PSYC 2310 Chapter 4 Summary Social Perception ...
PSYC 2310 Chapter 4 Summary Social Perception
Social Perception: how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people o North Americans and people from similarly individualistic cultures sometimes focus too much on the role of personal factors, while ignoring, or minimizing the often considerable influence of the situation External attribution: seeing the behaviour as caused by something external to the person who performs the behaviour Internal attribution: refers to whether the person’s behaviour is caused by personal factors, such as traits, ability, effort, or personality There are four major theories that describe how we think about why people engage in particular types of behaviour o Heider’s Theory of Naive Psychology: people practice a form of untrained psychology as they use cause and effect analyses to understand their world and other people’s behaviour; everyone is a naive psychologist. This theory is based on three principles: People have the need to explain the cause of other peoples’ behaviour in order to understand their motivation People are motivated to try to figure out why a person acted in a given way so that they can predict how the person will act in the future When people make casual attributions, they make a distinction between internal and external causes of behaviour o Jones and Davis’s Theory of Correspondent Inference: people infer whether a person’s behaviour is caused by the person’s internal disposition by looking at various factors related to the person’s actions. Proposes that there are three factors that influence the extent to which you attribute behaviour to the person rather than to the situation: Does the person have the choice to engage in the action? If you know that the person was forced to engage in a given behaviour, it is reasonable to assume that the action is due to the situation and not the person Is the behaviour expected based on the social role or circumstance? Behaviour that isn’t necessarily required, but is largely expected in a situation, doesn’t tell us much about the person What are the intended effects or consequences of the person’s behaviour? If there is only one intended effect, then you have a pretty good idea of why the person is motivated to engage in the behaviour, but if there is multiple good effects, it’s more difficult to know what the attribute the behaviour to o Kelley’s Covariation Theory: people determine the causes of a person’s behaviour by focusing on the factors that are present when a behaviour occurs and absent when it doesn’t occur. There are three main components: Consensus: refers to whether other people generally agree or disagree with a given person. If many people agree with that person or behave in a similar manner, we’re more likely to make a situation attribution than we would if few people agreed with the target individual Distinctiveness: refers to whether the person generally reacts in a similar way across different situations. If the person’s behaviour matches their usual behaviour in that situation, we would most likely make a dispositional attribution Consistency: information about whether a person’s behaviour toward a given stimulus is the same across time- the more consistent their behaviour is, the more likelihood of a dispositional attribution
See Figure 4.1 to further explain the Model of Covariation o Weiner’s Attribution Theory: people attribute their achievements (successes and failures) in terms of three dimensions Locus: whether the location of the cause is internal or external to the person Stability: whether the cause stays the same or can change Controllability: whether the person can control the cause This produces eight different types of explanation for achievement See Table 4.1 Intergroup attribution: making attributions about ones’ own and others’ behaviours based on group membership Ethnocentrism: a tendency to attribute desirable characteristics to one’s own group and undesirable characteristics to outgroups Observers tend to attribute men’s successes to ability and women’s successes to effort There are two different errors that people make in attributing the causes of people’s behaviour o Fundamental attribution error (or correspondence bias): the tendency to overestimate the role of personal causes and underestimate the role of situational causes in explaining behaviour. We believe that when people’s behaviour is caused by the situation, they give obvious clues that reflect this external pressure o Actor Observer Effect: the tendency to see other people’s behaviour as caused by dispositional factors, but see our own behaviour as caused by the situation May occur because observers can only see other people’s behaviour and don’t have access to others’ internal thoughts or feelings; thus we are less likely to use this error with friends than with strangers. It also occurs because we strive to see ourselves in a positive way Belief in a just world: the phenomenon in which people believe that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people; lets us see ourselves as safe from harm There are several explanations for why people can and do make errors when they attribute the causes of other’s behaviour o Salience: as the actor in an event, factors that lead to your behaviour are salient (obvious) because you are aware of your own situational factors, whereas they are less salient as an observer of someone elses behaviour. Usually others are more salient to us than ourselves o Lack of Cognitive Capacity: people may initially focus on the internal factors underlying a person’s behaviour, and only later adjust the weight of these factors by taking the situation into account Two stage model of attribution: a model in which people first automatically interpret a person’s behaviour as caused by dispositional factors, and then later adjust this interpretation by taking into account situational factors that may have contributed to the behaviour o Beliefs about others abilities and motivations: we tend to believe that people are unable to persuasively engage in counter-attitudinal behaviour, therefore we assume that a person’s behaviour must reflect his or her true attitudes We are more likely to make a dispositional attribution when we learn that a person received a positive incentive for engaging in a dishonest behaviour than that person received a negative incentive People see a positive incentive as motivating only certain people (eg. Those who already have certain dispositions), yet a negative incentive is seen as a strong situational pressure that would influence most people’s behaviour o Self knowledge: because we have more information about our own behaviour than we do about other’s behaviour, we assume that our own behaviour is more variable than do those who observe us We give ourselves credit for having good intentions, even when we don’t carry them out
