Exam 3 Flashcards
Person Perception:
At zero acquaintance, how is physical appearance linked to personality?
- round face, attractive = nice
- Halo effect: when we find others physically attractive we assume they have other positive traits (opp.is also true)
Person Perception:
At zero acquaintance, what 2 are the easiest traits of the “Big 5” to judge?
- OCEAN
- Openness
- Conscientiousness (easy)
- Extroversion (easy)
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
Person Perception:
Discuss Ambady’s “thin slices” of behavior
- students shown short clips of teachers teaching and had to rate whether they would like the teacher
- their ratings were compared to those of real students
- both groups made same ratings
- Ambady also did experiment where had to guess sexual orientation of individuals -result that they did better than chance
Person Perception:
What are the 6 primary facial expressions? (HFSSAD)
- happiness
- fear
- sadness
- surprise
- anger
- disgust
Person Perception:
Are perceptions of facial expressions innate?
- yes, probably
- across cultures people can identify the same expressions
- infants make same expressions that adults to do without having to be taught (even blind infants)
Person Perception:
What are the best ways to detect deception?
- faces are not good indicator
- fidgeting
- speech hesitations
- higher voice pitch
- more difficult to maintain eye contact and lie
- more difficult to tell story in reverse order if lying
- secret service agents better than chance at detecting lying
Person Perception:
Discuss Ashc’s research on impression formation
- investigated if people could form an impression of a person by looking at list of traits
- 2 lists; one list positive traits first, second list negative traits first
- demonstrated that first bit of info is more important and that we weigh negative info more heavily than pos info
Person Perception:
What are central traits? Peripheral traits?
- central traits have a powerful impact on our overall impressions
- peripheral traits: traits that don’t have a big impact on overall ratings
Person Perception:
What are Implicit Personality Theories?
- our ideas of the types of traits that tend to go together
- ex. think that other pos. traits go with “warm”
Person Perception:
What is information integration? Is it an average of the traits?
- when put together, some types of info carry more weight than others
- negative info weighed more
- NOT an average of the traits
Person Perception:
What are perceiver effects in the context of first impression formation?
- things about the perceiver influence how they see the target person
- traits the perceiver is schematic on, mood, comparison to self
- like ppl better when in good mood
- compare to self, think no one else is as good at something as you are for instance
Person Perception:
What is attribution?
- when we see a behavior we try to figure out why someone is doing it
Person Perception:
Explain Heider’s distinction between personal attributions and situational attributions
- personal: attribute behavior due to internal characteristics of the person (ex. personality, mood, ability)
- situational: attribute behavior to factors external to the person (maybe even to a different person)
Person Perception:
Describe Kelley’s covariation theory and what types of info we look for (CDC)
- in order for A to cause B (behavior), A must be present when the behavior occurs and absent when the behavior doesn’t occur
- Consensus - how do different people react to same stim
- Distinctiveness - how the same person reacts to different stimuli
- Consistency- what happens another time when the person and the stimulus are the same
Person Perception:
What are the patterns leading to external or internal attributions?
- external: high consensus, high distinctiveness, high consistency
- internal: low consensus, low distinctiveness, high consistency
Person Perception:
What is augmenting and discounting when it comes to attributions?
- augmenting: the role a factor in producing an outcome is enhanced when other limiting factors are present; make att stronger
- ex. really good athlete if you exercise and have asthma (overcome limiting factor)
- discounting: role of a factor in producing an outcome is diminished if other possible causes are present
- ex. person does good on exam but cheated, so not a good student after all
Person Perception:
What is the fundamental attribution error?
- fundamental attribution error: overestimate personal causes and underestimate situational causes
- pay more attention to person (in foreground) than the situation (in background)
- more likely to make this error when we’re cognitively busy
- with more time and motivation less likely
- happens more often in individualistic cultures
Person Perception:
What is the actor-observer effect attribution error?
- actors tend to make external attributions while observers tend to make internal attributions
- bc of perspective
- observers focused on person, actor focused on something else
- we have diff info about distinctiveness and consistency than people have about us
Person Perception:
What is the self-serving bias attribution error?
