Social Cognition and Perception

Question 1

What is meant by the term ‘social cognition’ and ‘social perception’?

Answer 1

what is social cognition? It is essentially the cognitive processes and structures that affect and are affected by social context and behaviour.Social cognition is an approach in social psychology that focuses on how our thinking processes and thoughts are affected by wider and more immediate social contexts, and how thinking and thoughts affect our social behaviour. The focus here is on what goes on in the head of the individual person and how that impacts and is impacted by human interaction.

social perception… that’s like social cognition, right? Well, partly. Social perception is highly related to social cognition, but rather than focusing on how we think about our social world more generally, social perception is interested in our tendency to engage in attributions. Attribution is the process of assigning a cause to your own or another’s behaviour.

Question 2

Outline the major assumptions of the following broad approaches to social cognition, as found in social psychology: (a) cognitive consistency; (b) naive scientist; (c) cognitive miser; and (d) motivated tactician.

Answer 2

1940-50s
Cognitive consistency A model of social cognition in which people try to reduce inconsistency among their cognitions, because they find inconsistency unpleasant.

1960s
Naive scientist (or psychologist) Model of social cognition that characterises people as using rational, scientific-like,
cause–effect analyses to understand their world.

1970s
A model of social cognition that
characterises people as using the least complex and demanding cognitions that are able to produce generally adaptive behaviours.
(we are often economic rather than accu­rate when jumping to a conclusion).

1985
Motivated tactician A model of social cognition that
characterises people as having multiple cognitive strategies available, which they choose among on the basis of personal goals, motives and needs.
-a fully engaged thinker who has multiple cognitive strategies available and chooses among them based on goals, motives, and needs. Sometimes the moti­ vated tactician chooses wisely, in the interests of adaptability and accuracy, and sometimes . . . defensively, in the interests of speed or self­esteem. (Fiske & Taylor, 1991, p. 13)

Question 3

What are central traits? Provide an example.

What are peripheral traits? Provide an example.

Answer 3

Traits that have a disproportionate influence on the configuration of final impressions, in Asch’s configural model of impression formation. (warm/cold)

Peripheral traits Traits that have an insignificant influence on the configuration of final impressions, in Asch’s configural model of impression formation. (polite/blunt)

A central trait is an attribute in someone’s personality that is considered particularly meaningful, in that its presence or absence signals the presence or absence of other traits. For example, if a person has a warm personality, it usually means that he or she is also friendly, courteous, cheerful, and outgoing—among many other possible traits. A peripheral trait is one whose presence or absence does not imply many other characteristics. For example, if a person is sarcastic, it might imply that he or she is cynical about the world or has a dark sense of humor—but not much else.

Question 4

What did Asch do to test his ideas and what were his findings?

Answer 4

page 32.
However, the impressions we form are influenced by some bits of information more than others. Very early on, Solomon Asch (1946) argued that some attributes are strongly related in our minds to a large number of other attributes – knowing someone has one of these attributes allows one to infer a great deal about a person and readily form an integrated impression of that person. These attributes he called central traits, to distinguish them from less diagnostic attributes that he called peripheral traits. To investigate this idea, Asch had students read one of two lists of seven adjec­ tives (traits) describing a hypothetical person. The lists differed only slightly – embedded in one was the word warm and in the other the word cold. The stu­ dents then evaluated the target person on a number of other dimensions, such as generous/ungenerous, happy/unhappy, reliable/unreliable. Students who read the list containing warm formed a much more favourable impression of the target than did those exposed to the list containing the trait cold (see Figure 2.1). When the words warm and cold were replaced by polite and blunt, the difference in impres­ sion was far less marked. Asch argued that warm/cold is a central trait dimension that has more influence on impression formation than polite/blunt, which is a peripheral trait dimension.
Perhaps you are now wondering how ordinary people, or social psychologists
for that matter, decide which traits are central and which peripheral. Asch believed that central traits are ones that are intrinsically highly correlated with other traits.

Question 5

What criticisms have been made regarding the concept of central trait? (Note the role of personal constructs and implicit personality theories).

Answer 5

However, others such as Mark Zanna and David Hamilton (1972) argued that what makes a trait central is influenced by context. In Figure 2.1, a trait that is distinctive (e.g. warm) and semantically linked to the other judgement dimensions (e.g. good-natured) will be more central than one that is non­distinctive or not obviously related to the other dimensions. Yet others have suggested that people have their own idiosyn­ cratic and enduring beliefs, which the personality psychologist George Kelly (1955) called personal constructs, about which attributes are most important in making judge­ ments of people – for example, you might organise your impressions around humour while your partner anchors it on intelligence. Arising from his research in person per­ ception, David Schneider (1973) suggested that people may also have more integrated implicit personality theories, or philosophies of human nature, which are enduring general principles about what sorts of characteristics go together to form certain types of personality. Implicit personality theories are widely shared within cultures but differ between cultures, according to Hazel Markus and her colleagues (Markus, Kitayama & Heiman, 1996), and can sometimes be quite idiosyncratic.

