Key Terms
Closure - The tendency to fill in missing information in order to complete an otherwise incomplete figure
or statement.
Figure - The focal point of your attention.
First impression - An initial opinion about people upon meeting them
Gender identity - How you feel about and express your gender.
Ground - The background against which your focused attention occurs
Impression management - Sharing personal details in order to present an idealized self.
In-group - A group that people belong to that gives them a source of pride, self-esteem, and sense of
belonging to a social world.
Intergroup perspective - The theory that emphasizes the ways in which people in a social interaction
identify and categorize themselves or others in terms of group membership and how these categorizations
shape perceptions and interactions with others.
Interpretive perception - Perception that involves a blend of internal states and external stimuli
Organization - The grouping of stimuli into meaningful units or wholes.
Out-group - A group of people excluded from another group with higher status; a group marginalized by
the dominant culture.
Perception - The use of the senses into process information about the external environment.
Perception checking - A process of describing, interpreting, and verifying that helps us understand
another person and his or her message more accurately.
Perceptual constancy - The idea that your past experiences lead you to see the world in a way that is
difficult to change; your initial perceptions persist.
Personal identity - Perception of what makes an individual unique with regard to various personality
characteristics, interests, and values.
, Prejudice - An unfavorable predisposition about an individual because of that person's membership in a
stereotyped group
Proximity - The principle that objects physically close to each other will be perceived as a unit or group
Role - The part you play in various social contexts.
Selective attention - The tendency, when you expose yourself to information and ideas, to focus on
certain cues and ignore others.
Selective exposure - The tendency to expose yourself to information that reinforces, rather than
contradicts, your beliefs or opinions.
Selective perception - The tendency to see, hear, and believe only what you want to see, hear, and
believe.
Selective retention - The tendency to better remember the things that reinforce your beliefs than those
that oppose them.
Similarity - The principle that elements are grouped together because they share attributes, such as size,
color, or shape.
Stereotyping - Making a hasty generalization about a particular group based on a judgment about an
individual from that group.
Subjective perception - Your uniquely constructed meaning attributed to sensed stimuli.
Symbolic interactionism - The process in which the self develops through the messages and feedback
received from others.
Closure - The tendency to fill in missing information in order to complete an otherwise incomplete figure
or statement.
Figure - The focal point of your attention.
First impression - An initial opinion about people upon meeting them
Gender identity - How you feel about and express your gender.
Ground - The background against which your focused attention occurs
Impression management - Sharing personal details in order to present an idealized self.
In-group - A group that people belong to that gives them a source of pride, self-esteem, and sense of
belonging to a social world.
Intergroup perspective - The theory that emphasizes the ways in which people in a social interaction
identify and categorize themselves or others in terms of group membership and how these categorizations
shape perceptions and interactions with others.
Interpretive perception - Perception that involves a blend of internal states and external stimuli
Organization - The grouping of stimuli into meaningful units or wholes.
Out-group - A group of people excluded from another group with higher status; a group marginalized by
the dominant culture.
Perception - The use of the senses into process information about the external environment.
Perception checking - A process of describing, interpreting, and verifying that helps us understand
another person and his or her message more accurately.
Perceptual constancy - The idea that your past experiences lead you to see the world in a way that is
difficult to change; your initial perceptions persist.
Personal identity - Perception of what makes an individual unique with regard to various personality
characteristics, interests, and values.
, Prejudice - An unfavorable predisposition about an individual because of that person's membership in a
stereotyped group
Proximity - The principle that objects physically close to each other will be perceived as a unit or group
Role - The part you play in various social contexts.
Selective attention - The tendency, when you expose yourself to information and ideas, to focus on
certain cues and ignore others.
Selective exposure - The tendency to expose yourself to information that reinforces, rather than
contradicts, your beliefs or opinions.
Selective perception - The tendency to see, hear, and believe only what you want to see, hear, and
believe.
Selective retention - The tendency to better remember the things that reinforce your beliefs than those
that oppose them.
Similarity - The principle that elements are grouped together because they share attributes, such as size,
color, or shape.
Stereotyping - Making a hasty generalization about a particular group based on a judgment about an
individual from that group.
Subjective perception - Your uniquely constructed meaning attributed to sensed stimuli.
Symbolic interactionism - The process in which the self develops through the messages and feedback
received from others.
