The mix of qualities that make a person likable are complex and often do not generalize fromone situation to another. One clear finding, however, is that physically attractive people tendto be liked more. In fact, we prefer them to a disturbing extent: Various studies have shownwe perceive attractive people as smarter, kinder, stronger, more successful, more sociallyskilled, better poised, better adjusted, more exciting, more nurturing, and, most important,of higher moral character. All of this is based on no other information than their physicalappearance (e.g., Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972).

Humans are not so different. Take theexample of a study conducted on variousways to promote a campus bake sale forcharity (Levine, 2003). Simply displayingthe cookies and other treats to passersbydid not generate many sales (only 2 out of30 potential customers made a purchase).In an alternate condition, however, whenpotential customers were asked to "buy acookie for a good cause" the number roseto 12 out of 30. It seems that the phrase "agood cause" triggered a willingness to act.

In humans fixed action patterns include many of the activities we engage in while mentallyon "auto-pilot." These behaviors are so automatic that it is very difficult to control them. Ifyou ever feed a baby, for instance, nearly everyone mimics each bite the baby takes by openingand closing their own mouth! If two people near you look up and point you will automaticallylook up yourself.

In autobiographical reasoning, a narratoris able to derive substantive conclusions about the self from analyzing his or her own personalexperiences. Adolescents may develop the ability to string together events into causal chainsand inductively derive general themes about life from a sequence of chapters and scenes(Habermas & de Silveira, 2008).

Maybe you woke up one day anddecided that you must become a more optimistic and emotionally upbeat person. Taking intoconsideration the reflected appraisals of others, you realized that even your friends seem toavoid you because you bring them down. In addition, it feels bad to feel so bad all the time:Wouldn’t it be better to feel good, to have more energy and hope? In the language of traits,you have decided to “work on” your “neuroticism.” Or maybe instead, your problem is the traitof “conscientiousness”: You are undisciplined and don’t work hard enough, so you resolve tomake changes in that area. Self-improvement efforts such as these—aimed at changing one’straits to become a more effective social actor—are sometimes successful, but they are veryhard—kind of like dieting.

Numerous studies have shown that by the time they reach their second birthdaymost toddlers recognize themselves in mirrors and other reflecting devices (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979; Rochat, 2003).

The problemis that when you assume people are attacking you, you feel more self-conscious and are lesslikely to stay in a situation and to interact with that group of people or others in the future.Our thoughts influence our behavior, and the negative interpretations and predictions ofpeople with SAD only serve to feed their social avoidance patterns (Amir, Beard, & Bower,2005 ).

If you were to observe what people with SAD pay attention to in a social interaction, you wouldfind that they are quick to recognize any signs of social threats.

When social anxiety and avoidance interfere with a person’s ability to function in importantroles (e.g., as a student, worker, friend), the condition is called social anxiety disorder (SAD),also known as social phobia (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

Nearly everyone experiences some social anxiety at one point or another. It is particularlycommon before performing in front of an audience or meeting new people on one’s own, andthis is normal.

People with growth mindsets, however,are likely to interpret an upward comparison as a challenge, and an opportunity to improvethemselves.

Take, forexample, a realistic scenario where Oliviauses social comparison to gauge herabilities: Olivia is a high school student whooften spends a few hours in her backyardshooting a soccer ball at her homemadegoal. A friend of hers suggests she try outfor the school’s soccer team. Olivia acceptsher friend’s suggestion, although nervously, doubting she’s good enough to make the team.On the day of tryouts, Olivia gets her gear ready and starts walking towards the soccer field.As she approaches, she feels butterflies in her stomach and her legs get wobbly. But, glancingtowards the other candidates who have arrived early to take a few practice shots at the goal,she notices that their aim is inconsistent and they frequently miss the goal. Seeing this, Oliviafeels more relaxed, and she confidently marches onto the field, ready to show everyone her

Mr. Smith is experiencing the effects of social comparison. Occurring frequently in our lives,social comparison shapes our perceptions, memory, and behavior—even regarding the mosttrivial of issues.

