Social Beliefs and Judgments

Question 1

Priming

Answer 1

activating particular associations in memory

Question 2

Spontaneous trait transference

Answer 2

occurs when communicators are perceived as possessing the very traits they describe in others.

Question 3

Belief perseverance

Answer 3

persistence of one’s initial conceptions, as when the basis for one’s belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives

Question 4

Misinformation effect

Answer 4

incorporating “misinformation” into one’s memory of the event, after witnessing the event and receiving misleading information about it

Question 5

Controlled processing

Answer 5

“explicit” thinking that is deliberate, reflective, and conscious

Question 6

Rosy retrospection

Answer 6

our tendency to recall the past more fondly than the present, all else being equal

Question 7

Automatic processing

Answer 7

“implicit” thinking that is effortless, habitual, and without awareness, roughly corresponds to “intuition.”

Question 8

Overconfidence phenomenon

Answer 8

the tendency to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs

Question 9

Confirmation bias

Answer 9

a tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions

Question 10

Heuristic

Answer 10

a thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments

Question 11

Representativeness heuristic

Answer 11

the tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling (representing) a typical member

Question 12

Availability heuristic

Answer 12

a cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory. If instances of something come readily in mind, we presume it to be commonplace

Question 13

Counterfactual thinking

Answer 13

imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn’t

Question 14

Illusory correlation

Answer 14

perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists

Question 15

Illusion of control

Answer 15

perception of uncontrollable events as subject to one’s control or as more controllable than they are

Question 16

Regression toward the average

Answer 16

the statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to turn toward one’s average

Question 17

Misattribution

Answer 17

mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source

Question 18

Attribution theory

Answer 18

the theory of how people explain others’ behavior - for example, by attributing it either to internal dispositions (enduring traits, motives, and attributes) or to external situations

Question 19

Dispositional attribution

Answer 19

attributing behavior to the person’s disposition and traits

Question 20

Situational attribution

Answer 20

attributing behavior to the environment

Question 21

Spontaneous trait interference

Answer 21

an effortless, automatic interference of a trait after exposure to someone’s behavior

Question 22

Fundamental attribution error

Answer 22

the tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others’ behavior

Question 23

Self-awareness

Answer 23

a self-conscious state in which attention focuses on oneself. It makes people more sensitive to their own dispositions and attitudes

Question 24

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 24

a belief that leads to its own fulfillment

Question 25

Behavioral confirmation

Answer 25

a type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people’s social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations