MIDTERM 3 STUDY GUIDE*need key termsSOCIAL PERCEPTION AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Perception: A cognitive process that enables us to interpret and understand our surroundings. Recognition is one of this process’s major functions. Social perception: The type we are concerned about; four-stage information processing sequence. Stages are as follows:Social information processing model1. Selective attention/awareness : Environmental stimuli/information: salient information2. Encoding and Simplification : interpretation/categorization; schemas, scripts, categories, stereotypes (when stereotypes occur)3. Storage and Retention : memory (different types)—semantic, episodic (event), people4. Retrieval and Repose : Judgments and decisions; attributions, ratings/judgments, decisions, bias, errorsStage 1: Selective Attention/Awareness Attention: the process of becoming consciously aware of something or someone. Canbe focused on information either from the environment or from memory (i.e. when you’re thinking about something else when reading this textbook). People usually pay attention to salient stimuli, or when it stands out from its context. People have more tendency to pay attention to negative rather than positive information. Stage 2: Encoding and Simplification Cognitive Categories: perceivers assign pieces of information to categories, or a number of objects that are considered equivalent, in order to interpret or translate raw materials into mental representations Schema: representation of a person’s mental picture or summary of a particular eventor a type of stimulus. Ex: I picture a sports car as being small, red with two doors. Therefore I would associate all small, red, two-door cars as being sports cars. Stereotype: an individual’s set of beliefs about the characteristics or attributes of a group. People use this in encoding to organize and simplify information. Not always negative. Used to differentiate a particular group from other groups. Not effortful. Stage 3: Storage and Retention (long-term memory) Event memory describe sequences of events in well-known situations, both specific and general Semantic memory refers to general knowledge about the world, serving as a mental dictionary of concepts. Concepts are stored as schemata.Person memory contain information about individuals or groups—more likely to remember something about a person if it has characteristics similar to something stored in the compartments of this memoryStage 4: Retrieval and Response Happens in hiring, performance appraisal, evaluations of leadership Should be considered when trying to communicate and influence others, and as the cause of counterproductive work behaviors and physical/psychological well-being Implicit Cognition: any thoughts or beliefs that are automatically activated from memory without our conscious awareness—leads to bias without realizing itBiases and Errors Leniency : A personal characteristic that leads to someone consistently evaluating other people or objects in a very positive fashion. Ex: someone who hates to say negative things about others. Halo Error : a rater forms an overall impression about an object and then uses that impression to bias ratings about the object. Ex: rating a professor high on everything because we like them generally. Central Tendency Error : tendency to avoid all extreme judgments and rate things as average or neutral. Recency Effect: tendency to remember recent information. Ex: giving a professor poor ratings because the last lecture was bad, when the lectures for the 12 weeks before it were great. Contrast Effect: tendency to evaluate people by comparing them with characteristics of recently observed people. Ex: rating a good professor average because you compared them with the best 2 professors you’ve had in college Fundamental Attribution BIAS: reflects one’s tendency to attribute another person’s behavior to his or her personal characteristics, as opposed to situational factors. This bias causes perceivers to ignore important environmental forces that often significantly affect behavior Self-Serving bias: represents one’s tendency to take more personal responsibility for success than for failure. Strictness error Attribution Causal Attributions: suspected or inferred causes of behavior. o We constantly formulate cause-and-effect explanations for our own and others’ behavior—often self-servingo Important in organizational behavior—a manager might train an individual if poor performance is attributed to lack of ability, but would reprimand them if attributed to lack of behavior Attribution Theory: An attribution is made as to whether action(s) and/or behavior(s) resulted from internal factors (e.g., ability, amount of work) or external factors (e.g., task difficulty). This attribution is based on the consensus ,distinctiveness, and consistency of the observed behavior. Can be made for good ORpoor performance/outcomes Kelley’s Model of Attribution: people make causal attributions after gathering information about the consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency dimensions of behavior.o Attributed to external causes (overly difficult task) High consensus, high distinctiveness, low consistencyo Attributed to internal causes (employee’s personal characteristics) Low consensus, low distinctiveness, high consistencyo Consensus : People. Comparison of an individual’s behavior with that of his orher peers. High = when one acts like the rest of the group Low = one acts differently from group o Distinctiveness : Tasks. Comparing a person’s behavior on one task with his orher behavior on other tasks. High = the individual has performed the task in question in a significantly different manner than he or she has performed other tasks. Low = stable performance or quality from one task to anothero Consistency : Time. Judging if the individual’s performance on a given task is consistent over time High = a person performs a certain task the same way time after time Low = unstable performance of a task over timeCore Self Evaluation: broad personality trait comprised of four narrower traits1. Self-esteem: a person’s belief about his or her own self worth2. Self-efficacy: a person’s belief about his or her chances of successfully accomplishing a specific taska. Learned helplessness: the
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