Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the relationship between mental states and social situations, studying the social conditions under which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur, and how these variables influence social interactions.
Victimology is the study of victimization, including the psychological effects on victims, the relationship between victims and offenders, the interactions between victims and the criminal justice system—that is, the police and courts, and corrections officials—and the connections between victims and other social groups and institutions, such as the media, businesses, and social movements.
In social psychology, fundamental attribution error (FAE), also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect, is a cognitive attribution bias where observers under-emphasize situational and environmental explanations for the behavior of an actor while overemphasizing dispositional- and personality-based explanations. This effect has been described as "the tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are"; that is, to overattribute their behaviors to their personality and underattribute them to the situation or context. Although personality traits and predispositions are considered to be observable facts in psychology, the fundamental attribution error is an error because it misinterprets their effects.
The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological theory that states that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim in presence of other people. First proposed in 1964 after the murder of Kitty Genovese, much research, mostly in psychology research laboratories, has focused on increasingly varied factors, such as the number of bystanders, ambiguity, group cohesiveness, and diffusion of responsibility that reinforces mutual denial. If a single individual is asked to complete the task alone, the sense of responsibility will be strong, and there will be a positive response; however, if a group is required to complete the task together, each individual in the group will have a weak sense of responsibility, and will often shrink back in the face of difficulties or responsibilities. The theory was prompted by the murder of Kitty Genovese about which it was wrongly reported that 38 bystanders watched passively. Recent research has focused on "real world" events captured on security cameras, and the coherency and robustness of the effect has come under question. More recent studies also show that this effect can generalize to workplace settings, where subordinates often refrain from informing managers regarding ideas, concerns, and opinions.
Actor–observer asymmetry is a bias one makes when forming attributions about the behavior of others or themselves depending on whether they are an actor or an observer in a situation. When people judge their own behavior, they are more likely to attribute their actions to the particular situation than to their personality. However, when an observer is explaining the behavior of another person, they are more likely to attribute this behavior to the actors' personality rather than to situational factors.
In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors. People constantly make attributions—judgements and assumptions about why people behave in certain ways. However, attributions do not always accurately reflect reality. Rather than operating as objective perceivers, people are prone to perceptual errors that lead to biased interpretations of their social world. Attribution biases are present in everyday life. For example, when a driver cuts someone off, the person who has been cut off is often more likely to attribute blame to the reckless driver's inherent personality traits rather than situational circumstances. Additionally, there are many different types of attribution biases, such as the ultimate attribution error, fundamental attribution error, actor-observer bias, and hostile attribution bias. Each of these biases describes a specific tendency that people exhibit when reasoning about the cause of different behaviors.
A self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner. It is the belief that individuals tend to ascribe success to their own abilities and efforts, but ascribe failure to external factors. When individuals reject the validity of negative feedback, focus on their strengths and achievements but overlook their faults and failures, or take more credit for their group's work than they give to other members, they are protecting their self-esteem from threat and injury. These cognitive and perceptual tendencies perpetuate illusions and error, but they also serve the self's need for esteem. For example, a student who attributes earning a good grade on an exam to their own intelligence and preparation but attributes earning a poor grade to the teacher's poor teaching ability or unfair test questions might be exhibiting the self-serving bias. Studies have shown that similar attributions are made in various situations, such as the workplace, interpersonal relationships, sports, and consumer decisions.
Diffusion of responsibility is a sociopsychological phenomenon whereby a person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction when other bystanders or witnesses are present. Considered a form of attribution, the individual assumes that others either are responsible for taking action or have already done so.
The halo effect is the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, country, brand, or product in one area to positively or negatively influence one's opinion or feelings in other areas. Halo effect is "the name given to the phenomenon whereby evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality." The halo effect is a cognitive bias which can possibly prevent someone from accepting a person, a product or a brand based on the idea of an unfounded belief on what is good or bad.
The just-world hypothesis or just-world fallacy is the cognitive bias that assumes that "people get what they deserve" – that actions will have morally fair and fitting consequences for the actor. For example, the assumptions that noble actions will eventually be rewarded and evil actions will eventually be punished fall under this hypothesis. In other words, the just-world hypothesis is the tendency to attribute consequences to—or expect consequences as the result of— either a universal force that restores moral balance or a universal connection between the nature of actions and their results. This belief generally implies the existence of cosmic justice, destiny, divine providence, desert, stability, and/or order. It is often associated with a variety of fundamental fallacies, especially in regard to rationalizing suffering on the grounds that the sufferers "deserve" it.
