Ch. 4 Social Perception Flashcards
social perception
the study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people
display rules
culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display
implicit personality theory
a type of schema people use to group various kinds of personality traits together;
-ex. many people believe that someone who is king is generous as well
attribution theory
a description of the way in which people explore the causes of their own and other people’s behavior
perceptual salience
the seeming importance of information that is the focus of people’s attention
- perpetual salience, or our visual point of view, helps explain why the fundamental attribution error is so widespread
- we underestimate or even forget about the influence of the situation when we are explaining human behavior
self-serving attributions
explanations for one;s successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for ones failures that blame external, situational factors
- we engage in this b/c we want to preserve our self esteem, sometimes to the point of distorting reality through thoughts
- basically, if we succeed then its because we are great if we fail its because of others fault, even circumstances, or live
attribution theory
a description of the way in which people explore the causes of their own and other people’s behavior
two step process of attribution
analyzing another person’s behavior first by making an automatic internal attribution and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behavior after which one may adjust the original internal attribution
bias blind spot
the tendency to think that other people are more susceptible to attributional biases in their thinking than we are
belief in a just world
a form of defensive attribution wherein people assure that bad things happen to bad people and that food things happen to good people
