Term
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Definition
| to mentally activate a concept and hence make it accessible (also used as a noun - a stimulus presented to activate concept) |
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Term
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Definition
| the theory that people try to maintain balance among their beliefs, cognitions and sentiments ( (+)+(+)=(+), (-)+(-)=(+) ) |
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Term
| cognitive dissonance theory |
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Definition
| the theory that inconsistencies between a person's thoughts, sentiments, and actions create an aversive emotional state that leads to efforts to restore consistency |
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Term
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Definition
| the tendency to reduce dissonance by finding reasons for why we have devoted time, effort, or money to something that has turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing |
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Term
| induced (forced) comliance |
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Definition
| subtly compelling individuals to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes, or values, which typically leads to dissonance and to change in their original attitudes or values in order to reduce their dissonance |
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Term
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Definition
| bolstering our identity and self-assessment by taking note of important elements of our identity, such as our important values |
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Term
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Definition
| a theory that people come to know their attitudes by looking at their behavior and the context in which it occurred and inferring what their attitudes must be |
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Term
| interpersonal simulations |
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Definition
| experiments in which an "observer-participant" is given a detailed description of one condition of a dissonance experiment, is told how a participant behaved in that situation, and is asked to predict the attitude of that participant |
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Term
| system justification theory |
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Definition
| the theory that people are motivated to see the existing political and social status quo as desirable, fair, and legitimate |
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Term
| terror management theory (TMT) |
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Definition
| the theory that people deal with the potantially paralyzing anxiety that comes with the knowledge of the inevitability of death by striving for symbolic immortality through the preservation of a valued worldview and the conviction that one has lived up to its values and prescriptions |
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