Chapter 4: Perceiving Persons Flashcards
(22 cards)
Social Perception
A general term for the processes by which people come to understand one another
Mind Perception
The process by which people attribute human-like mental states to various animate and inanimate objects, including other people
Nonverbal Behavior
Behavior that reveals a person’s feelings without words, through facial expressions, body language, and vocal cues
Attribution Theory
A group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of behavior
Personal Attibution
Attribution to internal characteristics of an actor, such as ability, personality, mood, or effort.
Situational Attribution
Attribution to factors external to an actor, such as the task, other people, or luck
Covariation Principle
A principle of attribution theory that holds that people attribute to behavior to factors that are present when a behavior occurs and are absent when it does not
Availability Heuristic
The tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances of it come to mind
False-Consensus Effect
The tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes and behaviors
Base-Rate Fallacy
The finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information presented in the form of numerical base rates
Counterfactual Thinking
The tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not
Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the impact of situations on other people’s behavior
Belief in a Just World
The belief that individuals get what they deserve in life, an orientation that leads people to disparage victims
Impression Formation
The process of integrating information about a person to form a coherent impression
Information Integration Theory
The theory that impressions are based on (1) perceiver dispositions and (2) a weighted average of a target person’s traits
Priming
The tendency for recently used or perceived words or ideas to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information
Central Traits
Traits that exert a powerful influence on overall impressions
Primacy Effect
The tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later
Need for Closure
The desire to reduce cognitive uncertainty, which heightens the importance of first impressions
Confirmation Bias
The tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs
Belief Perseverance
The tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
The process by which one’s expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations
