Chapter 3-social perceptions and attribution Flashcards
Social perception
- How we perceive other people (characteristics) and how we explain their behavior.
- Collecting and interpreting information about another person’s individual characteristics
Central trait
Characteristics we ca apply to a personality. Warm/cold, good/bad, active/passive, strong/weak.
Peripheral trait
a trait that does not change the overall perception of a person. Polite/blunt,
Primacy effect
Tendency for earlier information to be more influential in social perception and interpretation.
Implicit personality theories
we know one thing-assume many other things about that person. E.g. Intelligent people=arrogant
Configural model
Asch: Perceivers construct deeper meanings out of bits of information they receive about others.
Cognitive algebra
A proposed process for averaging or summing trait information when forming impressions of other people.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
False expectation leads to own confirmation.
Pygmalion effect
Rosenthal 1968. Student smart: better performance. Student dumb: Worse performance. Connected to self-fulfilling prophecy.
Attribution theory.
Not really a theory, more an idea. Attribution is making an inference about the cause of
behavior that we observe: “why does someone behave
this way?”
Two types of attribution
Internal and external. Character/external reason why we behave like we do
Covariation theory
Kelley 1967. We use 3 types of information to help us decide whether an event was caused by internal or external factors:
› Distinctiveness
• How does this actor behave in other situations?
› Consistency
• How does this actor usually behave in this situation?
› Consensus
• How do other actors behave?
Non-common effects
belongs to correspondent theory. when both choices have a lot in common and there are thus fewer things which differentiate them?
Gosling vs clooney-young/old=non common effect
Correspondence bias
We make many internal attributions for the
behavior of others
» We overestimate the importance of the person
» We underestimate the importance of the
situation
Actor-observer effect
Tendency to attribute our own behaviors externally
and others’ behavior internally
perceptual salience
We tend to over-estimate the causal role (salience) of information we have available to us. Taylor and Fiske (1975) arranged two people facing each other having a conversation, with other people sat in a circle around them. Afterward, they asked the people from the circle to attribute cause for several incidents. The people attributed more to the people whose faces they could see better.
self-serving bias
We are more likely to attribute our successes internally and our failures externally
False consensus bias
Assumption that people share the same personal attitudes and opinions.
Etic approach
Universal characteristics of people determine our behavior.
Emic approach
Characteristics of culture, situation, moment that determine our behavior.
Attributional biases
Systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and other’s behavior
Correspondence bias: behavior is an reflection of an actors corresponding internal disposition (aggressive behavior reflect aggressive personality)
Salience
A set of reasons that draws an observer’s attention toward a particular object
Augmenting principle
The assumption that causal factors need to be stronger if an inhibitory influence on an observed effect is present. The converse of discounting principle.
Cyclist is going fast up a hill=conclude that she was able to pedal strongly enough to override the slopes power to slow her down.
Averaging
Perceives compute the mean value of pieces of information about a person when other information is strongly positive, additional mildly positive information yields as a less positive impression.
Warm and boring=less positive impression
Warm and interesting=positive impression
Cold and boring=negative impression where warm and boring is better
Casual attribution
The social process whereby social perceives arrive at conclusions about the causes of another persons behavior
Casual power
An intrinsic property of an object or event that enables it to exert influence on some other object or event
Causal schema
We fill in missing information by reference to our existing schemas.
Central trait
Characteristics viewed by social perceivers as integral to the organization of personality (warm/cold)
Cognitive algebra
A proposed process for averaging or summing trait information when forming an impression of someone.
Configural model
Perceivers construct deeper meanings out of bits of information they receive about others.
Consensus information
How different actors behave differently towards the same object.
- Hermoine: This class is boring
- Your friends: This class is fun
- You: Make a person attribution about Hermione as a boring person.
Consistency information
Evidence relating to how an actor’s behavior towards an object differ across situations and times.
- Hermoine: This class is boring; she only say it in front of other people to seem cool(low consistency)
- Say it in different situations (high consistency)
Correspondent inference theory
proposes that observers infer correspondent intentions and dispositions for observed intentional behavior under certain circumstances.
-Observers work out why actions are performed by comparing the effects of the selected action with those alternatives unselected actions. -Connected to analysis of non-common effects, why we choose what we chose
covariation theory
Kelley’s question: What kind of
information do individuals use
to infer whether an outcome is
due to internal (person) or
external (situation, entity)
causes?
› We use 3 types of information to help us decide whether an
event was caused by internal or external factors:
› Distinctiveness
• How does this actor behave in other situations?
› Consistency
• How does this actor usually behave in this situation?
› Consensus
• How do other actors behave?
Depressive realism
The idea that depressed people have a more realistic view of the world than non-depressed people.
Discounting principle
Kelley. If we already believe that we have the answer to why something happens, we rule out alternatives.
Distinctiveness information
Evidence relating to how an observer responds to different objects under similar circumstances.
False consensus bias
The assumption that people generally share one’s own personal attitudes and opinions.
Learned helplessness bias
The proposal that depression results from learning that outcomes are not contingent on one’s behavior. Give up because you learned by experience that you ‘‘can’t do it’’.
Naive scientist model
A metaphor for how social information is processed, the assumption that people seek to understand the social world in a scientific manner, but sometimes get it wrong. Perhaps some of our everyday explanations are not designed to provide a neutral characterization of reality in the first place.
probabilistic contrast
Cheng. A comparison when you do something frequently and then compare it to the absence of not doing it.
Self-serving attributional biases
Sometimes people interpret social situations in the way it suits them.
summation
perceivers add together information about a person to construct a meaning based on their ideas about how different personality characteristics hang together.
What is the difference between correspondence inference theory and covariation theory?
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