Question 6

What is the primacy effect? Provide an example.

What is the recency effect? Provide an example.

Answer 6

Impressions are also influenced by the order in which bits of information about the person are encountered. There is a primacy effect in which the first things you learn about a person disproportionately affect your overall impression. For example, Asch (1946) found that people had a more favourable impression of a hypotheti­ cal person described as being intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious (i.e. positive traits first, negative traits last) than when the order of the traits was reversed. He speculated that early information functions in the same way as central traits. There is also evidence for a recency effect where later information has more impact than earlier information – this is most likely to occur if you are distracted (e.g. overworked, bombarded with stimuli, tired) or you have little moti­ vation to attend to someone. Overall, however, primacy is more common (Jones & Goethals, 1972) – first impressions really do count!

Question 7

How do physical cues feed into our impression formations? Provide a summary of a research finding in this area.

Answer 7

Given that in forming impressions of strangers often the first bit of information we have is what they look like, maybe appearance has a primacy effect. Although we would like to believe that we are way too sophisticated to be swayed in our impressions by mere physical appearance, research suggests otherwise – physical appearance has a huge influence on impressions. According to Leslie Zebrowitz and Mary Ann Collins (1997), people do tend to ‘judge a book by its cover’. This may not necessarily always be a bad thing, as appearance­based impressions can be surprisingly accurate. Indeed, as you will find in Chapter 10, impressions based on physical appearance play a critical role in romantic attraction. Now try answering the first focus question. However, forming impressions based on appearance can also have undesirable implications. For example, Mark Knapp (1978) found that professional men taller than 1.88 m had 10 per cent higher starting salaries than men under 1.83 m. In her research conducted in work settings, Madeline Heilman found that attractive male executives were considered more able than less attractive male executives. She also found that this effect was reversed for female executives; participants suspected that attractive female executives had been promoted because of their appearance, not their ability (Heilman & Stopeck, 1985; also see Chapter 7).

Question 8

What are the positivity and negativity biases? Identify a reason why it might be more difficult to change a negative impression, once it is formed, than a positive impression.

Answer 8

Another problem with appearance­based first impressions is that because racial, ethnic and gender cues are highly visible, people rapidly categorise others and generate impressions based on these cues, effectively stereotyping them, sometimes in negative ways (again, see Chapter 7). Negative impressions formed in this way are difficult to change. Indeed a review of research shows that we usually give more weight to nega­ tive information when we form impressions than we do to positive information (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989). Even a positive view of a stranger that we have just formed can be dramatically reversed by just a small negative ‘fact’, such as appearing to avoid eye contact a couple of times. Unfortunately, positive infor­ mation seems to have little impact on a negative impression. Negative information has this effect because it is unusual and distinctive; it may also have survival value because it signals potential danger.

Question 9

why do we classify people into categories?

Answer 9

The classification of a person or situation as fitting a particular category enables us to then apply schematic knowledge to social perception (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). This means, for example, that:

“Once you recognize someone filling a particular role (e.g., gas station attendant) on the basis of particular attributes (probably male, maybe wearing a jumpsuit, maybe with an oily rag in a pocket, maybe approaching your car, perhaps helping others get gas), then you can apply your knowledge about the role to guide the subsequent interaction (this person can help you with your car).” - Fiske & Taylor (1991, p. 105)

In other words, it is only after categorising a person or a situation that we can apply a particular type of schema.

Question 10

Define the term ‘schema’ and identify the type of cognitive processing that a schema facilitates once it is invoked. (Note that the plural is either ‘schemas’ or ‘schemata’.)

Answer 10

A schema is a circumscribed and coherent set of interrelated cognitions (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, attitudes) that allows us quickly to make sense of a person, situation, event or place on the basis of limited information. Typically, certain cues activate a schema and the schema then ‘fills in’ missing details to provide a rich set of perceptions, interpretations and expectations.
Once activated, schemas facilitate what is called top-down, concept­driven or
theory­driven processing – that is, they rapidly generate an overall impression based on preconceptions and prior knowledge. The converse is bottom-up or data­driven processing in which an impression is painstakingly put together from separate bits of information gleaned directly from the immediate context.

Question 11

Define and identify examples of each of the following types of schemas: (a) person schemas; (b) role schemas; (c) event schemas (scripts); (d) content-free schemas; (e) self-schemas.

Answer 11

Person schemas are idiosyncratic schemas we have about specific people: for example, a close friend (she is kind and intelligent but is shy and would rather frequent cafes than go mountain climbing).
• Role schemas are knowledge structures about role occupants: for example, air­ line pilots (they fly the plane and should not be seen swigging whisky in the cabin) and doctors (although often complete strangers, they are allowed to ask intimate questions and get you to undress). Role schemas can sometimes be better understood as schemas about social groups, in which case if such schemas are shared, they are social stereotypes.
• Scripts are schemas about events (Abelson, 1981): for example, attending a lecture, having a party, giving a presentation or eating out in a restaurant.
• Self-schemas are schemas about your self – they are often more complex and varied than schemas about other people. They form part of a person’s concept of who they are, the self­concept, and are discussed in Chapter 3 when we deal with self and identity.
Family resemblance Defining property of category membership.
Fuzzy sets Categories are considered to be fuzzy sets of features organised around a prototype.
Prototype
Cognitive representation of the typical/ideal defining features of a category.
• Content-free schemas do not describe specific people or categories, but are ‘rules’ about how to process information: for example, a content­free schema might specify how to attribute causes to people’s behaviour (see discussion of attribution theories below); or that if you like John and John likes Tom, then in order to maintain balance you should also like Tom (Heider, 1958).

Question 12

What is meant by the term ‘family resemblance’?

Answer 12

Family resemblance Defining property of category membership.

Question 13

What are ‘prototypes’? (Note that they are used to assess family resemblance.)

Answer 13

Prototype

Cognitive representation of the typical/ideal defining features of a category.

Question 14

What sort of relationship between ‘categories’ is thought to exist?

Answer 14

What determines whether we represent a category as a prototype or an exem­plar? As people become more familiar with a category, they shift from using prototypes to exemplars. This shift is most clear­cut when people represent out­ groups (Klein, Loftus, Trafton & Fuhrman, 1992).
Once a person, event or situation is categorised, the relevant schema is invoked. Schemas and prototypes are similar and indeed are often used interchangeably by social psychologists. One way to distinguish them is that prototypes are more nebulous and fuzzy whereas schemas are much more organised (Wyer & Gordon, 1984).

Question 15

Distinguish between prototypes and exemplars and ensure you understand the difference between prototypes and schemas (go back to earlier definition if necessary).

Answer 15

prototype is a typical idea of something in a category.

exampler is something specific in that category

A schema is a circumscribed and coherent set of interrelated cognitions (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, attitudes) that allows us quickly to make sense of a person, situation, event or place on the basis of limited information.

Question 16

Note the definition of stereotypes. Briefly overview five things research has told us about stereotypes.

Answer 16

Stereotypes are simplified images of members of a group; they are often deroga­ tory when applied to outgroups; and they are often based on, or create, clearly visible differences between groups (e.g.
in terms of physical appearance;
Zebrowitz, 1996). They are usually shared by group members characterising members of another group; and can also be shared images of one’s own ingroup.
• People readily describe vast human groups using a few fairly crude shared features. Stereotyping is an adaptive cognitive short cut that allows one to form quick impressions of people. Stereotypes are not inaccurate or wrong, and they may or may not have a kernel of truth; but the key point is that they serve to make sense of particular intergroup relations.
• Because stereotypes are cognitively adaptive they are slow to change. When they do, it is generally in response to wider social, political or economic changes. However, stereotypes of the same group can vary from context to context – they are selected to fit situational demands and our own goals and motives. Stereotypes will usually persist if we can readily access them in memory, because we use them a great deal and they are important to who we are. Changes in accessibility or fit will change the stereotype.
• Some stereotypes are acquired at an early age, often before the child has any knowledge about the groups that are being stereotyped, while others crystallise later in childhood, after age 10 (e.g. Rutland, 1999).
• Stereotypes become more pronounced and hostile when social tensions and con­ flict arise between groups, and then they are extremely difficult to modify.

Question 17

What is Tajfel’s accentuation principle and how does it relate to stereotyping?

Answer 17

Accentuation principle: Categorisation
accentuates perceived similarities within and differences between groups on dimensions that people believe are correlated with the categorisation. The effect is amplified where the categorisation and/or dimension has subjective importance, relevance or value.

Relying on categories to clarify perception is a very basic human activity, but it also produces a widespread cognitive perceptual bias. Tajfel (1959, 1969) intro­ duced the term accentuation principle to describe how we accentuate: (1) similarities among instances within the same category; (2) differences between instances from different categories; and (3) differences between different categories as a whole. This effect is enhanced when people are uncertain about how to judge something, and when they think that what they are categorising is very important, relevant or valu­ able. Shelley Taylor and her colleagues found that, in practice, we tend to make more errors within a category than between categories (Taylor, Fiske, Etcoff & Ruderman, 1978). For example, Australian people attending a meeting in Melbourne would more likely remember whether it was a Lebanese or a Greek delegate who said some­ thing than remember which specific Arabic or Greek delegate it was.

