Download Aronson, The Social Animal, 10e

Social Cognition
Chapter Four
Social Cognition
• To what extent do we behave
like we are superstitious,
simpleminded, and/or
uneducated?
• How might our fictions guide
our behavior and actions?
Social Cognition
• We are forever trying to
make sense of our social
world
–How we do it makes a
difference…
How Do We Make Sense of the World?
• We humans have powerful and efficient brains.
• As wonderful as they are, they are far from
perfect.
– One consequence of this imperfection is that most
of us end up “knowing” a lot of things that simply
are not true.
• Example: Infertile couples, adoption, & later conception
(Gilovich)
– We believe it is true because we want it to be and because we
focus our attention on instances that support our belief.
How Do We Make Sense of the World?
• Are we rational animals?
– 18th century philosopher Bentham thought so…
• He argued we engage in a felicific calculus – a
happiness calculation – to determine what is
good and what is bad.
• The goal = “the greatest happiness for the
greatest number”
– Became a fundamental assumption
underlying modern capitalism
How Do We Make Sense of the World?
• More recently, Kelley argued that people think like
naïve scientists.
– We look for three pieces of information:
• Consistency
• Consensus
• Distinctiveness
– The way we use this information to make
attributions can underlie important decisions.
• A systematic weighing of these factors can be
highly valuable and extraordinarily important.
How Do We Make Sense of the World?
• There is little argument that we are capable of rational
thought and behavior.
– Example: Benjamin Franklin’s felicific calculations
• However, rational thought requires at least two
conditions which almost never hold in every day life:
– Access to accurate, useful information
– Mental resources needed to process life’s data
How Do We Make Sense of the World?
• We do not possess a “God’s-eye” view of
the world and, as such, we try to use
shortcuts whenever we can.
• According to Fiske & Taylor, we human
beings are cognitive misers.
– We are forever trying to conserve our
cognitive energy.
How Do We Make Sense of the World?
• Fiske & Taylor argue that, given our limited capacity
to process information, we attempt to adopt strategies
that simplify complex problems.
– We ignore some information.
– We “overuse” other information.
– We accept a less-than-perfect alternative.
• Our strategies are efficient but can lead to serious
errors and biases.
– Unless we recognize our cognitive limitations we will be
enslaved by them.
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment
• How does social context – the way things are
presented and described – affect our judgments about
people, including ourselves?
– Four different aspects are key:
• The comparison of alternatives
• The thoughts primed by a situation
• How a decision is framed or posed
• The way information is presented
• All judgment is relative – how we think about a person
or thing is dependent on its surrounding context.
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
Reference Points & Contrast Effects
• An object can appear to be better or worse than it is,
depending on what it is compared to.
– Example: Use of a decoy
• An alternative that is clearly inferior to other
possible selections – but serves the purpose of
making one of the others, the one it is most
similar to – look better by comparison
• Example: Tasti-burger decoy study (Pratkanis, et
al.)
– The addition of the decoy created a contrast
effect…
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
Reference Points & Contrast Effects
• When any object is contrasted with something
similar but not as good, that particular object is
judged to be better than would normally be the
case.
– This is the contrast effect.
• Example: Charlie’s Angels/Blind date
(Kenrick & Gutierres)
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
Reference Points & Contrast Effects
• Contrast effects can occur subtly and have
powerful effects.
– Depending on the context, objects and
alternatives can be made to look better
or worse.
• Examples: politicians, cars, houses,
etc.
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
Reference Points & Contrast Effects
• Important judgments we make about
ourselves can also be powerfully
influenced by contrast effects.
– Example: HS valedictorian at an elite
college
– Example: Comparison of own
attractiveness relative to beautiful vs.
average people
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
Priming & Construct Accessibility
• How we interpret social events
usually depends on what we are
currently thinking about, as well as
what beliefs and categories we
typically use to make sense of things.
–Categories vary with the individual.
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
Priming & Construct Accessibility
• Interpretation also can depend on what happens to be
prominent in the situation, which can be induced
through priming.
– A procedure based on the notion that ideas that have
been recently encountered or frequently activated
are more likely to come to mind and thus will be
used in interpreting social events
• Example: Higgins, Rholes, & Jones study of
impression formation
• Example: Bargh, et al. study
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
Priming & Construct Accessibility
• Priming can and does have a major
impact on the attitudes and behavior
of many people – even of seasoned
professionals in life-and-death
situations in the real world.
