Answers to Concept Checks

• 10.1
  1. Interpersonal attraction is what makes people like each other and is influenced by at least five factors discussed in the chapter: physical attractiveness, similarity, self-disclosure, reciprocity, and proximity.
  2. No, in addition to behavior with the intent to cause harm, aggression can also be a behavior that increases relative social dominance. Aggression can be physical, verbal, or nonverbal.
     
     

  3. Type of Attachment	Response to Caregiver
     Secure	Upset at departure of caregiver, comforted by return; trusts caregiver, who is viewed as a secure base
     Avoidant	Shows no preference for a stranger or caregiver; shows little distress at departure and little relief by return of caregiver
     Ambivalent	Distressed by departure of caregiver with mixed reactions at return
     Disorganized	No clear pattern of behavior; sometimes exhibits repetitive behaviors or seems dazed, frozen, or confused

  4. Social support is the perception or reality that one is cared for by a social network. There are five types discussed in this chapter: emotional support, esteem support, material support, informational support, and network support.
  5. Altruism is a form of helping behavior in which the person’s intent is to benefit someone else at some cost to him- or herself.
• 10.2
  1. The primacy effect is the power of first impressions over later impressions of an individual. The recency effect is weighing the most recent information of a person as the most important. The halo effect occurs when one applies general feelings about a person (usually, “good” or “bad”) to specific characteristics of that person. The just-world hypothesis is the belief that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute our successes to internal factors and our failures to external factors.
  2. Attribution theory focuses on the tendency of individuals to infer the causes of other people’s behavior. Attributions are divided into two types: dispositional (internal) causes, which relate to the features of the target, and situational (external) causes, which relate to features of the surroundings or context.
  3. Fundamental attribution error is the general bias toward making dispositional attributions rather than situational attributions about the behavior of others, especially in negative contexts.
  4. Attribute substitution occurs when individuals must make judgments that are complex but instead substitute a simpler solution or heuristic.
• 10.3
  1. Stereotypes occur when attitudes and impressions are made based on limited and superficial information about a person or a group of individuals and are cognitive. Prejudice is defined as an irrational negative, or occasionally positive, attitude toward a person, group, or thing, which is formed prior to an actual experience and is affective. Discrimination is when prejudicial attitudes cause individuals of a particular group to be treated differently than others and is behavioral.
  2. Power, prestige, and class all influence prejudice through unequal distribution of wealth, influence, and resources.
  3. Ethnocentrism refers to the practice of making judgments about other cultures based on the values and beliefs of one’s own culture. Cultural relativism refers to the recognition that social groups and cultures must be studied on their own terms. In both cases, an individual perceives another group to which he or she does not belong; however, it is the reaction to that other group that determines which paradigm is being used.