Vested interest is a communication theory that seeks to explain how an attitude of self-interest can affect behavior; or, in more technical terms, to question how certain hedonically relevant attitudinal dimensions can influence and consistently predict behavior based on the degree of subjective investment an individual has in a particular attitude object.
In-group favoritism, sometimes known as in-group–out-group bias, in-group bias, intergroup bias, or in-group preference, is a pattern of favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, in allocation of resources, and in many other ways.
Motivational salience is a cognitive process and a form of attention that motivates or propels an individual's behavior towards or away from a particular object, perceived event or outcome. Motivational salience regulates the intensity of behaviors that facilitate the attainment of a particular goal, the amount of time and energy that an individual is willing to expend to attain a particular goal, and the amount of risk that an individual is willing to accept while working to attain a particular goal.
The implicit-association test (IAT) is an assessment intended to detect subconscious associations between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory. Its best-known application is the assessment of implicit stereotypes held by test subjects, such as associations between particular racial categories and stereotypes about those groups. The test has been applied to a variety of belief associations, such as those involving racial groups, gender, sexuality, age, and religion but also the self-esteem, political views, and predictions of the test taker. The implicit-association test is the subject of significant academic and popular debate regarding its validity, reliability, and usefulness in assessing implicit bias.
Salience is the state or condition of being prominent. The Oxford English Dictionary defines salience as "most noticeable or important." The concept is discussed in communication, semiotics, linguistics, sociology, psychology, and political science. It has been studied with respect to interpersonal communication, persuasion, politics, and its influence on mass media.
Terror management theory (TMT) is both a social and evolutionary psychology theory originally proposed by Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski and codified in their book The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life (2015). It proposes that a basic psychological conflict results from having a self-preservation instinct while realizing that death is inevitable and to some extent unpredictable. This conflict produces terror, which is managed through escapism and cultural beliefs that counter biological reality with more significant and enduring forms of meaning and value—basically countering the personal insignificance represented by death with the significance provided by symbolic culture.
Salience is the property by which some thing stands out. Salient events are an attentional mechanism by which organisms learn and survive; those organisms can focus their limited perceptual and cognitive resources on the pertinent subset of the sensory data available to them.
Kent C. Berridge is an American academic, currently working as a professor of psychology (biopsychology) and neuroscience at the University of Michigan. Berridge was a joint winner of the 2018 Grawemeyer Award for Psychology.
Social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group.
Shelley Elizabeth Taylor is an American psychologist. She serves as a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University, and was formerly on the faculty at Harvard University. A prolific author of books and scholarly journal articles, Taylor has long been a leading figure in two subfields related to her primary discipline of social psychology: social cognition and health psychology. Her books include The Tending Instinct and Social Cognition, the latter by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor.
In social psychology, social salience is the extent to which a particular target draws the attention of an observer or group. The target may be a physical object or a person. If the target is a person, they may be alone or a member of a group or else in a situation of interpersonal communication. It is based on the way a particular feature can be linked to a certain type of speaker, who is then associated with social and emotional evaluations. These evaluations are then transferred to the linguistic feature.
The social identity model of deindividuation effects is a theory developed in social psychology and communication studies. SIDE explains the effects of anonymity and identifiability on group behavior. It has become one of several theories of technology that describe social effects of computer-mediated communication.
Self-categorization theory is a theory in social psychology that describes the circumstances under which a person will perceive collections of people as a group, as well as the consequences of perceiving people in group terms. Although the theory is often introduced as an explanation of psychological group formation, it is more accurately thought of as general analysis of the functioning of categorization processes in social perception and interaction that speaks to issues of individual identity as much as group phenomena. It was developed by John Turner and colleagues, and along with social identity theory it is a constituent part of the social identity approach. It was in part developed to address questions that arose in response to social identity theory about the mechanistic underpinnings of social identification.
Mortality salience is the awareness that one's death is inevitable.
A reverse salient refers to a component of a technological system that, due to its insufficient development, prevents the system in its entirety from achieving its development goals. The term was coined by Thomas P. Hughes, in his work Networks of power: Electrification in western society, 1880-1930.
The job demands-resources model is an occupational stress model that suggests strain is a response to imbalance between demands on the individual and the resources he or she has to deal with those demands. The JD-R was introduced as an alternative to other models of employee well-being, such as the demand-control model and the effort-reward imbalance model.
Anxiety buffer disruption theory (ABDT) is an application of terror management theory to explain an individual's reaction to a traumatic event, which leads to post traumatic stress disorder. Terror management theory posits that humans, unlike any other organism, are uniquely aware that death is the inevitable outcome of life. When thoughts of death are made salient, such as when a terrorist attack carries those thoughts into the level of consciousness, humans are subject to debilitating anxiety unless it can be "buffered." Humans respond to the anxiety and dread mortality salience produces by clinging to their cultural worldview, through self-esteem and also close personal relationships. Cultural worldviews, with their cultural norms, religious beliefs and moral values infuse life with meaning. They give life a feeling of normalcy and also a feeling of control. There is no way to definitely prove one's cultural worldview, there they are fragile human constructs and must be maintained. Clinging to a cultural worldview and self-esteem buffer the anxiety connected to thoughts of mortality. When thoughts of death are salient, humans are drawn to their cultural world view which "stipulates appropriate social requirements, and standards for valued conduct, while instilling one's life with meaning, order and permanence."
Praise as a form of social interaction expresses recognition, reassurance or admiration.
