Social Psychology by David Myers - Chapter 3

Priming

Activating particular associations in memory

Belief perseverance

Persistence of one's initial conceptions, as when the basis for one's belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives

Misinformation effect

Incorporating misinformation into one's memory of the event, after witnessing an event and receiving misleading information about it

Controlled processing

Explicit thinking that is deliberate, reflective, and conscious

Automatic processing

Implicit thinking that is effortless, habitual, and without awareness, roughly corresponds to intuition

Overconfidence phenomenon

The tendency to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs

Confirmation bias

A tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions

Heuristic

A thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments

Representativeness heuristic

The tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling (representing) a typical member

Availability heuristic

A cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory. If instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace

Representativeness

Snap judgments of whether someone or something fits a category

Availability

Quick judgments of likelihood of events (how available in memory)

Counterfactual thinking

Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn't

Illusory correlation

Perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of stronger relationship than actually exists

Illusion of control

Perception of uncontrollable events as subject to one's control or as more controllable than they are

Regression toward the average

The statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to return toward one's average

Misattribution

Mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source

Attribution theory

The theory of how people explain others' behavior - for example, by attributing it either to internal dispositions (enduring traits, motives, and attitudes) or to external situations

Dispositional attribution

Attributing behavior to the person's disposition and traits

Situational attribution

Attributing behavior to the envioronment

Spontaneous trait inference

An effortless, automatic inference of a trait after exposure to someone's behavior

Three factors of Harold Kelley's Theory of Attributions

Consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others' behavior. (Also called correspondence bias, because we so often see behavior as corresponding to a disposition.)

Self-awareness

A self-conscious state in which attention focuses on oneself. It makes people more sensitive to their own attitudes and dispositions

Self-fulfilling prophecy

A belief that leads to its own fulfillment

Behavioral confirmation

A type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people's social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations