PSYC 2606 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Fundamental Attribution Error, Representativeness Heuristic
Document Summary
Social cognition - the process of thinking about and making sense of oneself and others. Self-fulfilling prophecy - when an initially inaccurate expectation leads to actions that cause the expectation to come true. Ex: children whose teachers expect them to be bright, may perform better because teachers are warmer, challenge, and interact with them more. Dispositional inference - the judgement that a person"s behavior has been caused by an aspect of that person"s personality. Correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error) - the tendency for observers to overestimate the causal influence of personality factors on behavior and to underestimate the causal role of situational influence. Overestimating the importance of forces within a situation. Cognitive heuristic - a mental shortcut used to make a judgement. Representative heuristic - a mental shortcut people use to classify something as belonging to a certain category to the extent that it is similar to a typical case from that category.
