Psychology Unit 1

Personal Perception

refers to the different mental processes used to understand and form impressions of other people.

Direct

provided the person we are judging.

Indirect

from another person or source.

First impressions

a type of personal perception that are usually based on very little information.

Attribution theory

an evaluation made about the causes of behaviour and the process of making this evaluation

Internal

judged behaviour as being something personal with an individual.

External

judged behaviour as being something with the situation outside the individual.

Fundamental attribution error

refers to the tendency to judge other people’s behaviour as internal instead of external.

Actor-observer bias

refers to the tendency to attribute our own behaviour to external or situational factors, yet others’ behaviour to internal.

Self-serving bias

When judging ourselves we tend to take credit for our successes and deny responsibility for our failures.

Affective

refers to our emotions and intuitive feelings towards something reflected in our attitude.

Behavioural

refers to our outward and observable actions that reflect our point of view about something.

Cognitive

refers to our thoughts and beliefs towards something.

Stereotyping

a belief or generalisation about a group, about all members of the group thinking they’ll all have the same characteristics despite their individuality.

Cognitive dissonance

Psychological tension that occurs when our thoughts, feelings and/or behaviours do not align. It occurs when we act in a way that contradicts with our beliefs

Cognitive bias

Unconscious, systemic tendencies to interpret imformation in a way that is neither rational nor based on objective reality.

Confirmation bias

tendency to accept info that supports our prior beliefs and ignores evidence that doesn’t

Halo effect

tendency for the impression we form about one quality of a person to influence our overall belief about the person in other respects

False-Consensus Bias

tendency to overestimate the degree to which other people share the same ideas and attitudes as we do.

Heuristics

Information processing strategies or mental shortcuts that enable individuals to form judgements, make decisions, and solve problems quickly and efficiently.

Prejudice

a prejudgement that you make about others before interacting with them

Discrimination

unjust treatment of people due to their membership within a certain social category.

Stereotype

widely held belief and a generalisation about a group. A generalisation that all members in a group share the same characteristics, despite individuality.

What are the 5 types of Cognitive bias?

Confirmation bias, Halo effect, false-consensus bias, self-serving bias and actor-observer bias.

What are ways of reducing cognitive dissonance?

changing thoughts to match with behaviour or vise-versa