Psychology 2720A/B Lecture : Intro Soc - Ch.4.pdf

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2720A/B
• Professor: Patrick Brown

Document Summary

Chapter 4 covers social perception, a term that encompasses a wide range of topics. The chapter builds on the concepts in chapter 3 (social cognition) to understand more complex judgments. For example, humans constantly try to understand why things happen (both social and non-social events). Such causal judgments are called attributions and constitute one of the important topics in chapter 4. Humans also try to understand themselves, such as figuring out their strengths and weaknesses, or assessing the validity of their beliefs. Some of these issues of self-perception are also addressed in the chapter. The first section addresses what people see in others. Topics like attributions and nonverbal behaviour are covered. The second section addresses what people see in themselves. Topics like social comparison and self-serving judgments are covered. The third section addresses what others see in us. The common thread throughout all of these topics is that they speak to how humans interpret and understand the events around them.