64 checked facts

Social

Everything on this site about social — each one naming the study behind it.

Your physical environment dictates how you judge social interactions.
A 2008 study by Williams and Bargh reported that participants holding a warm drink rated a target person as having a '…
You feel an urge to act because you were asked.
Researchers found that simply being asked for a small favor increased a participant's future liking for that person.…
You underestimate how much others appreciate your kindness.
People consistently expect their expressions of gratitude to be less impactful than they actually are to the recipient…
You judge people by their actions but yourself by your intentions.
Although Jones and Nisbett (1971) proposed that people attribute their own actions to situational factors while attrib…
You find people more attractive if they show flaws.
Highly competent individuals are often rated more favorably after making a minor, relatable blunder, while less compet…
You interpret physical warmth as personal social acceptance.
A 2008 study reported that holding a hot beverage could lead to warmer social evaluations, but this effect has failed …
Shared suffering increases cooperation more than shared rewards do.
Groups that endure an unpleasant experience together develop stronger bonds than groups that experience a neutral acti…
Holding a warm drink makes you perceive people as kinder.
An initial 2008 study suggested that physical warmth might prime interpersonal warmth, though subsequent larger-scale …
You judge people by their actions but yourself by intentions.
The hypothesis of a foundational actor-observer asymmetry in attribution, while influential in early social psychology…
You assume the person next to you is fine.
The 'pluralistic ignorance' effect leads individuals to believe they are the only ones struggling while everyone else …
You blame the person, not the situation.
The correspondence bias describes your tendency to infer a person's character from their behavior while ignoring situa…
You believe your thoughts are more transparent to others than they really are.
The illusion of transparency leads you to overestimate how well others can read your emotional state.…
Your perception of reality shifts to match others.
In 1935, Sherif found that people converge on a shared estimate when viewing a stationary dot of light in a dark room.…
You change your opinion to avoid social isolation.
In a 1951 experiment, 74% of participants went along with an obviously incorrect group judgment at least once.…
You unconsciously adjust your gait to match others.
When walking with a partner, your stride frequency naturally synchronizes within minutes to match theirs.…
Your choices often follow the crowd's momentum.
The probability of an individual adopting a behavior increases as more people do the same, because individuals use oth…
You are less likely to help if others are watching.
The presence of other witnesses significantly reduces the individual probability that someone will offer help in an em…
You judge a person's character by their appearance.
The 'halo effect' was identified by Thorndike in 1920, but the specific 'what is beautiful is good' stereotype regardi…
You are not being watched as much as you think.
A 2000 study showed that people vastly overestimate how much others notice their appearance or actions in public.…
You assume everyone sees the world exactly like you.
Most people believe their subjective interpretation of events is an objective reflection of reality.…
You look more attractive when surrounded by other people.
A 2013 study found that faces are rated as more attractive in a group than when shown individually.…
You unconsciously mimic the body language of others.
People consistently adopt the postures and mannerisms of their conversation partners, a process termed the chameleon e…
You explain your mistakes differently than you explain theirs.
The actor–observer asymmetry, proposed by Jones and Nisbett in 1972, hypothesized that individuals attribute their own…
You look to strangers to decide which path is correct.
Asch's (1951) study showed that participants gave incorrect answers in approximately one-third (35.7%) of trials to ma…
You adjust your confidence to match your social environment.
The spotlight effect is the psychological tendency to believe you are being noticed more than you actually are.…
You assume a person's current mood is their permanent nature.
The correspondence bias is a common, though not universal, tendency to infer stable personality traits from observed b…
Holding a warm drink makes you judge strangers as warmer.
A 2008 study reported that participants holding warm coffee judged a target person to have a 'warmer' personality, but…
You mistake neutral interactions for deliberate slights.
The term 'hostile attribution bias' was coined by Nasby, Hayden, and DePaulo in 1980.…
You remember your contributions as disproportionately large.
Egocentric bias causes you to overstate your personal impact on group outcomes.…
Your performance improves solely because you are watched.
The Hawthorne effect describes how being observed alters your behavior.…
You assume everyone agrees with your private opinion.
The false consensus effect leads you to overestimate how many people share your beliefs.…
You are less likely to help someone if you are in a crowd.
