Social Perception

1. Social perception is the study of how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people.
2. Emotional expressions in psychology are observable verbal and nonverbal behaviors that communicate an internal emotional or affective state.
3. Implicit personality theory describes the specific patterns and biases an individual uses when forming impressions based on a limited amount of initial information about an unfamiliar person.
4. Attribute theory describes how people view trait stability in another person.
5. The self-based heuristic describes the strategy that observers use when they are provided limited trait information about another person, in which case they proceed to fill in the gaps with trait information that reflects their own personality.
6. Impression management is a goal-directed conscious or subconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people by regulating and controlling information in social interaction.
7. The halo effect describes the tendency of an observer to form a generally favorable, unfavorable, or average impression of a specific person, and to allow that general impression to have an exaggerated effect on their judgments of that person along other trait dimensions.
8. A self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner.
9. Attribution is the process by which individuals explain the causes of behavior and events.
10. Situational attribution, also called external attribution, refers to interpreting someone's behavior as being caused by the situation that the individual is in.
11. Dispositional attribution is the explanation of individual behavior as a result caused by internal characteristics that reside within the individual, as opposed to external (situational) influences that stem from the environment or culture in which that individual is found.
12. Attribute substitution is thought to underlie a number of cognitive biases and perceptual illusions. It occurs when an individual has to make a judgment (of a target attribute) that is computationally complex, and instead substitutes a more easily calculated heuristic attribute.
13. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics (personality) to explain someone else's behavior in a given situation rather than considering the situation's external factors.
14. Self-serving attribution bias leads a person to attribute positive outcomes to one's internal disposition but negative outcomes to factors beyond one's control e.g. others, chance or circumstance.
15. In attributing an individual's behavior as either dispositional or situational, consensus information is information on how other people in the same situation and with the same stimulus behave.
16. In attributing an individual's behavior as either dispositional or situational, distinctiveness information is information on how the individual responds to different stimuli.
17. In attributing an individual's behavior as either dispositional or situational, consistency information is information on the individual's behavior with similar stimulus but varied situations.
18. According to correspondent inference theory, a perceiver compares actions with alternative actions to evaluate the choices available to the actor. The more distinctive the consequences of a choice, the more confidently the perceiver infers intention and disposition.
19. Social status is the position or rank of a person or group, within the society.
20. Ascribed status is the social status a person is assigned at birth or assumed involuntarily later in life. It is a position that is neither earned nor chosen but assigned.
21. Achieved status is a social position that a person can acquire on the basis of merit. It is a position that is earned or chosen.


Physician is an achieved status.

22. Master status is the social position that is the primary identifying characteristic of an individual. It is defined as "a status that has exceptional importance for social identity, often shaping a person's entire life.
23. A role is a set of connected behaviours, rights, obligations, beliefs, and norms as conceptualised by people in a social situation.
24. A role set is anyone a person has a recurring relationship with in their role. It is the complement of social relationships in which a person is involved because they occupy a particular social status.
25. Role conflict takes place when one is forced to take on two different and incompatible roles at the same time.
26. Role strain may arise when there is a conflict in the demands of roles, when an individual does not agree with the assessment of others concerning his or her performance in his or her role, or from accepting roles that are beyond an individual's capacity.