module 3 socpsy

Predisposition

natural or acquired tendency, attitude, or likelihood to react or behave in a certain way

Prejudgment

Forming an opinion or conclusion about someone or something before having all the relevant information

Priming

activating particular associations in memory

Preconception

an idea or opinion about something before really knowing much about it

Kulechov Effect

filmmakers control people’s perceptions of emotion by manipulating the setting in which they see a face

Construal Process

the way an individual perceives, interprets, and makes sense of the world, particularly events and people’s actions by forming mental representations of meaning

Spontaneous Trait Transference

psychological phenomenon where people perceive a speaker as possessing the traits they describe in others

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

Rosy Retrospection

construction of positive memories; recall of mildly pleasant events more favorably than they experienced them

Totalitarian Ego

revision of the past to suit our present views

Anthony Greenwald (1980)

social psychologist who believed all people have Tolitarian ego

Intuitive Judgments

quick, unconscious, and effortless judgments or understandings of social situations (personal or “gut feeling”) rather than deliberate reasoning or conscious analysis

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

tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs

Confirmation Bias

tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions

Representativeness Heuristic

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

Availability Heuristic

cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability 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 a 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

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 - Fritz Heider (1958)

theory of how people explain other’s 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 environment

Spontaneous Trait Inference

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

Fundamental Attribution Error

tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon other’s behavior

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