Social perception and Influence Flashcards
what is perception
“the dynamic psychological process responsible for attending to, organizing and interpreting sensory data” (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2010, p. 236)
what the the process of perception?
sensory input
selective attention
perceptual organisation
interpretation
behavioural responnse
buchannan et al 2017
what is the bottom up process of perception?
brings the sensory input from the environment to the brain for interpretation eg when someone is learning a new word for the first time, without any previous reference points for that new word. The transduction relies entirely on the person learning and analyzing this completely new stimulus.
what is the top down process of perception?
brain uses knowledge, beliefs and expectations to help us interpret the sensory information eg if you see the chair you have stubbed your toe on before and you avoid it to make sure it does not happen again.
Process of perception - application
Understanding human behavior in the workplace = understanding their perceptual world
Successful interpersonal relationships depend on some overlap between our perceptual
world
How may an overlap of the perceptual
world in a team make a teamwork
successful?
if people understand others perceptual worlds it allows for viewpoints to be easily understood and avoid argumentative conversations promoting teamwork
Process of perception – critical
evaluation
Dual process theory: thoughts and behaviours can be affected
by top-down, controlled processes or bottom-up, automatic
processes
* Dynamic interplay between bottom-up and top-down
processes(Shelton et al, 2017)
* Individual differences in the interplay:
– working memory capacity (Barrett et al., 2004)
– Conscientiousness, only modest effect, r = .10, (Smith et al., 2015)
heider (1957)
people make causal attributions about events that happen around them – the understand them: Why do I behave as I do? Why do others behave as they do
what are Personal attributions?
How skilled someone is, how
much effort expended
what is Situational attribution?
How difficult the task is,
Whether there is enough
support
what is Fundamental Attribution Error?
the idea that we are too inclined to see the person (actor) as the cause of their own behaviour. We neglect the influence of other persons involved (observers) and the general situation – especially when bad things happen.
what are some attributional dimensions?
Locus of causality
Stability
Controllability
Locus of causality
whether the perceived cause
of an outcome is internal or external
stability
perceived variability or permanence of
a causal factor
Controllability
the extent to which a cause of an outcome is perceived as being under someone’s control
what is Actor observer effect?
attributing someone elses behaviour to themselves but your behaviour to the situtation
eg if you litter its fine because there no bin if someone else litters they are inconsiderate
Attribution theory
application
Performance appraisal
▪ The supervisor must recognize, attend to and organize relevant
information about employees
▪ Prone to situational cues (Kombeiz & Dietl, 2019) and inferences about people
(Harper, 2000)
▪ Discrimination
▪ Leadership
▪ attributions account for significant proportions of the variance in
leadership behaviors (Martinko et al., 2007)
Attribution theory
critical evaluation
Attributional dimensions:
▪ Stability is rarely studied separately from other dimensions
▪ Controllability: smallest amount of research attention
▪ High predictive power, e.g.:
▪ attributions account for significant proportions of the variance in
leadership behaviors (Martinko et al., 2007)
▪ Affect: locus of attributions and emotional reactions to undesirable (r =
-.16) and desirable (r = .13) outcomes (Harvey et al., 2014)
▪ Performance: locus of attributions to undesirable (r = .11) and desirable
(r = .21) outcomes (Harvey et al., 2014)
Halo effect
perception of a person on one quality influences
positively the perception of them
on another quality
Horns effect (also known as the
rusty halo effect)
general judgements about a person are
made from the perception of a
negative characteristic
Stereotyping
simplifying the process of perception,
making judgements of other people instead of dealing with a range of complex stimuli
(Mullins, 2016)
Perceptual Defence
The tendency to screen
out information that
we find perceptually
threatening or difficult
to process
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Is a process through
which an original
(sometimes false)
expectation leads to
its confirmation due
to the behaviour of
the believer.
Projection
attribution of your own
thoughts, feelings, values,
attitudes on to others.
Unconscious bias
Is about unconscious social preferences and is closely related to all other perceptual errors
“similar to me” effect
attributing certain qualities (usually positive) because the person has similar traits/behaviours to you.
