1

Perceiving & evaluating other people

Why do we evaluate others? all of us are naïve psychologists

Are we accurate? often however, our judgments can suffer from a

number of biaseswhen not using all our resourceswhen we have limited informationwhen we have hidden motives/goals

• e.g., our self-esteem is threatened

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Social Comparison

Downward social comparison Compare ourselves to others who are not as

good (i.e. could be worse!) Upward social comparison

Comparing ourselves to others who are doing better (gives us hope/creates optimism)

3

Self-fulfilling Prophecies

When our beliefs and expectations create reality

Beliefs & expectations influence our behavior & others’

Pygmalion effect person A believes that person B has a

particular characteristic person B may begin to behave in accordance

with that characteristic

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Studies of the Self-fulfilling Prophecy

Rosenthal & Fode tested whether labeling would affect outcome divided students into 2 groups and gave them randomly

selected rats 1 group was told they had a group of “super genius” rats

and the other was told they had a group of “super moron” rats

all students told to train rats to run mazes “genius” rat group ended up doing better than the

“moron” rat group b/c of the expectations of the students

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Attributions from behavior

Attribution a claim about the cause of someone’s

behavior seeking a reason for the occurrence of

events/behaviors Heider

early researcher we intuitively attribute others’ actions to

personality characteristics

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Person vs. Situation Attributions Have to decide whether behavior is due to

something about personality, or whether anyone would do same thing in that situation

Kelley’s 3 questions in making an attribution does this person regularly behave this way in this

situation? [distictiveness] do others regularly behave this way in this situation?

[consensus] does this person behave this way in many other

situations? [consistency]

Example: Susan is angry while driving in a traffic jam

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Kelley’s Attributional Logic

(1) Does Susan regularly get angry in traffic jams?

YES(2) Do many other people get angry in traffic jams?

NO

NO

YES

(3) Does Susan get angry in many other situations?

No personality or situational attribution

Situational attribution: traffic jams make people mad

Personality attribution, general

Personality attribution, particular

YES NO

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Kelley – in summary

When are we likely to make internal attributions? Low consensus High consistency Low distinctiveness

(see example with “boss insulting customer” on p. 683)

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Person bias in attributions

People give too much weight to personality and not enough to situational variables

Known as person bias a.k.a. fundamental attribution error

Conditions promoting person bias when task has goal of assessment of personality when person is cognitively loaded

Conditions promoting a situation bias when goal is to judge the situation

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Two-stage Model of Attributions

First stage is rapid & automatic bias according to goal (person/situation)

Second stage is slower & controlled won’t occur if cognitively loaded we correct our automatic attribution

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Two-stage Model of Attributions

What kind of person is Joe?

How funny is the TV comedy?

Person: Joe laughs easily

Situation: the TV show is funny

Observer’s goalAutomatic Attribution

Controlled Attribution

Revision: could be a funny show

Revision: maybe Joe laughs easily

Book example: Joe laughs hysterically while watching a TV comedy. What can we conclude?

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Cross-cultural differences

Western culture people are in charge of

own destinies more attributions to

personality Some Eastern cultures

fate in charge of destiny

more attributions to situation

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Actor-Observer Bias Attribute personality causes of behavior when

evaluating someone else’s behavior Attribute situational when evaluating our own

behavior Why?

hypothesis 1: we know our behavior changes from situation to situation,

but we don’t know this about others hypothesis 2:

when we see others perform an action, we concentrate on actor, not situation -- when we perform an action, we see environment, not person

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Prior Information Effects

Mental representations of people (schemas) can effect our interpretation of them Kelley’s study

students had a guest speaker before the speaker came, half got a written bio

saying speaker was “very warm”, half got bio saying speaker was “rather cold”

“very warm” group rated guest more positively than “rather cold” group

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Effects of Personal AppearanceThe attractiveness bias

physically attractive people are rated higher on intelligence, competence, sociability, morality

studiesteachers rate attractive children as smarter, and higher

achievingadults attribute cause of unattractive child’s

misbehavior to personality, attractive child’s to situation

judges give longer prison sentences to unattractive people

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Effects of Personal Appearance

The baby-face bias people with rounder heads, large eyes,

small jawbones, etc. rated as more naïve, honest, helpless, kind, and warm than mature-faced

generalize to animals, women, babies

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Attitudes

What is an attitude? predisposition to behave in a certain way toward some

people, group, or objects can be negative or positive

Cognitive dissonance theory Festinger we we need our attitudes to be consistent with our

behavior it is uncomfortable for us when they aren’t we seek ways to decrease discomfort caused by

inconsistency

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Dissonance-reducing MechanismsAvoiding dissonant information

we attend to information in support of our existing views, rather than information that doesn’t support them

Firming up an attitude to be consistent with an action once we’ve made a choice to do something,

lingering doubts about our actions would cause dissonance, so we are motivated to set them aside

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Dissonance-reducing Mechanisms Changing an attitude to justify an action

when a person does something counter to their stated beliefs, then justify the deed by modifying their attitude

Insufficient-justification effectchange in attitude that occurs because person

cannot justify an already completed action without modifying attitude

optimizing conditions include external justification, free choice, when action would cause harm

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Insufficient-justification effect

Festinger & Carlsmith (1959) gave subjects a boring task, then asked subjects to lie

to the next subject and say the experiment was exciting

paid ½ the subjects $1, other ½ $20 then asked subjects to rate boringness of task $1 group rated the task as far more fun than the $20

group

each group needed a justification for lying $20 group had an external justification of money since $1 isn’t very much money, $1 group said task was

fun

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Using Attitudes as Ways to “Justify” Injustice

Just-world bias a tendency to believe that life is fair

it would seem horrible to think that you can be a really good person and bad things could happen to you anyway

Just-world bias leads to “blaming the victim” we explain others’ misfortunes as being their

faulte.g., she deserved to be raped, what was she

doing in that neighborhood anyway?

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Stereotypes

What is a stereotype? schemas about a group of people a belief held by members of one group about

members of another group how can we study stereotypes?

early studies just asked peopletoday’s society is sensitized to harmful effects of

stereotypingneed different ways of studying

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Studying stereotypes3 levels of stereotypes in today’s research

public what we say to others about a group

private what we consciously think about a group, but don’t

say to others

implicit unconscious mental associations guiding our

judgments and actions without our conscious awareness

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Implicit StereotypesUse of priming: subject doesn’t know

stereotype is being activated, can’t work to suppress it another study

flash pictures of Black vs. White faces subliminally give incomplete words like “hos_____,” subjects seeing Black

make “hostile,” seeing White make “hospital”

Assign: Go to my website and click on Implicit Social Attitudes

This will take you to the link you need to take the Harvard IAT.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/(or click this of you are online now )

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Implicit StereotypesDevine’s automaticity theory

stereotypes about African-Americans are so prevalent in our culture that we all hold them

these stereotypes are automatically activated whenever we come into contact with an African-American

we have to actively push them back down if we don’t wish to act in a prejudiced way.

Overcoming prejudice is possible, but takes work