Question 18

What sorts of schemas are especially likely to be used or invoked?

Answer 18

Basic-level categories Middle range categories that have cognitive priority because they are the most useful, e.g. a ‘chair’ rather than ‘furniture’ or a ‘rocker’.
basic-level categories that are neither too big nor too small (see Figure 2.2). They use subtypes such as ‘career woman’, rather than superordinate categories such as ‘woman’ or subordinate categories such as ‘female astronaut’. They also access social stereotypes and role schemas such as ‘politician’, rather than trait schemas such as ‘intelligent’.

Question 19

What happens when people need to use more accurate schemas? What happens if the costs of indecision are high?

Answer 19

Schemas that we use automatically are usually accurate enough for immedi­
ate day­to­day interaction – they have circumscribed accuracy that optimises the trade­off between rapid top­down theory­driven cognition and accurate bottom­up data­driven cognition (Swann, 1984). A key factor that governs this trade­off is how costly people feel it is to be wrong or to be indecisive.
If the costs of being wrong are high, we are more attentive to data and use more accurate schemas. The costs of being wrong become important when our rewards and punishments are heavily dependent on the actions of others, and when we feel that we should account for their actions (see Neuberg & Fiske, 1987; Tetlock & Boettger, 1989). If the costs of being indecisive are high, people make quick deci­ sions and form quick impressions – indeed, any decision or impression, however inaccurate, may be preferable to no decision or impression, so people rely heavily on schemas. The costs of being indecisive become important when people perform a task under time pressure, or when people are anxious or distracted (Jamieson & Zanna, 1989; Wilder & Shapiro, 1989).

Question 20

Explain the role of experience when it comes to schema acquisition.

Answer 20

Where do our schemas come from? People can simply tell you or you can read about them, but more typically we acquire or modify our schemas through encoun­ ters with instances that fit the category (directly or through various media). Take an example when the schema is of an individual person. According to Bernadette Park (1986), as you encounter more instances of a category, in this case a person, your schema becomes more general and abstract. For example, your impressions of Roberta might evolve from descriptions such as ‘dyes her hair pink’ and ‘is boister­ ous in class’ to character traits such as ‘extraverted’. A schema can also become richer, more complex and more tightly organized into a single compact mental structure that can be activated in an all­or­nothing manner. Thus an experienced university student is more likely than a first­year student to have a more detailed schema of someone who would make a good roommate. Schemas formed in this way are quite resilient – they are able to incorporate exceptions, rather than disre­ gard them simply because they might threaten the validity of the schema (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990). One paradoxical feature of such schemas is that they are relatively ‘accurate’ in so far as they closely map social reality.

Question 21

Briefly describe the processes of schema change as suggested by Rothbart (1981).

Answer 21

coherence to a social world that would otherwise be highly complex and unpre­ dictable. For this reason schemas do not easily change. Ross, Lepper and Hubbard (1975) investigated how people deal with information that is not consistent with a schema. They told their participants that information they had received, that a target person had made either good or poor at making decisions, was entirely false. Despite this correction, participants held on to their original impression that the target was a good or poor decision maker. Trial lawyers take advantage of this. They introduce inadmissible evidence, which the judge immediately instructs the jury to disregard. But of course an impression formed from inadmissible evidence will not vanish just because the judge has instructed jurors to disregard it (Thompson, Fong & Rosenhan, 1981). The impression lingers. People think a lot about their schemas, marshalling all sorts of supportive evi­
dence. The original basis of the schema is lost in the mists of time and is rarely unearthed, let alone critically re­examined (e.g. Schul & Burnstein, 1985). Schemas can, and do, change, however, if they are really inaccurate. For exam­
ple, a schema that characterised lions as cuddly, good­natured and playful pets as seen in a fun TV programme would, if you encountered one on foot in the wild, change rather dramatically – assuming that you survived the encounter! Mick Rothbart (1981) has studied extensively how social categorisation works, and suggested three ways in which schemas can change: 1. Bookkeeping – they can change slowly in the face of accumulating evidence. 2. Conversion – they can change suddenly once a critical mass of disconfirming evidence has accumulated.
3. Subtyping – they can form a subcategory to accommodate disconfirming evidence.

Subtyping is probably the most common way that a schema adapts to discon­ firming evidence (Weber & Crocker, 1983). For example, a woman who believes that men are violent might, through encountering many who are not, form a sub­ type of non­violent men to contrast with violent men.

Question 22

What is ‘social encoding’? (Note the various stages to this process.)

