S1 Topic 1 - Person Perception

Question 1

What are first impressions affected by? (4)

Answer 1

Non-verbal cues
Rumors
Similarity to self
Self-esteem

Question 2

What is the primacy/order effect?

Answer 2

the first information received carries more weight than the one following it

Question 3

What are 5 characteristics of non-verbal communication?

Answer 3

Conscious or unconscious (e.g., body language)

Out of your control (e.g., blushing)

Congruent or incongruent (e.g., your tone doesn’t match what you’re saying)

Cultural boundaries

Ambiguous (e.g., expressing 2 emotions at once)

Question 4

What are the 5 functions non-verbal communication?

Answer 4

Regulating (better understanding)
Accenting (placing emphasis)
Complementing (providing clarity)
Contradicting
Substituting

Question 5

Name 9 forms of non-verbal communication

Answer 5

Clothes and belongings
Facial expressions
Gaze and eye contact
Posture
Gestures
Paralanguage (pace, pitch, volume)
Proximity
Touch (friendly/intimate/sexual)
Personal space

Question 6

Who came up with looking-glass self theory?

Answer 6

Charles Cooley

Question 7

What theories did Solomon Asch invent? (2)

Answer 7

The Primacy/Order Effect
The Centrality of Traits

Question 8

Who invented the recency effect?

Answer 8

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Question 9

What did Asch believe the primacy/order effect was caused by?

Answer 9

assimilation of meaning

Question 10

In Jones et al’s experiment on the primacy effect, who did the observers think was the most intelligent:

the person who answered most questions correctly only in the beginning
OR
the person who answered most questions correctly only in the end

Answer 10

the person who answered most questions correctly in the beginning - even though his performance decreased in the second half

Question 11

What is the recency effect?

Answer 11

the information presented last will dominate impressions

Question 12

Explain the centrality of traits
Give an example

Answer 12

certain traits are more significant than others

E.g., substituting polite for blunt has less effect than substituting warm for cold - therefore the traits warm and cold are the more significant traits

Question 13

Explain the implicit personality theory

Answer 13

it is the sum total of our accumulated hypotheses and expectations about the way people’s attributes and traits are organized

Question 14

What is the Attribution Theory?

Answer 14

how we make inferences about the causes of our own and others’ behaviour

Question 15

What 2 questions does Heider’s theory of naïve psychology ask?

Answer 15

1. is the action caused by an internal disposition or by external pressures
2. if caused by an internal disposition, was it intentional or unintentional

Question 16

Name the Attribution Theories and who invented them (3)

Answer 16

Theory of Naïve Psychology - Heider

Correspondent Inference Theory - Jones and Davis

Covariation Model - Kelly

Question 17

According to the correspondent inference theory, on what traits do we judge people’s behaviour (5)

Give an example for each (5)

Answer 17

Choice - e.g., choice of course

Social role - e.g., a lecturer eating lunch with students

Social desirability - e.g., liar/untrustworthy

Prior expectations - e.g., seeing a lecturer at a strip club

Non-common effect - e.g., consequences of making the decision to study law instead of medicine

Question 18

Explain the non-common effect

Answer 18

the consequences of a chosen action must be compared with the consequences of possible alternatives

Question 19

According to the covariation model, on what 3 principles do we determine the cause of a behaviour?

Give examples for each (3)

Answer 19

1. Distinctiveness - does the student sleep during ONLY my lectures?
2. Consistency - does the student sleep during ALL my lectures?
3. Consensus - do other students ALSO sleep during my lectures?

Question 20

What is the fundamental attribution error?
Give an example

Answer 20

Since behaviour is motivated by the person’s predisposition and attitude, people tend to overattribute the behaviour of others to dispositional causes, ignoring context or role

E.g., when a lecturer is in a bad mood, a student regards him as a bad lecturer, without considering that the lecturer may have had a bad day

Question 21

What is the actor observer effect?
Give an example

Answer 21

We attribute our own behaviour to external factors to justify it

E.g., I failed an exam because the examiner is tough, not because I didn’t study

Question 22

Distinguish between:
self-based consensus
self-centered bias
self-serving bias

Answer 22

self-based consensus - assuming others will do the same thing as you would in a given situation

self-centered bias - taking more credit for a joint effort on a successful task

self-serving bias - take credit for success but deny responsibility for failure

Question 23

What is the defensive attribution hypothesis?

Answer 23

observers attribute more responsibility for an accident that produces sever rather than mild consequences

Question 24

What are negativity biases? (2)

Answer 24

negative info has a disproportionately large weight in determining impressions

a negative first impression is more resistant to change

Question 25

What is the leniency bias?

Answer 25

in the absence of negative info, we expect people to have positive qualities

Question 26

What are biases due to expectations?
What can this lead to?

Answer 26

if we have positive expectations, we look for information that proves us right - and vice versa

This can lead to the self-fulfilling prophecy or the Pygmalion effect

Question 27

What is the Pygmalion effect?

Answer 27

a self-fulfilling prophecy based on the way an individual treats another

Question 28

What is evaluative consistency?

Answer 28

the tendency to consider a partial structure of a person’s personality that is visible to us, as though it is their total personality

Question 29

What is the self-fulfilling prophecy?

Answer 29

an expectation or belief that can influence your behaviors, thus causing the belief to come true

Question 30

List the 12 cognitive biases (AA-BB-CC-OOO-P-SS)

Answer 30

• Anchoring bias (primacy effect)
• Availability of heuristic bias
• Bandwagon effect (groupthink)
• Blind spot bias (thinking you aren’t biased)
• Choice supportive bias (not pointing out your choice was the worse one)
• Confirmation bias (focus only on info that supports our belief)
• Ostrich bias (ignore negative info)
• Outcome bias
• Overconfidence (following gut feeling)
• Placebo bias
• Survivorship bias
• Selective perception (noticing more what appeals to you)