Social Psych 2 Flashcards
impression formation
forming of first knowledge a person has about another person
includes assigning other person to a number of categories and drawing conclusions about what that person is likely to do
primacy effect in impression formation
first time people meet someone, they form an impression of that person, often based on physical appearance alone, that persists even though they may later have other contradictory information about that person
social categorization
assignment of new person to category/group based on characteristics the new person has in common with other people or groups with whom the perceiver has had prior experience
mostly automatic, not conscious awareness often
stereotype
a belief that a set of characteristics is shared by all members of a particular social category
implicit personality theory
sets of assumptions that people have about how different types of people, personality traits, and actions are all related and form in childhood
schema
mental patterns/groups
attribution
the process of explaining both one’s own behavior and the behavior of other people
attribution theory
originally developed by header
explains why things happen and why people choose bx explanations they do
external causes and internal causes
situational cause
when the cause of behavior is assumed to be from external sources
observed behavior assumed to be caused by situation that exists for person at the time
dispositional cause
cause of behavior assumed to come from within the individual
person’s internal personality characteristics that are seen as the cause of the observed behavior
fundamental attribution error
tendency for people observing someone else’s actions to overestimate the influence of that person’s internal characteristics on behavior and underestimate the influence of the situation
actor observer bias
in explaining our own bx, the tendency to use situational attributions instead of personal
people tend to explain actions of others with dispositional causes rather than looking for outside causes, opposite for self
main takeaway in many studies
US is bad (more fundamental attribution errors, more implicit associations) and other countries better, especially in Asia
three main fields in social psych
social influence, social cognition, and social interactions
prejudice
when a person holds an unsupported and often negative stereotyped attitude about the members of a particular social group