Chapter 4 Flashcards
Social perception
The study of how we form
impressions of and make
inferences about other people
Nonverbal communication
The way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words; nonverbal cues include facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position and movement, the use of touch, and gaze
Encode
To express or emit nonverbal
behavior, such as smiling or
patting someone on the back
Decode
To interpret the meaning of the nonverbal behavior other people express, such as deciding that a pat on the back was an expression of condescension and not kindness
Affect blend
A facial expression in which one
part of the face registers one
emotion while another part of the
face registers a different emotion
Display rules
Culturally determined rules about
which nonverbal behaviors are
appropriate to display
Emblems
Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture; they usually have direct verbal translations—such as the OK sign
Implicit personality theory
A type of schema people use to group various kinds of personality traits together; for example, many people believe that someone who is kind is generous as well
Attribution theory
A description of the way in which
people explain the causes of their
own and other people’s behavior
Internal attribution
The inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character, or personality
External attribution
The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he or she is in; the assumption is that most people would respond the same way in that situation
Covariation theory
A theory that states that to form an attribution about what caused a person’s behavior, we systematically note the pattern between the presence or absence of possible causal factors and whether or not the behavior occurs
Consensus information
Information about the extent
to which other people behave
the same way toward the same
stimulus as the actor does
Distinctiveness information
Information about the extent to
which one particular actor behaves
in the same way to different stimuli
Consistency information
Information about the extent to
which the behavior between one
actor and one stimulus is the same
across time and circumstances
Fundamental attribution error
The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors
Perpetual salience
The seeming importance of
information that is the focus of
people’s attention
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
Self-serving attributions
Explanations for one’s successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors
Defensive attributions
Explanations for behavior that
avoid feelings of vulnerability and
mortality
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 assume that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people
