• People form impressions about others through the process of person perception.
• People’s physical appearance strongly influences the way they are perceived by others.
• People are particularly influenced by physical attractiveness and baby-faced features.
• Social schemas affect how people perceive events and other people.

• Stereotypes are beliefs about people based on their membership in a particular group.
• Stereotypes tend to be difficult to change.
• Stereotyping has some important functions, but it can also distort reality in dangerous ways.
• Evolutionary psychologists believe that people evolved the tendency to stereotype because it gave their ancestors an adaptive advantage.
• A prejudice is a negative belief or feeling about a particular group of individuals.
• Prejudice is pervasive because it serves many social and psychological functions.
• Researchers find it difficult to measure prejudice. They often measure implicit rather than explicit prejudice.
• People who identify strongly with their ingroup are more likely to be prejudiced against people in outgroups.
• Research shows that there are effective ways to reduce prejudice.

• Attributions are inferences people make about the causes of events and behavior.
• Attributions can be classified along two dimensions: internal vs. external and stable vs. unstable.
• People often make incorrect attributions because of the fundamental attribution error, the self-serving bias, and the just world hypothesis.
• Cultural values and norms affect the way people make attributions.

• Attitudes are evaluations people make about objects, ideas, events, or other people. They can be explicit or implicit and can include beliefs, emotions, and behavior.
• Attitudes vary according to strength, accessibility, and ambivalence.
• Attitudes do not always affect behavior.
• The foot-in-the-door phenomenon and the prison study show that behavior can affect attitudes.
• Theories that account for attitude change are learning theory, dissonance theory, and the elaboration likelihood model.

• Some common social influence strategies are the foot-in-the-door technique, the lowball technique, manipulation of the reciprocity norm, and feigning scarcity.
• Persuasion involves a source, a receiver, a message, and a channel.
• Credible, likable sources are more likely to be persuasive.
• Many features of the source, receiver, and message influence persuasion.
• Coercive persuasion involves limiting freedom to choose and preventing clear reasoning.

• Interpersonal attraction refers to positive feelings about another person.
• Physical attractiveness, proximity, similarity, and reciprocity influence attraction.
• Romantic love includes passionate and compassionate love.
• Compassionate love includes intimacy and commitment.
• Infant attachment styles tend to be reproduced in adult relationships.
• There are both similarities and differences among cultures in romantic attraction.
• Evolutionary psychologists speculate that the tendency to be attracted to physically attractive people is adaptive.

• Obedience is compliance with commands given by an authority figure.
• Stanley Milgram’s obedience study showed that people have a strong tendency to comply with authority figures.
• The degree of obedience depends on many situational factors.
• People sometimes carry obedience to extremes.

• A group is a social unit composed of two or more people who interact and depend on each other in some way.
• Groups tend to have distinct norms, roles, communication structures, and power structures.
• Conformity is the process of giving in to real or imagined pressure from a group.
• Solomon Asch did a famous study that showed that people often conform and that social roles influence behavior.
• Factors that influence conformity include group size and unanimity, level of competence, liking for the group, and group observation of the behavior.
• People conform because of normative social influence, because of informational social influence, because they want to gain rewards, and because they identify with the group.
• Insufficient coordination and social loafing contribute to lowered productivity in groups.
• Social facilitation may occur in some group situations.
• Groupthink, group polarization, and minority influence affect decision-making in groups.
• Deindividuation sometimes occurs in large, anonymous, arousing groups.

• People are less likely to offer help in the presence of other people.
• Bystanders are more likely to help people in some circumstances than others.
• Explanations for helping behavior include social exchange theory, the social responsibility norm, and the reciprocity norm.
• A social trap is a situation in which acting in one’s own self-interest can harm both the actor and others.