Social Psychology-Chapter 4: Perceiving Persons – Flashcards
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social perception
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A general term for the processes by which people come to understand one another.
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mind perception
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The process by which people attribute humanlike mental states to various animate and inanimate objects, including other people.
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nonverbal behavior
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Behavior that reveals a person's feelings without words, through facial expressions, body language, and vocal cues.
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attribution theory
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A group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of behavior.
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personal attribution
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Attribution to internal characteristics of an actor, such as ability, personality, mood, or effort.
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situational attribution
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Attribution to factors external to an actor, such as the task, other people, or luck.
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covariation principle
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A principle of attribution theory that holds that people attribute behavior to factors that are present when a behavior occurs and are absent when it does not.
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availability heuristic
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The tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances of it come to mind.
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false-consensus effect
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The tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes, and behaviors.
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base-rate fallacy
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The finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information presented in the form of numerical base rates.
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counterfactual thinking
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The tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not.
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fundamental attribution error
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The tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the impact of situations on other people's behavior.
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belief in a just world
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The belief that individuals get what they deserve in life, an orientation that leads people to disparage victims.
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impression formation
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The process of integrating information about a person to form a coherent impression.
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information integration theory
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The theory that impressions are based on (1) perceiver dispositions and (2) a weighted average of a target person's traits.
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priming
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The tendency for recently used or perceived words or ideas to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information.
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implicit personality theory
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A network of assumptions people make about the relationships among traits and behaviors.
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central traits
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Traits that exert a powerful influence on overall impressions.
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primacy effects
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The tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later.
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need for closure
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The desire to reduce cognitive uncertainty, which heightens the importance of first impressions.
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confirmation bias
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The tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs.
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belief perseverence
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The tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited.
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self-fulfilling prophecy
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The process by which one's expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations.
