Skip to main content

SAGE Social Science Thesaurus

Search from vocabulary

Concept information

Preferred term

person-positivity heuristic  

Definition

  • Definition The person-positivity heuristic is a tendency to evaluate individual people more positively than the groups to which they belong. Psychologist David Sears coined the phrase in 1983 because he noticed that results of political polls typically show that although respondents hold political institutions such as the U.S. Congress in low regard, they often have positive impressions of the individuals (senators and representatives) who make up those institutions. [Source: Encyclopedia of Social Psychology; Person-Positivity Heuristic]

Broader concept

Belongs to group

URI

http://data.loterre.fr/ark:/67375/N9J-DJWB2DTG-S

Download this concept: