atp 3: social psychology 3: perceiving persons perceiving persons tom farsides: 08/10/03 tom...

ATP 3: Social Psychology 3: Perceiving Persons

Perceiving Persons

Tom Farsides:

08/10/03

Tom Farsides:

08/10/03


Lecture Overview

• Attribution theories

• Cognitive heuristics, errors, and biases

• Priming effects

• Implicit personality theories

• Primacy effects

• Confirmation biases


Social perception

“This subject concerns the qualities that people perceive in others and the factors...that contribute to these perceptions”

Zebrowitz (1995, p. 583)


Nonverbal behavior

The six innate and universal basic emotions (SHAFDS)

Sad Happy Anger Fear Disgust SurpriseJapan 87 90 67 65 60 94

Scotland 86 98 84 86 79 88

Sumatra 91 69 70 70 70 78

Turkey 76 87 79 76 74 90

USA 92 95 81 84 86 92


Attribution theories

Attribution theories describe how people attempt to explain the causes of behaviour.

Heider (1958) differentiated between ‘personal’ and ‘situational’ attributions.

Another common distinction is between stable and unstable causes of behaviour.

Another is made in terms of controllability.


Correspondent inference theory (Jones & Davis, 1965)

What is a correspondent inference?

Influenced by Perceived choice (CI if high) Intended effects (CI if few benefits to actor) Expectedness (CI if unexpected)


Kelley’s (1967) covariation theory

We attribute causality to factors that co-vary with behaviours.

Behaviour can be attributed to the actor, a stimulus they are reacting to, or the situation they are acting in.

Three types of covariation information may be used. Consensus

Same stimulus: Different people.

Distinctiveness Same person: Different stimuli.

Consistency Same person: Same stimulus.


Kelley’s (1967) covariation theoryLOW

Other people do not

stroke Defor.

LOWYou tend tostroke any

dog you see.

HIGH You strokeDefor every

time you meet.

You strokeDefor (a

dog).

PERSONALATTRIBUTIONYou like dogs.

HIGHOther people

tend to stroke Defor.

HIGHYou tend

not tostroke dogs.

HIGHYou strokeDefor every

time you meet.

STIMULUSATTRIBUTION

Defor is cute.

CONSENSUS DISTINCTIVENESS CONSISTENCY x-persons x-stimuli x-situations

LOWOther people

do not stroke Defor.

HIGHYou tend

not tostroke dogs.

LOWYou have neverstroked Defor

before or since.

SITUATIONATTRIBUTION

You werelocked in a

room with Defor.


Cognitive heuristics

Cognitive heuristics (“rules of thumb”) effective often adequate a greater chance of being wrong

E.g., The availability heuristic


The fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977)

In explaining another’s behavior, we over-emphasise personal factors and downplay situational factors.

Jones & Harris (1967)


Miller (1984)Individualism and the correspondence bias


Gilbert & Malone (1995)A two-step model of the attribution process


The actor-observer effect (Jones & Nisbett, 1972)

Actors tend to attribute their behaviour to situational factors while observers tend to attribute the same behaviours to dispositional factors.

Differential information explanation.

Differential focus explanation.


Primacy effect

The tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later.

Asch (1946) “Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and

envious” leads to more positive impressions than the other way around.

‘Lazy’ and ‘stubborn’ explanations.


Implicit personality theories

The network of assumptions commonly made about relationships among types of people, traits and behaviours.

Knowing one trait a person has leads us to assume or infer the person has other traits and behaviors. e.g., blondes...

Asch (1946) “Intelligent, skillful, industrious, _____, determined,

practical and cautious.”


Priming

The tendency for frequent or recent concepts to easily come to mind and influence the way we interpret new information.

Higgins et al. (1977) Impressions of same adventurer affected by positive or negative

primes.

Bargh & Pietromonaco (1982) Subliminally presented primes have most influence on

subsequent impression formation.

Bargh & Chartrand (1999) Primes affect subsequent behaviour.

Bargh et al. (1996) Primes influence subsequent social behaviour too.


Bargh et al. (1996)

Priming of social behavior


Biases confirming expectancies from stereotypes

Darley & Gross (1983)

Viewing Hannah’s mixed performance led to perceived verification of both low and high expectations, with evidence of the opposite ignored or rationalised


Confirmatory hypothesis testing

Darley & Gross (1983) demonstrate that people will interpret ambiguous or mixed

information in ways to confirm existing theories.

Snyder & Swann (1978) demonstrate that people with existing theories will bias the

information they collect when evaluating those theories. The evidence collected is biased enough to cause others

shown it to ‘confirm’ the original person’s existing theory.

Cf. Adorno et al.’s (1950) validation of the authoritarian personality.


Resisting confirmation biases

• Elaborate alternative theories, reasons they might be true, and potential evidence for them.

• Be sceptical about the truth of existing beliefs and seek accuracy instead of confirmation.

• Be wary of information and information-seeking tools provided by others.

• Bias information-seeking in favour of trying to disconfirm your expectations.


The self-fulfilling prophecy

Perceiver’s expectations can lead to their own fulfilment (Merton, 1948).

Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968) Pygmalion in the Classroom Teachers told ‘late bloomers’ had IQ scores indicating an

imminent growth spurt. Eight months later, these randomly selected children had

higher IQ increases and received better teacher evaluations than control children.

Remember Darley & Gross (1983) and Snyder & Swann (1978).


Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968)Average gain in IQ


Challenging the self-fulfilling prophecy

Rosenthal (1985) Teacher expectation successfully predicts student

performance 36 percent of the time. Brehm et al. (2002) report this as confirmation of the self-

fulfilling prophesy.

Jussim et al. (1996) Point out that - unlike in Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968) -

teachers often have good reasons for their expectations. Students perform in accordance with these expectations

because both the performance and the expectations are caused by some third factor, e.g. talent and application.

Is Rosenthal (1985) evidence against the self-fulfilling prophesy, i.e., only 36% (with 64% of expectations not being fulfilled)?

atp 3: social psychology 3: perceiving persons perceiving persons tom farsides: 08/10/03 tom...

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