Social Psychology Ch 5
Terms
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- Self- Concept
- The content of the self; that is, our knowledge about who we are
- Self- Awareness
- The act of thinking about ourselves
- Self- Schemas
- Mental structures that people use to organize their knowledge about themselves and that influences what they notice, think about, and remember about themselves
- Self- Reference Effect
- The tendency for people to remember information better if they relate it to themselves
- Independent View of the Self
- A way of defining oneself in terms of one’s own internal thoughts, feelings, and actions and not in terms of the thoughts, feelings, and actions of other people
- Interdependent View of the Self
- A way of defining oneself in terms of one’s relationships to other people; recognizing that one’s behavior is often determined by the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others
- Introspection
- The process whereby people look inward and examine their own thoughts, feelings, and motives
- Self-Awareness Theory
- The idea that when people focus their attention on themselves, they evaluate and compare their behavior to their internal standards and values
- Causal Theories
- Theories about the causes of one’s own feelings and behaviors; often we learn such theories from our culture
- Reasons- Generated Attitude Change
- Attitude change resulting from thinking about the reasons for one’s attitudes; people assume their attitudes match the reasons that are plausible and easy to verbalize
- Self- Perception Theory
- The theory that when our attitudes and feelings are uncertain or ambiguous, we infer these states by observing our behavior and the situation in which it occurs
- Intrinsic Motivation
- The desire to engage in an activity because we enjoy it or find it interesting, not because of external rewards or pressures
- Extrinsic Motivation
- The desire to engage in an activity because of external rewards or pressures, not because we enjoy the task or find it interesting
- Overjustification Effect
- The tendency to people to view their behavior as caused by compelling reasons, making them underestimate the extent to which it was caused by intrinsic reasons
- Task- Contingent Rewards
- Rewards that are given for performing a task, regardless of how well the task is done
- Performance- Contingent Rewards
- Rewards that are based on how well we perform a task
- Two-Factor Theory of Emotion
- The idea that emotion experienced is the result of a two-stem self-perception process in which people first experience physiological arousal and then seek an appropriate explanation for it
- Misattribution of Arousal
- The process whereby people make mistaken inferences about what is causing them to feel the way they do
- Social Comparison Theory
- The idea that we learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to other people
- Upward Social Comparison
- Comparing ourselves to people who are better than we are on a particular trait or ability
- Downward Social Comparison
- Comparing ourselves to people who are worse than we on a particular trait or ability
- Impression Management
- The attempt by people to get others to see them as they want to be seen
- Ingratiation
- The process whereby people flatter, praise, and generally try to make themselves likable to another person, often of higher status
- Self- Handicapping
- The strategy whereby people create obstacles and excuses for themselves so that if they do poorly on a task, the can avoid blaming themselves