Psychology 331 Social Psychology

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Psychology 331Social Psychology

• Social Beliefs and Judgments
• Chapter 3

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Social Perception

• The study of how we form impressions of and make
  inferences about other people

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Nonverbal Behavior

• Facial Expressions of Emotion
• Nonverbal Communication
• Eye contact
• Use of personal space
• Use of gestures
• Gender Differences

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Causal Attributions

• Attribution Theory
• A description of the way in which people explain
  the causes of their own and other peoples
  behavior
• Attribution
• An inference about why an event took place or
  about a persons disposition

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Theories of Attribution

• Fritz Heiders Naïve Theory
• Everyday peoples everyday judgments about
  everyday events
• Important Features
• Interpret events Look for stable and enduring
  factors
• Internal forces (personal) vs. External forces
  (environment)

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Theories of Attribution

• Jones Davis Correspondent Inference Theory
• How do you characterize others by observing their
  behavior
• Four factors

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Correspondent Inference Theory

• Social Desirability
• Jones, Davis, Gergens Submariner/ Astronaut
  Study
• Non-Common Effects
• Hedonic Relevance
• Personalism

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Jones, Davis, Gergen (1961)
Expression
DV What is the person really like? (confidence)
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Correspondent Inference Theory

• Social Desirability
• Jones, Davis, Gergens Submariner/ Astronaut
  Study
• Non-Common Effects
• Hedonic Relevance
• Personalism

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Theories of Attribution

• Kelleys Covariation model
• Person as a calculator
• Behavior may be attributed to 3 factors
• Person
• Entity
• Circumstance

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Kelleys Covariation Model

• Three types of information
• Distinctiveness
• Does the person act this way only with regard to
  this stimulus?
• Consistency
• Does the person act this way toward the same
  stimulus at other times in other situations?
• Consensus
• Does everyone act this way toward this stimulus?

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Important Principles

• Discounting Principle
• The role of a given cause in accounting for a
  given effect is discounted when other plausible
  causes are present
• Augmenting Principle
• If, for a given effect, you have both a
  facilitative cause (helps outcome) and a
  plausible inhibitory cause (gets in the way of
  the outcome), then the role of the facilitative
  cause will be judged greater than if there had
  not been an inhibitory cause

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Sigall McKella
Discounting
Augmenting
DV Trust in mans praise
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Theories of Attribution

• Weiners Taxonomy of Success and Failure
  Attributions
• Three dimensions
• Locus internal or external
• Stability
• Controllability

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We Do Make Errors

• Fundamental Attribution Error
• Tendency to overestimate the extent to which
  peoples behavior is due to internal,
  dispositional factors, and to underestimate the
  role of situational factors
• Jones Harris (1967)
• Ross, Amabile, Steinmetz

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We Do Make Errors

• Actor/Observer Difference
• Tendency to see other peoples behavior as
  dispositionally caused, while focusing more on
  the role of situational factors when explaining
  ones own behavior
• Storms (1973)

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We Do Make Errors

• Self-Serving Attributions
• Explanations for ones successes that credit
  internal, dispositional factors and explanations
  for ones failures that blame external,
  situational factors.

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Who is Going to Heaven?

• Class Demonstration

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How accurate are our attributions and impressions?

• First impressions are not very accurate
• We get better as we get to know others
• But overall accuracy is still not that impressive

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Social Cognition

• The study of how people select, interpret, and
  use information to make judgment about the social
  world.

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Schemas

• Cognitive structures that people use to organize
  their knowledge about the world
• Function of schemas Continuity
• Kelleys (1950) warm/cold study

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Problem with Schemas

• Distortion! As a result of
• Maintaining Self-Esteem
• Hastorf Cantril (1954) football study
• Primacy Effect
• Jones et al. (1968) questions study
• Belief Perseverance Effect
• Ross, Lepper, Hubbard (1975) suicide notes
  study

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Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

• People have an expectation about what another
  person is like, which
• Influences how they act toward that person, which
• Causes that person to behave in a way consistent
  with the original expectation

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Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

• Rosenthal Jacobsen (1968)
• Blooming Children Study
• Snyder, Tanke, Berscheid (1977)
• Attractive woman study

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Snyder, Tanke, Berscheid
Unattractive Attractive
Picture of Woman
DV Woman Judged as Warm and Friendly
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Mental Strategies Shortcuts

• Judgmental Heuristics
• Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments
  quickly and efficiently

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Availability Heuristic

• People base a judgment on the ease with which
  they can bring something to mind
• Vivid events are easily recalled and thus bias
  estimates
• Schwarz et al. (1991)
• Assertiveness study

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Counterfactual Thinking

• Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a
  way of imagining what might have been.

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Representative Heuristic

• People classify something according to how
  similar it is to a typical case.
• People tend to ignore base-rate information

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Anchoring Adjustment Heuristic

• Mental shortcut that involves using a number or
  value as a starting point, and then adjusting
  ones answer away from this anchor
• People often do not adjust sufficiently