Social Psych Ch. 4

The study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people.

The way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words; nonverbal cues include facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position and movement, the use of touch, and gaze.

To express or emit nonverbal behavior, such as smiling or patting someone on the back.

To interpret the meaning of the nonverbal behavior other people express, such as deciding that a pat on the back was an expression of condescension and not kindness.

A facial expression in which one part of the face registers one emotion while another part of the face registers a different emotion.

Culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display.

Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture; they usually have direct verbal translations such as the "OK" sign.

A type of schema people use to group various kinds of personality traits together; for example, many people believe that someone who is kind is generous as well.

A description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people's behavior.

The inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character, or personality.

The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he or she is in; the assumption is that most people would respond the same way in that situation.

A theory that states that to form an attribution about what caused a person's behavior, we systematically note the pattern between the presence or absence of possible casual factors and whether or not the behavior occurs.

Information about the extent to which other people behave the same way toward the same stimulus as the actor does.

Information about the extent to which one particular actor behaves in the same way to different stimuli.

Information about the extent to which the behavior between one actor and one stimulus is the same across time and circumstances.

The tendency to infer that people's behavior corresponds to (matches) their disposition (personality).

The seeming importance of information that is the focus of people's attention.

Analyzing another person's behavior first by making an automatic internal attribution and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behavior, after which one may adjust the original internal attribution.

The tendency to see other people's behavior as dispositionally caused but focusing more one the role of situational factors when explaining one's own behavior.

Explanations for one's successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one's failures that blame external, situational factor.

Explanations for behavior that avoid feelings of vulnerability and mortality.

A form of defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people.