Answers | Revised
attribution - ✔✔An explanation of why things happen or why people act as they do; not necessarily
correct interpretations of others and their motives.
cognitive complexity - ✔✔the number of mental constructs an individual uses, how abstract they are, and
how elaborately they interact to create perceptions
cognitive schemata - ✔✔mental structures people use to organize and interpret experience
Constructivism - ✔✔a theory that holds that we organize and interpret experience by applying cognitive
structures called schemata
culture - ✔✔the beliefs, values, understandings, practices, and ways of interpreting experience that are
shared by a group of people
empathy - ✔✔ability to feel with another person, to feel what what they feel in a situation
expectancy violation theory - ✔✔A theory claiming that when our expectations are violated, we become
more cognitively alert as we struggle to understand and cope with unexpected behaviors.
individualism - ✔✔A predominant Western value that regards each person as unique, important, and to
be recognized for her or his individual qualities and behavior.
inference - ✔✔An interpretation that goes beyond the facts known but is believed to logically follow from
them.
interpretation - ✔✔The subjective process of creating explanations for what we observe and experience.
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, judgment - ✔✔A belief or opinion based on observations, feelings, assumptions, or other nonfactual
phenomena.
mind reading - ✔✔The assumption that we understand what another person thinks or how another
person perceives something.
monitoring - ✔✔The observation and regulation of one's own communication.
perception - ✔✔An active process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting people, objects, events,
situations, and activities.
personal construct - ✔✔A bipolar mental yardstick that allows us to measure people and situations along
bipolar dimensions of judgment, such as "honest- dishonest."
person-centeredness - ✔✔The ability to perceive another as a unique and distinct individual apart from
social roles and generalizations.
positive visualization - ✔✔A technique used to enhance success in a variety of situations by teaching
people to visualize themselves being effective and successful.
prototype - ✔✔A knowledge structure that defines the clearest or most representative example of some
category.
schemata - ✔✔Cognitive structures we use to organize and interpret experiences. The four types of
schemata are prototypes, personal constructs, stereotypes, and scripts. (Singular: schema)
script - ✔✔one of the four cognitive schemata; defined expected or appropriate sequences of action in
particular settings
self-serving bias - ✔✔The tendency to attribute our positive actions and successes to stable, global,
internal influences that we control and to attribute negative actions and failures to unstable, specific,
external influences beyond our control.
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Crafted for Academic Insight by KatelynWhitman. All rights reserved © 2025