week 2 Flashcards
Social perception
How do we perceive others?
is the study of how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people as sovereign personalities
1- We form initial impressions of people’s external characteristics (person perception)
2- We interpret their non-verbal behavior (facial features, body language)
3- We seek explanations for their behavior (= attributions)
Person perception
We form initial impressions of people’s external characteristics
attributions
the process by which individuals explain the causes of behavior and events
making an inference about the cause of behaviour that we observe: “Why does someone behave this way?”
mostly by referring to personal dispositions and situational factors
we make first impressions…
1- very quickly and often unconsciously
2- based on our “implicit theories” about personality
3- based on certain central characteristics (e.g. a being warm/cold person)
Self-fulfilling prophecy
When an originally wrong social belief leads to its fulfillment
e.g. You think of someone as being rude
You act unfriendly towards the person
He/she responds in a rude way.
Heider’s Attribution Theory
People are naive scientists
trying to explain the behaviour of our own and others
How?
By making causal attributions about the behaviour
What is the use of making attributions?
It helps to understand simple observations
It helps with future predictions
two types of attribution
- Dispositional (personal/internal attributions)
- Situational (external attributions)
Dispositional (personal/internal attributions)
- Inference says something about the person such as character or personality
- Highly diagnostic
Situational (external attributions)
- Inference is based on something about the situation the person is in
- Says little about person; less diagnostic
Controllability Attributions
Whether an outcome is controllable or not
If something could be done about it.
-Controllability attributions – lack of effort
-Uncontrollability attributions- lack of ability
experiment controllability attributions
Among a group of tough junior high school boys
A training on controllability attributions
helped restore hope about the future
led to increased productivitiy
Learned Helplessness Theory
happens when people believe they cannot change the course of negative events.
Stronger when you have internal (dispositional), stable, uncontrollability attributions for failure.
how do we determine the cause of behavior?
Correspondent Inference Theory
Covariation Theory
Correspondent Inference Theory
example: group assignment, girl eats ice cream instead of working.
systematically accounts for a perceiver’s inferences about what an actor was trying to achieve by a particular action”
Observers infer certain intentions and dispositions from correspondent behaviours.
-By looking at if the behaviour was executed with free will and if it was unexpected.
-By comparing the reason of a particular behvaiour with a set of other likely reasons.
Analysis of non-common effects
Non-common effects
Not related to how rare a behavior is.
But with the amount of reasons that are available for a particular behaviour
When the behavior has few potential causes: it corresponds more easily with the intention/disposition we infer.
Kelly’s Covariation Theory
More complete theory of attributions
Kelley’s question: What kind of information do individuals use to infer whether an outcome is due to internal (person/disposition) or external (situation/entity) causes?
We use 3 types of information to help us decide
whether an event was caused by
internal or external factors.
3 types of information to decide whether an event was caused by internal or external factors
Consensus: How do other actors behave?
Consistency: How does the actor usually behave in this situation?
Distinctiveness: How does this actor behave in other situations?
shortcomings for social perception
1: We often make attributions in quite different ways
2: Are people ‘naïve’ scientists?
Attributions are therefore often biased
Attributional Biases
a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others’ behaviors
Correspondence Bias (Fundamental Attribution Bias)
When trying to make sense of someone else’s behaviour:
Behaviour is seen as resulting from dispositional factors/character/personality
We underestimate the role of situational factors
e.g. a driver yelling at another driver
Aggressive personality is the immediate inference.
Castro Study, Johnes and Harris
Students were asked to read drafts of pro/anti-Castro speeches
evaluated the attitude of the speech-writers towards Castro as favourable or unfavourable?
Manipulation: Topic own choice (free will) versus assigned
the readers thought with both choices the writers character was pro castro
->So we attribute dispositions even in the presence of clear situational effects
we attribute dispositions
even in the presence of clear situational effects.
Why?
- Dispositional attribution is automatic response
- Requires effort to process situational influences.
- Some situational effects might be subtle/difficult to detect.
The Actor-Observer Difference
a tendency to attribute one’s own actions to external causes while attributing other people’s behaviors to internal causes
why do we do the actor observer difference
1- We know our own situational circumstances better.
Therefore we can more easily recall them
2- When observing someone, we focus on the person rather than the behavior.
perceptual salience
We tend to over-estimate the causal role (salience) of information we have available to us
Self-serving attributional bias
- Motivated distortions in attributions to protect self-esteem
- Attributing own success to dispositions and own failures to situational factors.
- Motivation to self-enhance versus self-protect!
Misattribution of Arousal
the process whereby people make a mistake in assuming what is causing them to feel aroused
Each emotion is associated with the physiological experience of: Arousal
Schachter’s two-factor theory of emotion
Schachter’s two-factor theory of emotion
Emotions depend on the attributions we make for them rather than directly feeling them.
physiological arousal and cognitive interpretation give an emotional experience
attributionsss
Heider’s attribution theory
Correspondent inference theory
Covariation theory
biases
- Correspondence Bias (Fundemental Attribution Bias)
- The Actor-Observer Difference
- Self-serving attributional bias
