Social Perception and Behavior 10.2 [HY]

Question 1

Social perception (social cognition)

Answer 1

provides the tools to make judgments and impressions regarding other people

Question 2

Attributions

Answer 2

Explanations for the causes of a person’s actions

Question 3

3 Primary Components of Social Perception

Answer 3

• perceiver, target, situation
• Perceiver: is influenced by experience, motives, and emotional state.
• Target: refers to the person about which the perception is made.
• Situation is also important in developing perception. A given social context can determine what information is available to the perceiver.

Question 4

Primacy effect

Answer 4

• the idea that first impressions are often more important than subsequent impressions.

Question 5

Recency effect

Answer 5

the most recent information we have about an individual that is the most important in forming our impressions

Question 6

Reliance on central traits

Answer 6

Individuals tend to organize the perception of others based on traits and personal characteristics of the target that are most relevant to the perceiver

Question 7

Implicit personality theory

Answer 7

there are sets of assumptions people make about how different types of people, their traits, and their behavior are related.

Question 8

Halo effect

Answer 8

• cognitive bias in which judgments about a specific aspect of an individual can be affected by one’s overall impression of the individual

Question 9

Just-world hypothesis

Answer 9

• good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people
• A strong belief in a just world increases the likelihood of “blaming the victim” or stating that victims get what they deserve because such a
  worldview denies the possibility of innocent victims.

Question 10

Self-serving bias (self-serving attributional bias)

Answer 10

• individuals credit their own successes to internal factors and blame their failures on external factors.
• emotion is a factor in
  self-serving bias because emotion can impact self-esteem, which influences
  the need to protect one’s self-identity

Question 11

Self enhancement

Answer 11

• focuses on the need to maintain self-worth, which can be accomplished in part by the self-serving bias

Question 12

Self-verification

Answer 12

• suggests people will seek the companionship of others who see them as they see themselves, thereby validating a person’s self-serving bias.

Question 13

In-group bias

Answer 13

the inclination to view members in one’s group more favorably

Question 14

out-group bias

Answer 14

the inclination to view individuals outside one’s group harshly

Question 15

Attribution theory

Answer 15

how individuals infer the causes of other people’s behavior.

Question 16

Dispositional (internal) attributions

Answer 16

those that relate to the person whose behavior is being considered, including beliefs, attitudes, and personality characteristics

Question 17

Situational (external) attributions

Answer 17

• those that relate to features of the surroundings, such as threats, money, social norms,
  and peer pressure
• consider the characteristics of the social context rather than the characteristics of the individual as the primary cause.

Question 18

Consistency cues

Answer 18

• regular behavior we associate with the motives of the person
• has consistent behavior over time

Question 19

Consensus cues

Answer 19

• the extent to which a person’s behavior differs from others
• matches others’ behavior

Question 20

Distinctiveness cues

Answer 20

• the extent to which a person engages in similar behavior across a series of scenarios. If a person’s behavior varies in different scenarios, we are more likely to form a situational attribution to explain it.
• uses similar behavior in similar situations

Question 21

Correspondent inference theory

Answer 21

• focusing on the intentionality of others’ behavior
• When an individual unexpectedly performs a behavior that helps or hurts us, we tend to explain the behavior by dispositional attribution

Question 22

Fundamental attribution error

Answer 22

• posits that we are generally biased toward making dispositional attributions rather than situational attributions when judging the actions of others.

Question 23

Attribute substitution

Answer 23

individuals must make judgments that are complex, but instead they substitute a simpler solution or apply a heuristic.

Question 24

Culture and attribution error

Answer 24

• The type of culture an individual belongs to plays a major role in the types of attributions the individual makes
• Individualists tend to make more fundamental attribution
  errors than those in collectivist cultures. Individualists are also more likely to attribute behavior to dispositional factors, whereas collectivists are more likely to attribute behavior to situational factors
• Collectivist cultures view individuals as members of a group
• Individualist cultures put high value on the individual, personal goals, and independence