social cognition

Internal attribution

behaviour is caused by internal factors like personality, attitudes, motives

External attribution

person’s behaviour is caused by external, situational factors

Self-Serving Attributional Bias

The tendency to take credit for your successful actions (i.e., attribute internal causes), and to blame your failures on other circumstances (i.e., attribute external causes)

Fundamental Attribution Error

Tendency to underestimate situational influences, and overestimate dispositional influences when judging others’ behavior

Actor-Observer Bias

People engage in the FAE more when they’re interpreting other people’s behavior, and less when they are judging themselves

Attribution: Discounting principle

If there are other reasonable causes, we reduce our confidence in the authenticity of the observed behaviour

Attribution: Augmentation principle

If the expected causes would have produced different outcomes, we increase our confidence in the authenticity of the observed behaviour

Attribution: Counterfactual thinking

Consideration of possible alternative outcomes if something was done differently. Ex. bronze medalist is happier than silver medalist.

social cognition

How people think and make judgments when trying to understand and interact with the social world

Belief in a just world

We need to perceive the world as a fair and just place. Implies those rewarded are good people, or behaved well, and those punished are bad people or behaved poorly

Confirmation bias

A tendency to test an idea about the world by seeking information that confirms it

Supraliminal priming

Within conscious awareness, usually don’t know being primed, but exists if you look close

E.g., briefly displayed words, scrambled sentences, posters on wall, answering demographics before completing questionnaire, etc

Subliminal priming 

below conscious awareness. Usually presented as brief flash or low noise 

bottom-up processing

”data driven” mental processing, in which an individual forms conclusions based on stimuli encountered in the envionment

top down processing 

“theory driven” mental processing, in which an individual filters and interprets new information in light of preexisting knowledge and expectations