Chapter 1 Social psychology the scientific study of how people think about influence and relate to one another Social neuroscience an interdisciplinary field that explores the neural bases of social and emotional processes and behaviors and how these processes and behaviors affect our brain and biology Culture the enduring behaviors ideas attitudes and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next Social representations a society s widely held ideas and values including assumptions and cultural ideologies Our social representations help us make sense of our world Hindsight bias the tendency to exaggerate after learning an outcome one s ability to have foreseen how something turned out Also known as the I knew it all along phenomenon Theory an integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events Hypothesis a testable proposition that describes a relationship that may exist between events Field research research done in natural real life settings outside the laboratory Correlational research the study of the naturally occurring relationships among variables Experimental research studies that seek clues to cause effect relationships by manipulating one or more factors independent variables while controlling others holding them constant Random sampling survey procedure in which every person in the population being studied has an equal chance of inclusion Framing the way a question or an issue is posed framing can influence people s decisions and expressed opinions Independent variable the experimental factor that a researcher manipulates Dependent variable the variable being measured so called because it may depend on manipulations of the independent variable Random assignment the process of assigning participants to the conditions of an experiment such that all persons have the same chance of being in a given condition Note the distinction between random assignment in experiments and random sampling in surveys Random assignment helps us infer cause and effect Random sampling helps us generalize to a population Mundane realism degree to which an experiment is superficially similar to everyday situations Experimental realism degree to which an experiment absorbs and involves its participants Deception in research an effect by which participants are misinformed or misled about the study s methods and purposes Demand characteristics cues in an experiment that tell the participant what behavior is expected Informed consent an ethical principle requiring that research participants be told enough to enable them to choose whether they wish to participate Debriefing in social psychology the post experimental explanation of a study to its participants Debriefing usually discloses any deception and often queries participants regarding their understandings and feelings Chapter 2 Spotlight effect the belief that others are paying more attention to our appearance and behavior than they really are Illusion of transparency the illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by others Self concept what we know and believe about ourselves Self schema beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self relevant information Possible selves images of what we dream of or dread becoming in the future Social comparison evaluating one s abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others Individualism the concept of giving priority to one s own goals over group goals and defining one s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications Independent self construing one s identity as an autonomous self Collectivism giving priority to the goals of one s group often one s extended family or work group and defining one s identity accordingly Interdependent self construing one s identity in relation to others Planning fallacy the tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task Impact bias overestimating the enduring impact of emotion causing events Immune neglect the human tendency to underestimate the speed and the strength of the psychological immune system which enables emotional recovery and resilience after bad things happen Dual attitude system differing implicit automatic and explicit consciously controlled attitudes may change with education and persuasion implicit attitudes change slowly with practice that forms new habit Self esteem a person s overall self evaluation or sense of self worth Terror management theory proposes that people exhibit self protective emotional and cognitive responses including adhering more strongly to their cultural worldviews and prejudices when confronted with reminders of their mortality Self efficacy a sense that one is competent and effective distinguished from self esteem a sharpshooter in the military might feel high self efficacy and low self esteem Locus of control the extent to which people perceive outcomes as internally controllable by their own efforts or as externally controlled by chance or outside forces Learned helplessness the sense of hopelessness and resignation learned when a human or animal perceives no control over repeated bad events Self serving bias the tendency to perceive oneself favorably Self serving attributions a form of self serving bias the tendency to attribute positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to other factors Defensive pessimism the adaptive value of anticipating problems and harnessing one s anxiety to motivate effective action False consensus effect the tendency to overestimate the commonality of one s opinions and one s undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors False uniqueness effect the tendency to underestimate the commonality of one s abilities and one s desirable or successful behaviors Group serving bias explaining away outgroup members positive behaviors also attributing negative behaviors to their dispositions while excusing such behavior by one s own group Self handicapping protecting one s self image with behaviors that create a handy excuse for later failure Self presentation the act of expressing oneself and behaving in ways designed to create a favorable impression or an impression that corresponds to one s ideals Self monitoring being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting one s performance to create the desired impression Chapter 3 Priming activating particular associations in memory Embodied cognition the mutual influence of