Chapter 16 Student Resources

Flashcards

Key Terms

Social perception

the processes involved when one person perceives, evaluates, and forms an impression of another person.

Attributions

our inferences concerning the causes of patterns of behaviour in other people and in ourselves.

Fundamental attribution error

a bias towards attributing another person’s behaviour to their personality rather than the situation.

Dispositional attribution

deciding someone’s behaviour to internal characteristics (e.g., personality) rather than the situation.

Situational attribution

deciding that someone’s behaviour is due to the situation in which they find themselves rather than to their disposition.

Actor-observer bias

others’ actions are attributed to their internal dispositions whereas our own actions are attributed to the current situation.

Social cognition

the cognitive processes involved in understanding others’ behaviour and personality and understanding social situations.

Implicit personality theory

the assumption (sometimes mistaken) that certain personality traits tend to be found together in other people.

Primacy effect

the finding that first impressions have more impact than later ones in influencing our opinions of other people.

False consensus effect

the mistaken belief that most other people resemble us in many ways (e.g., personality; beliefs).

Self-disclosure

revealing personal or private information about oneself to another person.