6 Flashcards
What was found by Rosenhan and colleagues?
Rosenhan and colleagues faked hallucinations and were purposefully admitted to hospitals
Once they were admitted to hospitals they displayed normal behaviours, however they still experienced:
Diagnoses of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder
Biased interpretation of behaviour
Lack of communication
Rosenhan report showed problems with labeling, confirmation biases, and attributions.
What is social perception?
The process by which people come to understand one another.
What are person factors?
First impressions subtly influenced by person’s appearance.
What has been found about judgments by looking at a person’s face
100 ms judgments highly correlated with those made with unlimited
time
(quick judgement is often similar to what we judge someone as if we look at them for a longer time)
What do we see so quickly in another’s face? i.e. what do we look for when looking at someone
- Whether they should be approached vs. avoided
- The person’s social standing
What are snap judgments?
Judgments made quickly by just looking at someone’s face (e.g. 1-2 seconds)
How accurate are snap judgments?
Quite accurate:
e.g.
- One second judgments of candidates’ ‘competence’ accurately predicted election.
Greater the competence ratings, the larger the victory.
- Expert observation of ‘thin slices’ of interaction between couples predict long term relationship success.
What is Darwin’s (1872) theory of universality of emotion expression?
Facial expressions of emotion are the same wherever you go in the world, that they are innate.
High accuracy for anger, happiness, disgust, fear, sadness & surprise
What does more recent research suggest about Darwin’s theory of universality of emotion expression?
Recent work suggests more nuanced effect in recognizing emotional expression
Review of 1000+ studies (Barrett et al., 2019) concluded relationship between facial expression and emotion is complex.
Facial configurations are not fingerprints and do not reliably indicate emotional state regardless of context or person.
What are Attribution Theories?
Attribution theories describe how people explain the causes of their own and others’ behaviour.
What are the two categories of attributions?
Personal Attributions
Situational Attributions
What are personal attributions?
- Explaining our own behaviour or behaviour of other people –> something about the person, their personality
(e.g. date is late and we assume that person is a lazy person or poorly organised)
What are situational attributions?
- Explaining the behaviour of other people or ourselves when mostly driven by the specific situation people are in
- External explanations that seem to be more about the situation
(e.g. date is late and we think it may have been due to bad traffic or a flat tire)
Kelly’s Covariation Theory?
People make attributions by considering potential causes that co-occur with the behaviour.
What are the three kinds of covariation information that are useful according to Kelly’s Covariation Theory?
Consensus: e.g. How are other students reacting to the same class?
Distinctiveness: e.g. Does your friend like all his/her classes or just this class?
Consistency: e.g. Does your friend have favourable things to say about the class just today or all semester?
According to Kelly’s Covariation Theory, when is an attribution situation and when is an attribution personal?
Situational attribution likely when high on all three dimensions
- e.g. CONSENSUS by class saying the class is good, your friend is saying good things CONSISTENTLY throughout the whole semester and that it’s just DISTINCTLY this class = situational
Personal attribution is likely when high on consistency, but low on consensus and distinctiveness.
- e.g. CONSENSUS by class is unclear, but your friend is consistently saying the class is good throughout the semester, and your friend tends to say good things about all their classes (low distinctiveness)
What is the discounting principle?
Discounting principle proposes reduced weighting to a particular cause of behaviour if there are other plausible causes.
e.g. Being polite in a job interview, where it is usually expected for such behaviour
What is the augmentation principle?
The augmentation principle proposes greater weighting to a particular cause of behaviour if there are other causes that normally would produce the opposite.
e.g. being rude at a job interview where it is expected that people are well-mannered and polite
What is found about “in role” and “out of role” behaviour and give an example
It is more difficult to know what to conclude about someone behaving ‘in role’, but easy with someone who acts ‘out of role’
e.g. someone who displays more introverted behaviour when applying for a job that is usually required by an extraverted person, will be seen as more introverted compared to someone displaying introverted behaviour for a job that requires introverted traits.
e.g. someone acting introverted for a submarine job (close quarters - little personal space - ideal for extraverts) = will be seen as more introverted
Do we always analyse behaviour in the systematic manner proposed by attribution theories?
No (Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) / Correspondence Bias)
What is Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) / Correspondence Bias?
