Week 4 - Perceiving Persons

Question 1

Observations influencing impressions

Answer 1

1) physical appearance 2) social situations 3) behaviour

Question 2

Scripts

Answer 2

A preconception about a sequence of events likely to occur in a situation

Question 3

Attribution Theories

Answer 3

A group of theories describing how people explain causes of behaviour

Question 4

Personal Attribution

Answer 4

Attribution to internal characteristics of the actor

Question 5

Situational Attribution

Answer 5

Attribution to factors external to the actor

Question 6

Kelleys Covariation Theory

Answer 6

People attribute behaviour to factors that are present when the behaviour occurs and absent when it does not

Question 7

Three pieces of information req’d to make attributions according to Kelley’s theory

Answer 7

1) consistency 2) consensus 3) distinctiveness

Question 8

Cognitive heuristics

Answer 8

Information-processing rules of thumb; they are quick & easy, but frequently lead to error

Question 9

Availability heuristic

Answer 9

Overestimate the frequency of events that easily pop into mind

Question 10

False-consensus effect

Answer 10

Overestimate the extent to which others share our opinions

Question 11

Base-rate fallacy

Answer 11

People ignore numerical base rates or probabilities

Question 12

Representative Heuristic

Answer 12

Judgement of likelihood that object belongs to category based on similarity to typical features

Question 13

Counterfactual thinking

Answer 13

Tendency to imagine alternative outcomes that might have occurred but did not

Question 14

Fundamental Attribution Error

Answer 14

Overestimation of the extent to which people’s behaviour is due to internal, dispositional factors. And underestimation of the role of situational factors.

Question 15

Two-step model of the attribution process

Answer 15

Changing a first impression/attribution requires conscious effort (effortful second step) to account for situational factors

Question 16

Is the fundamental attribution error really a universally occurring error?

Answer 16

No, it appears to be influenced by culture (I.e Americans making more personal attributions vs Indians making more situational attributions)

Question 17

Summation model

Answer 17

the more positive traits, the better

Question 18

Averaging model

Answer 18

the higher the average value of all the various traits, the better

Question 19

Weighted averaging model

Answer 19

considering how important each trait is and then averaging them.

Question 20

Deviations from strict calculations in attribution weights

Answer 20

1) Perceiver characteristics 2) Priming effects 3) Target characteristics 4) Implicit personality theories 5) primacy effect

Question 21

Priming effects

Answer 21

Tendency for frequently used ideas to come to mind easily and influence interpretation of new information

Question 22

Primacy effect

Answer 22

Information presented early on - influence on information presented later.

Question 23

Implicit Personality Theory

Answer 23

A network of assumptions people make about the relationships among traits and behaviours. (neural networks/ activation of networks) e.g Warm = happier etc

Question 24

Confirmation Bias

Answer 24

Tendency to interpret, seek and create information in ways that verify existing beliefs

Question 25

Three confirmation biases

Answer 25

Perserverence of beliefs, confirmatory hypothesis testing and self-fulfilling prophecy

Question 26

Perseverance of beliefs

Answer 26

Sticking to initial beliefs even after these beliefs have been discredited

Question 27

Confirmatory Hypothesis Testing

Answer 27

Tendency to seek information that supports our existing views (i.e. asking loaded questions to force answers to support hypotheses)

Question 28

When is confirmatory hyp. testing less likely to occur

Answer 28

When people are not certain about their beliefs or are concerned with accuracy

Question 29

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 29

The process by which perceiver’s expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations

Question 30

mind perception

Answer 30

The process by which people attribute humanlike mental states to various animate and inanimate objects, including other people.

Question 31

Summarize the research

concerning perception of angry faces.

Answer 31

‘anger superiority effect’ researchers have found that people are quicker to spot—and slower to look away from—angry faces in a crowd than faces with neutral and less threatening emotions

Question 32

Jones’s correspondent inference theory

Answer 32

ystematically accounts for a perceiver’s inferences about what an actor was trying to achieve by a particular action

Question 33

Actor-observer bias

Answer 33

refers to a tendency to attribute one’s own actions to external causes, while attributing other people’s behaviors to internal causes.