John observed gracie, an executive for a large accounting firm, behave in an aggressive and pushy manner with her subordinates. john now believes that most women executives are aggressive and pushy with their subordinates. john's overestimation of the link between women executives and the social traits of "pushy" and "aggressive" is referred to as
a. a contravened stereotype.
b. an illusory correlation.
c. a self-serving attribution.

b. an illusory correlation.      

Explanation:

Illusory correlation: The term illusory correlation, in psychology, is defined as the event of discerning a relationship between different variables, such as behaviors, people, etc, even if there's no relationship as such. In other words, an illusory correlation occurs when a researcher over-emphasizes one outcome and therefore ignores the other outcome by mistake.

Example: A woman believes that rural area's men are less intelligent as compared to urban men. Hence, whenever she meets fewer intellectual men she assumes that he lives in a rural area rather than an urban area.

In the question above, the statement referred to as an illusory correlation.