chapter 3 social psych

Aaron's parents are going through a divorce, and his grades are going down. This is due to the physical and social circumstances in his life, a ______ attribution.

situational

People believe that vivid events, such as shark attacks, are more common than events that are harder to picture, even when this is statistically incorrect. This tendency is an example of ______.

the availability heuristic

According to research presented the book, students who score the lowest on tests of grammar, humor, and logic are the most prone to_______ their abilities.

Overestimating

Most students underestimate how long it will take to complete papers and other major assignments. Students are not alone. Which of the following also describe issues with estimating?

Planning fallacy that individuals overestimate how much we will get done and how much free time we will have. Stockbroker confidence that experts are overconfident they can beat the stock market average. Political overconfidence in which overconfident decision makers can wreak havoc. (not: CEO overconfidence in which one individual decides all the major decisions and judgments of the corporation.)

___trait inference is an effortless, automatic inference of a trait after exposure to someone's behavior.

Spontaneous

Within attribution theory, people explain others' behaviors by trying to find a cause for those behaviors. Which of the following are possible causes?

Traits Attitudes Motives (not past behaviors. Reason: Attribution theory tries to find either a dispositional or situational cause.)

When a person's social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to validate their expectations it is indicative of _______.

behavioral confirmation

When the persistence of one's initial conceptions are discredited, but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives, this persistence is identified as _____ ______

belief perseverance

We tend to see our worlds through _______ glasses.

belief-tinted

A tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconception is identified as confirmation

bias

Joey placed second in the state wrestling meet. He spent some time thinking about what might have been if he had gotten one more take down. Joey is demonstrating ______ thinking.

counterfactual

You have an appointment with someone and they are late. You are more likely to use a _____ attribution to explain why they are late.

dispositional

According to Fritz Heider's attribution theory (1958), _____attribution assumes behavior is due to a person's traits and personality, whereas _____attribution assumes behavior is due to the situation or environment.

dispositional situational

_____ intuition appears in how we take in, store, and retrieve social information.

illusory

______ thinking is the term for perceptual misinterpretations, fantasies, and construed beliefs that change to fit our current beliefs or behaviors.

illusory

Being the person who actually rolls the dice or spins the wheel while gambling have higher confidence than if they are just watching someone roll the dice or spin the wheel. What phenomena explains this?

illusory control

David prepares his cereal and accidentally puts the cereal away in the refrigerator and the milk in the cupboard. David's action is an example of ______ thinking.

impulsive automatic

A reason social psychologists study attribution errors is to make us more ______. (Select all that apply.)

in touch with reality humane rational (not intelligent)

When Jason is seen yelling at Joan, people think Jason is an angry person. This is not necessarily true, but it happens with a phenomenon called spontaneous trait ______.

inference

Dan had a feeling he should buy Apple stock, and it proved to be an excellent choice. His decision was based on a "gut feeling" instead of logic or reasoning. This feeling is an example of ______ judgment.

intuitive

Our immediate knowledge of something without reasoning or analysis is identified as _____judgment.

intuitive (or snap)

Sam is asked to testify in a court hearing as an eyewitness to a robbery. Sam's testimony is relying on his construction of ______.

memory

Heuristics can be defined as ______ shortcuts.

mental

Attributing a behavior to the wrong source is identified as ______.

misattribution

Jack and Jill are having problems in their marriage. One night, Jack is actually working late, but Jill is sure he is out with another woman instead. Jill is demonstrating ______.

misattribution

The tendency to be more confident than correct is identified as the ______phenomenon.

overconfidence

Your manager insists that all proposals and recommendations include a reason why they might not work. By asking this, your manager is trying to reduce

overconfidence

Even when stimuli are presented unconsciously, their effects can become conscious due to

priming

Kiley is attending college to be a nurse. As she learns of high blood pressure she starts to worry about the headache she has experienced. This can happen due to ______.

priming

The awakening or activating of certain associations is the definition of

priming

The statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to return toward one's average is an example of ______ toward the average.

regression

Mitchell, Thompson, and colleagues report that people recall mildly pleasant events more favorably than they experienced them, a phenomenon called _____.

rosy retrospection

Behavioral confirmation is a form of ________ when individuals' social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations.

self-fulfilling prophecy

When we assume that other people's actions are the same as their intentions and dispositions, we are inferring

traits, attributes, or trait

In recent months, national media spent a lot of time on stories about gays and lesbians. Yesterday, you conducted a poll asking people to estimate what percent of Americans are gay and lesbian. They results indicate that people estimated 23% are gay and lesbian but actually only about 4.1% identify as gay or lesbian. Why did people overestimate this percent?

Availability heuristic

Psychologists Nisbett and Ross (1980) recommended four ways that education can reduce people's vulnerability to cognitive error. Which of the recommendations below is NOT one of their suggestions?

