| Autokinetic phenomenon | the perception by a person in a dark room that a single, stationary spot of light appears to move |
| Blind | experiment in which subjects do not know whether or not they are in the treatment condition |
| Bystander intervention (bystander effect) | the more people who observe a crisis and who are potential helpers, the less likely any one bystander is to help the victim |
| Conformity | bringing behavior into agreement with social norms |
| Confounding | the simultaneous variation of a second variable with an independent variable of interest so that any effect on the dependent variable cannot be attributed with certainty to the independent variable; inherent in correlational research |
| Control variable | a potential independent variable that is held constant in an experiment |
| Demand characteristics | those cues available to subjects in an experiment that may enable them to determine the purpose of the experiment or what is expected by the experimenter |
| Diffusion (I = N-t) | the power law showing that impact (I) of other people decreases as a function of the number (N) of other people |
| Diffusion of responsibility | the tendency for individuals to assume less responsibility to act in a group situation |
| Double blind | an experimental technique in which neither the subject nor the experimenter knows which subjects are in which treatment conditions |
| Experimental control | the holding constant of extraneous variables in an experiment so that any effect on the dependent variable can be attributed to manipulation of the independent variable |
| Experimental error | any variation in the dependent variable that is not caused by the independent variable |
| Experimenter bias | the effect that an experimenter may unknowingly exert on results of an experiment, usually in a direction favoring the experimenter's hypothesis |
| Field research | research conducted in natural settings where subjects typically do not know that they are in an experiment |
| Impact (I = Nt) | the power law showing that the impact (I) of others increases with the number (N) of other people |
| Implicit attitude measures | tests that measure a person's attitudes (e.g., about race) without their awareness of what is being measured |
| Implicit memory test | a "memory" test that does not require a person to explicitly remember specific experiences but that spontaneously exhibits the effects of those experiences |
| Interaction | an experimental result that occurs when the levels of one independent variable are differentially affected by the levels of other independent variables |
| Obedience | conformity to a direct order or command |
| Placebo effect | the improvement often shown in drug-effectiveness studies when patients believe they have received a drug, although they have actually received an inert substance |
| Prime | prior experience that may not facilitate (prime) behavior |
| Priming | facilitation of a response because of a previous experience; e.g., prior presentation of a word speeds later reading of the same word |
| Randomization | a statistical sample procedure where every element has an equal probability of being selected |
| Simulating control participants | experimental participants who are told to simulate the behavior of how they expect others will act (e.g., people told to simulate hyponosis) |
| Single-blind experiment | an experiment in which subjects were not aware of their assigned treatment conditions |
| Social facilitation | the increase in individual effort produced by the presence of other people and when individual performance is measured |
| Social loafing | the decrease in individual effort that sometimes occurs when other people are present and when group performance is measured |
| Social norms | society's standards for behavior |
| Social pathology | the breakdown of ordinary social interaction often observed in animals subjected to extreme crowding |
| Social psychology | the psychological study of how society affects the individual |
| Target | the test item in a priming task; of interest is whether prior experience facilitates (primes) a decision about the target |
| Visual mask | used in computer tasks to block visual afterimages |
