PSYC 379 Study Guide - Final Guide: Fundamental Attribution Error, Belief Perseverance, Numeral System
2 Jul 2018
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actor-observer effect - The tendency to attribute our own behaviour to situational causes and the
behaviour of others to personal factors. (p. 118)
attribution theory - A group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of
behaviour. (p. 110)
availability heuristic - The tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how
easily instances of it come to mind. (p. 113)
base-rate fallacy - The finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information
presented in the form of numerical base rates. (p. 114)
belief in a just world - The belief that individuals get what they deserve in life, an orientation
that leads people to disparage victims. (p. 121)
belief perseverance - The tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited. (p.
129)
central traits - Traits that exert a powerful influence on overall impressions. (p. 126)
confirmation bias - The tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing
beliefs. (p. 128)
counterfactual thinking - The tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might
have occurred but did not. (p. 114)
covariation principle - A principle of attribution theory holding that people attribute behaviour
to factors that are present when a behaviour occurs and absent when it does not. (p. 111)
false-consensus effect - The tendency for people to over-estimate the extent to which others
share their opinions, attributes, and behaviours. (p. 113)
fundamental attribution error - The tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and
underestimate the impact of situations on other people’s behaviour. This error is sometimes
called correspondence bias. (p. 115)
implicit personality theory - A network of assumptions people make about the relationships
among traits and behaviours. (p. 126)
impression formation - The process of integrating information about a person to form a
coherent impression. (p. 122)
information integration theory - The theory that impressions are based on perceiver
dispositions and a weighted average of a target person’s traits. (p. 123)
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