In social psychology, fundamental attribution error (FAE), also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect, is a cognitive attribution bias where observers underemphasize situational and environmental factors for the behavior of an actor while overemphasizing dispositional or personality factors. This effect has been described as "the tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are"; that is, to overattribute their behaviors to their personality and underattribute them to the situation or context. Although personality traits and predispositions are considered to be observable facts in psychology, the fundamental attribution error is an error because it misinterprets their effects.
The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle. The effect has been demonstrated with many kinds of things, including words, Chinese characters, paintings, pictures of faces, geometric figures, and sounds. In studies of interpersonal attraction, the more often people see a person, the more pleasing and likeable they find that person.
The sleeper effect is a psychological phenomenon that relates to persuasion. It is a delayed increase in the effect of a message that is accompanied by a discounting cue. A discounting cue being some negative connotation or lack of credibility in the message. Where a positive message may evoke an immediate positive response which decays over time, the sleeper effect refers to a delayed positive response that is maintained over time. The effect was first noticed among US Army soldiers exposed to army propaganda. It was hypothesized that over time the soldiers forgot that the message was propaganda. The effect has been widely studied but notoriously difficult to reproduce, leading to some doubt over its existence.
Thomas Dashiff Gilovich an American psychologist who is the Irene Blecker Rosenfeld Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. He has conducted research in social psychology, decision making, behavioral economics, and has written popular books on these subjects. Gilovich has collaborated with Daniel Kahneman, Richard Nisbett, Lee Ross and Amos Tversky. His articles in peer-reviewed journals on subjects such as cognitive biases have been widely cited. In addition, Gilovich has been quoted in the media on subjects ranging from the effect of purchases on happiness to perception of judgment in social situations. Gilovich is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Automaticity is the ability to do things without occupying the mind with the low-level details required, allowing it to become an automatic response pattern or habit. It is usually the result of learning, repetition, and practice. Examples of tasks carried out by 'muscle memory' often involve some degree of automaticity.
Ego depletion is the controversial idea that self-control or willpower draws upon a limited pool of mental resources that can be used up. When the energy for mental activity is low, self-control is typically impaired, which would be considered a state of ego depletion. In particular, experiencing a state of ego depletion impairs the ability to control oneself later on. A depleting task requiring self-control can have a hindering effect on a subsequent self-control task, even if the tasks are seemingly unrelated. Self-control plays a valuable role in the functioning of the self on both individualistic and interpersonal levels. Ego depletion is therefore a critical topic in experimental psychology, specifically social psychology, because it is a mechanism that contributes to the understanding of the processes of human self-control. There have both been studies to support and to question the validity of ego-depletion as a theory.
Susan Tufts Fiske is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs in the Department of Psychology at Princeton University. She is a social psychologist known for her work on social cognition, stereotypes, and prejudice. Fiske leads the Intergroup Relations, Social Cognition, and Social Neuroscience Lab at Princeton University. Her theoretical contributions include the development of the stereotype content model, ambivalent sexism theory, power as control theory, and the continuum model of impression formation.
John A. Bargh is a social psychologist currently working at Yale University, where he has formed the Automaticity in Cognition, Motivation, and Evaluation (ACME) Laboratory. Bargh's work focuses on automaticity and unconscious processing as a method to better understand social behavior, as well as philosophical topics such as free will. Much of Bargh's work investigates whether behaviors thought to be under volitional control may result from automatic interpretations of and reactions to external stimuli, such as words.
Edward Tory Higgins is the Stanley Schachter Professor of Psychology and Business, and Director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University. Higgins' research areas include motivation and cognition, judgment and decision-making, and social cognition. Most of his works focus on priming, self-discrepancy theory, and regulatory focus theory. He is also the author of Beyond Pleasure and Pain: How Motivation Works, and Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing the World for Success and Influence.
Self-enhancement is a type of motivation that works to make people feel good about themselves and to maintain self-esteem. This motive becomes especially prominent in situations of threat, failure or blows to one's self-esteem. Self-enhancement involves a preference for positive over negative self-views. It is one of the three self-evaluation motives along with self-assessment and self-verification . Self-evaluation motives drive the process of self-regulation, that is, how people control and direct their own actions.
Philip E. Tetlock is a Canadian-American political science writer, and is currently the Annenberg University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is cross-appointed at the Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences. He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.
Negative affectivity (NA), or negative affect, is a personality variable that involves the experience of negative emotions and poor self-concept. Negative affectivity subsumes a variety of negative emotions, including anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness. Low negative affectivity is characterized by frequent states of calmness and serenity, along with states of confidence, activeness, and great enthusiasm.
Priming is the idea that exposure to one stimulus may influence a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. The priming effect refers to the positive or negative effect of a rapidly presented stimulus on the processing of a second stimulus that appears shortly after. Generally speaking, the generation of priming effect depends on the existence of some positive or negative relationship between priming and target stimuli. For example, the word nurse might be recognized more quickly following the word doctor than following the word bread. Priming can be perceptual, associative, repetitive, positive, negative, affective, semantic, or conceptual. Priming effects involve word recognition, semantic processing, attention, unconscious processing, and many other issues, and are related to differences in various writing systems. Research, however, has yet to firmly establish the duration of priming effects, yet their onset can be almost instantaneous.
Self-concealment is a psychological construct defined as "a predisposition to actively conceal from others personal information that one perceives as distressing or negative". Its opposite is self-disclosure.
Albert Jan "Ap" Dijksterhuis is a Dutch Social Psychologist at Radboud University Nijmegen.
Sander L. van der Linden is a social psychologist, author, and professor of social psychology in society in the department of psychology at the University of Cambridge, England where he has directed the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Laboratory since 2016. He is also a fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, a research affiliate of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication at Yale University and the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge.
Monica Rose Biernat is a social psychologist known for her research on social judgment, stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. She is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Kansas.
Felicia Pratto is a social psychologist known for her work on intergroup relations, dynamics of power, and social cognition. She is Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut. Pratto is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.
Serena Chen is an American social psychologist known for her work on the self and interpersonal relationships. She is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and currently serves as Chair of the Psychology Department. Her research utilizes a social-cognition framework and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other news outlets.
Tanya L. Chartrand is a social psychologist known for her research on consumer behavior and on non-conscious processes influencing emotions, cognition, and behavior. Chartrand is the Roy J. Bostock Marketing Professor and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University.