–Example: Physician study on HIV
risk (Heath, et al.)
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
Priming & Construct Accessibility
• Several studies have shown that there is a link between
which stories the media cover and what viewers
consider to be the most important issues of the day.
– In other words, the mass media make certain issues
and concepts readily accessible and thereby set the
public’s political and social agendas.
• Example: NC Election study (McCombs &
Shaw)
• Example: Iyengar, Peters, & Kinder study
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
Framing the Decision
• Another factor influencing how we
construct our social world is decision
framing – whether a problem or decision
is presented in such a way that it appears
to represent the potential for a loss or for a
gain.
– Example: Gain/Loss study (Kahneman
& Tversky)
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
Framing the Decision
• People dislike losses and seek to avoid them.
– It is more painful to give up $20 than it is
pleasurable to gain $20.
– How a question is framed is of enormous
importance.
• Example: Energy conservation study (Aronson,
Gonzales, & Costanzo)
• Example: Breast cancer self-examination
(Meyerowitz & Chaiken)
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
The Ordering of Information
• Another factor influencing the way we
organize and interpret the social world is
the manner in which information is
arranged and distributed.
– Two especially important
characteristics:
• What comes first
• The amount of information given
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
The Ordering of Information
• The Primacy Effect and Information Formation
– Things we learn first about a person have a
decisive impact on our judgment of that
people.
• Example: Asch study of personality
assessment
• Example: Perception of intelligence
(Jones, et al.)
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
The Ordering of Information
• In many situations we are not simply sitting
back observing those we are judging.
– We are interacting and actively influencing.
– We have specific goals that shape our
interpretations of the people we interact with.
• Example: Teachers judging intelligence of
students
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
The Ordering of Information
• An interesting exception to the primacy effect
was discovered by Aronson & Jones.
– Study of tutors and anagram solvers
– Suggests that if teachers are invested in the
long-term development of their students they
are prone to resist making a snap judgment
based on a first impression
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
The Ordering of Information
• Why does the primacy effect in impression formation occur?
– Evidence for two explanations:
• Attention decrement
– Later items in a list receive less attention and, thus,
have less impact on judgment.
• Interpretive set
– First items create an initial impression that is used to
interpret subsequent information, either through the
discounting of incongruent facts or by subtle changes
in the meaning of the items seen later.
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
The Ordering of Information
• Regardless of the explanation, the primacy
effect has an important impact on social
judgment.
• Moreover, we usually have little control over
the order in which we receive information.
• Therefore, it is important to realize the
existence of these effects so that we can try to
correct for them.
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
The Amount of Information
• We often believe we want more information when
making a decision.
• Although it can be helpful, it also can change how an
object is perceived and evaluated through what is
called “the dilution effect.”
– The tendency for neutral and irrelevant information
to weaken a judgment or impression
• Example: Zukier study
The Effects of Context on Social Judgment:
The Amount of Information
• The dilution effect has obvious practical value
for persons interested in managing impression,
such as those in sales or politics.
• Why does it occur?
– One answer is that irrelevant information
about a person makes a person seem more
similar to others, and thus more average and
like everyone else.
Judgmental Heuristics
• One way that we make sense of the array of information that
comes our way is through the use of judgmental heuristics.
– These are mental shortcuts – a simple, often approximate,
rule or strategy for solving a problem.
– Heuristics require very little thought.
– The three most common:
• Representative heuristic
• Availability heuristic
• Attitude heuristic
Judgmental Heuristics
• According to Kahneman & Tversky, when we
use the representative heuristic, we focus on
the similarity of one object to another to infer
that the first object acts like the second.
– Example: High-quality products are expensive,
therefore, if something is expensive, it is highquality.
– Example: Lucky Charms vs. 100% Natural
– Example: Disease cure should resemble cause.
Judgmental Heuristics
• The representative heuristic is often used to
form impressions and to make judgments
about other persons.
– The first information we usually pick up
about a person is usually associated with
simple rules that guide thought and
behavior.
• Example: Gender and ethnic stereotypes
Judgmental Heuristics
• The availability heuristic refers to judgments based
on how easy it is for us to bring specific examples to
mind.
– There are many situations in which this short cut will prove
accurate and useful.
• The main problem with employing this heuristic is
that sometimes what is easiest to bring to mind is not
typical of the overall picture.
– This will lead us to faulty conclusions.
• Example: Death from drowning or fire? (Plous)
Judgmental Heuristics
• An attitude is a special type of belief that
includes emotional and evaluative
components.