One of the most common and effective ways in which people communicate nonverbally is through facial expressions; people in different cultures tend to use the same facial expressions to convey the major emotionshappiness, fear, sadness, anger, surprise, and disgust Causes for errors in nonverbal communication include: o People sometimes try to hide their emotions o When facial expressions conflict with information about the situation, we interpret the emotion in line with the situation and not the expression o People are more accurate when identifying emotions expressed by people within their same culture or by those with greater exposure to that culture People conceal or even lie about their true thoughts (use deception) an average of one to two times per day, but we are only accurate in distinguishing lies and truth about 54% of the time because we make the fundamental attribution error and assume that people’s statements reflect their honest and trustworthy dispositions Verbal and nonverbal cues can be useful for detecting deception. People who are lying usually: o Make fewer references to the self (eg. I, me, my) because they are trying to distance themselves from the lie o Use more negative emotion words (eg. Hate, worthless, enemy) because they experience more tension and guilt o Use fewer “exclusive” words (eg. But, except, without) because they are focusing their attention on creating a story o Use more general and brief language to describe events o Have a more active heart rate, and more perspiration Some people are more accurate at detecting lies than others, and they tend to rely on both the nonverbal and verbal cues, whereas most people just rely on verbal cues o Having a knowledge for the person’s culture is also helpful in detecting deception The fundamental attribution error is much harder to find in collectivist cultures than in individualistic ones. Although both cultures believe dispositions do impact behaviour, those in collectivist cultures see situations as a more powerful impact on behaviour than do those in individualistic cultures. Reasons for this include: o In collectivistic cultures, personality is seen as more changeable than in individualistic cultures o People in collectivistic cultures pay more attention to the impact of the situation on behaviour, and therefore see more connection between events. Collectivistic cultures engage in patterns of holistic thought and are more attentive to relationships and context, whereas individualistic cultures engage in analytical thought and focus on themselves Although in the absence of situational information Koreans are as likely to make dispositional attributions than Americans, Koreans do make stronger situational attributions than Americans and are more responsive to salient information than are Americans o Distraction also has a different impact on attributional errors in people from different cultures. People in individualistic cultures make dispositional attributions when they are distracted, whereas people in collectivistic cultures do not make this error Different cultures also vary in their norms regarding the expression of emotion. Individualistic cultures are more comfortable expressing self reflective emotions such as pride and guilt than those in collectivist cultures. Similarly, people in collectivist cultures show more socially engaging emotions such as friendliness and shame, whereas people from individualistic cultures show more socially disengaging emotions such as anger and superiority Individualistic cultures also use fewer somatic words and fewer social words than those in collectivist cultures. They also tend to focus on verbal content over verbal tone, whereas collectivist cultures show the opposite pattern.
Social Perception: how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people o North Americans and people from similarly individualistic cultures sometimes focus too much on the role of personal factors, while ignoring, or minimizing the often considerable influence of the situation External attribution: seeing the behaviour as caused by something external to the person who performs the behaviour Internal attribution: refers to whether the person’s behaviour is caused by personal factors, such as traits, ability, effort, or personality There are four major theories that describe how we think about why people engage in particular types of behaviour o Heider’s Theory of Naive Psychology: people practice a form of untrained psychology as they use cause and effect analyses to understand their world and other people’s behaviour; everyone is a naive psychologist. This theory is based on three principles: People have the need to explain the cause of other peoples’ behaviour in order to understand their motivation People are motivated to try to figure out why a person acted in a given way so that they can predict how the person will act in the future When people make casual attributions, they make a distinction between internal and external causes of behaviour o Jones and Davis’s Theory of Correspondent Inference: people infer whether a person’s behaviour is caused by the person’s internal disposition by looking at various factors related to the person’s actions. Proposes that there are three factors that influence the extent to which you attribute behaviour to the person rather than to the situation: Does the person have the choice to engage in the action? If you know that the person was forced to engage in a given behaviour, it is reasonable to assume that the action is due to the situation and not the person Is the behaviour expected based on the social role or circumstance? Behaviour that isn’t necessarily required, but is largely expected in a situation, doesn’t tell us much about the person What are the intended effects or consequences of the person’s behaviour? If there is only one intended effect, then you have a pretty good idea of why the person is motivated to engage in the behaviour, but if there is multiple good effects, it’s more difficult to know what the attribute the behaviour to o Kelley’s Covariation Theory: people determine the causes of a person’s behaviour by focusing on the factors that are present when a behaviour occurs and absent when it doesn’t occur. There are three main components: Consensus: refers to whether other people generally agree or disagree with a given person. If many people agree with that person or behave in a similar manner, we’re more likely to make a situation attribution than we would if few people agreed with the target individual Distinctiveness: refers to whether the person generally reacts in a similar way across different situations. If the person’s behaviour matches their usual behaviour in that situation, we would most likely make a dispositional attribution Consistency: information about whether a person’s behaviour toward a given stimulus is the same across time- the more consistent their behaviour is, the more likelihood of a dispositional attribution
