Chapter 3

Question 1

Holistic Thinking Style

Answer 1

A type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other; this type of thinking is common in East Asian cultures (e.g., China, Japan, and Korea)

Question 2

Analytic Thinking Style

Answer 2

A type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context; this type of thinking is common in Western cultures

Question 3

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Answer 3

The case wherein people have an expectation about what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person, which causes that person to behave consistently with people’s original expectations, making the expectations come true

Question 4

Schemas

Answer 4

Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember

Question 5

Priming

Answer 5

The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept

Question 6

Availability Heuristic

Answer 6

A mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind

Question 7

Planning Fallacy

Answer 7

The tendency for people to be overly optimistic about how soon they will complete a project, even when they have failed to get similar projects done on time in the past

Question 8

Counterfactual Thinking

Answer 8

Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been

Question 9

Representativeness Heuristic

Answer 9

A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case

Question 10

Automatic Thinking

Answer 10

Thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless

Question 11

Social Cognition

Answer 11

How people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions

Question 12

Base Rate Information

Answer 12

Information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population

Question 13

Controlled Thinking

Answer 13

Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful

Question 14

Judgmental Heuristics

Answer 14

Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently

Question 15

Accessibility

Answer 15

The extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people’s minds and are therefore likely to be used when making judgments about the social world