The fundamental attribution error represents our tendency to:
Overestimate the role of personal factors.
Overlook the impact of situational factors
e.g. quiz game study - on average contestants scored 4/10
=> observers rated questioner higher for intelligence compared to contestant, despite the questioner having an advantage - as they could make the questions about whatever they wanted (overlooked the situational factor)
=> questioner rated themselves and contestant equally intelligent
=> contestant rated questioner slight more intelligent than themselves
When are Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) / Correspondence Bias likely to occur?
When cognitive resources are not available to systematically consider the role of situational factors
e.g. having to do a cognitive task (such as remembering a number) while observing someone and making attributions => will result in impaired assessment of situational factors
Perceptual bias’ role in Fundamental Attribution Error?
We may see dispositions in behaviour because of a perceptual bias.
- Actor is the conspicuous (clear/visible) figure of our attention.
- So the situation fades into the background.
Is the fundamental attribution error really so fundamental (universal)?
No, they tend to differ on average in different cultures (Individualistic vs Collectivistic)
What are the differences in fundamental attribution error in different cultures?
Differences in the extent to which people in individualistic and collectivistic cultures focus on context and object
- Collectivistic tend to account for both personal and situational attributions on average, whereas individualistic cultures tend to focus more on personal attributions on average.
e.g.
- westerners more likely to describe focal objects from image and not contextual information
- It is not that collectivists do not make personal attributions, but rather that they weigh both situational and personal factors
What was found about Attributional differences across cultures?
Attributional differences across cultures may emerge only later on
e.g. Indians and Americans from different age groups were asked to make attributions about various positive and negative events.
- found no differences in proportion of personal and situational attributions made until the age of 15, where Indians showed significantly greater proportion of situational attributions compared to Americans. While Americans showed greater proportion of personal attributions.
- this difference increased further in adulthood
What happens to people who are bicultural with both individualistic and collectivistic identities?
It may depend on which aspect of identity is salient
e.g.
chinese-americans shown american images => displayed less situational attributions
chinese-americans shown chinese images => displayed greater situational attributions
What is Actor/Observer Difference?
Tendency to see other people’s behaviour as dispositionally caused (personal) but focusing on situational factors when explaining our own
What are the potential causes for Actor-Observer difference?
- Perceptual salience (difference) of person and situation varies for actor and observer.
e.g. girlfriend is late
=> she may think it’s situational attribution -> traffic
=> bf may think it’s a personal attribution -> she was being lazy
= results in conflict - Actor has greater access to information than observer about intentions and factors underlying behaviour.
Actor = person running late for example
=> due to observers lack of information they are more likely to make attributions at the personal level
What has research found about the Actor/Observer Difference?
Meta-analysis reveals that it is real but only emerges for negative events
Social perception influenced by our motivations
Type of bias where our social perception are influenced by our motivations (i.e. people see what they want to see).
E.g., 72% of participants saw the letter ‘B’ and 61% saw the number ‘13’ when it influenced whether they got orange juice vs. a foul smelling drink.
What is Counterfactual Thinking?
Our attributions and thoughts are also influenced by what might have, could have, or should have happened ‘if only’ minor details were different
e.g. silver medalist less happy than bronze medalist as they think they only “just” missed out on gold
Influences emotions and perceived responsibility.
e.g.
person that goes to a dairy for the first time and dies is seen as more sad vs someone who is a regular customer that dies (“if only that irregular customer didn’t go to the dairy, he would’ve been alive today”)
What are Framing Effects?
Framing influences judgments and decisions
e.g. condom with 90% success rate perceived safer than condom with 10% failure rate (but they both are the same thing)
Also impacts experts: e.g. 82% of physicians recommended surgery when framed in terms of survival, but only 56% recommended same when framed by failure.
What is Confirmation Bias?
Our tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs
What is Confirmatory Hypothesis Testing?
A form of confirmation bias.
We have a hypothesis which we are trying to find evidence for and confirm.
e.g. Believe someone is introverted–> ask them if they like being alone to “recharge”
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
The process by which one’s expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations
e.g. Students expected to ‘bloom’ by teachers showed higher IQ at the end of year because expectations influenced interactions between teacher-student.
However, naturalistic studies (in the real world) reveal very weak effects