– In a sense, an attitude is a stored evaluation.
• According to Pratkanis & Greenwald, people
tend to use the attitude heuristic as a way of
making decisions and solving problems.
– Example: Reagan college grades (Pratkanis)
Judgmental Heuristics
• The use of an attitude heuristic
can influence our logic and ability
to reason.
–Example: Thistlewaite study of
syllogisms
Judgmental Heuristics
• Another dimension of the attitude
heuristic is the halo effect.
– A general bias in which a favorable or
unfavorable general impression of a
person affects our inferences and future
expectations about that person
– Example: College students halo for
women’s diet (Stein & Nemeroff)
Judgmental Heuristics
• Still another dimension of the attitude heuristic
is the false-consensus effect.
– An overestimation of the percentage of
people who agree with us on any given issue
– If I believe something, I leap to the
conclusion that most other people feel the
same way.
• Example: “Eat at Joe’s” study (Ross, et
al.)
Judgmental Heuristics
• When do we use heuristics? What conditions are most
likely to lead to heuristic employment rather than
rational decision making?
– Multiple conditions:
• Lack of time to think
• Information overload
• Unimportant issue
• Little solid information
Categorization & Social Stereotypes
• One of the most important consequences of
categorization is that it can invoke specific
data or stereotypes that then guide our
expectations.
– Example: “Hannah” study (Darley & Gross)
• Most people seem to have some understanding of
stereotypes.
– They seem reluctant to apply them in the absence of solid data.
• Despite this understanding, stereotypes still influence
our perception and judgments.
Categorization & Social Stereotypes
• Often in real face-to-face interactions, the process
observed by Darley & Gross does not stop with mere
judgments.
– Example: Stereotypes, schoolteachers, & student
performance (Rosenthal & Jacobson)
• Results demonstrated that expectations and
stereotypes lead people to treat others in a way
that makes them confirm their expectations.
– This is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Categorization & Social Stereotypes
• Still another effect of categorization is
that we frequently perceive a relationship
between two entities that we think should
be related – but, in fact, they are not.
– Social psychologists have dubbed this
“the illusory correlation.”
– Example: Hamilton, et al., study
Categorization & Social Stereotypes
• This illusory correlation shows up quite often in social
judgments.
– Example: Likelihood of lesbians contracting AIDS
– Example: Psychiatric diagnostic categories
• Regardless of the setting, the illusory correlation does
much to confirm our original stereotypes.
– Our stereotype leads us to see a relationship that
then seems to provide evidence that the original
stereotype is true.
Categorization & Social Stereotypes
• One of the most common ways of categorizing
people is to divide them into two groups: those
in “my” group and those in the “out” group.
• When we divide the world into two such
realities, two important consequences occur:
– The homogeneity effect
– In-group favoritism
Categorization & Social Stereotypes
• The homogeneity effect refers to the fact that
we tend to see members of out-groups as more
similar to each other than the members of our
own group – the in-group.
– It is not uncommon for us to imagine that
members of the out-group all look alike,
think alike, and act alike.
• Example: Sorority study (Park &
Rothbart)
Categorization & Social Stereotypes
• In-group favoritism refers to the tendency
to see one’s own group as better on any
number of dimensions and to allocate
rewards to one’s own group.
• In-group favoritism has been extensively
studied using what has come to be known
as the minimum group paradigm…
Categorization & Social Stereotypes
• In the minimum group paradigm, originated by
Tajfel, complete strangers are divided into
groups using the most trivial criteria
imaginable.
– Group members behave as if those who
share their meaningless label are their good
friends or close kin and allocate more money
and rewards to those who share their label.
Constructive Predictions &
Re-constructive Memory
• Two thinking processes play an important role
in social cognition:
– Predicting our reactions to future events
– Remembering past events
• Both are subject to considerable error.
– Considerable research demonstrates that we
overestimate the emotional impact of events and
durability to these events, whether good or bad.
• Example: Assistant professors (not) receiving tenure
Constructive Predictions &
Re-constructive Memory
• Why do we mispredict?
– One reason is that we adjust to both happy and sad
events in our lives, but frequently fail to recognize
our powers of adjustment when we mentally
construct what our futures will look and feel like.
– Another reason is that when we imagine the future,
we tend to focus only upon the event in question to
the exclusion of all other things that will
undoubtedly occur at the same time.