- make attributions to maintain a favorable self-concept
- internal att for good things
- external att for bad things (ex. blame on someone else)
Person Perception:
What is the ultimate attribution error?
- when making attributions about ingroup good things att as internal, bad things as external
- when attributions about outgroup: good as external, bad as internal
Person Perception:
What is confirmation bias?
- interpreting, seeking, or creating info to verify existing beliefs
Person Perception:
What is belief perseverance? Describe Snyder and Swann’s confirmatory hypothesis testing research that studied this
- maintain beliefs, even if discredited
- subjects were assigned to partner and told they were extroverted or introverted
- had list of questions to ask them and tended to ask typical introvert questions to partners they were told were introverted (makes them seem more introverted)
Person Perception:
What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
- our expectations lead us to behave in ways that alter the behavior of others
- 3 parts: expectations, our behavior, target’s behavior
Person Perception:
Describe Rosenthal and Jacobson’s research that looked at self-fulfilling prophecies
- told teachers that students will be given test to indicate if due for intellectual growth spurt
- randomly chose kids and told teachers these ones were due
- retested students at end of school year and those kids did better
- likely subtle influences on teacher’s behavior that influenced kids’ behavior
Person Perception:
Describe the role of stereotypes in the self-fulfilling prophecy
- stereotypes can inform out expectations and therefore influence our behavior which can influence target’s behavior (this behavior can then reinforce our stereotypes)
Person Perception:
What are the 2 types of accuracy with person perception?
- global: ability to predict how others will behave in general, across people, across situations
- circumscribed: ability to predict how others will behave in your presence
- we are better with circumscribed bc people are with you
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What are stereotypes?
- BELIEF that a group of people share certain traits
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What is prejudice?
- positive or negative FEELINGS toward a person based on their group membership
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What is discrimination?
- positive or negative BEHAVIOR toward a person based on their group membership
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Racism and sexism are what?
- Racism: prejudice and discrimination based on race
- Sexism: prej and discrim based on sex
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What is the outgroup homogeneity effect?
- we assume greater similarity among members of the outgroup than the ingroup
- we’re better at identfying members of our ingroup (ex. same ethnic background)
- bc we have more contact with members of our ingroup
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What is the “kernel of truth”?
- idea that there’s only a tiny bit of truth within stereotypes
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What contributes to stereotype survival?
- attributions (diff for members or ingroup or outgroup)
- ultimate att error (help maintain favorable view of ingroup)
- subtyping (make exceptions for certain individuals in the overall stereotyped group)
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Describe Sagar and Schofield’s study relating to stereotypes and our interpretations
- middle school boys viewed pics of ambiguous situations where target was either African American or white
- both African American and white students interpreted the behaviors as more mean if the target people were African American
- shows that stereotypes influence our interpretations usually to be consistent
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Describe Payne’e shoot-don’t-shoot study and how it relates to stereotypes
- subjects shown pic of African Am. or white male with either a tool or gun
- had to quickly hit “shoot” or “don’t shoot” button
- faster to hit shoot button if person holding gun was Af. Am.
- if holding a tool took longer to choose “don’t shoot” if target was Af. Am.
- shows awareness of cultural stereotypes
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Are stereotypes automatic?
- there are studies which hint that yes but also studies which hint at no
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What is Devine’s stance on whether stereotypes are automatic?
- stereotypes automatically come to mind as soon as we see someone
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What test did Greenwald and Banaji use to measure people’s automatic stereotypes?
- IAT
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Describe Gilbert and Hixon’s study and its relation to whether stereotypes are automatic
- video where either a white or Asian woman held cue cards with missing letters
- subjects more likely to finish words consistent with stereotype (ex. Rice, Short, Polite)
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Can we suppress stereotypes? What is the rebound effect?
- rebound effect: if we try to suppress stereotypes they usually come back even stronger
- rebound effect can affect our behavior
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
How does cognitive busyness hint that stereotypes aren’t automatic? Describe Gilbert and Hixon’s second study
- when subjects were cognitively busy they were less likely to complete the words to be consistent with the stereotype
- shows that it takes some cognitive effort to activate stereotypes
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
How does social acceptability relate to the rebound effect?
