The way we interpret, analyze, and remember information about ourselves and others.
Social cognition
Positive or negative feelings one has about themselves
Self-esteem
Relatively enduring evaluation of an object, person, place, idea, etc
Attitude
Type of communication that does not involve speaking, including facial expressions, body language, touching, voice patterns, and interpersonal distance
A type of learning in which behavior is controlled by consequences, such as rewards or punishments
Operant conditioning
The process of comparing oneself to others who are perceived as worse off or less successful, often to boost self-esteem or feel better about one’s own situation.
Downward Social Comparison
The tendency to seek out, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or expectations
Confirmation bias
The process of explaining behavior as the result of situational factors, rather than personal traits or characteristics.
External attribution
The tendency to seek, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms existing beliefs.
Confirmation bias
The process by which individuals try to control the image they project to others in order to influence how they are perceived
Self-presentation
Type of information processing that requires deliberately evaluating the content of the message
Thoughtful message processing
The tendency to remember and give greater importance to information that is presented first in a sequence
Primacy effect
The process of integrating new information into an existing schema
Assimilation
When we adopt others' labels into our self-concept
Self-labeling
A framework that explains attitudes as consisting of three components:
ABC Theory (Affective, Behavioral, Cognitive)
The tendency to make attributions that help us meet our desire to see ourselves positively
Self-serving attributions/self-serving bias
A mental shortcut where people rely on information that is most readily available to them
Availability heuristic
Concept introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois that describes how marginalized groups, particularly African Americans, navigate their identity through the lens of both their own self-perception and how they are perceived by the dominant society
Double consciousness
A persuasion strategy in which agreeing to a small request increases the likelihood of agreeing to a larger request late
Foot-in-the-Door Technique
Tendency to generalize about entire groups based on individual examples
Group attribution error