I. Intro to social psychology
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Transcript I. Intro to social psychology
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
analogy: bias/ perceptual illusion; gives cue to
normal processing
1
Attributions from behavior
Attribution
a claim about the cause of
someone’s behavior
Heider
Is behavior due to unique personal trait
or is it a normal human behavior given the
situation?
2
Person vs. Situation
Attributions
Kelley’s 3 questions
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?
3
Kelley’s Attributional Logic
(1) Does Susan
regularly get
angry in traffic
jams?
NO
No personality
or situational
attribution
YES
(2) Do many
other people
get angry in
traffic jams?
YES
Situational
attribution:
traffic jams
make people
mad
NO
(3) Does Susan
get angry in
many other
situations?
YES
NO
Personality
attribution,
general
Personality
attribution,
particular
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Person bias in attributions
People give too much weight to personality
and not enough to situational variables
Conditions promoting person bias
task has goal of assessment of personality
observer is cognitively loaded (busy with other task)
Conditions promoting a situation bias
when goal is to judge the situation
5
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
6
Two-stage Model of
Attributions
Book example: Joe laughs hysterically while watching a TV
comedy. What can we conclude?
Observer’s goal
Automatic
Attribution
Controlled
Attribution
What kind of
person is Joe?
Person: Joe
laughs
easily
Revision:
could be a
funny show
How funny is the
TV comedy?
Situation:
the TV show
is funny
Revision:
maybe Joe
laughs easily
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Cross-cultural differences
0.70
United States
Attributions to internal
disposition
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
0.60
0.50
0.40
0.30
India
0.20
0
8
11
15
Adult
Age (years)
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Does the trait describe: 1. You?
2. A close friend? 3. A professor
Outgoing
calm
agreeable
shrewd
self-disciplined
tidy
Y
N
YES
NO
D
Depends on
situation
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Actor-Observer Discrepancy
Others’ behavior: Person bias
Own behavior: Situation bias
Why?
hypothesis 1: Knowledge across situations
hypothesis 2: visual orientation
10
Prior Information Effects
Mental representations of people
(schemas) can effect our
interpretation of them
Kelley’s study
guest speaker
students: half got 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
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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 child’s
misbehavior to personality, attractive child’s to
situation
judges give longer prison sentences to
unattractive people
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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
today’s society is sensitized to harmful effects
of stereotyping
need different ways of studying
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Studying stereotypes
3 levels of stereotypes
public
what we say to others about a group
private
what we consciously think about a group, but
don’t say to others
implicit
unconscious mental associations guiding our
judgments and actions without our conscious
awareness
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Implicit Stereotypes
Use of priming: subject doesn’t know
stereotype is being activated, can’t work
to suppress it
Bargh study
word lists, some include e.g. “gray,” “Bingo,” “Florida”
observed subjects walking to elevators
studies on racial stereoptypes
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Implicit Stereotypes
Devine’s automaticity theory
racial stereotypes are so prevalent in our
culture that we all hold them
stereotypes are automatically activated
we have to actively resist them if we don’t
wish to act in a prejudiced way.
Overcoming prejudice is possible, but takes
work
16
Self-fulfilling Prophecies
Beliefs & expectations create reality
by influencing our behavior & others’
Pygmalion effect (liberal arts pop quiz:
Who was Pygmalion?)
person A believes that person B has a
particular characteristic
person B may begin to behave in
accordance with that characteristic
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Studies of the Self-fulfilling
Prophecy
Rosenthal & Fode
gave 2 groups of students randomly selected
rats
told Group 1 they had “super genius” rats
told Group 2 they had “super moron” rats
all students told to train rats to run mazes
“genius” rat group ended up doing better than
the “moron” rat group
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Studies of the Self-fulfilling
Prophecy
Rosenthal & Jacobson
went to a school and did IQ tests with kids
told teachers 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
reason: teacher’s expectations of them
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