This need for closure (the desire to come to a firm conclusion) is ofteninduced by time constraints (when a decision needs to be made quickly) as well as by individualdifferences in the need for closure (Webster & Kruglanski, 1997). Some individuals are simplymore uncomfortable with ambiguity than others, and are thus more motivated to reach clear,decisive conclusions.

In order to makethis classification (and many others),people may rely on the representativeness heuristic to arrive at a quick decision (Kahneman& Tversky, 1972, 1973). Rather than engaging in an in-depth consideration of the object’sattributes, one can simply judge the likelihood of the object belonging to a category, basedon how similar it is to one’s mental representation of that category. For example, a perceivermay quickly judge a female to be an athlete based on the fact that the female is tall, muscular,and wearing sports apparel—which fits the perceiver’s representation of an athlete’scharacteristics.

A schema is a mental model, or representation, of any of the various things wecome across in our daily lives. A schema (related to the word schematic) is kind of like a mentalblueprint for how we expect something to be or behave. It is an organized body of generalinformation or beliefs we develop from direct encounters, as well as from secondhand sources.Rather than spending copious amounts of time learning about each new individual object (e.g., each new dog we see), we rely on our schemas to tell us that a newly encountered dogprobably barks, likes to fetch, and enjoys treats. In this way, our schemas greatly reduce theamount of cognitive work we need to do and allow us to “go beyond the information given”(Bruner, 1957).

Researchers of social cognition study how people make sense of themselves and others tomake judgments, form attitudes, and make predictions about the future. Much of the researchin social cognition has demonstrated that humans are adept at distilling large amounts ofinformation into smaller, more usable chunks, and that we possess many cognitive tools thatallow us to efficiently navigate our environments. This research has also illuminated manysocial factors that can influence these judgments and predictions.

As people go about their daily lives, theyhave to resist many desires and impulses and must control themselves in other ways, and soover the course of a typical day many people gradually become ego depleted. The result isthat they become increasingly likely to give in to impulses and desires that they would haveresisted successfully earlier in the day (Hofmann, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2012).

Collegestudents with high self-control get bettergrades, have better close relationships,manage their emotions better, havefewer problems with drugs and alcohol,are less prone to eating disorders, arebetter adjusted, have higher self-esteem,and get along better with other people,as compared to people with low self-control (Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone,2004).

They control their emotions, as intrying to cheer themselves up or to calmdown when angry (or to stay angry, if that’shelpful). They control their impulses, as intrying not to eat fattening food, trying tohold one’s tongue, or trying to quitsmoking.

They wore clothes when they bathed and even while having sex. Further, sexeducation was nonexistent, as was breast feeding (Messenger, 1989). By contrast, Mangaians,of the South Pacific island of A’ua’u, are an example of a highly sexually-permissive culture.Young Mangaian boys are encouraged to masturbate. By age 13, they’re instructed by oldermales on how to sexually perform and maximize orgasms for themselves and their partners.When the boys are a bit older, this formal instruction is replaced with hands-on coaching byolder females. Young girls are also expected to explore their sexuality and develop a breadthof sexual knowledge before marriage (Marshall & Suggs, 1971). These cultures make clearthat what are considered sexually normal behaviors depends on time and place.

Just as biological sex varies more widely than is commonly thought, so too does gender.Cisgender individuals’ gender identities correspond with their birth sexes, whereastransgender individuals’ gender identities do not correspond with their birth sexes. Becausegender is so deeply ingrained culturally, rates of transgender individuals vary widely aroundthe world (see Table 1).Although incidence rates of transgender individuals differ significantly between cultures,transgender females (TGFs)—whose birth sex was male—are by far the most frequent typeof transgender individuals in any culture. Of the 18 countries studied by Meier and Labuski(2013), 16 of them had higher rates of TGFs than transgender males (TGMs)—whose birth

Sex and gender are important aspects of a person’s identity. However, they do not tell usabout a person’s sexual orientation (Rule & Ambady, 2008). Sexual orientation refers to aperson’s sexual attraction to others. Within the context of sexual orientation, sexual attraction refers to a person’s capacity to arouse the sexual interest of another, or, conversely, the sexualinterest one person feels toward another.

