Chapter 4 Perceiving Persons Social Perception From Elements to Dispositions Whorf theorized the language people speak determines the way they conceptualize the world Cultural differences in attribution are founded on varying folk theories about human causality Social perceptions are influenced by personal needs wishes and preferences People tend to take more credit for success than blame for failure People seek more info about their strengths than their weaknesses False consensus effect we overestimate the extent to which others think feel and behave as we do in part to assure ourselves that our ways are correct People judge favorably others who are similar to themselves rather than different on key characteristics People in poorer countries are less likely than those in affluent countries to believe in a just world the belief that individuals get what they deserve in life leads people to disparage victims Often assumed that poor people are lazy and crime victims are careless The more threatened we feel over an injustice the greater is the need to protect ourselves from the dreadful implication that it could happen to us Americans see more personal attributions and Indian Americans see more situational attributions Joan Miller cultural attribution From Dispositions to Impressions Impression formation is the process of integrating different sources of info about a person to form a coherent impression judgment of them Usually first step of social perception Based on rapid assessments of observable qualities and behaviors Includes nonverbal cues facial expressions Charles Darwin some emotional expressions are innate worldwide body posture attractiveness eye contact Physical features are the most common way to classify people usually superficial aspects race age sex attractiveness stereotypes Summation model more positive traits the better Average model higher the average value of all the traits the better Anderson s information integration theory states impressions formed of others are based on a combination of personal dispositions of the perceiver and a weighted average of the target person s characteristics Impression formation is in the eye of the beholder Priming is the tendency for frequently or recently used concepts to come to mind easily and influence the way we interpret new information Individuals can reliably be distinguished from one another along five broad traits extroversion emotional stability openness to experience agreeableness and conscientiousness Trait negativity bias is the tendency for negative info to weigh more heavily on our impressions than positive info ex Politics Implicit personality theory network of assumptions people make about the relationships among traits and behaviors if they have one trait they have another similar one as well Soloman Asch was first to discover that presence of one trait often implies the presence of other traits Central traits such as warm and cold imply the presence of certain other traits and exert a powerful influence on final impressions The primacy effect shows info often has greater impact when presented early in a sequence rather than later on in a sequence first impressions are critical The importance of first impressions is heightened by need for closure the desire to reduce cognitive uncertainty Low open minded deliberate High impulsive impatient judge quickly Change of meaning hypothesis once an impression is formed inconsistent info is interpreted in light of that impression From Impressions to Reality Confirmation biases tendencies to interpret seek and create info in ways that verify existing beliefs ambiguous events are seen they way we want to see them Belief perseverance sticking to initial beliefs even after these had been discredited Once people form an opinion that opinion becomes strengthened and people are less likely to change their minds when confronted with non supporting evidence Attraction breeds interaction which is why our negative first impressions persist Merton s self fulfilling prophecy process by which one s expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations Self Fulfilling Prophecy a perceiver has expectations the perceiver behaves in a manner consistent with expectations and target adjusts behavior accordingly all based on first impressions MAY NEED TO KNOW THE FOLLOWING Survival Value Hypothesis Darwin people do not attend equally to all facial expressions but rather exhibit the most sensitivity to those that would give them the best chance of survival Anger and Fear are the most recognizable expressions Attribution to infer casual relationships underlying behavior requires us to observe people s actions over time and across situations Attribution theory how people explain others behavior Fritz Heider Theory of Correspondent Inferences Jones and Davis predicts that people try to infer from an action whether the act itself corresponds to an enduring personal characteristic of an actor Dispositional inferences include degree of choice freely chosen expectedness of behavior departs from norm and intended effects of behavior few desirable outcomes Kelly s covariation theory states people attribute behavior to factors that are present when a behavior occurs and absent when it does not three factors consistency distinctiveness and consensus influence whether we attribute someone s behavior to internal or external causes Cognitive Heuristics Info processing rules of thumb that enable use to think in ways that are quick and easy but that frequently lead to error Availability Heuristics tendency to estimate the odds that an event will occur by how easily instance of it come to mind leads us astray in two ways o False Consensus Effect FCE tendency to overestimate the way others share one s opinions attitudes and behavior ex Religion o Base Rate Fallacy BRF to rely solely on one vivid or anecdotal situation and not the statistics revolving around a situation ex Phobia because of one past event Counterfactual Thinking tendency to dwell on alternative outcomes that might have occurred but did not occur Fundamental Attribution Error tendency for observers to underestimate situational external influences and overestimate disposition internal influences upon others behavior