Answer 22

‘Priming’ is a term that refers to the activation of a cognitive representation to increase its accessibility to make it more likely to be used. What happens once a category is primed?

1. Pre-attentive analysis – an automatic, non­conscious scanning of the environment. 2. Focal attention – once noticed, stimuli are consciously identified and categorised. 3. Comprehension – stimuli are given meaning. 4. Elaborative reasoning – the stimulus is linked to other knowledge to allow complex inferences.
   Social encoding depends heavily on what captures our attention. In turn, atten­tion is influenced by salience and accessibility.

Question 23

Social encoding is affected by factors such as stimuli salience. What is ‘salience’? What are the antecedents and consequences of salience?

Answer 23

Salience is the property of a stimulus that makes it stand out relative to other stimuli in a particular context – for example, a single male is salient in a group of women but not a mixed sex group, and someone wearing a bright T­shirt is salient at a funeral but not on the beach. Consider the second focus question. People can be salient because they are novel and stand out against the background, because their appearance or behaviour does not fit your expectations of them, or because they are important to you (e.g. because of their rank) in a particular context. Salient people attract attention and are considered more influential in a group, more personally responsible for their behaviour (e.g. choosing to dress differently from others), and less influenced by the situation. We usually attend closely to them and form coher­ ent impressions of them. People do not necessarily recall more about salient people; rather, they find it easier to hold a coherent mental picture of them.

Question 24

Encoding can also be affected by the accessibility of categories or schemas. What does ‘accessibility’ mean?

Answer 24

Attention is often directed not so much by stimulus properties ‘out there’ but
Accessibility Ease of recall of categories or schemas that we already have in mind.
Priming
Activation of accessible categories or
schemas in memory that influence how we process new information.
by the accessibility of categories or schemas that we already have in our heads (Higgins, 1996). Because accessible categories are ones we often use and are con­ sistent with our goals, needs and expectations, they are very easily activated or primed by things we see or hear – priming takes place. For example, people who are concerned about racial discrimination (i.e. it is an accessible category) may see racism everywhere: it is readily primed and used to interpret the social world.

Question 25

‘Priming’ is a term that refers to the activation of a cognitive representation to increase its accessibility to make it more likely to be used. What happens once a category is primed?

Answer 25

Once primed, a category interprets stimuli, particularly ambiguous stimuli, in
a category-consistent manner. However, when people become aware that a cate­ gory has been primed, they may try to counteract it. For example, Charles Stangor (1988) has shown that gender is often an accessible category that is readily primed and used to interpret behaviour; but if you knew that gender had been primed, you might make a special effort to interpret behaviour in a non­gendered way.

Question 26

What is a social inference? Distinguish between the approaches that have been used to describe the processes of social inference.

Answer 26

Social inference lies at the heart of social cognition. It refers to the way we pro­ cess social information to form impressions of people and make judgements about them. A key distinction that has already surfaced in different guises in this chapter is between (a) bottom-up processing in which we construct impressions piecemeal from specific bits of information and (b) top-down processing in which we auto­ matically draw inferences from general schemas or stereotypes. Related distinctions abound, such as in treatments of impression formation. For
example, Marilyn Brewer (1988) distinguished between two kinds of processing: one that uses categories and is relatively automatic; and one based on a person’s attributes and is more deliberate. Susan Fiske and Steven Neuberg (1990) pointed to a difference between inferences based on schemas and those based on data. Alice Eagly and Shelley Chaiken (1993) argued that we use two different processing routes whenever our attitudes come into play. We can choose a heuristic/peripheral route for rapid top­of­the­head decisions based on stereotypes, schemas and other cognitive short cuts, or a systematic/central route when we need to think carefully and deliberately. We call on one of these two routes when we respond (i.e. process) persuasive messages such as TV advertisements.

Question 27

Define ‘illusory correlation’. Your text discusses two bases for illusory correlation: (a) associative meaning; and (b) paired distinctiveness. Define each of these terms and explain how they may help to explain stereotyping.

Answer 27

A well­known bias that is difficult to avoid is the illusory correlation (e.g. Hamilton
& Gifford, 1976). When we make an inference we essentially make a judgement that a correlation exists – for example, if you believe that obesity and poor education are correlated then if you met an obese person you would infer that he or she was also poorly educated. The illusory feature is the tendency to overestimate the degree of correlation or to even see a correlation where none actually exists.

Chapman showed students lists of paired words such as lion/tiger, lion/eggs, bacon/eggs, blossoms/notebook and notebook/tiger, who then had to recall how often each word was paired with each other word.
• Although every word was paired an equal number of times with every other word, participants overestimated meaningful pairings (e.g. bacon/eggs); and dis­ tinctive pairings (e.g. blossoms/notebook – words that were much longer than all the other words in the list).
• He concluded that there are two bases for illusory correlation: associative mean­ ing (items are seen as belonging together because they ‘ought’ to, on the basis of prior expectations) and paired distinctiveness (items are thought to go together because they share some unusual feature).

