chapter 7 *

Question 1

actor-observer difference

Answer 1

the bias in attribution whereby actors tend to see their own behaviour as due to characteristics of the external situation, whereas observers tend to attribute actors’ behaviour to the actors’ internal, personal characteristics

Question 2

attribution

Answer 2

the process by which people make infefences about the cause of behaviour or attitudes

Question 3

belief perseverance

Answer 3

a tendency to continue to view an intial assumption as correct despite evidence to the contradictory

Question 4

categorization

Answer 4

the tendency to percieve stimuli as members of groups or classes rather than as isolated entities; the act of encoding stimuli as members of classes

Question 5

complexity-extremity effect

Answer 5

the bias where less complex schemas lead to more extreme judegments and evaluations

Question 6

confirmation bias

Answer 6

the tendency to focus on info relevant to a belief and ignoring or downplaying info that is inconsistent with that belief

Question 7

dispositional attribution

Answer 7

attributing a behaviour to the internal state(s) of the person who performed it rather than to factors in that person’s environment

Question 8

focus-of-attention bias

Answer 8

the tendency to overestimate the casual impact of whomever or whatever we focus our attention on

Question 9

fundamental attribution error

Answer 9

the tendency to underestimate the importance of situational influences and to overestimate personal, dispositional factors as causes of behaviours

Question 10

gender schema

Answer 10

characteristics and behaviour that we expect from men versus women

Question 11

halo effect

Answer 11

the tendency of our general or overall liking for a person to influence our assessment of more specific traits of that person. The halo effect can produce inaccuracy in our ratings of others’ traits and performances

Question 12

heuristics

Answer 12

mental shortcuts that allow individuals to quickly select and apply schemas to new or ambiguous situations

Question 13

implicit personality theory

Answer 13

a set of unstated assumptions about which personality traits are correlated with one another

Question 14

impression formation

Answer 14

the process of organizing diverse info into a unified impression of a person

Question 15

learned helplessness

Answer 15

occurs when individuals focus on past failures and conclude that they are incapable of achieving success.

Question 16

locus of control

Answer 16

the percieved cause of events in one’s life.

Question 17

primacy effect

Answer 17

the tendency, when forming an impression, to be most influenced by the earliest info recieved. The primacy effect accounts for the fact that first impressions are especially powerful

Question 18

prototype

Answer 18

in person perception, an abstraction that represents the “typical” or quintessential instance of a class or group

Question 19

recency effect

Answer 19

the tendecy, when forming an impression, to he most influenced by the latest info recieved

Question 20

schema

Answer 20

a specific cognitive structure that organizes the processing of the complex info about other persons, groups, and situations. our schemas guide what we percieve in the environment, how we organize info in memory, and what inferences and judgements we make about people and things

Question 21

self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 21

when persons behave toward another person according to a label (impression) and cause the person to respond in ways that confirm the label

Question 22

self serving bias

Answer 22

in attribution, the tendency for people to take personal credit for acts that yield positive outcomes and to defelct blame for bad outcomes by attributing them to external causes

Question 23

situational attribution

Answer 23

attributing a behaviour to environmental forces facing the person who performed it rather than to that person’s internal state

Question 24

social perception

Answer 24

the process through which we construct an understanding of the social world out of the data we obtain through our senses; more narrowly defined, the processed through which we use available info to form impressions of people

Question 25

stereotype threat

Answer 25

the suspucion a member of a group holde that they will be judged based on a common stereotype of the group

Question 26

stereotypes

Answer 26

fixed sets of characteristics that are attributed to all the members of a group; simplistic and rigid perceptions of members of one group that are widely shared by others

Question 27

subtractive rule

Answer 27

when making attributions about the influence of personal dispositions on a behaviour, the observer subtracts the perceived impact of situational forces from the personal disposition implied by the behaviour itself.

Question 28

subtyping

Answer 28

a process through which percievers create subcategories of stereotyper groups who serve as expectations to the rule without threatening the overarching stereotype. cognitive strategies like these help people explain away contradictory info and preserve stereotypes

Question 29

trait centrality

Answer 29

a personality trait has a high level of trait centrality when info about a person’s standing on that trait has a large impact on the overall impression that others form of that person. the warm-cold trait, for instance, is highly central

Question 30

person schemas

Answer 30

are cognitive structures that describe the personalities of others. person schemas can apply either to specific individuals or to types of individuals. person schemas organize our conceptions of others’ personalities and enable us to develop expectations about others’ behaviour

Question 31

self schemas

Answer 31

structures that organize our conception of our own characeristics

Question 32

group schemas

Answer 32

also called stereotypes, are schemas regarding the members of a particular social gorup or social category

Question 33

role schemas

Answer 33

indicate which attributes and behaviours are typical of persons occupying a particular role in a group.

Question 34

event schemas

Answer 34

also called scripts are schemas regarding important, recurring social events

Question 35

how do schemas help us focus on what is important

Answer 35

1) they influence our capacity to recall info by making certain kinds of facts more salient and easier to remember
2) they help us process info faster
3) they guide our inferences and judgements about people and objects
4) they allow us to reduce ambiguity by providing a way to interpret ambiguous elements in the situation

Question 36

schematic memory

Answer 36

• human memory is laregly reconstructive
• three types of info
• material consistent with schemas
• material contradictory to schemas
• material irrelevant to schemas

Question 37

schematic inference

Answer 37

-schemas affect the inferences we make about the persons and other social entities

Question 38

schematic judgement

Answer 38

-schemas can influence our judgements or feelings about persons and other entities

Question 39

origins of stereotypes

Answer 39

some theorists suggest that stereotypes arise out of direct experience with some members of the stereotyper group

Question 40

first impressions

Answer 40

-even before studying soc psych you surely notucer the effort individuals make to create a good impression when interviewing for a new job.. etc

Question 41

anchoring and adjustment

Answer 41

when faced with making a judgement on something we know very little about, we grasp any cues we can find to help us make a decent guess. oftentimes we will use some particular standard as a starting point. such a starting point is called an anchor , and our modufication relative to the anchor is called adjustment.

Question 42

commonality

Answer 42

because many acts have multiple effects, however, observers attributing specific intentions and dispositions find it informative to observe the actir in situations that involve choices betweeeb alternative actions