PSYC 241 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Fundamental Attribution Error, Counterfactual Thinking, Availability Heuristic
Document Summary
Page 1 of 17: social perception is the processes by which people come to understand one another, we first look at raw data : aspects of persons, situations, and behaviour of initial observations. Then we examine how people make explanations, or attributions, for the behaviour of others. Then we consider how people form integrated impressions of others. Concept: since one cannot directly observe others" mental or emotional state, or motives or intentions, the social perceiver must rely on indirect clues. These clues arise from an interplay of persons, situations, and behaviour. Frontal brain region associated with love and other positive emotions is activated when people are exposed to pictures of babies" faces, but not to faces of other adults: for baby-faced adults, this response is overgeneralized. Situations: the scripts of life: we have preset notions about certain types of situations, scripts that allow us to anticipate the goals, behaviours, and outcomes likely to occur in a particular setting.