The physical attractiveness stereotype is a tendency to assume that people who are physically attractive also possess other desirable personality traits. Stereotyping is the process by which people draw inferences about others based on knowledge of the categories to which they belong.
Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them. There is historical and current prejudice against the victims of domestic violence and sex crimes, such as the greater tendency to blame victims of rape than victims of robbery if victims and perpetrators knew each other prior to the commission of the crime.
Depressive realism is the hypothesis developed by Lauren Alloy and Lyn Yvonne Abramson that depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than non-depressed individuals. Although depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias that results in recurrent, negative automatic thoughts, maladaptive behaviors, and dysfunctional world beliefs, depressive realism argues not only that this negativity may reflect a more accurate appraisal of the world but also that non-depressed individuals' appraisals are positively biased.
Date rape is a form of acquaintance rape and dating violence. The two phrases are often used interchangeably, but date rape specifically refers to a rape in which there has been some sort of romantic or potentially sexual relationship between the two parties. Acquaintance rape also includes rapes in which the victim and perpetrator have been in a non-romantic, non-sexual relationship, for example as co-workers or neighbors.
Attribution is a term used in psychology which deals with how individuals perceive the causes of everyday experience, as being either external or internal. Models to explain this process are called attribution theory. Psychological research into attribution began with the work of Fritz Heider in the early 20th century, and the theory was further advanced by Harold Kelley and Bernard Weiner. Heider first introduced the concept of perceived 'locus of causality' to define the perception of one's environment. For instance, an experience may be perceived as being caused by factors outside the person's control (external) or it may be perceived as the person's own doing (internal). These initial perceptions are called attributions. Psychologists use these attributions to better understand an individual's motivation and competence. The theory is of particular interest to employers who use it to increase worker motivation, goal orientation, and productivity.
Social perception is the study of how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people as sovereign personalities. Social perception refers to identifying and utilizing social cues to make judgments about social roles, rules, relationships, context, or the characteristics of others. This domain also includes social knowledge, which refers to one's knowledge of social roles, norms, and schemas surrounding social situations and interactions. People learn about others' feelings and emotions by picking up information they gather from physical appearance, verbal, and nonverbal communication. Facial expressions, tone of voice, hand gestures, and body position or movement are a few examples of ways people communicate without words. A real-world example of social perception is understanding that others disagree with what one said when one sees them roll their eyes. There are four main components of social perception: observation, attribution, integration, and confirmation.
The ultimate attribution error is a type of attribution error which proposed to explain why attributions of outgroup behavior is more negative than ingroup behavior. Ultimate attribution error itself described as a cognitive bias where negative outgroup behavior is more likely attributed to factors internal and specific to the actor, such as personality. The second component of the bias is a higher chance of attributing negative ingroup behavior to external factors such as luck or circumstance. This bias is said to reinforce a negative stereotype and prejudice about the outgroup, and favouritism of the ingroup through positive stereotypes. The theory was later extended to the bias that positive acts performed by ingroup members are more likely a result of their personality, whereas, if an ingroup member behaves negatively, it is more likely a result of situational factors.
Self-blame is a cognitive process in which an individual attributes the occurrence of a stressful event to oneself. The direction of blame often has implications for individuals’ emotions and behaviors during and following stressful situations. Self-blame is a common reaction to stressful events and has certain effects on how individuals adapt. Types of self-blame are hypothesized to contribute to depression, and self-blame is a component of self-directed emotions like guilt and self-disgust. Because of self-blame's commonality in response to stress and its role in emotion, self-blame should be examined using psychology's perspectives on stress and coping. This article will attempt to give an overview of the contemporary study on self-blame in psychology.
Rape myths are prejudicial, stereotyped, and false beliefs about sexual assaults, rapists, and rape victims. They often serve to excuse sexual aggression, create hostility toward victims, and bias criminal prosecution.
Attributions for poverty is a theory concerned with what people believe about the causes of poverty. These beliefs are defined in terms of attribution theory, which is a social psychological perspective on how people make causal explanations about events in the world. In forming attributions, people rely on the information that is available to them in the moment, and their heuristics, or mental shortcuts. When considering the causes of poverty, people form attributions using the same tools: the information they have and mental shortcuts that are based on their experiences. Consistent with the literature on heuristics, people often rely on shortcuts to make sense of the causes of their own behavior and that of others, which often results in biased attributions. This information leads to perceptions about the causes of poverty, and in turn, ideas about how to eradicate poverty.
