Social Psychology

Social psychology covers numerous topics that focus on society as a whole, including the observation and study of social behavior and intergroup relations.

Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory is still one of the most influential social theories in modern social psychology.

was an American social psychologist best known for his development of the two factor theory of emotion

Psychology (Social)

Social psychology

Anthony Galt Greenwald is a social psychologist

Self-verification is a social psychological theory that asserts people want to be known and understood by others according to their firmly held beliefs and feelings about themselves, that is self-views (including self-concepts and self-esteem).

Realistic conflict theory (RCT), also known as realistic group conflict theory (RGCT), is a social psychological model of intergroup conflict.

Ingratiation, as a topic in social psychology, was first defined and analyzed by social psychologist Edward E.

Research in social psychology shows that linguistic intergroup bias is driven by differences in how people describe in-group and out-group behaviors using abstract or concrete language.

The idea that 'people naïvely believe they see things objectively and others do not' has been acknowledged for quite some time in the field of social psychology.

In several social psychology experiments, people chosen at random to receive messages of social exclusion became more aggressive, more willing to cheat, less willing to help others, and more likely to pursue short-term over long-term goals.

Some scholars have addressed the potential existence of puritanical bias in the existing social psychology literature.

Theory of mind is also closely related to person perception and attribution theory from social psychology.

The most comprehensive social exchange theories are those of the American social psychologists John W.

Susan Gill bridges the disciplines of social psychology and neuropsychology in her analysis of psychic numbing by explaining that there are notable behavioral changes, the most typical trait is being zombie-like and in a "dead-zone".

While trait ascription bias has been described by empirical results from various disciplines, most notably psychology and social psychology, explaining the mechanism of the bias remains a contentious issue in the theory of personality description literature.

In social psychology and sociology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member.

Approach-avoidance conflicts as elements of stress were first introduced by psychologist Kurt Lewin, one of the founders of modern social psychology.

System justification theory is a theory within social psychology that system-justifying beliefs serve a psychologically palliative function.

In social psychology, the health belief model (HBM) is a psychological framework used to explain and predict individuals' potentially detrimental behaviors, attitudes and beliefs on their health.

The triangular theory of love is a theory of love developed by Robert Sternberg.

The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is a psychological theory that links beliefs to behavior.

The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion is a dual process theory describing the change of attitudes.

Self-perception theory (SPT) is an account of attitude formation developed by psychologist Daryl Bem.

The social penetration theory (SPT) proposes that interpersonal communication moves from relatively shallow, non-intimate levels to deeper, more intimate ones as relationships develop.

The frustration-aggression hypothesis, also known as the frustration-aggression-displacement theory, is a theory of aggression proposed by John Dollard, Neal Miller, Leonard Doob, Orval Mowrer, and Robert Sears in 1939, and further developed by Neal Miller in 1941 and Leonard Berkowitz in 1989.

In the psychology of motivation, balance theory is a theory of attitude change, proposed by Fritz Heider.

In psychology, reactance is an unpleasant motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, regulations, advice, recommendations, information, and messages that are perceived to threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms.

In social science research, social-desirability bias is a type of response bias that is the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others.

In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person as an object or a thing.

Foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique is a compliance tactic that aims at getting a person to agree to a large request by having them agree to a modest request first.

The sleeper effect is a psychological phenomenon that relates to persuasion.

In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people.

Integrated threat theory (ITT), also known as intergroup threat theory, is a theory in psychology and sociology which attempts to describe the components of perceived threat that lead to prejudice between social groups.

Face negotiation theory is a theory conceived by Stella Ting-Toomey in 1985, to understand how people from different cultures manage rapport and disagreements.

Regulatory focus theory (RFT) is a theory of goal pursuit formulated by Columbia University psychology professor and researcher E. Tory Higgins regarding people's motivations and perceptions in judgment and decision-making processes.

The investment model of commitment, originally described by Caryl E. Rusbult, is a predictive psychological theory that aims to explain why people remain in relationships.

The Approach/Inhibition Theory of Power was developed by Dacher Keltner in 2003.

The theory of symbolic self-completion is a psychological theory which holds that individuals seek to acquire and display symbols that are strongly related to what they perceive as the ideal self.

First proposed in 1964, an assembly bonus effect requires a demonstration of group performance which exceeds the most capable group member or the combined contributions of individual group members.

The Matthew effect, sometimes called the Matthew principle or cumulative advantage, is the tendency of individuals to accrue social or economic success in proportion to their initial level of popularity, friends, wealth, and natural advantages.

Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology-as well as in colloquial English discourse-is the application of one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of using the standards of the particular culture involved.

The Abilene paradox is a collective fallacy, in which a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of most or all individuals in the group, while each individual believes it to be aligned with the preferences of most of the others.

A toxic leader is a person who abuses the leader-follower relationship by leaving the group or organization in a worse condition than it was in originally.

Mobbing, as a sociological term, refers either to bullying in any context, or specifically to that within the workplace, especially when perpetrated by a group rather than an individual.

Anticipatory obedience is the act of preemptively conforming to what is expected to be desired by an authority figure, often without explicit orders.

The discontinuity effect is known as the markedly greater competitiveness displayed between different, interacting groups relative to the competitiveness displayed when individuals interact with other individuals.

The double standard of aging, refers to when someone, typically a woman, is held to a higher standard than a similarly aged person, typically a man, with respect to aging.

Ghosting is a colloquial term for the practice of suddenly ending all communication and avoiding contact with another person without any apparent warning or explanation and ignoring any subsequent attempts to communicate.

Intergroup anxiety is the social phenomenon identified by Walter and Cookie Stephan in 1985 that describes the ambiguous feelings of discomfort or anxiety when interacting with members of other groups.

Peer contagion refers to the "mutual influence that occurs between an individual and a peer", and "includes behaviors and emotions that potentially undermine one's own development or cause harm to others". Peer contagion refers to the transmission or transfer of deviant behavior from one adolescent to another.

Peer pressure is a direct or indirect influence on peers, i.e., members of social groups with similar interests and experiences, or social statuses.

People in interactive, brainstorming groups generally produce fewer and less creative ideas than they would have if they were working individually.

"Closing time effect" refers to the phenomenon whereby people's perception of other people's attractiveness increases as it gets later into the night.

The social influence bias is an asymmetric herding effect on online social media platforms that makes users overcompensate for negative ratings but amplify positive ones.

In psychology and sociology, adultification refers to the treatment of some children by adults as being more mature than they actually are-such as when they are expected to take on age-inappropriate adult roles and responsibilities as children, and when they are taken to be as culpable as adults for any crime or wrongdoing.

Homohysteria is the fear of being thought homosexual because of behavior that is typically considered gender atypical.

Minority influence, a form of social influence, takes place when a member of a minority group influences the majority to accept the minority's beliefs or behavior.

"Wisdom of the crowd" or "wisdom of the majority" expresses the notion that the collective opinion of a diverse and independent group of individuals (rather than that of a single expert) yields the best judgement.

The Michelangelo phenomenon is an interpersonal process observed by psychologists in which close, romantic partners influence or 'sculpt' each other.

Gender bias is a societal concept in which one gender is preferred over another.

The women-are-wonderful effect is the phenomenon found in psychological and sociological research which suggests that people associate more positive attributes with women than with men.

Fragile masculinity is a concept describing the potential anxiety among males who feel they do not meet cultural standards of masculinity.

Mortality salience is the awareness that one's death is inevitable and that all attempts to defer it indefinitely are ultimately futile.

The red dress effect, which can be broadened to the general red-attraction effect, the red-romance effect, or the romantic red effect, is a phenomenon in which the color red increases physical attraction, sexual desire, and romantic sentiments in comparison to other colors.

The Proteus effect describes a phenomenon in which the behavior of an individual, within virtual worlds, is changed by the characteristics of their avatar.

Martin Elias Peter Seligman (; born August 12, 1942) is an American psychologist, educator, and author of self-help books.

Walter Mischel (German: [ˈvaltɐ ˈmɪʃl̩]; February 22, 1930 - September 12, 2018) was an Austrian-born American psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology.

Lawrence Kohlberg (; October 25, 1927 - January 17, 1987) was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development.

Robert Rosenthal (March 2, 1933 - January 5, 2024) was a German-born American psychologist who was a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside.

Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST; developed by Stanford psychologist Laura L. Carstensen) is a life-span theory of motivation.

Icek Ajzen (born 1942, Chełm, Poland) is a social psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

John Walter Thibaut (1917-1986) was a social psychologist, one of the last graduate students of Kurt Lewin.

Harold Kelley (February 16, 1921 - January 29, 2003) was an American social psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Fritz Heider (19 February 1896 - 2 January 1988) was an American/Austrian social psychologist whose work was related to the Gestalt school.

Daryl J. Bem (born June 10, 1938) is an American social psychologist and professor emeritus at Cornell University.

