Social perception and Influence

Question 1

what is perception

Answer 1

“the dynamic psychological process responsible for attending to, organizing and interpreting sensory data” (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2010, p. 236)

Question 2

what the the process of perception?

Answer 2

sensory input
selective attention
perceptual organisation
interpretation
behavioural responnse

buchannan et al 2017

Question 3

what is the bottom up process of perception?

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

what is the top down process of perception?

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

Process of perception - application

Answer 5

Understanding human behavior in the workplace = understanding their perceptual world

Successful interpersonal relationships depend on some overlap between our perceptual
world

Question 6

How may an overlap of the perceptual
world in a team make a teamwork
successful?

Answer 6

if people understand others perceptual worlds it allows for viewpoints to be easily understood and avoid argumentative conversations promoting teamwork

Question 7

Process of perception – critical
evaluation

Answer 7

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)

Question 8

heider (1957)

Answer 8

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

Question 9

what are Personal attributions?

Answer 9

How skilled someone is, how
much effort expended

Question 10

what is Situational attribution?

Answer 10

How difficult the task is,
Whether there is enough
support

Question 11

what is Fundamental Attribution Error?

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

what are some attributional dimensions?

Answer 12

Locus of causality
Stability
Controllability

Question 13

Locus of causality

Answer 13

whether the perceived cause
of an outcome is internal or external

Question 14

stability

Answer 14

perceived variability or permanence of
a causal factor

Question 15

Controllability

Answer 15

the extent to which a cause of an outcome is perceived as being under someone’s control

Question 16

what is Actor observer effect?

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Attribution theory
application

Answer 17

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)

Question 18

Attribution theory
critical evaluation

Answer 18

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)

Question 19

Halo effect

Answer 19

perception of a person on one quality influences
positively the perception of them
on another quality

Question 20

Horns effect (also known as the
rusty halo effect)

Answer 20

general judgements about a person are
made from the perception of a
negative characteristic

Question 21

Stereotyping

Answer 21

simplifying the process of perception,
making judgements of other people instead of dealing with a range of complex stimuli
(Mullins, 2016)

Question 22

Perceptual Defence

Answer 22

The tendency to screen
out information that
we find perceptually
threatening or difficult
to process

Question 23

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 23

Is a process through
which an original
(sometimes false)
expectation leads to
its confirmation due
to the behaviour of
the believer.

Question 24

Projection

Answer 24

attribution of your own
thoughts, feelings, values,
attitudes on to others.

Question 25

Unconscious bias

Answer 25

Is about unconscious social preferences and is closely related to all other perceptual errors

Question 26

“similar to me” effect

Answer 26

attributing certain qualities (usually positive) because the person has similar traits/behaviours to you.