After playing a particularly violent video game for a few hours, Tom became involved in a heated discussion with his roommate. When his roommate suddenly stood up to go to another room, thereby ending the discussion, Tom believed that his roommate was about to attack him. This misinterpretation of his roommate's actions is probably due to .

This misinterpretation of his roommate's actions is probably due to hostile expectation bias.

Explanation:

In psychology, hostile expectation bias is a person's tendency to interpret other people's actions as having a hostile intent, expecting others to react to conflicts aggressively. Studies have shown that playing violent video games can increase hostile expectation bias which, in its turn, increases aggressive behavior. Such effects were actually stronger in men than in women. As we can see, there is a connection made in the paragraph when it is said that Tom had been playing a violent video game for hours before the discussion with his roommate. That could have increased his hostile expectation bias, being the cause behind his thinking his roommate was about to attack him when he was not.