Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group, or between social groups. The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision-making behaviour, tracking the spread of diseases in society, creating effective therapy techniques, and following the emergence and popularity of new ideas and technologies. These applications of the field are studied in psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, epidemiology, education, social work, leadership studies, business and managerial studies, as well as communication studies.
The group attribution error refers to people's tendency to believe either
- the characteristics of an individual group member are reflective of the group as a whole, or
- a group's decision outcome must reflect the preferences of individual group members, even when external information is available suggesting otherwise.
Social rejection occurs when an individual is deliberately excluded from a social relationship or social interaction. The topic includes interpersonal rejection, romantic rejection, and familial estrangement. A person can be rejected or shunned by individuals or an entire group of people. Furthermore, rejection can be either active by bullying, teasing, or ridiculing, or passive by ignoring a person, or giving the "silent treatment". The experience of being rejected is subjective for the recipient, and it can be perceived when it is not actually present. The word "ostracism" is also commonly used to denote a process of social exclusion.
Caring in intimate relationships is the practice of providing care and support to an intimate relationship partner. Caregiving behaviours are aimed at reducing the partner's distress and supporting their coping efforts in situations of either threat or challenge. Caregiving may include emotional support and/or instrumental support. Effective caregiving behaviour enhances the care-recipient's psychological well-being, as well as the quality of the relationship between the caregiver and the care-recipient. However, certain suboptimal caregiving strategies may be either ineffective or even detrimental to coping.
Internalized racism is a form of internalized oppression, defined by sociologist Karen D. Pyke as the "internalization of racial oppression by the racially subordinated." In her study The Psychology of Racism, Robin Nicole Johnson emphasizes that internalized racism involves both "conscious and unconsious acceptance of a racial hierarchy in which a presumed superior race are consistently ranked above other races. These definitions encompass a wide range of instances, including, but not limited to, belief in negative stereotypes, adaptations to cultural standards, and thinking that supports the status quo.
In social psychology, entitativity is the degree to which a group is perceived as a cohesive, unified entity. It describes how much a collection of individuals is seen as "group-like" and bonded by common attributes, such as shared goals or traits. Perceived entitativity occurs when people view an aggregate of individuals as a single entity, attributing to them common characteristics or a collective purpose. Thus, a group is seen as a "real" group when its members' behaviors are seen as stemming from shared goals or traits.
Social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group.
Laurie A. Rudman is a social psychology feminist professor as well as the Director of the Rutgers University Social Cognition Laboratory who has contributed a great deal of research to studies on implicit and explicit attitudes and stereotypes, stereotype maintenance processes, and the media's effects on attitudes, stereotypes, and behavior on the Feminism movement. She was awarded the 1994 Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize for her research examining the effects of sexist advertising on men's behavior toward female job applicants.
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes are often overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information. A stereotype does not necessarily need to be a negative assumption. They may be positive, neutral, or negative.
Symbolic racism is a coherent belief system that reflects an underlying one-dimensional prejudice towards a racialized ethnicity. Symbolic racism is more of a general term than it is one specifically related to prejudice towards black people. These beliefs may cause the subject to discriminate against black people and to justify this discrimination. Some people do not view symbolic racism as prejudice since it is not linked directly to race but is indirectly linked through social and political issues.
Self-image is the mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change, that depicts not only details that are potentially available to an objective investigation by others, but also items that have been learned by persons about themselves, either from personal experiences or by internalizing the judgments of others. In some formulations, it is a component of self-concept.
Mark Schaller is an American psychological scientist who has made many contributions to the study of human psychology, particularly in areas of social cognition, stereotyping, evolutionary psychology, and cultural psychology. He is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia.
Ambivalent prejudice is a social psychological theory that states that, when people become aware that they have conflicting beliefs about an outgroup, they experience an unpleasant mental feeling generally referred to as cognitive dissonance. These feelings are brought about because the individual on one hand believes in humanitarian virtues such as helping those in need, but on the other hand also believes in individualistic virtues such as working hard to improve one's life.
Benevolent prejudice is a superficially positive prejudice expressed in terms of positive beliefs and emotional responses, which are associated with hostile prejudices or result in keeping affected groups in inferior societal positions. Benevolent prejudice can be expressed towards those of different race, religion, ideology, country, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
An implicit bias or implicit stereotype is the pre-reflective attribution of particular qualities by an individual to a member of some social out group.
Minority stress describes high levels of stress faced by members of stigmatized minority groups. It may be caused by a number of factors, including poor social support and low socioeconomic status; well understood causes of minority stress are interpersonal prejudice and discrimination. Indeed, numerous scientific studies have shown that when minority individuals experience a high degree of prejudice, this can cause stress responses that accrue over time, eventually leading to poor mental and physical health. Minority stress theory summarizes these scientific studies to explain how difficult social situations lead to chronic stress and poor health among minority individuals.
Patricia Grace Devine is a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she was the psychology department chair from 2009 to 2014. She was also the 2012 president of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
Intergroup relations refers to interactions between individuals in different social groups, and to interactions taking place between the groups themselves collectively. It has long been a subject of research in social psychology, political psychology, and organizational behavior.
Diversity ideology refers to individual beliefs regarding the nature of intergroup relations and how to improve them in culturally diverse societies. A large amount of scientific literature in social psychology studies diversity ideologies as prejudice reduction strategies, most commonly in the context of racial groups and interracial interactions. In research studies on the effects of diversity ideology, social psychologists have either examined endorsement of a diversity ideology as individual difference or used situational priming designs to activate the mindset of a particular diversity ideology. It is consistently shown that diversity ideologies influence how individuals perceive, judge and treat cultural outgroup members. Different diversity ideologies are associated with distinct effects on intergroup relations, such as stereotyping and prejudice, intergroup equality, and intergroup interactions from the perspectives of both majority and minority group members. Beyond intergroup consequences, diversity ideology also has implications on individual outcomes, such as whether people are open to cultural fusion and foreign ideas, which in turn predict creativity.
The psychological impact of discrimination on health refers to the cognitive pathways through which discrimination impacts mental and physical health in members of marginalized, subordinate, and low-status groups. Research on the relation between discrimination and health became a topic of interest in the 1990s, when researchers proposed that persisting racial/ethnic disparities in health outcomes could potentially be explained by racial/ethnic differences in experiences with discrimination. Although the bulk of the research tend to focus on the interactions between interpersonal discrimination and health, researchers studying discrimination and health in the United States have proposed that institutional discrimination and cultural racism also give rise to conditions that contribute to persisting racial and economic health disparities.
