Aantekeningen Sociale Psychologie
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Social psychology: The scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people
Social influence: The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our
thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior
Evolutionary psychology: The attempt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have
evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection
Construal: The way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world
Basic human motives: the need to feel good about ourselves (the self-esteem motive) and the need
to be accurate (the social cognition motive)
Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior
is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors
Behaviorism: A school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only
consider the reinforcing properties of the environment
Gestalt psychology: A school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way
in which an object appears in people’s minds rather than the objective, physical attributes of the
object
Naïve realism: The conviction that we perceive things “as they really are”, underestimating how
much we are interpreting or “spinning” what we see
Self-esteem: People’s evaluations of their own self-worth – that is, the extent to which they view
themselves as good, competent, and decent
Human beings are motivated to maintain a positive picture of themselves, in part by justifying their
behavior, and that under certain specifiable conditions, this leads them to do things that at first
glance might seem surprising or paradoxical. They might prefer people and things for whom they
have suffered to people and things they associate with ease and pleasure.
Social cognition: How people think about themselves and the social world more specifically, how
people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgements and decisions.
Social psychologists study the causes of social behavior, because they are curious and they want to
contribute to the solution of social problems. Kurt Lewin was the founder of the discipline after
World War II.
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Social cognition: How people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how
people select, interpret, remember and use social information to make judgements and decisions
Automatic thinking: Thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless. This
helps us understand new situations by relating them to our prior experiences.
,Schemas: Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around
themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember.
Having continuity, being able to relate new experiences to our past schemas, is so important that
people who lose this ability invent schemas where none exist. Schemas are particularly useful in
helping us figure out what is going on in confusing or ambiguous situations. The more ambiguous our
information is, the more we use schemas to fill in the blanks
Accessibility: The extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people’s minds and
are therefore likely to be used when making judgements about the social world. Something can
become accessible because of past experience, because it is related to a current goal and because of
our recent experiences.
Priming: The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or
concept. Thoughts have to be accessible and applicable before they will act as primes. Priming is an
example of automatic thinking.
Self-fulfilling prophecy: The case wherein people have an expectation about what another person is
like, which influences how they act toward that person, which causes that person to behave
consistently with people’s original expectations, making the expectations come true. Teachers
created a warmer emotional climate for ‘bloomers’, gave them more personal attention,
encouragement, and support; they gave bloomers more material to learn and material that is more
difficult; they give bloomers more and better feedback on their work; and they give bloomers more
opportunities to respond in class and give them longer to respond. Teachers who think a child from a
low-income family doesn’t have what it takes to succeed in school inadvertently acted in ways that
made that child do more poorly in school.
In our everyday lives there are often competing goals, and the choice of which one to follow can
happen automatically. Priming religious thoughts in religious people increases the likelihood that
people would act kindly toward their fellow human beings. In nonreligious people thoughts about
being a good citizen should be primed. Goals can be activated and influence people’s behavior
without their knowing it. Research shows that the scent of cleanliness increases the degree to which
people trust strangers and their willingness to help others. When we think about something, or
someone, we do so with reference to how our bodies are reacting. Metaphors about the body and
social judgements also influence our judgements and decisions.
We use mental strategies and shortcuts to make decisions easier. These shortcuts do not always lead
to the best decision. We use schemas to understand new situations. When not having ready-made
schemas, we use judgmental heuristics: Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and
efficiently.
Availability heuristic: A mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with
which they can bring something to the mind. Doctors use it as well. People use it to make judgments
about themselves and other people.
Representativeness heuristic: A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to
how similar it is to a typical case
Base rate information: Information about the frequency of members of different categories in the
population
People use representativeness heuristic more than base rate information.
, The content of our schemas is influenced by the culture in which we live. Schemas are a very
important way by which cultures exert their influence – namely, by instilling mental structures that
influence the very way we understand and interpret the world. Culture can influence the kinds of
thinking people automatically use to understand their worlds. These differences in thinking styles
also influence how we perceive emotions in other people.
Analytic thinking style: A type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without
considering their surrounding context; this type of thinking is common in western cultures
Holistic thinking style: A type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the
ways in which objects relate to each other; this type of thinking is common in East Asian cultures
These differences in thinking are rooted in the different philosophical traditions of the East versus
West. Eastern thought has been shaped by the ideas of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism.
Western thought is rooted in the Greek philosophical tradition of Aristotle and Plato, which focuses
on the laws governing objects, independent of their context. The different thinking styles might also
stem from actual differences in the environments in the different cultures. The Japanese scenes
contained significantly more information and objects than the American scenes.
Controlled thinking: Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary and effortful. People can
usually turn this on or turn off at will and are fully aware of what they are thinking. We are the only
species that has the ability to engage in conscious reflection about ourselves and the outside world,
and we often use that ability to great purpose, solving difficult problems and planning for the future.
People have the capacity to think in a conscious, controlled way about only one thing at a time.
There can be a disconnect between what our conscious sense of how much we are causing our own
actions and how much we really are causing them. The extent to which people believe they have free
will has important consequences.
Counterfactual thinking: Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what
might have been. The easier it is to mentally undo an outcome, the stronger the emotional reaction
to it. Engaging in counterfactual reasoning about positive events might increase your belief in God.
Dwelling on the past is not so good if counterfactual thinking results in rumination, whereby people
repetitively focus on negative things in their lives. Rumination has been found to be a contributor to
depression. Counterfactual thinking can be useful if it focuses people’s attention on ways they can
cope better in the future.
One purpose of controlled thinking is to provide checks and balances for automatic thinking.
Planning fallacy: The tendency for people to be overly optimistic about how soon they will complete
a project, even when they have failed to get similar projects done on time in the past.
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Social perception: The study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other
people. Social perception is also about explaining why others behave as they do. Much of our daily
mental energy is devoted to analyzing other people, because thinking about other people and their
behavior helps us understand and predict our social universe.
Nonverbal communication: The way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally,
without words, including via facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position, movement,
touch and gaze. They help us to express our emotions, our attitudes, and our personality. You
communicate your personality traits.
