ch 4 Flashcards
Snap Judgements
Inferring personality from physical appearance
How are judgements correlated with one another
1)positive-negative dimension
2)power dimension
1)positive-negative dimension
(trustworthy vs untrustworthy
2)power dimension
(confident,dominant, submissive)
How well do snap judgements(impressions based on brief exposure to other people’s behavior) predict more considered consensus opinion
YES
The Process of Causal Attribution:
Determining whether actions are product of internal or external causes requires assessments of what most people are like and what most people are likely to do
-Ie: becoming a guitarist for the love of playing guitar is internal while becoming a guitarist for fame is external bc most people want to be famous
covariation principle:
we try to determine what causes-internal or external, characteristic of the person in question or applicable to nearly everyone-”covary” with what we’re trying to explain
One type of covariation:
consensus
refers to what most people would do in a given situation
distinctiveness(part of covariation)
what an individual does in different situations
Situational attribution
when consensus and distinctiveness are both high
-(when everyone else in your friend’s statistics class like it too, and when your friend likes few other math classes, there is something special about that class)
Dispositional attribution
consensus and distinctiveness are both low(ie:when no one like the statistics class and when your friend likes all math courses, her likeness for the course must reflect something about them)
discounting principle
our confidence that a particular cause is responsible for a given outcome will be reduced if there are other plausible causes that might have produced the same outcome
counterfactual thinking:
considerations of what might have, could have, or should have happened “if only” a few minor things were done differently
Emotional amplification
emotional reaction tends to be more intense if the event almost didn’t happen
Self serving attributional bias
people are inclined to attribute their failures to external circumstances but to attribute their successes and other good events to themselves
Fundamental attribution error:
tendency to see the behavior of others as a reflection of kind of people they are rather than as a result of the situation they find themselves
Actor-observer difference:
In the role of “actor” you’re usually more interested in determining what kind of situation you’re dealing with than assessing what kind of person you are
In the role of “observer”, you’re often primarily interested in determining what kind of person you’re dealing with
Why are people prone to fundamental attribution error?
Features of the environment that more readily capture our attention are more likely to be seen as potential causes of an observed effect
East asians are more inclined than westerners to attribute an actor’s behavior to the situation rather than to the person’s dispositions
East asians pay more attention to context than westerners