Term
| Definition
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actor-observer difference
| Differences in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment: the actor (who is relatively disposed to make situational attributions) or the observer (who is relatively disposed to make dispositional attributions).
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attitude inoculation
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Small attacks upon our beliefs that engage our attitudes, prior commitments, and knowledge structures, enabling us to counteract a subsequent larger attack and be resistant to persuasion.
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augmentation principle
| The idea that we should assign greater weight to a particular cause of behavior if there are other causes present that normally would produce the opposite outcome.
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availability heuristic
| The process whereby judgments of frequency or probability are based on the ease with which pertinent instances are brought to mind.
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cognitive dissonance
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The theory that inconsistencies among a person's thoughts, sentiments, and actions create an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency.
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correspondence bias
| The tendency to draw an inference about a person that "corresponds" to the behavior observed; also referred to as the fundamental attribution error.
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counterfactual thoughts
| Thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened "if only" something had been done differently.
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ego-defensive function
| An attitudinal function that enables us to maintain cherished beliefs about ourselves by protecting us from awareness of our negative attributes and impulses or from facts that contradict our cherished beliefs.
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emotional amplification
| A ratcheting up of an emotional reaction to an event that is proportional to how easy it is to imagine the event not happening.
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false consensus effect
| The tendency for people to think that their behavior (as well as their attitudes, preferences, or responses more generally) is relatively common.
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framing effect
| The influence on judgment resulting from the way information is presented, including the order of presentation.
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fundamental attribution error
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A tendency to believe that a behavior is due to a person's disposition rather than the situation in which the person finds himself.
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identifiable victim effect
| The tendency to be more moved by the plight of a single, vivid individual than by a more abstract aggregate of individuals.
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illusory correlation
| The belief that two variables are correlated when in fact they are not.
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peripheral (heuristic)
route of persuasion
| A persuasive route wherein people attend to relatively simple, superficial cues related to the message, such as the length of the message or the expertise or attractiveness of the communicator.
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pluralistic ignorance
| Misperception of a group norm that results from observing people who are acting at variance with their private beliefs out of a concern for the social consequences-behavior that reinforces the erroneous group norm.
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primacy effect
| The disproportionate influence on judgment of information presented first in a body of evidence.
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recency effect
| The disproportionate influence on judgment of information presented last in a body of evidence.
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reference groups
| Groups whose opinions matter to us and that affect our opinions and beliefs.
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self-serving bias
| The tendency to attribute failure and other bad events to external circumstances, but to attribute success and other good events to oneself.
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sleeper effect
| An effect that occurs when messages from unreliable sources initially exert little influence but later cause individuals' attitudes to shift.
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subjective norms
| People's beliefs about whether others are likely to approve of a course of action.
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theory of planned behavior
| The successor to the theory of reasoned action that maintains that the best predictors of deliberate behavior are people's attitudes toward specific behaviors, their subjective norms, and their beliefs about whether they can successfully perform the behavior in question.
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third-person effect
| The assumption by most people that "other people" are more prone to being influenced by persuasive messages (such as those in media campaigns) than they themselves are.
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thought polarization
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The hypothesis that more extended thought about a particular issue tends to produce more extreme, entrenched attitudes.
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