to change the conditions that disadvantage the in-group, for example, by building group solidarity and challenging the out-group.
• Social creativity. The strategy of introducing and emphasizing new dimensions of social comparison, on which a negatively regarded group can see itself as superior.
• Social desirability response bias. People's tendency to act in ways that they believe others find acceptable and approve of.
• Social dilemma. A form of interdependence in which the most rewarding action for each individual will, if chosen by all individuals, produce a negative outcome for the entire group.
• Social facilitation. An increase in the likelihood of highly accessible responses, and a decrease in the likelihood of less accessible responses, due to the presence of others.
• Social group. Two or more people who share some common characteristic that is socially meaningful for themselves or for others.
• Social identity. Those aspects of the self-concept that derive from an individual's knowledge and feelings about the group memberships he or she shares with others.
• Social identity function. The way an attitude contributes to connectedness by expressing important self and group identities and values.
• Social identity theory. The theory that people's motivation to derive self-esteem from their group memberships is one driving force behind in-group bias.
• Social interdependence. Reliance on other members of the group for feelings of connectedness, social and emotional rewards, and a positive social identity.
• Social loafing. The tendency to exert less effort on a task when an individual's efforts are an unidentifiable part of a group than when the same task is performed alone.
• Social norms. Generally accepted ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that people in a group agree on and endorse as right and proper.
• Social processes. The ways in which input from the people and groups around us affect our thoughts, feelings, and actions.
• Social psychology. The scientific study of the effects of social and cognitive processes on the way individuals perceive, influence, and relate to others.
• Social support. Emotional and physical coping resources provided by other people.
• Social value orientation. Stable differences in the ways people act in social dilemmas (such as competitive or prosocial).
• Stereotype. A mental representation or impression of a social group that people form by associating particular characteristics and emotions with the group.
• Stereotype threat. The fear of confirming others' negative stereotype of your group.
• Stigmatized. Negatively evaluated by others.
• Striving for mastery. The motivational principle that people seek to understand and predict events in the social world in order to obtain rewards.
• Strong attitude. A confidently-held extremely positive or negative evaluation that is persistent and resistant and that influences information processing and behavior.
• Subliminal. Presentation of stimuli in such a way (usually with a very brief duration) that perceivers are not consciously aware of them.
• Subtype. A narrower and more specific social group, such as housewife or feminist, that is included within a broad social group, like women.
• Superficial processing. Relying on accessible information to make inferences or judgments, while expending little effort in processing.
• Superficiality versus depth. The processing principle that people ordinarily put little effort into dealing with information, but at times are motivated to consider information in more depth.
• Superordinate goals. Shared goals that can be attained only if groups work together.
• Systematic processing. Giving thorough, effortful consideration to a wide range of information relevant to a judgment.
• Task interdependence. Reliance on other members of a group for mastery of material outcomes that arise from the group's task.
• Terror Management Theory. A theory stating that reminders of one's own mortality lead individuals to reaffirm basic cultural worldviews, which can have both positive and negative effects.
• Theory of planned behavior. The theory that attitudes, social norms, and perceived control combine to influence intentions and thus behavior.
• Theory of reasoned action. The theory that attitudes and social norms combine to produce behavioral intentions, which in turn influence behavior.
• Transformational leadership. Leaders who inspire extreme devotion and emotional identification on the part of their followers, allowing them to have profound effects on their followers.
• Trust. The expectation that others will act prosocially during a social interaction.
• Valuing "me and mine". The motivational principle that people desire to see themselves, and other people and groups connected to themselves, in a positive light.
• Vicarious retribution. Members of a group who were not themselves directly harmed by an attack retaliating against members of the offending group.