Distract people while they make decisions, so they rely on emotions (ways that are : Teach statistics courses focused on everyday logic Create memorable and useful slogans about biases Demonstrate good and bad logic with concrete examples)

Using the belief perseverance policy, consider a person who has a risk-prone personality trait. He or she would be most suited in which of the following occupations? (Select all that apply)

Firefighter Police officer

Which of the following methods can help remedy overconfidence?

Get prompt feedback. Consider disconfirming information.

Which of the following is NOT an aspect of controlled thinking?

Impulsive (deliberate, conscious are)

To avoid the camera perspective bias, upon whom or what should a confession videotape be focused?

It should focus equally on the suspect and the law enforcement officer.

In an experiment, people anticipated interacting with another person of a different race. When led to believe that the other person disliked interacting with someone from their race, they felt more ______.

anger

The theory of how people explain another's behavior by assuming it was caused by either internal or external reasons is identified as ______.

attribution

Studies have shown that teachers who know students are in the gifted range will ______.

call on them more often for answers set higher standards for them look and smile at them more

In most trials, evidence of a confession is videotaped from an earlier police interview. The view in the tape usually focuses exclusively on the confessor, not other people in the room (such as police). This fact is sometimes called the _____ bias.

camera perspective

Jonas was certain his computer program for grading classes was the best system to use. When others tried to offer feedback, Jonas did not really listen. Jonas is displaying ______ bias.

confirmation

We respond not to reality but to reality as we ______ it.

construe

Colton was told to eat his cereal and he would grow big muscles. Colton ate his cereal and checked his "growing" muscles in the mirror daily. Colton is experiencing an illusory _______.

correlation

Imagining an alternative scenario or outcome that might have happened but did not is known as ______ thinking.

counterfactual

Our social judgments are affected by our physical sensations thanks to our ______cognitions. For example, if one is holding a warm drink they are more likely to rate someone warmly as they approach.

embodied

____ _____explains how our physical sensations can prime our social judgments.

embodied cognition

Eyewitness testimony is based on the concept that our construction of memory is ______.

exact

When estimating chances for success on some future task, people's confidence is highest when the moment of truth is ______away.

farthest, farther, or distant

Eastern Asian cultures are more sensitive than Westerners are to the importance of situations, and therefore are less likely to commit the____attribution error.

fundamental

A cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory is identified as availability _______.

heuristic

Our personal system of mental shortcuts is the definition of

heuristics

Jessica was told that "blonds have more fun" so she colored her hair blond and actually believed she was meeting more people and that her social life improved. Jessica is an example of ______ thinking.

illusory

Repeated findings in experiments show that when witnessing an event and then repeatedly receiving misleading information about that event, an individual will incorporate the errors into his or her memory. This is referred to as the ______ effect.

misinformation

_____effect occurs when one incorporates wrong information into a memory after witnessing an event and attaining wrong, misleading information about it.

misinformation

John is a leader in his career; he speaks as an expert in all areas of the company. John's impression of expertise is an example of the ______ phenomena.

overconfidence

Research in 1999 by Kruger and Dunning found that incompetence feeds

overconfidence

In collectivist cultures, people less often perceive others in terms of ______ dispositions.

personal

Activating particular associations in memory is ______.

priming

We worry about remote possibilities while ignoring higher probabilities. Social scientists refer to this as our _____.

probability neglect

In the construction of memories, research shows that ______.

recall is often biased by current knowledge and beliefs

Don and Dana were married for 20 years before they divorced. Prior to the divorce, Dana said she was happy in her marriage; following the divorce, Dana felt they should have divorced much sooner. This is an example of ______ past attitudes.

reconstructing

Changing our memory of past behaviors to fit current perspectives or attitudes is called ______ of past behaviors.

reconstruction

Miguel is having a terrible week; he failed an exam, his stocks fell in value, and his golf score hit a low. However, Miguel is not upset because he knows that over time, bad trends get better (just like good trends get worse). Miguel is counting on which idea to improve his situation?

regression toward the average

The tendency to presume that someone or something belongs to a particular group if it resembles a typical member is a description of_____heuristics

representativeness

John is a 23-year-old male who is an atheist and a drug user. You are asked to guess what kind of music he likes. You guess heavy metal music. Your guess is based on the _____ heuristic.

representativeness (not stereotype)

Research has shown through behavioral confirmation that people who are more lonely behave less ______.

socially

Robyn Dawes, Richard Nisbett, and Lee Ross all agree that what is needed to reduce errors in our social thinking is, at heart, to _____.

teach

A teacher divides her class into groups of four students and randomly chooses one of them to write review questions for an upcoming exam. The student who writes the questions then quizzes the other three students in each group. Afterward, everyone in class agrees that the students who wrote the questions are the smartest. This error in logic is a result of not taking the situation into account, otherwise known as

the fundamental attribution error

Gamblers continue to gamble and feel more in control when they have picked their own lottery numbers (compared with picking random numbers). These actions are an example of ______.

the illusion of control

Anthony Greenwald describes our tendency to revise the past to suit our present views as having _____ egos.

totalitarian