lecture sessions on impression formation (person perception)

Lecture Sessions on Impression Formation (Person Perception)

1. What are the sources of information in forming impressions of the characteristics, or personality, of other people?

To begin with, there are direct sources and second-hand information.

2. Early research in impression formation: The work of Solomon Asch.

e.g. The role of trait centrality (“warm-cold” dimension)

and the order of presentation of positive and negative information)

Asch:

In one study, separate groups of participants listened to one of two descriptions of an individual in the form of trait-adjectives. They were then asked to form overall impressions of the person and to rate that person on a list of other trait adjectives.

Study 1 Information:

Intelligent, skillful, industrious, warm, determined, practical, cautious OR

Intelligent, skillful, industrious, cold, determined, practical, cautious

Study 2 Information:

Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious

OR

Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, intelligent

3. Forming impressions based on direct information – the observation of the behavior of others.

First Pretend Videotape

Man pacing back and forth in agitated manner.



Please rate him on the following:

feeling calm:__:__:__:__:__:__:__: feeling anxious




calm (person):__:__:__:__:__:__:__: anxious (person)

Second Pretend Video

Café Scene: Man is given too much change when he pays his bill, leaves and comes back in to return the money.



dishonest:__:__:__:__:__:__:__: honest



dishonest (behaviour):__:__:__:__:__:__:__: honest (behaviour)

This was a State Judgement


This was a Trait Judgement


Causal attributions regarding the behavior of others or our own behaviour.

dispositional: the person behaved as she did for dispositional, internal reasons, because of her personality, attitudes, and other attributes.

situational: the person behaved as she did because of situational factors, the nature of the situation (e.g., anxiety arousing), whom she was with and their expectations, etc.

The Tendency (in Western Cultures, at least), is to Interpret Behaviour as Being Due to Dispositional Reasons Rather Than Situational Reasons

The Fundamental Attribution Error is to

Interpret Behaviour as Being Due to Dispositional Reasons Rather Than Situational Reasons When a Situational Interpretation of the Cause of the Behaviour is More Accurate



dishonest:__:__:__:__:__:__:__: honest

dishonest (behaviour):__:__:__:__:__:__:__: honest (behaviour)

Attributing causality

19

Attributions and reactions

Negative behaviour (A man is rude to his colleague)

Dispositional Attribution (The man is a hostile person)

Situational Attribution (The man was given an unfair evaluation)

Unfavourable Reaction (I don’t like this man)

Symptomatic Reaction (I can understand)20

Impressions based on non-verbal behavior – the role of expectations and again, the fundamental attribution error.

Snyder (1976)

Led to Believe that the Topic Of the Interview Is

Politics Sex

Snyder (1976)


Politics Sex

State anxiety rating* 8.5 11.1

* higher scores represent higher levels of state or trait anxiety

Snyder (1976)


Politics Sex

State anxiety rating* 8.5 11.1

Trait anxiety rating* 46.2 58.4

* higher scores represent higher levels of state or trait anxiety

Impression Formation Based on Indirect Sources of Information

Stereotypes and stereotyping as an indirect source in impression formation.

Stereotypes and Stereotyping

Stereotypes refer to the expectations we have about the attributes of a category of people-in-general.

To stereotype is to incorporate your expectations about the attributes of a category of people-in-general into your judgements about a specific member of that category.

More on Stereotypes The question of consensus Your judgments of French-Canadian-in- general

More on Stereotypes and how is this consensus developed?

and the role of the fundamental attribution error (again)

Evidence for stereotyping

And the question of attending to “individuating information” about an individual, that is, to information which is counter to the stereotype.

Gardner and Taylor

Research participants listened to one of three audio-tapes of a man being interviewed (randomly assigned).

Interviews (in English) were scripted by the researchers such that in:

Tape 1: French-Canadian, information consistent with the stereotype.

Tape 2: French-Canadian, information irrelevant to the stereotype.

Tape 3: French-Canadian, information opposite to the stereotype.

After listening to one of the tapes, subjects made judgements of the person being interviewed on the same rating scale that you used to rate French-Canadians-in-general.

Based on certain ratings, a stereotype score was calculated (this was the dependent variable).

Gardner and Taylor

7 ________________________ tape 1 6

5

Stereotype 4 ________________________ tape 2 score 3

2

1 ________________________ tape 3 ___________________________ Tape 1 Tape 2 Tape 3

Gardner and Taylor

7 ________________________ X X 6

5

Stereotype 4 ________________________ score X 3

2

1 _________________________ ___________________________ Tape 1 Tape 2 Tape 3

The question of the accuracy of components of a stereotype.

Native Canadians-in-general

Poor: __: X :__:__:__:__:__: Wealthy


Poor: __: X :__:__:__:__:__: Wealthy

Educated: __:__:__:__:__:_X_:__: Uneducated


Poor: __: X :__:__:__:__:__: Wealthy

Educated: __:__:__:__:__:_X_:__: Uneducated

Physically: __:__:__:__:__:_X_:__: Physically Clean Dirty

Ethnocentrism

To make an ethnocentric judgement is to evaluate the beliefs, values and behaviour of another group of people using the beliefs, values and behaviour of your own group as the standard for that which is morally correct and essentially human.