In real life, negative events are distinctive because they are perceived to be more rare than positive events (Parducci, 1968), and minority groups are distinctive because people have few contacts with them. As a result, an illusory correlation based on dis­ tinctiveness will occur and produce negative stereotyping of minority groups. If you reckon that a green­haired man cheated you out of money on a card game, you might be inclined to keep an eye on the next green­haired man you play with!

Question 28

Define ‘heuristics’. Your text identifies three main types of heuristics: (a) the representativeness heuristic; (b) the availability heuristic; and (c) the anchoring and adjustment. Write down examples of each of these types of heuristics.

Answer 28

Representativeness heuristic – we assess how similar we think an instance, say a person, is to a typical member in a given category, and if we feel the level of similarity is sufficient we infer that the person has all the category attributes. If Jane, whom you have just met, has short hair, wears overalls and talks loudly, you might mull over whether she might be one of ‘those radical protestor types’.
• Availability heuristic – events or associations that come readily to mind are con­ sidered to be more common and prevalent than they really are. And so in sizing Paul up, who has even shorter hair than Jane, wears big boots and carries a cane, you would overestimate the likelihood that he will also be violent because you had just seen that old film A Clockwork Orange. Availability is adequate as a basis for making inferences (after all, things that come to mind easily are probably fairly plentiful), but it fails to control for the odd exposure to events or associations that may actually be rare.
• Anchoring and adjustment – impressions are tied to earlier perceptions that are a starting point, much like the primacy effect we discussed earlier. Inferences about other people are often anchored in beliefs about ourselves. We might therefore decide how intelligent, artistic or kind someone else is by referring to our own self­schema. ‘Because I think I am bright, smart Fred must have a giant brain!’ Another example – your dislike for Mary can act as an anchor from which only small adjustments are made, even in the light of subsequent over­ whelming evidence that she is actually absolutely delightful!

Question 29

The distinction between dispositional (internal) and situational (external) attribution is important. Define and provide an example of each of these terms.

Answer 29

Heider believed that people are intuitive psychologists who construct causal theories of human behaviour, and because such theories have the same form as systematic scientific social psychological theories, people are actually intuitive or naive psychologists. Heider made a lasting distinction between personal factors (e.g. personality, abil­ ity) and environmental factors (e.g. situations, social pressure) in the way that we account for the causes for behaviour. The former are examples of an internal (or dispositional) attribution and the latter of an external (or situational) attribution. So, for example, it might be useful to know whether someone you meet at a party who seems aloof and distant is an aloof and distant person or is acting in that way because she is not enjoying that particular party. Heider believed that because internal causes, or intentions, are hidden from us, we can infer their presence only if there are no clear external causes. However, as we see below, people tend to be biased in preferring internal to external attributions even in the face of evidence for
external causality. It seems that we readily attribute behaviour to stable properties of people. Klaus Scherer (1978), for example, found that people made assumptions about the stable personality traits of complete strangers simply on the basis of hear­ing their voices on the telephone.

Question 30

What is Kelley’s (1967, 1973) covariation model? Define and provide examples of consensus information, consistency information, and distinctiveness information and make sure you understand what it means when information is high or low in terms of these dimensions.

Answer 30

Covariation model Kelley’s theory of causal attribution – people assign the cause of behaviour to the factor that covaries most closely with the behaviour.

Kelley went on to argue that in order to discover a cause of someone’s behav­ iour people act much like scientists, rather than naive psychologists. They identify what factor covaries with the behaviour and then assign that factor a causal role. People use this covariation principle to decide whether to attribute a particular act to internal dispositions (e.g. personality) or external environmental factors (e.g. social pressure). To make this attributional decision people consider three types of information: consistency, distinctiveness and consensus.
If Jane only sometimes behaves in a particular way, for example giggles, in a given situation then consistency is low and we look for alternative causes. If on the other hand Jane always giggles in the same situation consistency is high but we still don’t know whether the giggling reflects Jane’s personality or the situation. Assuming high consistency, people can assess the distinctiveness of the behaviour (distinctiveness is low if Jane giggles all the time, high if Jane only giggles in this situation) and whether there is high consensus (every one giggles in this situation) or low consensus (only Jane giggles in this situation). The conjunction of high distinctiveness and consensus leads to an external attribution (Jane’s giggling is due to the situation), and the con­ junction of low distinctiveness and consensus leads to an internal attribution (Jane’s giggling is due to Jane – she is simply the sort of person who giggles). Research shows that people certainly can make causal attributions for behaviour in this way (Kassin, 1979; McArthur, 1972), however, they under­use consensus information and are generally not very good at assessing covariation. Also, just because people can perform these laborious attributional analyses, it does not mean that in everyday life they actually do it or do it all the time

Question 31

Identify the dimensions that, according to Weiner, affect our explanations for task performance.

