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
4
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
7
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)
8
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
9
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
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 child’s
misbehavior to personality, attractive child’s to
situation
judges give longer prison sentences to
unattractive people
12
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
13
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
14
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
17
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
18
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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