Irwin Altman (born July 16, 1930, in New York City, New York), is a social psychologist who earned his B.A. degree from New York University in 1951, his M.A. degree from the University of Maryland in 1954 and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1957.

William B. Swann (born 1952) is a professor of social and personality psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Albert Jan "Ap" Dijksterhuis (born 12 November 1968, Zutphen) received his Ph.D. in social sciences from Radboud University Nijmegen in 1996.

Loran F. Nordgren is an American professor of psychology who studies the adoption of new ideas and behaviors.

Bluma Zeigarnik (Russian: Блю́ма Ву́льфовна Зейга́рник, IPA: [ˈblʲumə ˈvulʲfəvnə zʲɪjˈɡarnʲɪk]; 9 November [O.S. 27 October] 1900 - 24 February 1988) was a Soviet psychologist and a member of the Berlin School of experimental psychology and the so-called Vygotsky Circle.

Marie Jahoda (26 January 1907 - 28 April 2001) was an Austrian-British social psychologist.

Diederik Alexander Stapel (born 19 October 1966) is a Dutch former professor of social psychology at Tilburg University.

Ignacio Martín-Baró (November 7, 1942 - November 16, 1989) was a scholar, social psychologist, philosopher and Jesuit priest who was born in Valladolid, Spain, and died in San Salvador, El Salvador.

Sandra Ruth Lipsitz Bem (June 22, 1944 - May 20, 2014) was an American psychologist known for her works in androgyny and gender studies.

Susan Tufts Fiske (born August 19, 1952) is an American psychologist who served as the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs in the Department of Psychology at Princeton University until her retirement in 2023.

Wade W. Nobles is a professor emeritus in the Department of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University and notable pioneer of the African-American psychology movement.

Amy Joy Casselberry Cuddy (born July 23, 1972) is an American social psychologist, author and speaker.

John A. Bargh (; born 1955) is an American social psychologist working at Yale University as the Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Professor Emeritus of Psychology and of Cognitive Science and Management.

David Michael Buss (born April 14, 1953) is an American evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, researching human sex differences in mate selection.

Rosy retrospection is a proposed psychological phenomenon of recalling the past more positively than it was actually experienced.

Compassion fade is the tendency to experience a decrease in empathy as the number of people in need of aid increase.

Distinction bias, a concept of decision theory, is the tendency to view two options as more distinctive when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.

Dehumanization is the process, practice, or act of denying full humanity in others, along with the cruelty and suffering that accompany it.

The black sheep effect (BSE) is a psychological phenomenon in which members of a social group judge deviant ingroup members more harshly than members that are aligned with an outgroup (Marques et al., 1988).

Locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they, as opposed to external forces (beyond their influence), have control over the outcome of events in their lives.

Scarcity as a concept in social psychology operates much like scarcity in the area of economics.

An empathy gap, sometimes referred to as an empathy bias, is a breakdown or reduction in empathy (the ability to recognize, understand, and share another's thoughts and feelings) where it might otherwise be expected to occur.

Crab mentality, also known as crab theory, crabs in a bucket mentality, or the crab-bucket effect, describes the mindset of people who try to prevent others from gaining a favorable position, even if attaining such position would not directly impact those trying to stop them.

Gender schema theory is a cognitive theory to explain how individuals become gendered in society, and how sex-linked characteristics are maintained and transmitted to other members of a culture.

In social psychology, group polarization refers to the tendency for a group to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members.

Much recent work involves academics from social psychology, sociology, and network science investigating online social networks.

The superstar effect or "Tiger Woods effect" refers to the change in performance caused by the presence of a highly ranked player-a superstar-in a rank-order competition.

The amity-enmity complex theory was introduced by Sir Arthur Keith in his work A New Theory of Human Evolution (1948).

Solo status is a social psychology term first popularized by Lord and Saenz (1985), to classify the situation when only one member of a particular social category (race, gender, culture) is present in a group setting.

Excitation-transfer theory, based heavily on psychology, psychophysiology, and biochemistry, is a psychological theory that originated in the field of social psychology and effects studies pertaining to communication.

The weapons effect is a controversial theory described and debated in the scientific field of social psychology.

Herd mentality is the tendency for people's behavior or beliefs to conform to those of the group they belong to.

Shelley Elizabeth Taylor (born 1946) is an American psychologist.

Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı (29 January 1940 - 2 March 2017) was a Turkish scientist and professor.

Roger William Brown (April 14, 1925 - December 11, 1997) was an American psychologist.

