L10 - Social Psyc Flashcards
First Impressions
- We form Schemas quickly & automatically with the information available to us
- Schemas = mental file folder
- Faces are the first thing we notice
Key characteristics when forming first impressions
- Trustworthiness/Warmth (Friend or Foe)
- Competence/dominance (Social status?)
Elderly person:
Low competence + High warmth
-> Feel protective of them
Homeless person
Low competence + low trustworthiness
-> Feel distain (robbing them of their humanity)
Charming Successful CEO
High competence + High trustworthiness
-> We admire them
High competance + low warmth = we fear them
How accurate are our first impressions?
Impressions from faces
- Inferred emotional expression
- Not very accurate
Impressions from other sources
- Not very accurate
- Somewhat accurate at judgments of what they are generally like (i.e. Extraversion)
Primacy Effect
The first pieces of information we encounter being remembered more strongly
Factors that limit accuracy in impression formation
- Heuristics
- Impression management
- Confirmation bias
Heuristics
Mental shortcut to get impression of someone
Heuristics - Transference
Applying the schema of someone you already know to understand someone new
Heuristics - False Consensus
Assuming everyone is the same as us, especially people we know and like
Impression Management
Self promotion
- being seen as competent
Ingratiation
- being seen as likeable
Exemplification
- being seen as dedicated
Intimidation
- being seen as dominant
Supplication
- being seen as needy
Confirmation Bias
Tendency to seek out and prefer info that supports our preexisting beliefs
Attributions
Causal explanations we assign to the causes of an event, action, or outcome (Hieder, 1952)
Attribution Theory
When explaining others behaviour, we tend to attribute the behaviour to internal or external factors
Dispositions/Internal factors
traits, values, attitudes, beliefs, intentions, skills
Situations/External factors
Events, weather, aspects of a context, circumstances, accidents, chance, other ppl’s actions
Self Serving Bias
Tendency to explain our success with internal factors and to explain our failures with external factors
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)
When explaining the behaviours of others, we tend to overestimate internal factors and underestimate external factors
-> Can be overridden with cognitive effort
-> Has cultural variation
Ex. You overhear passenger insisting to be moved from an aisle to window seat
Individualistic society (USA, Canada, Netherlands, Australia)
- Western culture
- Emphasis on independence, uniqueness, sufficiency
- Tend to commit FAE by not considering external factors
Collectivistic society (China, Japan, LA, Eastern Europe)
- Value community, needs of group over individual
- More sensitive to situational constraints and how people might adjust to meet the environmental situation
- Tend to commit FAE much less on average
- Spanish Idiom: I was late = clocks fault
Stereotypes
Mental beliefs/schemas/associations we have about groups of people
-> Ex. Generalization
Automatic associations: not judgments, can be positive or negative
Where do Stereotypes come from?
- Learned & Perpetuated from our own personal culture and env. we grew up in
-> Parents, teachers, peers, media
Stereotypes - causes for inaccuracy
- Bias in the media
- Applying group characteristics to an individual
Prejudice
- Negative attitudes or emotional responses toward or about a group and/or its individual members
- Bias against a person based on their perceived group
Discrimination
Negative behaviours directed against people because of their
group membership; differential treatment
-> Often steming from prejudice attitudes
Social Categorization
Humans naturally categorize the world into different social groups on a shared characteristic(s) or attributes
- Race, gender, age, height
- Sports teams
- Shared beliefs
- Personal preferences/hobbies
Why do we socially categorize people?
- saves time + mental energy
- simplifies our chaotic env.
- often is accurate/useful if you have no other info about a person
Social Categorization leads us to…
Divide into in/out groups
- Our identities are partly/largely derived from the various groups we belong to
- In-groups = group we belong to
- Out-groups = other groups we don’t belong to
Costs to Social Categorization
- Applying stereotypes to these groups
- In/out group division (Us vs. them)
In-group favourtism
“our group is better than theirs”
Out-group derogation
“we hate/dislike them”
Overestimating group differences
“They are not like us”
Out-group homogeneity effect
“They are all alike; we are
unique and diverse”
Symbolic Racism
Indirect forms of discrimination, such as social policies