Chapter 4 Of Textbook Flashcards
(26 cards)
covariation principle
The idea that behavior should be attributed to potential causes that occur along with the observed behavior.
consensus
A type of covariation information: whether most people would behave the same way or differently in a given situation.
distinctiveness
A type of covariation information: whether a behavior is unique to a particular situation or occurs in many or all situations.
discounting principle
The idea that people will assign reduced weight to a particular cause of behavior if other plausible causes might have produced the same behavior.
counterfactual thinking
Thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened “if only” something had occurred differently.
emotional amplification
An increase in an emotional reaction to an event that is proportional to how easy it is to imagine the event not happening.
self-serving attributional bias
The tendency to attribute failure and other bad events to external circumstances and to attribute success and other good events to oneself.
fundamental attribution error
The failure to recognize the importance of situational influences on behavior, along with the corresponding tendency to overemphasize the importance of dispositions on behavior.
actor-observer difference
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).
primacy effect
A type of order effect whereby the information presented first in a body of evidence has a disproportionate influence on judgment.
recency effect
A type of order effect whereby the information presented last in a body of evidence has a disproportionate influence on judgment.
framing effect
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.
construal level theory
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.
Confirmation bias
The tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence in support of it.
bottom-up processing
“Data-driven” mental processing, in which an individual forms conclusions based on stimuli encountered in the environment.
top-down processing
“Theory-driven” mental processing, in which an individual filters and interprets new information in light of preexisting knowledge and expectations.
priming
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.
subliminal
Below the threshold of conscious awareness.
heuristics
Intuitive mental operations, performed quickly and automatically, that provide efficient answers to common problems of judgment.
Availability heuristic
The process whereby judgments of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind.
Representativeness heuristic
The process whereby judgments of likelihood are based on assessments of similarity between individuals and group prototypes or between cause and effect
Fluency
The feeling of ease (or difficulty) associated with processing information.
base-rate information
Information about the relative frequency of events or members of different categories in a population.
Illusory correlation
The belief that two variables are correlated when in fact they are not.