The bystander effect demonstrates that the presence of others reduces your perceived personal responsibility to interv…
You become more likable after making a small, visible mistake.
The pratfall effect suggests that a minor error makes a highly competent individual more appealing, but can decrease t…
You change your own behavior when being watched.
The 'Hawthorne effect' is a popular but scientifically contested term used to describe the hypothesis that subjects ch…
People perform better because you expect them to.
Higher performance expectations lead to improved outcomes for the individuals being observed.…
You perform better at simple tasks when others watch.
The presence of an audience increases your speed on easy tasks.…
You assume your private opinions are the majority view.
You consistently overestimate how much others agree with your personal beliefs.…
Your personal effort drops when you join a group.
The phenomenon of decreased group effort is often termed 'social loafing,' a term coined by Latané et al. in 1979, whi…
You only remember the very first impression you formed.
Information presented at the beginning of a sequence is retained better than information in the middle.…
You like the people you encounter most frequently.
Physical proximity is a stronger predictor of friendship than shared interests.…
Your performance drops when you fear confirming a stereotype.
The awareness of a negative stereotype regarding your group can cause an involuntary decline in performance.…
People perform better when you expect them to succeed.
The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon where high expectations lead to improved performance in a given are…
You feel an ownership for groups you did not join.
Basking in reflected glory is the tendency to associate yourself with successful groups or individuals to bolster your…
You judge your own actions by intent, but others' by outcomes.
The actor-observer asymmetry was a widely cited hypothesis, but it has failed to replicate in broad meta-analyses.…
Everyone follows a rule that no one actually likes.
A 1993 study found that students privately disliked campus drinking but believed peers enjoyed it.…
You prefer associating with winners to signal your status.
A 1976 study found students wore more university gear the day after their football team won.…
You mistakenly believe others think exactly like you do.
The false consensus effect is the cognitive bias where you overestimate the extent to which your opinions and habits a…
You like people more when you live near them.
The propinquity effect is the tendency for people to form friendships with those they encounter in their daily physica…
You judge your behavior by your circumstances, not character.
Jones and Nisbett (1971) proposed the actor-observer asymmetry hypothesis, though subsequent meta-analyses have found …
You assume attractive people are also morally good.
While Thorndike identified the 'halo effect' as a general cognitive error in 1920, the systematic experimental finding…
You are a member of a group just by existing.
A 1970 study showed that people favored others simply because they were assigned to the same arbitrary group, even whe…
You adapt your behavior to fit what others expect.
A 1974 study found that high self-monitors consistently changed their behavior to match the social situation, whereas …
You assume everyone shares your private opinions.
A 1977 study showed that people who agreed to wear a sandwich board were more likely to believe others would too.…
You believe your inner emotions are visible to others.
A 1998 study showed that speakers overestimate how much their nervousness is detectable by their audience.…
You perceive members of other groups as all identical.
Outgroup homogeneity is the tendency to see individuals in other groups as having fewer unique traits than people in y…
You prefer strangers just because they are like you.
A 1970 study found that participants assigned to arbitrary groups awarded more money to their own team, even when grou…
You claim credit for things you did not do.
A 1976 study found students were significantly more likely to wear school apparel after their team won a game.…
You like people just because you see them often.
A 1950 study found that physical proximity is a significant predictor of friendship formation, working in tandem with …
You think your virtues are unique, but your vices are normal.
The 1987 study by Suls and Wan demonstrated that people tend to underestimate the commonality of their positive or hea…
A rumor becomes truth if it is repeated enough.
The availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process in which an idea gains social momentum through the interaction …
You conform to the group to avoid social discomfort.
A majority of participants conformed to an obviously incorrect group consensus on at least one occasion, though most i…
You are harder on yourself during simple tasks.
Social facilitation reveals that the presence of others improves performance on simple, well-rehearsed tasks but degra…
You assume people notice your mood more than they do.
The 'illusion of transparency' causes individuals to overestimate how much their internal state is visible to others.…
You believe the world is fundamentally fair to everyone.
A 1966 study demonstrated that people will blame victims for their own misfortune to maintain the belief that people g…