PSYB10 lec03.docx

PSYB10 lec03 PERSON PERCEPTION: what goes into person perception are a) behavior b) context c) schemas  Behavior input: this consist of; verbal behavior and non-verbal behavior- which is subdivided into 2: a) Emblems: which are hand gestures that have well understood meaning within a culture which are essentially non-language. E.g. the thumbs up sign, O.K. sign& peace sign. However, it can change within culture entirely e.g. O.K. sign might be different in North America and u.k. Also, sign language isn’t a form of emblem because it’s different. b) Thin slice: An approach within social psychology focused on the attribution power of brief exposure to others aka understanding the impact of non-verbal behaviors on very minute thin slices of non-verbal behaviors. Research on thin slice by Kraus& keltner (2009) showed that naïve observers were accurately able to detect family income, parent’s education& subjective SES. Also, relatively to high SES participants, low SES participants spent less time grooming, doodling and manipulating objects. Ambiguous group is a social group which one may/not belong. Furthermore, another research by Nicholas rule showed that 64% of pop. Are about to recognize ambiguous group by faces. c) Context: context matters when interpreting people. It also provides additional input, and can completely change attribution. SCHEMA: what you expect is what you get. This means that we expect people to act in a particular way and feel disappointed when it starts to fall apart. ATTRIBUTION: Explanation for an observed behavior of a social object. Research by heider& simmel (1944) on the ease of attribution was the idea that because we make attribution so easily, there are some functional purpose in us that is trying to explain the world. Attributions are very automatic aka pattern matching in different areas of the brain. ATTRIBUTION THEORY: this poses the question whether we attribute behavior on something about the person “internal” or something about the situation “external”? Internal attribution theory: Attributing a person’s behavior to something intrinsic to that person e.g. personality, disposition, attitude & character, always consistent in any situation. External attribution theory: Attributing a person’s behavior to something about the situation in which the behavior occurred, especially not changing belief regarding the person’s characters. This specific to the situation that someone is currently in. CORRESPONDENT BIAS: Tendency to infer that a person’s behavior corresponds to their disposition, personality, or attitude. This means that we lay emphasis on internal attribution more than external attribution and tend to underestimate other factors. FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR: When perceiving others we tendency to overestimate the influence of internal causes for behavior and underestimate external causes, When perceiving self: Much more likely to attribute own behavior to external causes AKA, “FAE” fundamental attribution error. A study on fundamental attribution error by jones& harris 1967 showed that participants attributed their essay based on the choice of article they read meaning if forced/not forced to read about pro/anti- Castro, they based their essay on the particular article they read. Explanation for FAE: perceptual salience; Tendency to overestimate the causal role of information that grabs our attention. This means that whatever factor whether internal or external that’s more salient when explaining a behavior, those are the factors you overestimate. Anchoring & adjustment heuristic: proposed by Dan Gilbert that FAE occurs through a 2 step process: a) making internal attribution because we are bias and think people are the causes of their own behavior& outcome. However, we tend to b) adjust from internal attribution by considering situational constraints. Both are competing theories. How fundamental is FAE: research done by peng&morris 1994 on the FAE based on the killing by Gang Lu showed that English newspaper had more internal attributions made for gang lu’s behavior than the Chinese language newspapers. COVARIATION THEORY: this assumes that people are lays statisticians. This includes 3 factors of attribution:  Consensus: do other people behave this way? Behavior is unique to people. E.g. seeing someone assaulting another person.  Distinctiveness: does this person behave like this with other stimuli? Behavior is unique to situation. E.g. same as consensus.  Consistency: does this person behave like this over time? Behavior is unique to this moment in time. E.g. same as consensus. Difference between external and situational is that situational is idiosyncratic to a situation in a moment in time; external factor can be repeated across situation in time. SELF SERVING BIASES:  Self-serving attribution: you do really well on a test might be because the test was easy or you are smart, we tend to make more internal attribution. You do really bad on a test might be because you are dumb or that the test was hard, we tend to make more external attribution concluding that the test was hard. Positive outcome of self: explains in terms of internal factors whereas; negative outcome of self: explains in terms of external factors  Defensive mechanism attribution: a) Unrealistic optimism: we tend to expect that bad things are less likely to happen to us than others and good things are more likely to happen to us than others. b) Just world hypothesis: we tend to believe than good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. This gives us a sense of control over the world and might result into rejection and blaming of victims. E.g. blaming the victim of a sexual assault because of what they were wearing displayed; it gives us a sense of control over them.  False consensus effect: we assume that more people share our belief, attitudes and preference than they actually do. E.g. cheating. People who have cheated overestimated on the number of people you have cheated and people who haven’t cheated underestimated the number of people you have cheated.  Ultimate attribution error: this is the tendency to make internal attribution on an entire social group’s disposition based on the behavior of one group member. This only applies to social out- groups. E.g. blaming an act of terrorism which was conducted by a home-grown individual on a foreign individual aka blaming Arabs for an act of terror committed by an American. PREDICTIONS: people are very bad at predicting when other people are lying. IMPLICIT PERSONALITY THEORIES: these are types of schema used to group certain personality traits together. This means that we believe that certain traits are correlated with other even when not directly observed. E.