Vocabulary

Active-constructive responding: Demonstrating sincere interest and enthusiasm for the good news of another person.
Agender: An individual who may have no gender or may describe themselves as having a neutral gender.
Ambivalent sexism: A concept of gender attitudes that encompasses both positive and negative qualities.
Anomalous face overgeneralization hypothesis: Proposes that the attractiveness halo effect is a by-product of reactions to low fitness. People overgeneralize the adaptive tendency to use low attractiveness as an indicator of negative traits, like low health or intelligence, and mistakenly use higher-than-average attractiveness as an indicator of high health or intelligence.
Attractiveness halo effect: The tendency to associate attractiveness with a variety of positive traits, such as being more sociable, intelligent, competent, and healthy.
Benevolent sexism: The “positive” element of ambivalent sexism, which recognizes that women are perceived as needing to be protected, supported, and adored by men.
Bigender: An individual who identifies as two genders.
Binary: The idea that gender has two separate and distinct categories (male and female) and that a person must be either one or the other.
Capitalization: Seeking out someone else with whom to share your good news.
Cisgender: A term used to describe individuals whose gender matches their biological sex.
Developmental intergroup theory: A theory that postulates that adults’ focus on gender leads children to pay attention to gender as a key source of information about themselves and others, to seek out possible gender differences, and to form rigid stereotypes based on gender.
Epigenetics: Heritable changes in gene activity that are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
Functional distance: The frequency with which we cross paths with others.
Gender: The cultural, social, and psychological meanings that are associated with masculinity and femininity.
Gender constancy: The awareness that gender is constant and does not change simply by changing external attributes; develops between 3 and 6 years of age.
Gender discrimination: Differential treatment on the basis of gender.
Gender identity: A person’s psychological sense of being male or female.
Gender roles: The behaviors, attitudes, and personality traits that are designated as either masculine or feminine in a given culture.
Gender schema theory: This theory of how children form their own gender roles argues that children actively organize others’ behavior, activities, and attributes into gender categories or schemas.
Gender stereotypes: The beliefs and expectations people hold about the typical characteristics, preferences, and behaviors of men and women.
Genderfluid: An individual who may identify as male, female, both, or neither at different times and in different circumstances.
Genderqueer or gender nonbinary: An umbrella term used to describe a wide range of individuals who do not identify with and/or conform to the gender binary.
Good genes hypothesis: Proposes that certain physical qualities, like averageness, are attractive because they advertise mate quality—either greater fertility or better genetic traits that lead to better offspring and hence greater reproductive success.
Hostile sexism: The negative element of ambivalent sexism, which includes the attitudes that women are inferior and incompetent relative to men.
Mere-exposure effect: The notion that people like people/places/things merely because they are familiar with them.
Mere-exposure effect: The tendency to prefer stimuli that have been seen before over novel ones. There also is a generalized mere-exposure effect shown in a preference for stimuli that are similar to those that have been seen before.
Morph: A face or other image that has been transformed by a computer program so that it is a mixture of multiple images.
Oxytocin: A nine amino acid mammalian neuropeptide. Oxytocin is synthesized primarily in the brain, but also in other tissues such as uterus, heart and thymus, with local effects. Oxytocin is best known as a hormone of female reproduction due to its capacity to cause uterine contractions and eject milk. Oxytocin has effects on brain tissue, but also acts throughout the body in some cases as an antioxidant or anti-inflammatory.
Perceived social support: A person’s perception that others are there to help them in times of need.
Prototype: A typical, or average, member of a category. Averageness increases attractiveness.
Proximity: Physical nearness.
Received social support: The actual act of receiving support (e.g., informational, functional).
Relationship bank account: An account you hold with every person in which a positive deposit or a negative withdrawal can be made during every interaction you have with the person.
Schemas: The gender categories into which, according to gender schema theory, children actively organize others’ behavior, activities, and attributes.
Self-expansion model: Seeking to increase one’s capacity often through an intimate relationship.
Sex: Biological category of male or female as defined by physical differences in genetic composition and in reproductive anatomy and function.
Sexual harassment: A form of gender discrimination based on unwanted treatment related to sexual behaviors or appearance.
Sexual orientation: Refers to the direction of emotional and erotic attraction toward members of the opposite sex, the same sex, or both sexes.
Social learning theory: This theory of how children form their own gender roles argues that gender roles are learned through reinforcement, punishment, and modeling.
Support support network: The people who care about and support a person.
Transgender: A term used to describe individuals whose gender does not match their biological sex.
Vagus nerve: The 10th cranial nerve. The mammalian vagus has an older unmyelinated branch which originates in the dorsal motor complex and a more recently evolved, myelinated branch, with origins in the ventral vagal complex including the nucleus ambiguous. The vagus is the primary source of autonomic-parasympathetic regulation for various internal organs, including the heart, lungs and other parts of the viscera. The vagus nerve is primarily sensory (afferent), transmitting abundant visceral input to the central nervous system.
Vasopressin: A nine amino acid mammalian neuropeptide. Vasopressin is synthesized primarily in the brain, but also may be made in other tissues. Vasopressin is best known for its effects on the cardiovascular system (increasing blood pressure) and also the kidneys (causing water retention). Vasopressin has effects on brain tissue, but also acts throughout the body.