CHAPTER 5 (perceiving others)

Question 1

attribution

Answer 1

the process of assigning causes to behaviour

Question 2

person perception

Answer 2

the process of learning about other people

Question 3

nonverbal behaviour

Answer 3

any type of communication that does not involve speaking, including facial expressions, body language, touching, voice patterns, and interpersonal distance

Question 4

central trait

Answer 4

characteristics that have a very strong influence on our impressions of others

Question 5

primacy effect

Answer 5

the tendency for information that we have learned first to be weighted more heavily than is information that we learn later

Question 6

recency effect

Answer 6

which information that comes later is given more weight

Question 7

hale effect

Answer 7

the influence of a global positive evaluation of a person on perceptions of their specific traits

Question 8

casual attribution

Answer 8

the process of trying to determine the cause of people’s behaviour

Question 9

personal (or internal or dispositional) attribution

Answer 9

when we decide that the behaviour was caused primarily by a person

Question 10

situational (or external) attributions

Answer 10

we may determine that the behaviour was caused primarily by the situation

Question 11

covariation principle

Answer 11

a given behaviour is more likely to have been caused by the situation if that behaviour is covaries (or changes) across situations

Question 12

fundamental attribution

Answer 12

when tend to overestimate the role of person factors and over look the impact of situations

Question 13

correspondance bias

Answer 13

when we attribute behaviours to people’s internal characteristics

Question 14

actor-observer bias or difference

Answer 14

we tend to make more personal attributions for our won behaviour of others than we do for ourselves and to make more situational attributions for our own behaviour than for the behaviour of others

Question 15

trait ascription bias

Answer 15

a tendency for people to view their own personality, beliefs and behaviours as more variable than those of others

Question 16

self-serving attribution

Answer 16

are attributions that help us meet our desires to see ourselves positively

Question 17

self-serving bias

Answer 17

the tendency to attribute our successes to ourselves, and our failures to others and the situation

Question 18

group-serving bias (ultimate attribution error)

Answer 18

a tendency to make internal attributions about our in-groups success and external attributions about their set back and to make the opposite pattern of attributions about our out-groups

Question 19

group attribution error

Answer 19

a tendency to make attributional generalization about entire out-groups based on a very small number of observations of individuals members

Question 20

just world hypothesis

Answer 20

a tendency to make attributions based on the belief that the world is fundamentally just

Question 21

need for cognition

Answer 21

the tendency to think carefully and fully about our experiences

Question 22

entity theorists

Answer 22

who tend to believe that people’s traits are fundamentally stable and incapable of change

Question 23

incremental theorists

Answer 23

who believes that personalities change a lot overtime and who therefore are more likely to make situational attributions for events

Question 24

attributional style

Answer 24

the type of attributions that we tend to make for the events that occur to us

Question 25

stable attribution

Answer 25

those that we think will be relatively permenant

Question 26

unstable attibution

Answer 26

are expected to change over time

Question 27

global attribution

Answer 27

are those that we feel apply broadly

Question 28

specific attribution

Answer 28

are those causes that we see as more unique to particular events

Question 29

negative attributional style

Answer 29

the tendency to explain negative events by referring to their own internal, stable, and global qualities

Question 30

learned helplessness

Answer 30

continually make external, stable, and global attributions for their behaviour

Question 31

positive attributional style

Answer 31

ways of explaining events that are related to high self-esteem and a tendency to explain the negative events they experience by referring to external, unstable and specific qualities

Question 32

unrealistic optimism

Answer 32

tendency to be overly positive about the likelihood that negative things will occur to us and that we will be able to effectively cope with them if they do

Question 33

self-handicapping

Answer 33

when we make statements or engage in behaviours that help us crate a conveniently external attribution for potential failure