AP Psych 4.1-2

How we form impressions of ourselves and others, including attributions of behavior

Person perception

How we explain the causes of events

Attribution

two types of explanatory styles

Pessimistic or optimistic

Theory that we explain someone’s behavior by crediting either the situation of the person’s stable, enduring traits

Attribution theory

Tendency for observers to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition

Fundamental attribution error

One factor that influences our attributions

Cultures

Tendency for those acting in a situation to attribute their behavior to external causes, but for observers to attribute others’ behavior to internal causes

Actor-observer bias

Comparing ourselves to others

Social comparison

Unjustifiable and usually negative attitude toward a group

Prejudice

Three part mixture of prejudice

Negative emotions, stereotypes, discrimination

Three ways psychologists study implicit prejudice

Test for unconscious group associations, considering unconscious patronization, monitoring body reflex responses

How do some prejudices still exist?

Few people have enough courage to challenge prejudicial or hate speech

Tendency for people to believe the world is just and that people get what they deserve

Just-world phenomenon

part of self-concept that comes from group memberships (“we”)

Social identity

people with whom we share a common identity (“us”)

Ingroup

Those previewed as different or apart form our ingroup (“them”)

Outgroup

Tendency to favor our own group

Ingroup bias

Theory that prejudice offers and outlet for anger by providing someone to blame

Scapegoat theory

Economically frustrated people often express heightened prejudice, during economic downturns this intensifies

Social trends (scapegoat theory)

Temporarily frustrating people intensifies their prejudice, people who experience failure or are insecure restore self-esteem by being mean to others

Experiments (scapegoat theory)

Tendency to view our own ethnic or racial group as superior

Ethnocentrism

Uniformity of attitudes, personality, and appearance

Outgroup homogeneity

Tendency to recall faces of one’s own race more accurately than faces of other races

Other-race effect, cross-race effect, own-race bias

Availability heuristic

Tendency to estimate the frequency of an event by how readily it comes to mind

How does hindsight bias affect victim blaming?

Amplifies it

Feelings that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events, often influenced by our beliefs

Attitude

How do attitudes impact our actions?

predisposes our reactions to people, events, and objects

Identify a situational factor that can override attitude-behavior connection

Intense social pressures

Not only will we stand up for what we believe, but we also will more strongly believe in what we have stood up for

Attitudes-follow-behavior principle

Tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to late comply with a larger request

Foot-in-the-door phenomenon

After being turned down with a large request, a person will make a smaller request the next time

Door-in-the-face effect

How do new roles impact attitude?

first feeling fake as if you are acting but later that role become part of your attitude

What happens when our attitudes and actions don’t coincide?

Experience tension or cognitive dissonance

Theory that we reduce the discomfort we feel when two of our thoughts are inconsistent, we are aware that our attitudes and actions clash so we reduce tension by changing our attitude

Cognitive dissonance theory

Changing people’s attitudes, potentially influencing their actions

Persuasion

Suggests that when we actively process a message we more often retain it

Elaboration likelihood method

Occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues (such as a speaker’s attractiveness)

Peripheral route persuasion

occurs when interested people’s thinking is influenced by considering evidence and arguments

Central route persuasion

We may believe beautiful or famous people are especially smart or trustworthy

Halo effect

we explain someone’s behavior by crediting the situation

situational attribution

we explain someone’s behavior by crediting a person’s stable, enduring traits

dispositional attribution

difference between implicit and explicit prejudice

implicit is often subconscious, explicit is conscious

subtle prejudices that still exist

colorism, criminal stereotypes, medical care

areas where gender prejudice still exists

work and pay, leadership, perceived intelligence, masculine norms