Chapter 4 Flashcards
(23 cards)
A group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of behavior.
attribution theory
The tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances of it come to mind.
availability heuristic
The finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information presented in the form of numerical base rates.
base-rate fallacy
The belief that individuals get what they deserve in life, an orientation that leads people to disparage victims.
belief in a just world
The tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited.
belief perseverance
Traits that exert a powerful influence on overall impressions.
central traits
The tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs.
confirmation bias
The tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not.
counterfactual thinking
A principle of attribution theory that holds that people attribute behavior to factors that are present when a behavior occurs and are absent when it does not.
covariation principle
The tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes, and behaviors.
false-consensus effect
The tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the impact of situations on other people?s behavior.
fundamental attribution error
A network of assumptions people make about the relationships among traits and behaviors.
implicit personality theory
The process of integrating information about a person to form a coherent impression.
impression formation
The theory that impressions are based on (1) perceiver dispositions; and (2) a weighted average of a target person?s traits.
information integration theory
The process by which people attribute humanlike mental states to various animate and inanimate objects, including other people.
mind perception
The desire to reduce cognitive uncertainty, which heightens the importance of first impressions.
need for closure
Behavior that reveals a person?s feelings without words, through facial expressions, body language, and vocal cues.
nonverbal behavior
Attribution to internal characteristics of an actor, such as ability, personality, mood, or effort.
personal attribution
The tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later.
primacy effect
The tendency for recently used or perceived words or ideas to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information.
priming
The process by which one?s expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations.
self-fulfilling prophecy
Attribution to factors external to an actor, such as the task, other people, or luck.
situational attribution
A general term for the processes by which people come to understand one another.
social perception
