Social Psychology by David G. Myers 8th Edition
Social Beliefs and Judgments
How We Explain Other’s Behavior
Attribution Theory
Dispositional vs. situational attributions
Inferring traits
Commonsense attributions



The Fundamental Attribution Error
Attribution Theories & The FAE
The Fundamental Attribution Error
Why do we make this error?
Perspective and situational awareness
Cultural differences
How fundamental is this error?
Why we study attribution errors


Constructing Our Social Worlds
Perceiving and interpreting events
Belief perseverance
Constructing memories
Reconstructing past attitudes
Reconstructing past behavior
Reconstructing our experiences


Judging Others
Thinking without awareness
Judgmental overconfidence
Heuristics
Representative heuristic
The availability heuristic
Counterfactual thinking
The Four-Card Problem
Card 1 D
Card 2 3
Card 3 B
Card 4 7
Every card has a letter on one side and a number on the other. The rule is, “If there is a D on one side of any card, there is a 3 on the other side.”
Q: What card(s) do you need to turn over to test the rule?
Judging Others


Illusory thinking
Illusory correlation
Illusion of control
Mood and judgment


The Gambler’s Fallacy
The gambler believes that early chance results will somehow force or influence later chance results.

Example: Flip a coin 6 times.
1-Tails 2-Heads 3-Tails 4-Tails 5-Tails
What do you predict for the next toss?
Self-Fulfilling Beliefs

Teacher expectations and student performance
Getting from others what we expect


Expectations & Attributions
Self-Fulfilling Beliefs