- rebound effect changes depending on how socially acceptable our stereotypes are
- also influenced by age of participants, intoxication, fatigue - more likely to have rebound effect under these conditions
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What is stereotype threat?
- concern over being negatively evaluated based on a stereotype triggers anxiety or under-performance
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Describe Sherif’s robbers cave study and how it related to prejudice
- factors that incited prejudice/neg. feelings towards the outgroup:
competition/perceived competition - superordinate goal can help reduce the negative feelings
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Describe Tajfel’s social identity theory and how it can lead to derogation of the outgroup
- social identity theory: we can increase our self-esteem through affiliation w/ successful groups or by making our ingroup look good
- derogation of outgroup: make outgroup look bad to make ingroup look better
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What is Social Dominance Orientation?
- desire to see ingroup as dominant and facilitate the oppression of the outgroup
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
How do kids and adults act towards the different sexes?
- kids: prefer to look at new things (ex. used to one gender then want to look at other); at 3 months recognize categories of gender, 2-3 yrs recognize own gender
- adults interact with babies differently depending on the baby’s gender
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Are gender stereotypes accurate? What is social role theory?
- based on a kernel of truth
- real gender differences get exaggerated/amplified by the social roles that men and women occupy
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What are the differences that result when men and women are exposed to sexism?
- men: tend to use more exist lang, act in more sexist ways toward women
- women: tend to internalize, less self-confident, less independent, perform worse
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.: What is the difference between hostile and benevolent sexism?
- hostile: having neg. feelings about women’s abilities
- benevolent: pos. feelings towards women but patronizing behaviors
- countries with inequality tend to have more of both
- high in one also tend to be high in the other
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Describe Katz and Braly’s racism study
- 1933 - peole had to think about a group of people and use adjectives to describe; they were willing to admit pos. and neg. racial stereotypes
- repeated study in 2001 - willingness to admit overt racism decreased, the racial stereotypes they did admit tended to be pos.
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What is modern racism? What did Plous find in his study?
- racism that comes out when it is safe/socially acceptable/easy to rationalize
- Plous found that almost all his students reported instances of this during thanksgiving break
- Modern racism scale
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What is aversive/implicit racism?
- people don’t want to be racist but still harbor unconscious prejudice/discrimination
- can use IAT test to predict behavior and attitudes based on reaction times
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Describe Fazio’s study with reaction time
- Sequential priming task
- pics of black and white target ppl, after looking at them had to read a paragraph and classify the words within it as good or bad
- white subjects slower to classify good words as good when follows a black target
- black subjects faster to classify bad words as bad when follows a white target
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Describe Word’s study
- white interviewers interviewed white and black applicants
- looked at behavior of interviewers
- sat further away from black applicants, less eye contact, more speech errors, shorter interview
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What is the contact hypothesis?
- increased contact with ppl of diff ethnic backgrounds will improve inter-race relations
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
What happened when schools were desegregated? What factors are necessary for contact to improve racial relations?
- initially made worse relations
- factors:
- equal status
- personal knowledge (get to know each other on a personal level)
- interdependent (have to rely on each other)
- social norms need to be supportive
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Describe Aronson’s jigsaw technique
- tried implementing factors to improve relations in desegregated schools
- gave each student one piece of info (made them interdependent)
- children who participated showed reduced prejudice towards people of diff ethnicity, liked school more, liked group members
Stereotypes, Prej., Discrim.:
Describe Steele’s study with stereotype threat
- math test
- women performed at same level as male subjects when told test was designed to be fair for both men and women
- activating stereotypes can make ppl anxious and cause under performance
Person Perception:
What is Jones and Davis’ correspondent interference theory? What are the factors of it?
- people try to infer from action whether the act is consistent with an enduring personal trait of the target
- choice - freely performed behavior more informative
- expectedness -more informative if not expected
- effects - acts that produce undesirable outcome tell you more about a person
