Perceiving the World

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Perceiving the World
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Motive Conserve effort Cognitive Heuristics

• Typically discussed in terms of short-comings
• Availability -- likelihood of events judged by
  availability in memory
• Representativeness -- judgments of events based
  on how well event matches prototype
• Ignoring Base-rate Information -- tendency to
  ignore base-rate information
• Anchoring Adjustment -- judgments are made by
  adjusting from a rough estimate

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Motive To be accurate

• People CAN be accurate social thinkers
• interpret use information systematically
• Attribution theory -- how people explain events
  in their worlds
• internal attributions --
• external attributions --

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Motive To be accurate

• Commonsense Psychology (Heider, 1958)
• 1. people attempt to understand events
• 2. people believe that environmental personal
  factors are inversely related in causing events
• 3. the need for a predictable world leads to more
  attributions to stable personality dispositions
• dispositions determined by
• 4. covariation of cause effect is fundamental

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Motive To be accurateAn Attribution Model

• Covariation model (Kelley, 1967 1972)
• attributions use an orderly process
• systematic users of 3 types of information
• Results Situational or Dispositional attribution
• Distinctiveness -
• Consistency -
• Consensus -

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Kelleys Attribution model
attribution
Consensus
Consistency
Distinctiveness
attribution
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Functioning in our Worlds

• Multiple goals (not independent)...
• Manage Self-image
• Conserve Energy
• To be Accurate

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Adding information to the model

• Isnt always so clear cut but still systematic
• When are you confident that Jack married for love?

Jack loves Jill Jacks friends like Jill
Jack loves Jill Jacks friends like Jill Jill is
wealthy Jill tolerates Jacks bad habits
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Adding information to the model
When are you confident Jack married for love?
Jack loves Jill Jacks friends like Jill Jill is
dirt poor Jill wants to change Jacks habits
Jack loves Jill Jacks friends like Jill Jill is
wealthy Jill tolerates Jacks bad habits
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How accurate can we really be?

• Are our goals mutually-exclusive?
• managing self-image
• conserving effort
• accuracy
• Even given the intent to be accurate, people are
  not always objective
• Fundamental Attribution Error
• Self-Other (actor-observer) Divergence

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Fundamental Attribution Error

• Im just unlucky, you must be stupid!
• Quiz Exercise

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Self-other Divergence /aka the Actor-Observer
Effect