CHAPTER 5 (perceiving others) Flashcards
attribution
the process of assigning causes to behaviour
person perception
the process of learning about other people
nonverbal behaviour
any type of communication that does not involve speaking, including facial expressions, body language, touching, voice patterns, and interpersonal distance
central trait
characteristics that have a very strong influence on our impressions of others
primacy effect
the tendency for information that we have learned first to be weighted more heavily than is information that we learn later
recency effect
which information that comes later is given more weight
hale effect
the influence of a global positive evaluation of a person on perceptions of their specific traits
casual attribution
the process of trying to determine the cause of people’s behaviour
personal (or internal or dispositional) attribution
when we decide that the behaviour was caused primarily by a person
situational (or external) attributions
we may determine that the behaviour was caused primarily by the situation
covariation principle
a given behaviour is more likely to have been caused by the situation if that behaviour is covaries (or changes) across situations
fundamental attribution
when tend to overestimate the role of person factors and over look the impact of situations
correspondance bias
when we attribute behaviours to people’s internal characteristics
actor-observer bias or difference
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
trait ascription bias
a tendency for people to view their own personality, beliefs and behaviours as more variable than those of others
self-serving attribution
are attributions that help us meet our desires to see ourselves positively
self-serving bias
the tendency to attribute our successes to ourselves, and our failures to others and the situation
group-serving bias (ultimate attribution error)
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
group attribution error
a tendency to make attributional generalization about entire out-groups based on a very small number of observations of individuals members
just world hypothesis
a tendency to make attributions based on the belief that the world is fundamentally just
need for cognition
the tendency to think carefully and fully about our experiences
entity theorists
who tend to believe that people’s traits are fundamentally stable and incapable of change
incremental theorists
who believes that personalities change a lot overtime and who therefore are more likely to make situational attributions for events
attributional style
the type of attributions that we tend to make for the events that occur to us
