Social Psychology and Prejudice

This page delves into the concepts of prejudice, discrimination, and social group dynamics, which are crucial aspects of social psychology.

Social group dynamics and prejudice play a significant role in shaping human behavior and interactions. Prejudice refers to negative attitudes towards a group based on their membership or affiliation, while discrimination involves negative behavior towards members of a target group.

Definition: Stereotypes are generalizations about a group based solely on their membership, not individual characteristics.

In-group bias is the tendency to favor members of one's own group, while out-groups are social groups to which an individual does not belong. The scapegoat theory explains how powerful groups may blame less powerful groups for their problems.

Example: The Robbers Cave experiment by Muzafer Sherif examined how group hostility can be created and overcome through the use of superordinate goals.

Vocabulary: Superordinate goals are shared objectives that require cooperation and can help overcome differences between groups.

Memory Formation and Retrieval

The process of memory formation and retrieval involves multiple stages and cognitive mechanisms. This page explores the key concepts of memory, including recognition, recall, and the three-stage model of memory.

Stages of memory formation and retrieval include sensory memory, working/short-term memory, and long-term memory. The information-processing model involves three main processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Definition: Explicit memories are conscious memories of facts and experiences, while implicit memories involve skills and classically conditioned associations.

The brain processes different types of information automatically, including space, time, and frequency. Sensory memory feeds some information into working memory for active processing.

Vocabulary: Iconic memory is a brief sensory memory of visual stimuli, while echoic memory is a short sensory memory of auditory stimuli.

The brain's frontal lobes and hippocampus are involved in explicit memory formation, while the cerebellum and basal ganglia are crucial for implicit memory formation. Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a process where neurons become more efficient at transmitting signals.

Highlight: The serial position effect explains why we tend to recall the first and last items in a list better than those in the middle.