perceiving others Flashcards
1
Q
person perception
A
- impression formation
- social perception
- social judgement
- social cognition
2
Q
Gustav Ichheiser (1897-1969)
A
- one of the first person to talk about social perception
- “If people who do not understand each other at least understand that they understand each other better than when, not understanding each other, they do not even understand that they do not understand each other”
- Ichhesier, 1949: Misunderstandings in human relations. A study of false social perception, p. 37
3
Q
the raw material of social perception - Ichheiser, 1949
A
- what do we have to go on:
- physical appearance
- behaviour - how they are behaving
- situational factors - e.g., where you live, your friends, your job
- communications from other people - tell us about that person
- communications from the person themselves
4
Q
typology of personality misinterpretations - Ichheiser, 1949
A
- The tendency to overestimate the unity of personality
- Success and failure as sources of misinterpretations
- Stereotyped classifications as sources of misinterpretations
- Limits of insights as sources of misinterpretation
- Mechanisms of rigidity
- The tendency to overestimate the role of personal and to underestimate the role of situational factors
5
Q
Solomon Asch (1907-1996)
A
- “We look at a person and immediately a certain impression of his character forms itself in us. A glance, a few spoken words are sufficient to tell us a story about a highly complex matter. We know that such impressions form with remarkable rapidity and with great ease.”
- Asch, 1946: Forming impressions of personality, p.258
6
Q
primacy effects
A
- Asch 91946), Experiment 6:
- Lists of traits of two individuals:
- Target A: intelligent-industrious-impulsive-critical-stubborn-industrious-envious
- Target B: envious-stubborn-critical-impulsive-industrious-intelligent
- What do you think of these two people?
- A: “The person is intelligent and fortunately he puts his intelligence to work. That he is stubborn and impulsive may be due to the fact that he knows what he is saying and what he means and will not therefore give in easily to someone else’s idea which he disagrees with.”
- B: “This person’s good qualities such as industry and intelligence are bound to be restricted by jealousy and stubbornness. The person is emotional. He is unsuccessful because he is weak and allows his bad
points to cover up his good ones.”
7
Q
central traits
A
- Asch (1946), Experiment 1
- Lists of traits of two individuals:
- Target A: intelligent-skillful-industrious-warm-determined-practical-cautious.
- Target B: intelligent-skillful-industrious-cold-determined-practical-cautious.
- What do you think of these two people?
- Target A - “A person who believes certain things to be right, wants others to see his point, would be sincere in an argument and would like to see his point won.”
- Target B - “A rather snobbish person who feels that his success and
intelligence set him apart from the run-of-the-mill individual. Calculating and unsympathetic.”
8
Q
warmth and competence
A
- “fundamental” or “universal” dimensions of social judgement, social cognition and stereotype content (Fiske, Buddy and Click, 2007)
9
Q
Fritz Heider (1896-1988)
A
- ‘It seems that behaviour in particular has such salient properties it tends to engulf the total field rather than be confined to its proper position as a local stimulus whose interpretation requires the additional data of a surrounding field’
- Heider, 1958: the psychology of interpersonal relations p.54
10
Q
attribution theory
A
- Heider (1958) idea of “naïve psychology”
- Attribution theory is concerned with how people make casual explanations for their own and others’ behaviour (Kelley, 1973).
- “Attempts of ordinary people to understand the causes and implications of the events they witness” (Ross, 1977, p.174).
- Focused on how we as social perceivers use information to arrive at these casual explanations.
- “Attempts of ordinary people to understand the causes and implications of the events they witness” (Ross, 1977, p.174).
11
Q
types of attribution
A
- Dispositional vs situational attribution:
- “Jill bought the house because she wanted privacy” = internal/dispositional attribution
- “Jack bought the house because it was so secluded” = external/situational attribution
- “Jill bought the house because she wanted privacy” = internal/dispositional attribution
12
Q
correspondent inference theory
A
- Concerned with the conditions under which people will make dispositional attributions of others’ behaviour (Jones and Davis, 1965).
- Choice
- Social desirability
- Social roles
13
Q
Example study - Jones and Harris (1967) and the attitude attribution paradigm
A
- Participants (N = 41) read essays on Castro’s Cuba.
- Informed that a student had written the essay in response to the following instructions:
- either (a) “Based on the past week’s discussion and lectures, write a short cogent criticism of Castro’s Cuba as if you were giving the opening statement in a debate”
- or (b) “…short cogent defence of Castro’s Cuba as if…”
- or (c) “…. short cogent essay either defending or criticizing Castro’s Cuba as if …”.
- 200-word pro-Castro or anti-Castro essay
- Asked to judge characteristics of author and estimate their true attitude towards Castro
14
Q
correspondence bias
A
- “The tendency to draw inferences about a person’s unique and enduring dispositions from behaviours that can be entirely explained by the situations in which they occur”
- Gilbert and Malone, 1995, p.21
15
Q
fundamental attribution error
A
- “The tendency for attributers to underestimate the impact of situational factors and to overestimate the role of dispositional factors in controlling behaviour”
- Ross, 1977, p.183
