Download Social Perception & Attributions

Social Perception & Attributions
Social psychologists study how we think about,
influence, and relate to one another.
Social Perception
• Social schemas  mental representations that
influence how we perceive others
– Influence how we process & interpret info
– Influence what we remember because we attend to
things that are consistent with our schemas
– Can lead to errors in judging others
Attribution Theory
• Internal (dispositional) attribution  assume
person’s behavior is determined by personal
traits
• External (situational) attribution  assume
person’s behavior is due to external
circumstances
How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we
react to it
Situational attribution
“Maybe that driver is ill.”
Tolerant reaction
(proceed cautiously, allow
driver a wide berth)
Dispositional attribution
“Crazy driver!”
Unfavorable reaction
(speed up and race past the
other driver, give a dirty look)
Negative behavior
Factors That Determine Attribution
• Consensus  Are other people's behavior similar to that
person’s behavior in the situation?
• Consistency  does the person act the same way
frequently or in most cases?
• Distinctiveness  does person respond differently in
other situations? Or just this specific situation?
Soup Story….Bad Soup or Crabby Customer?
Dispositional
Consensus Low consensus – few
(general
people act this way
agreement) (i.e. few people think
the soup is bad &
complained)
Situational
High consensus –
many people act
this way
(i.e. many people
agree that the
soup is bad &
complained)
Soup Story….Bad Soup or Crabby Customer?
Dispositional
Consistency High consistency –
person acts this
way frequently
(i.e. customer
always complains
about food)
Situational
Low consistency –
person rarely acts
this way
(i.e. customer
rarely complains
about food)
Soup Story….Bad Soup or Crabby Customer?
Dispositional
Distinctiveness Low Distinctiveness
of Situation - person behaves
same way in other
situations
(i.e. customer
complains at all
restaurants or
about all food)
Situational
High Distinctiveness
– person does not
behave this way in
other situations
(i.e. customer never
complains @ other
places or about
other food)
• Fundamental Attribution Error 
overestimating internal (dispositional)
attributions to others and
underestimating external (situational)
attributions
• Actor-observer effect  attributing our
own behavior to external (situational)
causes & behavior of others to internal
(dispositional) causes
– “ I was unprepared for the
exam because there was a
family emergency last night,
but Sally was unprepared
because she’s basically not
good at math.”
• Self-serving bias  tendency to
attribute success to internal
(dispositional) factors, but
failures to external (situational)
factors
– “I won the game today
because
I am a great athlete.”
– “I lost the game because
the referee made bad calls.”
• False consensus effect  tendency to
think other people share our attitudes
more than they actually do
– “I really like this one television show, so I
assume most of my peers like it as well.”
Social Perception
• Self-fulfilling prophecy  occurs when our
expectations cause us to unknowingly act in a
way that elicits the behaviors that confirm our
expectations
Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968)
• Teachers told that certain elementary school
students would bloom (rapid academic growth)
• Randomly chosen bloomers showed significantly
greater gains in IQ than
control-group classmates
• Teacher expectancies about
children influenced student
performance
The student who believes that he/she cannot
pass a test will not study as hard as needed,
thereby confirming that he/she was “right”
• Just world hypothesis  tendency to
believe that good people are rewarded,
bad people are punished
• False consensus effect  tendency to
think other people share our attitudes
more than they actually do
– “I really like this one television show, so I
assume most of my peers like it as well.”
• Representative heuristic  tendency to make
judgments about a person according to the
group they appear to represent
– If you see someone wearing athletic
apparel, you assume that they are
in the “jock” group
– If you see someone wearing a
white lab coat, you assume that
they work in a lab or hospital
• What about the make-up counter at a
department store?
• Availability heuristic  tendency to judge
probability of an event’s occurring based on how
readily examples come to mind
– After 9/11, many people were afraid to fly, yet
the increased security at airports made it safe
to fly
– Swine flu
• Hindsight bias  tendency
to overestimate how
predictable an event was
once the outcome is known
“I knew it all along!”
Availability Heuristic
• A person claims to a group of friends that drivers
of red cars get more speeding tickets. The group
agrees with the statement because a member of the
group, "Jim," drives a red car and frequently gets
speeding tickets. The reality could be that Jim just
drives fast and would get a speeding ticket
regardless of the color car that he drove. Even if
statistics show fewer speeding tickets were given
to red cars than to other colors of cars, Jim is an
available example which makes the statement seem
more plausible.
Hindsight Bias
• For instance, suppose a person was
asked to estimate how many votes John
McCain would get in the Michigan
primaries. If before the election, he
estimated 30%, and then learned that
the actual figure was 50%, he may later
recall that his answer was 40%.
• Gambler’s fallacy  people believe that
future events are influenced by past
occurrences
– Individuals who have lost many times while
gambling assume that they “must win” the
next time