Social Perceptions and Attitudes Chapter 13 Perceiving evaluating other people Why do we evaluate others all of us are na ve psychologists Are we accurate often however our judgments can suffer from a number of biases when not using all our resources e g cognitively loaded when we have limited information when we have hidden motives goals e g our self esteem is threatened 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 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 do others regularly behave this way in this situation does this person behave this way in many other situations Example Susan is angry while driving in a traffic jam 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 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 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 Actor Observer Discrepancy Attribute personality causes of behavior when evaluating someone else s behavior Attribute situational when evaluating our own behavior Why we know our behavior changes from situation to situation but we don t hypothesis 1 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 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 Effects of Personal Appearance The attractiveness bias sociability morality studies physically attractive people are rated higher on intelligence competence teachers rate attractive children as smarter and higher achieving adults attribute cause of unattractive child s misbehavior to personality attractive child s to situation judges give longer prison sentences to unattractive people Effects of Personal Appearance The baby face bias people with rounder heads large eyes small jawbones etc rated as more na ve honest helpless kind and warm than mature faced generalize to animals women babies 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 people need different ways of studying today s society is sensitized to harmful effects of stereotyping Studying stereotypes 3 levels of stereotypes in today s research what we say to others about a group public private implicit what we consciously think about a group but don t say to others unconscious mental associations guiding our judgments and actions without our conscious awareness Implicit Stereotypes Use of priming subject doesn t know stereotype is being activated can t work to suppress it Bargh study have subjects read word lists some lists include words like gray Bingo and Florida subjects with old word lists walked to elevators significantly more slowly another study give incomplete words like hos subjects seeing Black make flash pictures of Black vs White faces subliminally hostile seeing White make hospital Implicit Stereotypes Devine 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 Overcoming prejudice is possible but takes work way Self Evaluation 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 Self Evaluation Rosenthal Jacobson told teachers that the test was a spurters test went to a school and did IQ tests with kids randomly selected several kids and told the teacher they were spurters did another IQ test at end of year spurters showed significant improvements in their IQ scores b c of their teacher s Evaluations of the aspects of the social world Good or bad likeable or unlikeable attractive or unattractive moral or expectations of them Attitudes What is an attitude immoral etc can be negative or positive Attitude Formation Classical Conditioning no thought Used successfully in marketing First impressions the case of Bob Heuristics superficial thought Use of rules to determine the evaluation Does it look official Do you think most people believe in the message Is a famous and or attractive person giving the message Elaboration likelihood model Petty and Cacioppo 1986 We are cognitive misers we reserve elaboration for messages that are most relevant Central Route to Persuasion the thoughtful elaborative route Strong arguments are more effective than weak arguments Peripheral Route to Persuasion evaluation is done with simple minded heuristics People attend to superficial characteristics of the speaker Attitude Formation Elaboration likelihood model Petty and Cacioppo 1986 Which Route is Chosen Strength of the Argument Source of the Argument Personal Relevance or Motivation with Respect to the Argument Dissonance reducing Mechanisms Avoiding dissonant information we attend to information in support of our existing views rather than information that doesn t support them Sweeney Gruber 1973 Watergate study Firming up an attitude to be consistent with