Constructive Predictions &
Re-constructive Memory
• Like imaging the future, recalling the past
plays an important role in our social
interactions, and is also subject to bias.
• Remembering is a re-constructive process.
– We recreate our memories from bits and
pieces of actual events filtered through and
modified by our notions of what might have
been, and what should have been, and what
we would like it to have been.
Constructive Predictions &
Re-constructive Memory
• Our memories also are profoundly
influenced by what people have told us
about specific events – long after they
occurred.
– Example: Work of Elizabeth Loftus
• Leading questions influence the
judgment of facts and can affect the
memory of what has happened.
Autobiographical Memory
• It is clear that memory can be reconstructive when it involves
quick, snapshot-like events.
• We also have a strong tendency to organize our personal
history in terms of what Markus calls “self-schemas.”
– Coherent memories, feelings, and beliefs about ourselves
that hang together and form an integrated whole
– Our memories get distorted in such a way that they fit the
general picture we have of ourselves.
• Example: Ross, McFarland, & Fletcher study of
toothbrushing
Autobiographical Memory
• Loftus has continued this line of research
further and shown how easy it is to plant false
memories of childhood experiences in the
minds of young adults.
– Most people, when presented a story of their
childhood as fact, will incorporate and plant that
memory into their own history and will have
embroidered it with details.
– This has been called the false memory syndrome.
Autobiographical Memory
• Loftus’s research on the planting of
false childhood memories has led her
and other cognitive psychologists to
take a close and skeptical look at a
recent societal phenomenon:
–the recovered memory phenomenon
Autobiographical Memory
• According to scientists who have done systematic
research on the nature of memory, repeated instances
of traumatic events occurring over a long stretch of
time are not usually forgotten.
– Rather, “recovered” memories of abuse could have
been unintentionally planted by therapists.
– Accordingly, memory researchers have criticized
some self-help books on the grounds that they
grossly underestimate the power of suggestion and
unwittingly lead people to recover false memories.
Autobiographical Memory
• False memory has been a highly controversial
issue in contemporary psychology.
– Some professional psychologists have been
willing to take accounts at face value.
– Most cognitive scientists, based on their
memory research, believe that, in the
absence of any corroborating evidence to
suggest abuse, it would be wrong to accuse
the suspected family memory of a crime.
How Conservative is Human
Cognition?
• Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek
confirmation of initial impressions or
beliefs.
– It is a common tendency in human
thought.
– Example: Snyder & Swann study –
students chose to ask questions to
confirm their pre-existing belief about
an interviewee.
How Conservative is Human
Cognition?
• Not only do we tend to confirm our hypotheses,
but we often are quite confident that they are
true.
– Fischhoff termed this the “hindsight bias” or
the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect.
• Once we know the outcome of an event,
we have a strong tendency to believe that
we could have predicted it in advance.
How Conservative is Human
Cognition?
• The confirmation and hindsight biases
provide support for the proposition that
human cognition tends to be conservative.
– We try to preserve that which is already
established, to maintain our preexisting
knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and
stereotypes.
How Conservative is Human
Cognition?
• Greenwald has argued that cognitive
conservatism has at least one benefit:
– It allows us to perceive the social world
as a coherent and stable place.
– To keep our minds operating and
coherent, it makes sense to practice
cognitive conservatism and to modify
only slightly our cognitive categories.
How Conservative is Human
Cognition?
• Cognitive conservatism also has its costs:
– The misuse of categories may cause a person
to distort events or to miss important
information.
– The misapplication of a heuristic can lead to
poor decision-making.
– The consequences are not just mental:
• Such thinking can lead to racism, sexism,
prejudice, and just plain stupid thinking.
How Conservative is Human
Cognition?
• What can we do to avoid the negative
consequences of cognitive conservatism?
– Be wary of those who attempt to create your
categories and definitions of situations.
– Try to use more than one way to categorize and
describe a person or event.
– Try to think of persons and important events as
unique.
– When forming an impression, consider the
possibility that you might be mistaken.
How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide
Behavior?
• What is the relationship between our
attitudes and our behavior?
• Can we use our attitudes to predict
how we will behave?
–A long history of research suggests
that we cannot!
How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide
Behavior?
• One of the class studies of the attitude-behavior
relationship was conducted in the early 1930s
by LaPiere.
– He contacted hotel and restaurant proprietors and
assessed their attitude toward Chinese patrons.
• Strongly negative
– Later assessed behavior of the same proprietors
• Only one of 128 establishments refused service.
