Ch. 4 Perceiving Persons Flashcards
*When are we accurate perceivers
- We are bad at determining personalities right away.
- Humans are good at guessing extraversion and narcissism.
- We can make assumptions based on spaces someone has “made their own”.
- We suck at guessing who is nice, trustworthy, intelligent
Social perception
A general term for the processes by which people come to understand one another.
First step of social perception
Recognition of other people’s actions. We have sharper perception if we are able to recognize larger groups of actions (running, jumping, cheering)
How do we form impressions of others
Humans make snapshot first impressions based on visual clues and surface level information
Todorov’s study states…
We assume people with an abundance of expressions and softer/more baby-like features are nicer people
Honor, Face, Dignity
Honor: Modesty and loyalty for women, defense against insult for men
Face: Respect of others’ social status, humility
Dignity: Equal value of each life at birth
Social setting/meaningful behavior
Our understanding of the social setting we are in helps us analyze others’ behavior. We understand a situation better if we break actions into more details.
Mind perception
The process by which people attribute humanlike mental states to various animate and inanimate objects, including other people
Non-verbal behavior
Behavior that reveals a person’s feelings without words, through facial expressions, body language, and vocal cues.
Human facial expressions are globally understood, and are a part of human constitution. We recognize expressions we are scared of better than others
Eyes
As social beings, people are highly attentive to eyes, often following the gaze of others.
Detecting truth vs deception
We notice deception thru observation of the body more than observation of the face. Facial expressions are easier to regulate.
Liars have a harder time doing effortful tasks while maintaining a lie (eye contact, adding detail to their story)
Attribution theory
Theory that describes how people explain the causes of behavior
Dispositional (internal attribution
internal characteristics of an actor, such as ability, personality, mood, or effort. (e.g. he’s just mean)
Situational (external) attribution
Attribution to factors external to an actor, such as the task, other people, or luck. (ex: his girlfriend dumped him)
Jones’s Correspondent inference Theory
People try to infer from an action whether the act corresponds to an enduring personal trait of the actor
Factors of the correspondent inference theory
Choice: Actions done freely rather than forcefully reveal their personality
Expectedness: Abnormal behaviors reveal their personality
Effects: The desired effects of one’s actions reveal their personality
Kelley’s Covariation principle
In order for something to be the cause of a behavior, it must be present when the behavior occurs and absent when it does not. (part of attribution theory)
Consensus information (in covariation principle)
How different people react to the same stimulus (high consensus: behavior matches the norm)
Distinctiveness information (covariation principle)
How one person reacts to different stimuli (high distinctiveness: behavior differs from this person’s typical behaviors)
Consistency information (covariation principle)
What happens when the same stimulus is presented at different times (high consistency: behavior remains the same at any time)
1st system of thought (System 1)
Quick, easy, automatic thinking (intuitive, uses cognitive heuristics or rules of thumb. error prone.)
2nr system of thinking (Systm 2)
Slow, controlled thinking, where attention is needed
Availability heuristic
The tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances of it come to mind.
False-consensus effect
The tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes, and behaviors.
Base-rate fallacy
The finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information (general info) and favor individuating information (info ab a specific case).
Counterfactual Thinking
The tendency to imagine alternative outcomes that might have occurred but did not (most often for jobs, romance, education)
False-consensus effect
The tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes, and behaviors.
Base-rate fallacy
The finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information presented in the form of numerical base rates.
Fundamental Attribution error
The tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the impact of situations on other people’s behavior. (Usually occurs when observer is not paying full attention to the situation, usually not accurate)
The study about the gameshow hosts that proves the fundamental attribution error list ithere
*Why does FAE happen
We form impressions automatically. Not possible to exert effort to form it differently or to not form it. Though we can correct our views, this takes mental resources (time, concentration)
Who makes which attributions?
People in poor social standing make more situational attributions (blame their position/situation in society).
Western civilizations make more personal attributions.
People will make different attributions based on context (what will I think of you on a date vs during an interview)
*Smoke detector principle
It is more advantageous for us, evolutionarily, to interpret friendliness as romantic (sexual) interest. False alarms are better than missed detection.
Wishful seeing
Motivational bias in which we will perceive an image as want it to look (illusion in which people who wanted to see a letter saw a B, and people who wanted to see a number saw a 13)
Need for self esteem
The need for self-esteem leads us to make favorable, self-serving, and one-sided attributions for our own behavior.
Belief in a just world
Leads to critique of victims. People view the world as a just place in which we “get what we deserve” and “deserve what we get”. This is lowkey the FAE in another font.
Impression formation
The process of integrating information about a person to form a coherent impression.
Two models of impression formation
Summation model: We think better of people with a greater number of positive traits
Averaging model: We think better of people with a higher average value of traits
Information integration theory
The theory that impressions are based on
1. Perceiver dispositions (how are we feeling in this moment, where are we, etc)
2. A weighted average of a target person’s traits.
Priming
The tendency for recently used or perceived words or ideas to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information.
OCEAN big five
People accross the world can be distinguished on five traits: extraversion, emotional stability (neuroticism), openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness
Trait negativity bias
The tendency for negative information to weigh more heavily on our impressions than positive information. (This is because we want to associate with them less to protect ourselves)
We assume the worst about someone’s traits if they are not described to us positively off the bat. (Rec letters have to mention drive AND character)
Implicit personality theory
Network of assumptions about the relationships among various types of people, traits, and behaviors
If we know someone has one trait, we may believe they have certain other traits as well
Central traits
Traits that exert a powerful influence on overall impressions. (e.g. people who are warm/cold)
Each trait can be placed on a social and intellectual scale. Moral scores highest for both.
Primacy effect
The tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later. Info presented to us afterward is then compared to this earlier info.
Causes of primacy effect
- People subconsciously pay less attention once they feel they have properly assessed a person’s personality
- Change-of-meaning hypothesis: People form an opinion based on given information and can bend the meaning of that information to frame it in a negative or positive light. (calm could be patient or cold)
Need for closure
The desire to reduce cognitive uncertainty, which heightens the importance of first impressions.
Confirmation bias
The tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs. When we are given information that does not fit our initial impression, we disregard it.
Belief perseverance
The tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited. can be avoided by presenting and prompting thought on an alternative theory
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. Rosenthal & Jacobson on late blooomers
Process of self-fulfilling prophecy
An impression is formed. The perceiver treats them as if they behave that way, so target unwittingly adjusts to fit this behavior
Rejection prophecy
Branching off of the self-fulfilling prophecy. People who are insecure are scared of rejection, making them socially awkward.
