In this video, we’ll kick off a series of videos all about social psychology. We’ll discuss what the study of social psychology involves, and we’ll learn about several major theories and ideas that stem from it.

Social Psychology: The study of how people influence one another, and of the power of situational forces on behavior.

Need-to-belong Theory: Posits that humans have a biologically-based need for interpersonal connections.

Social Contagion: The idea that we look to others for knowledge or to decide how to act.

Social Comparison Theory: Posits that we seek to evaluate our abilities and beliefs by comparing them to others.

Downward Social Comparison: Comparing yourself to someone who performed more poorly than you or is otherwise worse off than you (e.g., you received a C- on an exam, but you feel better because your friend received a D-).

Upward Social Comparison: Comparing yourself to someone who performed better than you or is otherwise better off than you (e.g., you follow fitness pages on social media because seeing people in great shape motivates you to follow your nutrition and exercise plans).

Social Facilitation: The presence of others can enhance our performance in certain situations.

Social Disruption: The presence of others can disrupt our performance in certain situations (e.g., “choking” when lots of people are watching you at an important moment in a sporting match).

Fundamental Attribution Error: The assumption that the things people do are caused by dispositional factors rather than situational factors; also known as “correspondence bias.”

Dispositional Factors: Internal causes of a person’s behavior, such as their personality.

Situational Factors: External causes of a person’s behavior, such as social pressures or circumstances.

Actor-observer Bias: Attributing other people’s behavior to dispositional factors (fundamental attribution error) while attributing our own behavior to situational factors.

Self-serving Bias: Attributing our successes to dispositional factors while attributing our failures to situational factors.

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