Gregory M. Herek (born 1954 in Omaha, Nebraska) is a researcher, author, and professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis (UCD).

Larissa Z. Tiedens is an American social psychologist and academic administrator known for her research on emotions, social hierarchy, and organizational behavior.

Positioning theory is a theory in social psychology that characterizes interactions between individuals.

In Gestalt psychology and social psychology, field theory is a theory that examines patterns of interaction between the individual and the total field, or environment.

In social psychology, the stereotype content model (SCM) is a model, first proposed in 2002, postulating that all group stereotypes and interpersonal impressions form along two dimensions: (1) warmth and (2) competence.

In social psychology, the cross-race effect is described as the "ingroup advantage," whereas in other fields, the effect can be seen as a specific form of the "ingroup advantage" since it is only applied in interracial or inter-ethnic situations.

Effort justification is an idea and paradigm in social psychology stemming from Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance.

The door-in-the-face technique is a compliance method commonly studied in social psychology.

Since its introduction into the academic literature, stereotype threat has become one of the most widely studied topics in the field of social psychology.

The minimal group paradigm is a method employed in social psychology.

In social psychology, collective narcissism (or group narcissism) is the tendency to exaggerate the positive image and importance of a group to which one belongs.

In social psychology, hysterical contagion occurs when people in a group show signs of a physical problem or illness, when in reality there are psychological and social forces at work.

Idiosyncrasy credit is a concept in social psychology that describes an individual's capacity to acceptably deviate from group expectations.

Moral disengagement is a term from developmental psychology, educational psychology and social psychology for the process of convincing the self that ethical standards do not apply to oneself in a particular context.

Martin Fishbein (March 2, 1936 Brooklyn, New York, November 27, 2009 London) was a social psychologist, considered influential, and active AIDS prevention.

Petty received his Ph.D. in social psychology from Ohio State in 1977.

Mamie Phipps Clark (October 18, 1917, August 11, 1983) was a social psychologist who, along with her husband Kenneth Clark, focused on the development of self-consciousness in black preschool children.

It is considered a milestone work in personality theory and social psychology.

In the 1940s he became one of the founding members of the Asociación Argentina de Psicoanálisis (Argentine Psychoanalytic Association, or APA) and in the 1950s participated in the creation of the first private school of Social Psychology and the Instituto Argentino de Estudios Sociales (Argentine Institute of Social Studies, or IADES).

Shalom Hillel Schwartz (Hebrew: שלום שוורץ; born January 1, 1936) is a social psychologist, cross-cultural researcher and creator of the Theory of Basic Human Values (universal values as latent motivations and goals).

Her primary research focus is social psychology, as well as personality psychology and Industrial Organizational Psychology.

From 1974 to 1978, he attended the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut, where he received his Ph.D. in personality and social psychology and studied attribution theory with Charles A.

Developed by Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen in 1967, the theory derived from previous research in social psychology, persuasion models, and attitude theories.

It was designed by social psychologist Elliot Aronson to help weaken racial cliques in forcibly integrated schools.

In sociology and social psychology, similar patterns are sometimes called irrational escalation of commitment or commitment bias.

Research in social psychology shows that when individuals are subtly mimicked during an interaction, they tend to like the other person more and perceive the interaction as smoother and more natural, even when they are not consciously aware that mirroring is happening.

Social psychologist Daniel Wegner first studied ironic process theory in a laboratory setting in 1987.

HARKing (hypothesizing after the results are known) is an acronym coined by social psychologist Norbert Kerr that refers to the questionable research practice of "presenting a post hoc hypothesis in the introduction of a research report as if it were an a priori hypothesis".

Of them, social psychologist Gordon Allport united early research in this vein under intergroup contact theory.

Self-licensing (also moral self-licensing, moral licensing, or licensing effect) is a term used in social psychology and marketing to describe the subconscious phenomenon whereby increased confidence and security in one's self-image or self-concept tends to make that individual worry less about the consequences of subsequent immoral behavior and, therefore, more likely to make immoral choices and act immorally.

In social psychology, illusory superiority is a cognitive bias wherein people overestimate their own qualities and abilities compared to others.

Kurt Zadek Lewin (September 9, 1890 - February 12, 1947), was a German -born psychologist , one of the pioneers of contemporary social psychology

In her professional work as a social psychologist, Caryl was a dedicated scholar, a scientist who conscientiously studied the most important part of human life, personal relationships.

Elliot Aronson is a prominent American social psychologist.