Unit 4: Perceiving Persons

Question 1

Define social perception.

Answer 1

Social perception refers to the processes by which people come to understand each other. The elements of social perception are people, situations, and behaviour.

Question 2

Describe how the perception of other people can be influenced by their physical appearance.

Answer 2

1. first impressions of others
2. Judgments about character
3. Inferences about what attitudes a person holds
4. Judgments about trustworthiness

Question 3

Define scripts.

Answer 3

Social scripts are the preset notions people have about certain types of situations that allows them to anticipate the goals, behaviours, and outcomes that are likely to occur in that certain setting. Scripts develop based on past experiences with more experience leading to more detailed scripts.

Question 4

What are the functions of scripts in social perception?

Answer 4

1. people see what they expect to see in a particular situation based on their existing script
2. people use what they know about social situations from scripts to explain the causes of other people’s behaviour

Question 5

Identify the six “primary” emotions expressed by the face, regardless of culture.

Answer 5

1. Happiness
2. Fear
3. Sadness
4. Anger
5. Surprise
6. Disgust.

Question 6

Define body language.

Answer 6

Body language refers to the ways that people stand, sit, walk, and express themselves with different gestures. Body language can include conversational hand gestures, such as waving goodbye, to communicate with other people. It can also include more subtle gestures like walking style.

Question 7

Describe how people use eye contact to judge others.

Answer 7

In many cultures, people who stare are seen as tense, angry and unfriendly. In contrast, someone who avoids eye contact is seen as evasive, cold, fearful, shy, or indifferent. Interpretation of eye contact is also sometimes influenced by the status of the relationship between thei individuals.

Question 8

Describe how people use touch to judge others.

Answer 8

Physical touch can be used to express things like friendship, nurturance, and sexual interest. People also make impressions based on touch, e.g. handshakes. People may form first impressions based on qualities of a handshake like whether they are firm, limp, strong, weak, brief, lingering, clammy, etc.

Question 9

Which channels of communication are most likely to reveal that someone is lying?

Answer 9

The channel of communication most likely to reveal that someone is lying is the voice.

People falsely assume that people who are lying will feel stress and that it will show in their face and body language. In reality, people are good at controlling their facial expressions and body language.

Question 10

What are attribution theories?

Answer 10

Attribution theories are theories that describe how people explain the causes of behaviour. The goal of these theories is to understand people’s perceptions of causality rather than the true cause. Attribution theories typically fall into one of two categories: personal or situational.

Question 11

What are personal attributions?

Answer 11

Personal attributions are causes of behaviour related to the internal characteristics of the actor such as ability, personality, mood, or effort.

Question 12

What are situational attributions?

Answer 12

Situational attributions are causes of behaviour related to factors that are external to the actor such as the task, other people, or luck.

Question 13

Briefly describe Jones’s correspondent inference theory.

Answer 13

People try to infer from an action whether the act itself corresponds to an enduring personal trait of the actor.

Three factors are considered when making these inferences:

1. the actor’s degree of choice matters such that coerced behaviour is believed to be less informative about a person than a behaviour that is freely chosen.
2. how expected a behaviour is impacts inferences such that unexpected behaviour tells more about a person that does behaviour that adheres to norms, social roles, and circumstances.
3. people use the intended effects or consequences of a behaviour to make inferences about a person

Question 14

Briefly describe Kelley’s covariation theory.

Answer 14

Kelley’s covariation theory says that people attribute behaviour to factors that are present when a behaviour occurs and absent when the behaviour does not occur. Three types of covariation information are helpful to make an attribution: consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency. People make personal attributions when there is high consistency, low consensus, and low distinctiveness. People make stimulus attributions (something about the stimulus caused the behaviour) when there is high consensus, high distinctiveness, and high consistency. When behaviours are low in consistency attribution is assigned to passing circumstances.

Question 15

What are cognitive heuristics (in general)?

Answer 15

Cognitive heuristics are information-processing rules of thumb that allow people to think in ways that are quick and easy. A downside of cognitive heuristics is that they frequently lead to error. Cognitive heuristics are often used to make attributions and other types of social judgments.

Question 16

Define the availability heuristic.

Answer 16

The availability heuristic is the tendency to estimate the likelihood of an event occurring based on how easily instances of it come to mind.

Question 17

Define the false-consensus effect.

Answer 17

The false-consensus effect is the tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes, and behaviours.

Question 18

Define the base-rate fallacy.

Answer 18

The base-rate fallacy describes the finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information presented in the form of numerical base rates.

Question 19

Explain how the availability heuristic can give rise to the false-consensus effect.

Answer 19

People tend to associate with other people who are similar to themselves thus, they are more likely to notice and remember instances of behaviour that is similar to their own. This reinforces the belief that others share their views.