Answer 31

Covariation model Kelley’s theory of causal attribution – people assign the cause of behaviour to the factor that covaries most closely with the behaviour.

Let us say that your classmate Helga fails in her psychology examination, and we think this was caused by ‘unusual hindrance from others’ (the top right­hand box in Figure 2.4). Now, you know that Helga is intelligent (therefore, failure in this case is an external factor). You also know that she was seriously disturbed by Bevan. He should never have been there – his eyes were running from a bout of hay fever, he kept sneezing throughout, and he was sitting next to poor Helga. So let us look to the future: in future examinations Bevan might not be present (an unstable factor), or Helga could choose to sit well away from Bevan if he turns up (a controllable factor). In total, there are eight different ways of explaining task performance.

Question 32

Note the eight different types of explanations that people can draw. - (Consult Figure 2.4 on page 47). Identify which particular combinations of dimensions Weiner suggested would result in these different types of explanations of task performance.

Answer 32

page 47 for diagram

Question 33

What is Bem’s self-perception theory?

Answer 33

If you can attribute an act internally to a person’s disposition you now know some­ thing about that person – his or her personality. Daryl Bem (1972) pinpointed an interesting implication of this in his self-perception theory. He argued that: (1) we make attributions for our own behaviour in the same way as we make attributions for others’ behaviour; and (2) it is through internal attribution of our own behaviour that we gain knowledge about ourselves, our self­concept and identity (see Chapter 3).

Question 34

What are attributional styles? Provide examples.

Answer 34

We all engage in attributions, but it appears that we differ in our attributional style. According to the eminent clinical psychologist Julian Rotter (1966), those of us who are internals tend to make internal attributions; believing we have a great deal of personal control over our destiny – things happen because we make them happen. Those of us who are externals tend to make external attributions; believ­ ing that we have little control over what happens to us – things simply occur by chance, luck or the actions of powerful external agents.

Question 35

What differences have been found in the types of attributions made by happy and distressed couples? Can you think of your own anecdotal examples of attributional styles in interpersonal relationships.

Answer 35

Attributions also play an important role in close interpersonal relationships where attributions are communicated to fulfil a variety of functions: for instance, to explain, justify or excuse behaviour, as well as to assign blame and instil guilt (Hilton, 1990; see Chapter 10). A key finding is that attributional conflict, where partners in a relationship disagree over attributions (e.g. one exclaiming, ‘I with­ draw because you nag’, the other, ‘I nag because you withdraw’), is strongly associated with and plays a causal role in relationship dissatisfaction and distress (Fincham & Bradbury, 1993). In good relationships people credit their partners for positive behaviour by citing internal, stable, global and controllable factors to explain them, and explain away negative behaviour by ascribing it to external, unstable, specific and uncontrollable causes. Distressed couples behave in exactly the opposite way. Women tend fairly continuously to engage in attributional thought about the relationship, but men do so only when the relationship becomes dysfunctional. In this respect, and contrary to popular opinion, men’s attributional behaviour is a better barometer of relationship dysfunction.

Question 36

What is meant by the term ‘correspondence bias’? What is another term for it?

Answer 36

Perhaps the best­known attribution bias is correspondence bias (also called the fundamental attribution error). This a tendency for people to attribute behaviour
internally to stable underlying personality dispositions, even in the face of strong evidence for external causes (Gilbert & Malone, 1995; Ross, 1977). It is called corre-spondence bias because it is a bias in viewing behaviour as corresponding to internal dispositions rather than external situations.

Question 37

What is meant by the term ‘actor-observer effect’? Think of some personal examples of the actor-observer effect.

Answer 37

Correspondence bias only occurs reliably when we make an attribution of others’ behaviour. When seeking causes for our own behaviour we are more likely to attribute it externally to situational factors. This asymmetry, for which there is sub­ stantial empirical support, is called the actor–observer effect (Jones & Nisbett, 1972; Watson, 1982). The most likely causes of the actor–observer effect are the following: • Focus of attention – when other people are the focus we judge them against the background of the situation. However, when we consider our own actions we focus outwards on the situation rather than inwards on our self: the situation is causally more salient.
• Asymmetry of information – we know more about ourselves and therefore know that our behaviour is influenced by situational factors, because we behave differ­ ently in different situations. At least we think we do!
Not surprisingly, the actor–observer effect can be reduced or even disappear if the actor becomes the observer. One way that you might begin to see your disposi­ tional side is to watch videotape of yourself recorded in a natural situation. Now, you become like others – you are the observer of you (Storms, 1973)

Question 38

What is the ‘false consensus effect’? Describe the classic Ross, Greene and House (1977) experiment (“Eat at Joe’s” experiment).

