Unit 9.1 Flashcards
Attribution Theory and Person Perception
Attribution
Process of inferring the causes of events or behaviors.
External Attribution
Process of explaining an event or behavior as being caused by situational factors.
Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional or personality-based explanations for behaviors observed while under-emphasizing situational explanations.
Internal Attribution
When an individual uses a personal reason as the cause for a situation or event instead of an external reason.
Actor-Observer Bias
The theory that we attribute our behavior to external causes.
Self-Serving Bias
People’s tendency to attribute positive events to their own character but attribute negative events to external factors.
Just-World Hypothesis
The tendency for people to believe that the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve what they get.
False Consensus Effect
Attributional type of cognitive bias whereby people tend to overestimate the extent to which their opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits are normal and typical of those of others.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
A belief that leads to its own fulfillment.
Self-Schemas
How we view ourselves; made up of many categories,
Gender
Social construct and generally based on the norms, behaviors, and societal roles expected of individuals based primarily on their sex.
Race
The social construction and categorization of people based on perceived shared physical traits.
Ethnicity
Characterization of people based on having a shared culture (language, food, music, etc) relating to a common ancestry and shared history.
