Psych 221 Ch. 3 Flashcards
social cognition
the process of thinking about and making sense of oneself and others.
self fulfilling prophecy
when an initially inaccurate expectation leads to actions that cause the expectation to come true
dispositional inference
the judgement that a persons behavior has been caused by an aspect of that persons personality
correspondance bias (fundamental attribution error)
the tendency for observers to overestimate the casual influence of personality factors on behavior and to underestimate the causal role of situational influences
cognitive heuristic
a mental shortcut used to make a judgment
representative heuristic
a mental shortcut people use to classify something as belonging to a certain category to the extent that it is similar to a typical case from that category
availability heuristic
a mental shortcut people use to estimate the likelihood of an event by the ease with which instances of that event come to mind
false consensus effect
the tendency to overestimate the extent to which others agree with us
anchoring and adjustment heuristic
a mental shortcut thru which people begin with a rough estimation as a starting point and then adjust this estimate to take into account unique characteristics of the present situation
downward social comparison
the process of comparing ourselves with those who are less well off
upward social comparison
the process of comparing ourselves with those who are better off
self serving bias
the tendency to take personal credit for our successes and to blame external factors for our failures
attribution theories
theories designed to explain how people determine the cause of behavior
correspondent inference theory
the theory that proposes that people determine whether a behavior corresponds to an actors internal disposition by asking whether 1) the behavior was intended, 2) the behaviors consequences were foreseeable, 3) the behavior was freely chosen, and 4) the behavior occurred despite countervailing forces
covariation model
the theory that proposes that people determine the cause of an actors behavior by assessing whether other people act in similar ways(consensus), the actor behaves similarly in similar situations (distinctiveness), and the actor behaves similarly across time in the same situation (consistency)
