Chapter 3

Question 1

What is the fundamental attribution error?

Answer 1

tendency to attribute behaviors to personal characteristics instead of external circumstances in other people, but attributing behavior more to external circumstances for ourselves

Question 2

What is the actor-observer bias?

Answer 2

tendency to attribute behaviors in oneself to external causes, but to attribute behaviors in others to internal causes

Question 3

What is priming, the overconfidence phenomenon, and confirmation bias?

Answer 3

priming - activating particular associations in memory
overconfidence phenomenon -
confirmation bias - tendency to be more confident than correct, to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs
confirmation bias - tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions

Question 4

What are heuristics? What is the difference between the representative and availability heuristics?

Answer 4

heuristics - rules people follow to make judgements quickly and efficiently

representative heuristic - a mental short-cut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case

availability heuristic - judgement based on the east with which they can bring something to mind

difference - one is based on how you identify a typical thing of a category, the other is based on which is easier to remember

Question 5

Know what illusory correlation, illusions of control, regression toward the mean are.

Answer 5

illusory correlations - perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists
illusions of control - perception of uncontrollable events as subject one’s control or as more controllable than they are
regression toward the mean - statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to return toward one’s average

Question 6

Understand the research on self-fulfilling beliefs and behavioral confirmation

Answer 6

research shows that expecting a certain thing can often cause that thing to happen
behavioral confirmation - type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people’s social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations
researchers asked men to talk on the phone with women who had been shown a picture of either an attractive woman or unattractive woman, men rated supposedly attractive women as speaking more warmly

Question 7

Jones and Davis’ Correspondent Inference theory

Answer 7

not done

Question 8

Kelley’s covariation model - understand distinctiveness, consensus, and consistency, and the role of augmenting and discounting

Answer 8

consistency - does the person act this way consistently?
consensus - do others behave similarly in the same situation?
distinctiveness - does person behave differently in different situations?
augmenting - when there are known risks, costs or constraints to an action, that action is more likely to be attributed to personal characteristics
discounting - the more you know about the environmental factors surrounding behavior, the less likely you are to attribute behavior to internal factors