chapter 4: social cognition

Question 1

list

2 dimensions of snap judgment

Answer 1

• dimension 1 (positive/negative): trusworthy/or not agressive/ or not
• dimension 2 (power): confident/bashful dominant/submissive

Question 2

true or false

Snap judgements are always accurate

Answer 2

false

Question 3

define

situational attribution

Answer 3

consensus and distinctiveness high

Question 4

define

dispositional attribution

Answer 4

consenses and distinctiveness low

Question 5

answer

what are men more likely than women to attribute their failures to?

Answer 5

lack of effort

Question 6

answer:

what are women more likely than men to attribute their failures to?

Answer 6

lack of ability

Question 7

define:

covariation principle

Answer 7

idea that behavior should be atttributed to potential causes that occur along with observed behavior

Question 8

define

consensus

Answer 8

type of covarition; whether most people would behave the same way or different in a given situation

Question 9

define

distinctiveness

Answer 9

type of covariation; whether a behavior is unique to a particular situation or occurs in many/all situations

Question 10

define

discounting principle

Answer 10

idea that people will assign reduced weight to a particular cause of behaior id other plausible causes might have produced the same behavior

Question 11

define:

counterfactual thinking

Answer 11

thoughts of what we would’ve, could’ve, should’ve happened “if only” something occured differently

Question 12

define:

emotional amplification

Answer 12

increase in emotional reaction to an event that is proportional to how easy it is to imagine the event not happening

Question 13

define:

self-serving attributions bias

Answer 13

tendency to attribute failure/other bad events to external circumstances and to attribute success and other good events to oneself

Question 14

define:

fundamental attribution error

Answer 14

failure to recognixe the importance of external factors on behavior along with the tendency to over emphasize importance of disposition on behavior

Question 15

define

actor-observer effect

Answer 15

difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment

actor makes situaltional attributions
observer makes dispostional attri

Question 16

define

spin framing

Answer 16

varies content, not just order (25% fat vs 75% lean)

Question 17

define:

temporal frame

Answer 17

particular time perspectie in which we think about events

Question 18

define

primacy effect

Answer 18

type of order effect; information 1st presented has disproportionate influence on judgment

Question 19

define:

recency effect

Answer 19

type of order effect; last information presented has a disproportionate influence on judgment

Question 20

define:

framing effect

Answer 20

influence on judgment resulting form the way information is presented

Question 21

define

construal level theory

Answer 21

theory about the relationship between temporal distance and abstract/concrete thinking
* psychologically distant events are thought about in abstract terms
* actions that are close are thought about in concrete terms

Question 22

define

overconfidence bias

Answer 22

tendency for individuals to have greater confidence in their judgments than is accurate

Question 23

define

confirmation bias

Answer 23

tendency to test a propsition by searching for evidence in support of it

Question 24

define

bottom up processing

Answer 24

data driven mental processing in which an individual forms conclusions based on stimuli encountered in the environment

Question 25

define:

top down processing

Answer 25

theory driven mental processing in which an individual filters and interprets new information in light of preexsiting knowledge/ experiences

Question 26

define

priming

Answer 26

the presentation of information designed to activate a concept and hence make it accessible

Question 27

define

intuitive system

Answer 27

quick/automatic, based on associations, performs many operations simultanelously

Question 28

define

rational system

Answer 28

slower/controlled based on rules and deductions; performs operations one at a time

Question 29

define

heuristics

Answer 29

intuitive mental operations performed quickly and automatically that provide efficient answers to common problems of judgements

Question 30

define

availability heuristic

Answer 30

process whereby judgments of frequency or probablility based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind

Question 31

define:

representativeness heuristic

Answer 31

the process wherby judgements of liklihood are based on assessments of similarity between individuals and group prototypes or between cause and effect

Question 32

define

fluency

Answer 32

feeling of ease/difficulty associated with processing information

Question 33

define

base rate information

Answer 33

information about the relative frequency of events or members of differnt categories in a population

Question 34

define:

illusory correlation

Answer 34

belief that two variables are correlated when in fact they are not

Question 35

define

regression effect

Answer 35

the statistical tendency, when 2 variables are imperfectly correlated, for extreme values of one of them to be associated with less extreme values of the other

Question 36

define

regression fallacy

Answer 36

failure to recognize the influence of the regression effect and to instead offer a causal theory for what is really a simple statistical regularity

Question 37

define

attribution theory

Answer 37

a set of concepts that explain how people assign causes to the events around them and the effects of these kinds

Question 38

define

causal attribution

Answer 38

linking a cause to an event concluding that something happened because of x or y

Question 39

define

consistency

Answer 39

whether an individual behaves the same way or differently in a given situation on different outcomes