Theself-expansion model (Aron & Aron,1996) suggests that people naturally seekto expand their capacity and that intimaterelationships are an important way bywhich they accomplish self-expansion.

It appears that forgiveness can be an important way of building emotional capital inthe relationship. Not forgiving the people in your life can block positive deposits to therelationship bank account.

When one person seeks out another person with the intent to share positive news, it has beencalled capitalization (Gable et al., 2004). The best, supportive response to someone who sharesgood news has been termed active-constructive and is characterized by enthusiastic support.These active-constructive responses are positively associated with trust, satisfaction,commitment, and intimacy.

Social engagement actually helps us to cope with stress. The same hormones and areas ofthe brain that increase the capacity of the body to survive stress also enable us to better adaptto an ever-changing social and physical environment

During early life in particular, trauma or neglect may produce behaviors and emotional statesin humans that are socially pathological. Because the processes involved in creating socialbehaviors and social emotions are delicately balanced, these be may be triggered ininappropriate contexts, leading to aggression toward friends or family.

However, women who give birth by cesarean sectionwithout going through labor, or who opt not to breastfeed, are still able to form a strongemotional bond with their children. Furthermore, fathers, grandparents, and adoptive parentsalso form lifelong attachments to children.

Despite popular belief, divorce ratesin the United States actually declined for many years during the 1980s and 1990s, and onlyjust recently started to climb back up—landing at just below 50% of marriages ending indivorce today (Marriage & Divorce, 2016); however, it should be noted that divorce ratesincrease for each subsequent marriage, and there is considerable debate about the exactdivorce rate.

In 2010 a documentary, Catfish, focused on the personal experience of a man who met awoman online and carried on an emotional relationship with this person for months. As helater came to discover, though, the person he thought he was talking and writing with did notexist. As Dr. Aaron Ben-Zeév stated, online relationships leave room for deception; thus, peoplehave to be cautious.

The ways people are finding love has changed with the advent of the Internet. In a poll, 49%of all American adults reported that either themselves or someone they knew had dated aperson they met online (Madden & Lenhart, 2006).

Indeed, a face morph that is the averageof many individuals’ faces is more attractive than the individual faces used to create it (Langlois& Roggman, 1990). Also, individual faces that have been morphed toward an average face aremore attractive than those that have been morphed away from average (

More attractive people are more popular with their peers, and this isshown even in early childhood

Not only are attractive adultsjudged more positively than their less attractive peers, but even attractive babies are viewedmore positively by their own parents, andstrangers consider them more healthy,affectionate, attached to mother, cheerful,responsive, likeable, and smart (Langlois et al.,2000).

Although facial attractivenesshas received the most research attention(Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo, 1991),people higher in body or vocal attractivenessalso create more positive impressions(Riggio, Widaman, Tucker, & Salinas, 1991;Zuckerman & Driver, 1989). This advantageis termed the attractiveness halo effect, and it is widespread.

Research from the US (Harris,2015) and Japan (Veldkamp, 2009) finds thatmany pet owners consider their pets to bemembers of the family.

Traditional family hasbeen defined as two or more people whoare related by blood, marriage, and—occasionally—adoption (Murdock, 1949).Historically, the most standard version ofthe traditional family has been the two-parent family. Are there people in your lifeyou consider family who are not necessarilyrelated to you in the traditional sense?Harry Potter would undoubtedly call hisschoolmates Ron Weasley and HermioneGranger family, even though they do not fitthe traditional definition. Likewise, Harrymight consider Hedwig, his snowy owl, afamily member, and he would not be alonein doing so