We can also expand our impression of others by incorporating our expectations about how attributes go together in people-in-general into our judgements of a specific individual.

1.We have these expectations in general

2.We may use these expectations in forming an impression of a single individual

In addition, our impressions of others can be expanded through indirect processes of

assumed similarity

halo effect

Kenny & DePaulo (1993)

Do People Know How Others View Them?



1.People tend to think that they make a similar impression on others

(e.g., they think that others generally view them as good-natured or smart or that others like them about the same).



2.In terms of accuracy in the way that we think that others view us, generalized accuracy is fairly high, that is, our perceptions of how others in general view us is fairly high.

So that your belief that others in general see you as good-natured and smart is likely to be right.



3. On the other hand, because people’s beliefs about how others see them tend to be undifferentiated, people seem to have less insight into how they are uniquely viewed by others.



4. These distinctions are greater for trait judgements than for liking judgements.

Savitsky and others (2001)

Do others judge us as harshly as we think?

Suggest that others are less likely to form a negative view of us after witnessing our blunder than we would expect.

Our own expectations are based on the assumption of a strong correspondence inference made by others – that our behaviour corresponds to our inner disposition.

But your blunders do not take place in a vacuum, and include the observer’s other interactions with you, before and after, and a host of unrelated distracting factors at the time of the event.

In Study 1, participants were presented with three scenarios (e.g., you or someone else arrives at a party to discover that he/she is the only one to not bring a gift for the host).

In study 2, participants attempted to solve very difficulty anagrams with their “poor” results announced to the other person in the session.

Results

Overall, we expect to be judged more harshly than we actually are.

How Well Do We Know Our Own Abilities?

Kruger & Dunning (1999)

(see also page 91 in textbook)

Three studies measured our ability to judge what is funny, our logical reasoning ability, or our grammar ability.

In each case participants were also asked to estimate:

the level of their performance on the task and

their level of ability in this area in general.

Results

1. Regardless of their level of actual performance, participants tended to predict that they had performed somewhat above average and that their ability, in general, in this area was somewhat above average.

2. Consequently, those who performed less well demonstrated greater error in the evaluation of their own performance and their ability in this area.

In follow-up study, participants in bottom and top rungs based on their performance on the grammar test were asked to evaluate five grammar tests completed by other students who had demonstrated a range of scores or abilities.

After this, participants were shown their own test from weeks ago and asked to re-rate their performance and grammar ability in general.

Results

1.Low competence participants were less able to accurately evaluate the grammar competence of others, compared to high competence individuals

Results

2. In terms of self-assessment, high competence students raised their estimates of their own performance and ability (having just viewed the varied performance of others).

Results 3.In contrast, the low competence students continued to greatly inflate their own performance and ability.

In interpreting the results:

Past research has indicated that we seldom receive negative feedback in our everyday lives.



We may attribute negative feedback to external factors, rather than internal ones.



We may attribute negative feedback to external factors, rather than internal ones.

In some cases, we may be unable to engage in social comparison in valid ways.

Do we know how we have just behaved?

Study by Gosling (1998)

Gosling (1998)

Business administration students in groups of six.

Case study. Afterwards asked to indicate how frequently they had exhibited certain behaviours.

Discussion groups were videotaped and behaviour was assessed.

Results

Accuracy was assessed in terms of degree of correspondence between self-reported frequency of occurrence of a behaviour and actual (rated) occurrence of that behaviour

With some of our behaviours, we are fairly accurate, with other behaviours we are not.

Example of Results

Told joke to lighten tense moment - r=.72

Interrupted someone else - r=.07

Paunonen (1989)

One way to indirectly assess the question of accuracy of person perception.

Participants made trait judgements about a friend, about an acquaintance, and about a stranger brought together in the lab and make self-judgements on the same characteristics.

Self-judgements were used as the criterion measure.

Paunonen (1989)

Correspondence between judgements about another person and that person’s judgements about himself or herself ranged from

r=.08 for strangers

to r=.42 for close friends.

Swann (1997)

Based on a study of dating partners and university roommates.

Participants made judgments of their partner’s activity preferences and aspects of their past behaviour, for example.

“Our findings suggest that the confidence people have in their impressions of others is, at best, inconsistently related to the accuracy of those impressions.

Swann (1997)

Such confidence-accuracy discrepancies seem to occur because people base the confidence of their impression on cues that are largely unrelated to accuracy.

For example, relationship length and degree of involvement were associated with higher certainty but unrelated to accuracy of perceptions of partner’s activity preferences, aspects of their past behaviour, and so on.

lecture sessions on impression formation (person perception)

Documents

anxious slide

anxious person slide

intelligent slide

cautious slide

honest slide

accurate slide

honest behaviour slide

negative information