Chapter 4 Of Textbook

Question 1

covariation principle
The idea that behavior should be attributed to potential causes that occur along with the observed behavior.

Question 2

consensus

Answer 2

A type of covariation information: whether most people would behave the same way or differently in a given situation.

Question 3

distinctiveness

Answer 3

A type of covariation information: whether a behavior is unique to a particular situation or occurs in many or all situations.

Question 4

discounting principle

Answer 4

The idea that people will assign reduced weight to a particular cause of behavior if other plausible causes might have produced the same behavior.

Question 5

counterfactual thinking

Answer 5

Thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened “if only” something had occurred differently.

Question 6

emotional amplification

Answer 6

An increase in an emotional reaction to an event that is proportional to how easy it is to imagine the event not happening.

Question 7

self-serving attributional bias

Answer 7

The tendency to attribute failure and other bad events to external circumstances and to attribute success and other good events to oneself.

Question 8

fundamental attribution error

Answer 8

The failure to recognize the importance of situational influences on behavior, along with the corresponding tendency to overemphasize the importance of dispositions on behavior.

Question 9

actor-observer difference

Answer 9

A difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment: the actor (who is relatively inclined to make situational attributions) or the observer (who is relatively inclined to make dispositional attributions).

Question 10

primacy effect

Answer 10

A type of order effect whereby the information presented first in a body of evidence has a disproportionate influence on judgment.

Question 11

recency effect

Answer 11

A type of order effect whereby the information presented last in a body of evidence has a disproportionate influence on judgment.

Question 12

framing effect

Answer 12

The influence on judgment resulting from the way information is presented, including the words used to describe the information or the order in which it is presented.

Question 13

construal level theory

Answer 13

A theory about the relationship between temporal distance (and other kinds of distance) and abstract or concrete thinking: Psychologically distant actions and events are thought about in abstract terms; actions and events that are close at hand are thought about in concrete terms.

Question 14

Confirmation bias

Answer 14

The tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence in support of it.

Question 15

bottom-up processing

Answer 15

“Data-driven” mental processing, in which an individual forms conclusions based on stimuli encountered in the environment.

Question 16

top-down processing

Answer 16

“Theory-driven” mental processing, in which an individual filters and interprets new information in light of preexisting knowledge and expectations.

Question 17

priming

Answer 17

The presentation of information designed to activate a concept and hence make it accessible. A prime is the stimulus presented to activate the concept in question.

Question 18

subliminal

Answer 18

Below the threshold of conscious awareness.

Question 19

heuristics

Answer 19

Intuitive mental operations, performed quickly and automatically, that provide efficient answers to common problems of judgment.

Question 20

Availability heuristic

Answer 20

The process whereby judgments of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind.

Question 21

Representativeness heuristic

Answer 21

The process whereby judgments of likelihood are based on assessments of similarity between individuals and group prototypes or between cause and effect

Question 22

Fluency

Answer 22

The feeling of ease (or difficulty) associated with processing information.

Question 23

base-rate information

Answer 23

Information about the relative frequency of events or members of different categories in a population.

Question 24

Illusory correlation

Answer 24

The belief that two variables are correlated when in fact they are not.

Question 25

Regression effect

Answer 25

The statistical tendency, when two variables are imperfectly correlated, for extreme values of one of them to be associated with less extreme values of the other.

Question 26

Regression fallacy

Answer 26

failure to recognize the influence of the regression effect and to instead offer a causal theory for what is really a simple statistical regularity.