Impression Formation
The process by which we integrate various sources of information about another into overall judgment.
Stereotype
A fixed way of thinking about people that puts them into categories and doesn’t allow for individual variation
Implicit Personality Theory
Assumptions people make about which personality traits go which personality traits go together.
Positivity vs. Negativity Bias
The tendency for people to rate individual human beings more positively than groups or impersonal objects
The tendency for negative traits to bear weighted more heavily in impression formation than positive traits.
Fritz Heider’s Naïve Psychology
People are motivated to form a coherent view of the world
People have a need to gain control over their environments
Internal vs. external
Stable vs. Unstable
Controllability
Correspondent Inference Theory
The Action of the actor corresponds to, or is indicative of a stable personality characteristic.
Social desirability of the behavior
Actor’s degree of choice
Noncommon effects
Kelley’s Covariation Model
Covariation Principle: A principle of attribution theory stating, for that something to be a cause of a particular behavior, it must be present when the behavior occurs and absent when it does not occur.
Discounting principle: Whenever there are several explanations for a particular event, we tend to be less likely to attribute the effect to any particular cause.
Consensus
Consistency
Distinctiveness
The Fundamental Attribution Error
When explaining the actions of others, we tend to locate the cause in terms of dispositional characteristics rather than more appropriate situational characteristics.
The Actor-Observer Effect
The tendency to attribute other’s behavior to internal causes and our own behavior to external causes.
Self-Serving Bias
The tendency to assign an internal locus of causality for our positive outcomes and an external locus for our negative outcomes.
Self Serving Bias in Action
"Nicholas does well in school because I’m a good parent."
"Nicholas was crabby because he has not been feeling well."
Primacy Vs. Recency Effect
The tendency for the FIRST information received to carry more weight on one’s overall impression than later information.
The tendency for the last information received to carry greater weight than earlier information.