• Attitudes did not predict behavior.
How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide
Behavior?
• In 1969, Wicker reviewed over 40
studies that had explored the attitudebehavior relationship.
–His conclusion? It is considerably
more likely that attitudes will be
unrelated to overt behaviors.
How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide
Behavior?
• How can we reconcile this body of
research with our intuition that a
person’s attitudes are strongly related
to his or her behavior?
–One way is to conclude that there is
no consistent relationship between
attitudes and behavior.
How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide
Behavior?
• The perception of a relationship may persist because of the
common tendency to attribute the cause of an individual’s
behavior to characteristics of the individual, rather than to the
power of the situation itself.
– Jones, et al. call this tendency a correspondent inference:
• The behavior of the person is explained in terms of an
attribute or trait that is just like the behavior.
– Example: Sam spilled wine because he is clumsy.
– Example: Fidel Castro study (Jones & Harris)
How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide
Behavior?
• Just because attitudes don’t always predict beliefs
does not mean that attitudes never predict behavior.
– Fazio has identified one major factor that increases
the likelihood that we will act on our attitude –
Accessibility
• Attitude accessibility refers to the strength of the
association between an object and your
evaluation of it.
• Not all attitudes and beliefs are highly
accessible.
How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide
Behavior?
• According to Fazio, attitudes are used to
interpret and perceive an object selectively and
to make sense of a complex situation.
• There is considerable evidence to support the
proposition that highly accessible attitudes
guide behavior.
– Example: Fazio & Williams study of
Reagan/Mondale voting patterns
How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide
Behavior?
• There is another way that attitudes and beliefs can
influence behavior:
– The belief can come to create the social world in
which we live.
• Example: Hostility word game (Herr)
– In sum, a relatively subtle context had
influenced attitudes and expectations that, in
turn, affected behavior and subsequently
affected the next round of perceptions.
How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide
Behavior?
• Dweck and colleagues have demonstrated the
behavioral consequences of people’s more
enduring beliefs.
• According to Dweck, children develop implicit
theories about the permanence of people’s
defining traits.
– These theories exert a considerable influence upon
a child’s judgments and behavior.
• Example: People who see intelligence as a fixed trait are
more apprehensive about failure.
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• In studying how we interpret our social
world, social psychologists have
identified three general biases that often
affect our attributions and explanations:
– The fundamental attribution error
– The actor-observer bias
– Self-biases
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• The term fundamental attribution error
refers to a general human tendency to
overestimate the importance of
personality or dispositional factors
relative to situational or environmental
influences when describing and
explaining the causes of social behavior.
– Example: Correspondent inference
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• Another example of the fundamental attribution
error is provided by an experiment conducted
by Bierbrauer.
– Participants witnessed a reenactment of
Milgram’s obedience study; assumed that
obedience was an aberration.
– Results indicated that participants failed to
attribute the witnessed obedience to the
power of the situation.
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• As observers, we frequently lose sight of the
fact that each individual plays many social
roles and that we might be observing only one
of them.
• Thus, important social roles can be easily
overlooked in explaining a person’s behavior.
– Example: Dr. Mensch
– Example: Quiz show study (Ross, Amabile,
& Steinmetz)
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• The implications of the fundamental
application error are far-reaching.
– Example: Common reactions to person using
food stamps at the grocery store, convicted
burglar
– Perceiving poverty and crime (as only two
examples) as related to dispositional rather
than situational factors will impact policy,
spending, program development, etc.
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• At the very least, our knowledge of the
fundamental attribution error should alert
us to the possibility that our attributions
may not always be correct and that we
should take seriously the motto of the
novelist Samuel Butler:
– “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• Another common bias in social judgment is
known as the actor-observer bias.
– This is the tendency for actors to attribute their own
actions to situational factors, whereas observers
tend to attribute the same actions to stable
personality dispositions of the actors.
• I give myself the benefit of the doubt – I use situational
causes to explain myself.
• I don’t give you the same benefit – when I try to explain
your behavior, I make the fundamental attribution error.
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• There is considerable evidence that the actorobserver bias is pervasive.
–
–
–
–
Example: Explaining intelligence test scores
Example: Attributing research participation
Example: Drawing conclusions about peer behavior
Example: Explaining choice of girlfriend and
college major
– Example: Ascription of personality traits
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• What causes the actor-observer bias?
– Storms’ research indicates that it is a function of where a
person’s attention is focused.
