Perceiving

1
Perceiving evaluating other people

• Why do we evaluate others?
• all of us are naïve 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

2
Attributions from behavior

• Attribution
• a claim about the cause of someones behavior
• seeking a reason for the occurrence of
  events/behaviors
• Heider
• early researcher
• we intuitively attribute others actions to
  personality characteristics

3
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
• Kelleys 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

4
Kelleys Attributional Logic
5
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

6
Two-stage Model of Attributions

• First stage is rapid automatic
• bias according to goal (person/situation)
• Second stage is slower controlled
• wont occur if cognitively loaded
• we correct our automatic attribution

7
Two-stage Model of Attributions
Book example Joe laughs hysterically while
watching a TV comedy. What can we conclude?
8
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

Attributions to internal disposition
Age (years)
9
Actor-Observer Discrepancy

• Attribute personality causes of behavior when
  evaluating someone elses behavior
• Attribute situational when evaluating our own
  behavior
• Why?
• hypothesis 1
• we know our behavior changes from situation to
  situation, but we dont 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

10
Prior Information Effects

• Mental representations of people (schemas) can
  effect our interpretation of them
• Kelleys 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

11
Effects of Personal Appearance

• The attractiveness bias
• physically attractive people are rated higher on
  intelligence, competence, sociability, morality
• studies
• teachers rate attractive children as smarter, and
  higher achieving
• adults attribute cause of unattractive childs
  misbehavior to personality, attractive childs to
  situation
• judges give longer prison sentences to
  unattractive people

12
Effects of Personal Appearance

• The baby-face bias
• people with rounder heads, large eyes, small
  jawbones, etc. rated as more naïve, honest,
  helpless, kind, and warm than mature-faced
• generalize to animals, women, babies

13
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
• todays society is sensitized to harmful effects
  of stereotyping
• need different ways of studying

14
Studying stereotypes

• 3 levels of stereotypes in todays research
• public
• what we say to others about a group
• private
• what we consciously think about a group, but
  dont say to others
• implicit
• unconscious mental associations guiding our
  judgments and actions without our conscious
  awareness

15
Implicit Stereotypes

• Use of priming subject doesnt know stereotype
  is being activated, cant 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
• flash pictures of Black vs. White faces
  subliminally
• give incomplete words like hos_____, subjects
  seeing Black make hostile, seeing White make
  hospital

16
Implicit Stereotypes

• Devines 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
  dont wish to act in a prejudiced way.
• Overcoming prejudice is possible, but takes work

17
Self-fulfilling Prophecies

• 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

18
Studies of the Self-fulfilling Prophecy

• Rosenthal Fode
• tested whether labeling would affect outcome
• divided students into 2 groups and gave them
  randomly selected rats
• 1 group was told they had a group of super
  genius rats and the other was told they had a
  group of super moron rats
• all students told to train rats to run mazes
• genius rat group ended up doing better than the
  moron rat group b/c of the expectations of the
  students

19
Studies of the Self-fulfilling Prophecy

• Rosenthal Jacobson
• went to a school and did IQ tests with kids
• told teachers that the test was a spurters test
• 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 teachers expectations of
  them

20
Attitudes

• What is an attitude?
• predisposition to behave in a certain way toward
  some people, group, or objects
• can be negative or positive
• Cognitive dissonance theory
• Festinger
• we we need our attitudes to be consistent with
  our behavior
• it is uncomfortable for us when they arent
• we seek ways to decrease discomfort caused by
  inconsistency

21
Dissonance-reducing Mechanisms

• Avoiding dissonant information
• we attend to information in support of our
  existing views, rather than information that
  doesnt support them
• Sweeney Gruber (1973) Watergate study
• Firming up an attitude to be consistent with an
  action
• once weve made a choice to do something,
  lingering doubts about our actions would cause
  dissonance, so we are motivated to set them aside

22
Dissonance-reducing Mechanisms

• Changing an attitude to justify an action
• when a person does something counter to their
  stated beliefs, then justify the deed by
  modifying their attitude
• Insufficient-justification effect
• change in attitude that occurs because person
  cannot justify an already completed action
  without modifying attitude
• optimizing conditions include external
  justification, free choice, when action would
  cause harm

23
Insufficient-justification effect

• Festinger Carlsmith (1959)
• gave subjects a boring task, then asked subjects
  to lie to the next subject and say the experiment
  was exciting
• paid ½ the subjects 1, other ½ 20
• then asked subjects to rate boringness of task
• 1 group rated the task as far more fun than the
  20 group
• each group needed a justification for lying
• 20 group had an external justification of money
• since 1 isnt very much money, 1 group said
  task was fun

24
Using Attitudes as Ways to Justify Injustice

• Just-world bias
• a tendency to believe that life is fair
• it would seem horrible to think that you can be a
  really good person and bad things could happen to
  you anyway
• Just-world bias leads to blaming the victim
• we explain others misfortunes as being their
  fault
• e.g., she deserved to be raped, what was she
  doing in that neighborhood anyway?

25
Summary

• Perceiving evaluating others
• when were accurate, when were not
• Attributions
• person vs. situation attributions
• the person bias
• actor-observer discrepancy
• effects of prior information
• effects of physical appearance

26
Summary

• Stereotypes
• what are they?
• how do we study them?
• Implicit stereotypes
• Self-fulfilling prophecy effects
• Attitudes
• cognitive dissonance theory
• dissonance-reducing mechanisms
• the insufficient-justification effect
• the just-world bias blaming the victim