Answer 38

A third attributional bias is called the false consensus effect. People tend to over­ estimate how typical their own behaviour is – assuming that others behave in the same way as they do. This egocentric bias was first demonstrated by Ross, Greene and House (1977) who asked students if they would agree to walk around campus for 30 minutes wearing a sandwich board carrying the slogan ‘Eat at Joe’s’. Those who agreed estimated that 62 per cent of their peers would also have agreed, while those who refused estimated that 67 per cent of their peers would also have refused. False consensus is very prevalent (Marks & Miller, 1987), and arises because:
• we usually seek out similar others and so should not be surprised to find that other people are similar to us;
• our own opinions are so salient to us that they eclipse the possibility of alterna­ tive opinions;
• we are motivated to ground our opinions and actions in perceived consensus in order to validate them and build a stable world for ourselves.
False consensus is stronger for important beliefs that we care about, for beliefs we feel certain about, when we feel under external threat, and where we feel others are similar to us and we are members of a minority status group.

Question 39

What are self-serving biases? Note the distinction between self-enhancing biases and self-protecting biases.

Answer 39

We are very good at producing self-serving biases. Overall, we take credit for our positive behaviours as reflecting who we are and our intention and effort to do positive things (the self-enhancing bias), while we explain away our negative behaviours as being due to coercion, normative con­ straints and other external situational factors that do not reflect who we ‘really’ are (the self-protecting bias). This is a robust effect that holds across many cultures.

Question 40

What explanations exist for self-serving biases?

Answer 40

Self­enhancing biases are more common than self­protecting biases (Miller & Ross, 1975) – partly because people with low self­esteem tend not to protect them­ selves by attributing their failures externally; rather, they attribute them internally (Campbell & Fairey, 1985). However, self­enhancement and self­protection can sometimes be muted by a desire not to be seen to be boasting over our successes and lying about our failures (e.g. Schlenker, Weingold & Hallam, 1990). A fascinating
self­serving bias, which most of us have used from time to time, acts in anticipation – self-handicapping, a term described by Edward Jones and Steven Berglas: The self­handicapper, we are suggesting, reaches out for impediments, exag­ gerates handicaps, embraces any factor reducing personal responsibility for mediocrity and enhancing personal responsibility for success. (Jones & Berglas, 1978, p. 202)
People use this bias when they anticipate failure, whether in their job perfor­ mance, in sport, or even in therapeutic settings when being ‘sick’ allows one to drop out of life. What a person often will do is to intentionally and publicly make external attributions for a poor showing even before it happens. Check the experi­ ment about choosing between drugs in Box 2.4 and Figure 2.7. Self­serving biases are also framed by our need to believe the world is a just place in which we have some control over our destiny. We cling to an illusion of control (Langer, 1975) by having a belief in a just world (Furnham, 2003) in which ‘bad things happen to bad people’, ‘good things to good people’ (i.e. people get what they deserve), and people have control over their outcomes. Refer back to the fifth focus question. This pattern of attributions makes the world seem a controllable and

Question 41

what is the theory correspondent inference refer to?

Answer 41

Ned Jones and his colleagues developed a theory of theory of correspondent infer-ence to explain that people infer that a person’s behaviour corresponds to an underlying disposition or personality trait (Jones & Davis, 1965; Jones & McGillis, 1976). For example, if we saw Alex make a donation to charity we might infer that he has an underlying disposition to be charitable. People like to make cor­ respondent inferences. A dispositional cause is a stable cause that renders people’s behaviour predictable: it increases our own sense of control over our world. There are several cues that suggest a correspondent inference will be made. One cue is whether an act seems to be freely chosen rather than a response to external threats, inducements or constraints. Another cue is whether an act appears to be socially desirable, i.e. controlled by social norms. If so, it does not tell us much about a person’s disposition. A better basis for a correspondent inference is socially unde­ sirable action, because this would be in breach of a social norm.

Question 42

What are intergroup attributions? Give one example.

Answer 42

Miles Hewstone (1989) has observed that groups develop causal explanations for themselves as group members and others as either ingroup or outgroup members (also see Chapter 7). For example, Australians tend to attribute crime and economic
ills to minority outgroups, such as Middle Eastern or Asian ‘gangs’. In making attributions for the behaviour of outgroups, people often attribute negative behav­ iour dispositionally and positive behaviour externally – Thomas Pettigrew (1979)
error
Tendency to internally attribute bad outgroup and good ingroup behaviour, and to externally attribute good outgroup and bad ingroup behaviour.
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