6

Question 1

What was found by Rosenhan and colleagues?

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

What is social perception?

Answer 2

 The process by which people come to understand one another.

Question 3

What are person factors?

Answer 3

 First impressions subtly influenced by person’s appearance.

Question 4

What has been found about judgments by looking at a person’s face

Answer 4

 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)

Question 5

What do we see so quickly in another’s face? i.e. what do we look for when looking at someone

Answer 5

• Whether they should be approached vs. avoided
• The person’s social standing

Question 6

What are snap judgments?

Answer 6

Judgments made quickly by just looking at someone’s face (e.g. 1-2 seconds)

Question 7

How accurate are snap judgments?

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

What is Darwin’s (1872) theory of universality of emotion expression?

Answer 8

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

Question 9

What does more recent research suggest about Darwin’s theory of universality of emotion expression?

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

What are Attribution Theories?

Answer 10

Attribution theories describe how people explain the causes of their own and others’ behaviour.

Question 11

What are the two categories of attributions?

Answer 11

 Personal Attributions
 Situational Attributions

Question 12

What are personal attributions?

Answer 12

• 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)

Question 13

What are situational attributions?

Answer 13

• 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)

Question 14

Kelly’s Covariation Theory?

Answer 14

 People make attributions by considering potential causes that co-occur with the behaviour.

Question 15

What are the three kinds of covariation information that are useful according to Kelly’s Covariation Theory?

Answer 15

 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?

Question 16

According to Kelly’s Covariation Theory, when is an attribution situation and when is an attribution personal?

Answer 16

 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)

Question 17

What is the discounting principle?

Answer 17

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

Question 18

What is the augmentation principle?

Answer 18

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

Question 19

What is found about “in role” and “out of role” behaviour and give an example

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Do we always analyse behaviour in the systematic manner proposed by attribution theories?

Answer 20

No (Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) / Correspondence Bias)

Question 21

What is Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) / Correspondence Bias?

Answer 21

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

Question 22

When are Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) / Correspondence Bias likely to occur?

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Perceptual bias’ role in Fundamental Attribution Error?

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Is the fundamental attribution error really so fundamental (universal)?

Answer 24

No, they tend to differ on average in different cultures (Individualistic vs Collectivistic)

Question 25

What are the differences in fundamental attribution error in different cultures?

Answer 25

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

Question 26

What was found about Attributional differences across cultures?

Answer 26

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

Question 27

What happens to people who are bicultural with both individualistic and collectivistic identities?

Answer 27

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

Question 28

What is Actor/Observer Difference?

Answer 28

Tendency to see other people’s behaviour as dispositionally caused (personal) but focusing on situational factors when explaining our own

Question 29

What are the potential causes for Actor-Observer difference?

Answer 29

1. 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
2. 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

Question 30

What has research found about the Actor/Observer Difference?

Answer 30

Meta-analysis reveals that it is real but only emerges for negative events

Question 31

Social perception influenced by our motivations

Answer 31

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.

Question 32

What is Counterfactual Thinking?

Answer 32

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”)

Question 33

What are Framing Effects?

Answer 33

 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.

Question 34

What is Confirmation Bias?

Answer 34

 Our tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs

Question 35

What is Confirmatory Hypothesis Testing?

Answer 35

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”

Question 36

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Answer 36

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