See Figure 4.1 to further explain the Model of Covariation o Weiner’s Attribution Theory: people attribute their achievements (successes and failures) in terms of three dimensions Locus: whether the location of the cause is internal or external to the person Stability: whether the cause stays the same or can change Controllability: whether the person can control the cause This produces eight different types of explanation for achievement See Table 4.1 Intergroup attribution: making attributions about ones’ own and others’ behaviours based on group membership Ethnocentrism: a tendency to attribute desirable characteristics to one’s own group and undesirable characteristics to outgroups Observers tend to attribute men’s successes to ability and women’s successes to effort There are two different errors that people make in attributing the causes of people’s behaviour o Fundamental attribution error (or correspondence bias): the tendency to overestimate the role of personal causes and underestimate the role of situational causes in explaining behaviour. We believe that when people’s behaviour is caused by the situation, they give obvious clues that reflect this external pressure o Actor Observer Effect: the tendency to see other people’s behaviour as caused by dispositional factors, but see our own behaviour as caused by the situation May occur because observers can only see other people’s behaviour and don’t have access to others’ internal thoughts or feelings; thus we are less likely to use this error with friends than with strangers. It also occurs because we strive to see ourselves in a positive way Belief in a just world: the phenomenon in which people believe that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people; lets us see ourselves as safe from harm There are several explanations for why people can and do make errors when they attribute the causes of other’s behaviour o Salience: as the actor in an event, factors that lead to your behaviour are salient (obvious) because you are aware of your own situational factors, whereas they are less salient as an observer of someone elses behaviour. Usually others are more salient to us than ourselves o Lack of Cognitive Capacity: people may initially focus on the internal factors underlying a person’s behaviour, and only later adjust the weight of these factors by taking the situation into account Two stage model of attribution: a model in which people first automatically interpret a person’s behaviour as caused by dispositional factors, and then later adjust this interpretation by taking into account situational factors that may have contributed to the behaviour o Beliefs about others abilities and motivations: we tend to believe that people are unable to persuasively engage in counter-attitudinal behaviour, therefore we assume that a person’s behaviour must reflect his or her true attitudes We are more likely to make a dispositional attribution when we learn that a person received a positive incentive for engaging in a dishonest behaviour than that person received a negative incentive People see a positive incentive as motivating only certain people (eg. Those who already have certain dispositions), yet a negative incentive is seen as a strong situational pressure that would influence most people’s behaviour o Self knowledge: because we have more information about our own behaviour than we do about other’s behaviour, we assume that our own behaviour is more variable than do those who observe us We give ourselves credit for having good intentions, even when we don’t carry them out
One of the most common and effective ways in which people communicate nonverbally is through facial expressions; people in different cultures tend to use the same facial expressions to convey the major emotionshappiness, fear, sadness, anger, surprise, and disgust Causes for errors in nonverbal communication include: o People sometimes try to hide their emotions o When facial expressions conflict with information about the situation, we interpret the emotion in line with the situation and not the expression o People are more accurate when identifying emotions expressed by people within their same culture or by those with greater exposure to that culture People conceal or even lie about their true thoughts (use deception) an average of one to two times per day, but we are only accurate in distinguishing lies and truth about 54% of the time because we make the fundamental attribution error and assume that people’s statements reflect their honest and trustworthy dispositions Verbal and nonverbal cues can be useful for detecting deception. People who are lying usually: o Make fewer references to the self (eg. I, me, my) because they are trying to distance themselves from the lie o Use more negative emotion words (eg. Hate, worthless, enemy) because they experience more tension and guilt o Use fewer “exclusive” words (eg. But, except, without) because they are focusing their attention on creating a story o Use more general and brief language to describe events o Have a more active heart rate, and more perspiration Some people are more accurate at detecting lies than others, and they tend to rely on both the nonverbal and verbal cues, whereas most people just rely on verbal cues o Having a knowledge for the person’s culture is also helpful in detecting deception The fundamental attribution error is much harder to find in collectivist cultures than in individualistic ones. Although both cultures believe dispositions do impact behaviour, those in collectivist cultures see situations as a more powerful impact on behaviour than do those in individualistic cultures. Reasons for this include: o In collectivistic cultures, personality is seen as more changeable than in individualistic cultures o People in collectivistic cultures pay more attention to the impact of the situation on behaviour, and therefore see more connection between events. Collectivistic cultures engage in patterns of holistic thought and are more attentive to relationships and context, whereas individualistic cultures engage in analytical thought and focus on themselves Although in the absence of situational information Koreans are as likely to make dispositional attributions than Americans, Koreans do make stronger situational attributions than Americans and are more responsive to salient information than are Americans o Distraction also has a different impact on attributional errors in people from different cultures. People in individualistic cultures make dispositional attributions when they are distracted, whereas people in collectivistic cultures do not make this error Different cultures also vary in their norms regarding the expression of emotion. Individualistic cultures are more comfortable expressing self reflective emotions such as pride and guilt than those in collectivist cultures. Similarly, people in collectivist cultures show more socially engaging emotions such as friendliness and shame, whereas people from individualistic cultures show more socially disengaging emotions such as anger and superiority Individualistic cultures also use fewer somatic words and fewer social words than those in collectivist cultures. They also tend to focus on verbal content over verbal tone, whereas collectivist cultures show the opposite pattern.