• Actor’s attention is usually focused on the environment
and past history.
• Observer’s attention is almost always focused on the
actor.
– Storms’ research also suggests that actors who saw
themselves on videotape from the observer’s point of view
were more likely to explain their own behavior in terms of
dispositional factors, whereas observers who saw the world
from the point of view of the actors were more likely to
explain behavior in situational terms.
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• Often the actor-observer bias can lead to
misunderstanding and conflict.
• The Storms experiment points to one method for
nipping this potential conflict in the bud:
– Change the actor’s and observer’s perspective
– One tactic for doing this is to promote
empathy by role-playing the other’s point of
view.
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• As a primary source of motivation, the
way in which we conceive of the self
greatly influences all of our social
cognitions.
• There are two general ways that the self
influences social cognition:
– Egocentric thought
– Self-serving bias
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• Most people have a tendency to perceive themselves as
more central to events than is actually the case.
– We call this egocentric thought.
• People engaging in egocentric thought remember
past events as if they were a leading player,
influencing the course of events and the behavior
of others.
• Example: Jervis research on world leaders
• Example: Langer research on the “illusion of
control”
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• Another interesting manifestation of egocentric thought
is the assumption in social situations that others are
paying more attention to us than they are.
– Example: Teenager with a pimple
– Example: College student in uncool t-shirt
(Gilovich, et al.)
• Because we always see the world through our own
eyes, it is very difficult for us to see ourselves through
the eyes of others.
– We imagine they see us the way we see ourselves.
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• The belief that one’s self is the center of the universe helps explain a
paradox that occurs everyday in US newspapers.
– Despite pride in our country’s technological achievements, fewer
than 10 percent of daily newspapers carry a regular column on
science.
– In contrast, over 90% carry a daily feature on astrology.
• The stock-in trade of the horoscope is the Barnum statement –
a personality description vague enough to be true of almost
everyone.
• Because of our tendency to think egocentrically, most of us will
feel that the Barnum statement is a bull’s-eye description of us.
– Example: Petty & Brock study of personality test results
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• The tendency toward egocentric thought occurs in
subtle ways that frequently include our memory for
past events and information.
• One very common finding is that people have superior
memory for information descriptive of the self.
• The role of egocentric thought in memory does have
practical implications for the student:
– One of the best ways to recall material from classes
is to relate it to your personal experiences – to think
how it applies to you.
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• The self-serving bias refers to a tendency for
individuals to make dispositional attributions for their
success and situational attributions for their failures:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Example: Automobile driving
Example: Student performance on exams
Example: Gambler perception of success
Example: Married persons’ estimate of housework
Example: General personal ratings
Example: Two-person team performances
Example: Explanations of peer dislike
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• As Greenwald & Breckler note:
– “The presented self is (usually) too good to be true;
the (too) good self is often genuinely believed.
• But, why do people engage in the self-serving bias?
– One explanation that accounts for some of the data
is purely cognitive.
• Individuals are aware of different information as
actors than as observers.
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• But a purely cognitive-informational
explanation cannot account for all of the
examples of self-serving bias.
– Another explanation is that we are motivated
to engage in such attributions to protect and
maintain our self-concepts and self-esteem.
• This is called ego-defensive behavior.
• Example: Weary, et al.
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• Of what value are self-biases?
– Self-biases can serve important purposes:
• The individual who believes that he or she is the cause of
good things will try harder and persist longer to achieve
difficult goals.
• Example: Winning basketball teams (Grove, et al.)
– There may also be more important temporary benefits to selfbiases as well:
• Example: People who had faced tragic or near-tragic
events (Taylor)
• Example: Benefits of optimistic style of thinking
(Seligman)
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• In brief, engaging in egocentric thought and
self-serving attributions has an array of benefits.
• At the same time, it is important to bear in mind
that these positive consequences are not without
their price:
– The major price is a somewhat distorted
picture of the self and the world in general.
Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation
• Ironically, this distorted picture of the world is
frequently caused by a motive to justify
ourselves and our behavior.
• One of the most fascinating aspects of the social
animal is our touching need to see ourselves as
good and sensible people – and how this need
frequently leads us to perform actions that are
neither good nor sensible.
By March 20th
You should have read chapter four by this time. Now
that you have completed these power points, please
go to the Social Animal website.
http://bcs.worthpublishers.com/aronson10e/defau
lt.asp
Log in and take the quiz for chapter four, submit
answers to my email.