Question 20

Explain how the availability heuristic can give rise to the base-rate fallacy.

Answer 20

Social perceptions are more influenced by a vivid story than by statistical facts, even if the story is about an outlier.

Question 21

Define counterfactual thinking.

Answer 21

Counterfactual thinking describes the tendency for people to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not happen.

Question 22

When is counterfactual thinking likely to occur?

Answer 22

1. After negative outcomes resulting from actions taken instead of actions that were not taken
2. When people are on the verge of a better or worse outcome or cut-off point, e.g. getting second place instead of first place

Question 23

Define the fundamental attribution error.

Answer 23

Fundamental attribution error is the tendency for people to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the role of situations on other people’s behaviour.

Question 24

Summarize the two-step process model that explains the occurrence of the fundamental attribution error.

Answer 24

Step 1: The observer identifying the behaviour of the actor and making a quick personal attribution. This step is simple and automatic.

Step 2: The observer corrects or adjusts their initial inference to account for situational influences. This step requires attention, thought, and effort.

Question 25

What factors make the fundamental attribution error less likely to occur?

Answer 25

The fundamental attribution error is less likely to occur when the observer is paying full attention as they observe the target person compared to when they are cognitively busy or distracted. Since the second step in the process requires conscious thought, it has been proposed that people make more errors in this step when their attention is divided, when attribution is made hastily, or when their are unmotivated.

Question 26

Define the actor-observer effect.

Answer 26

The actor-observer effect is the tendency for people to attribute their own behaviour to situational causes and the behaviour of other people to personal factors.

Question 27

What is the “belief in a just world”?

Answer 27

The belief in a just world is the belief that people get what they deserve in life.

Question 28

What functions does the “belief in a just world” serve?

Answer 28

1. Buffering against stress and helping victims cope.

2. People want to believe that hard work will lead them to achieve their long-term goals.

Question 29

Describe the summation model of impression formation.

Answer 29

The summation model of impression formation says that the more positive traits there are, the better.

Question 30

Describe the averaging model of impression formation.

Answer 30

The averaging model of impression formation says that the higher the average value of all the various traits, the better.

Question 31

Describe information integration theory.

Answer 31

Information integration theory proposes that impressions are based on perceiver dispositions and a weighted average of a target person’s traits.

Question 32

How do characteristics of the perceiver influence impression formation?

Answer 32

1. Different people are more likely to notice and remember certain traits more than others. Since people tend to use themselves as a frame of reference, perceivers tend to evaluate others against their own skills and traits.
2. A perceiver’s current mood influences the impressions they form of others with people in happier moods tending toward more favourable impressions and less critical attributions.

Question 33

How do characteristics of the target influence impression formation?

Answer 33

The valence of socially desirable and undesirable traits affect final impressions. Perceivers have a tendency for negative information about a target to weigh more heavily than positive information.

Question 34

Describe the implicit personality theory, and explain how it affects a person’s impression of other people.

Answer 34

Implicit personality theory describes the network of assumptions people make about the relationships among traits and behaviours. When the perceiver knows that an individual has one trait, this information leads them to infer that the individual also possesses other traits as well.

Question 35

What are central traits?

Answer 35

Central traits are traits that exert a powerful influence on final impressions because they imply the presence of certain other traits.

Question 36

What is the primacy effect with respect to impression formation?

Answer 36

The primacy effect is the tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later. In respect to impression formation, traits discovered first may have greater impact on impression formation than those discovered later.

Question 37

What are the two main explanations for the primacy effect?

Answer 37

1. Perceivers think they have an accurate impression of an actor, they do not pay as much attention to new information about the actor.
2. The change-of-meaning hypothesis which states that once perceivers have formed an impression, they interpret inconsistent information in a way that can be integrated into their existing impression.

Question 38

Describe how people’s beliefs can create the reality they expect.

Answer 38

People have a tendency to interpret, seek, and create evidence in ways that support their expectations and initial impressions.

Question 39

Define confirmation bias.

Answer 39

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verified existing beliefs.

Question 40

Define belief perseverance.

Answer 40

Belief perseverance is the tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited.

Question 41

Define confirmatory hypothesis testing.

Answer 41

Confirmatory hypothesis testing refers to the tendency that people have to seek evidence that confirms expectations. People are less biased in their search for information under the following conditions: they are not certain of their beliefs; they are concerned about the accuracy of their impressions; they are allowed to prepare their own interviews; and/or when the available non confirmatory questions are better than the confirmatory questions.

Question 42

Define biased experience sampling.

Answer 42

Biased experience sampling refers to the tendency people have to avoid people we do not initially like. This has the effect of cutting us off from new information and limiting the opportunity to change your mind based on new evidence.

Question 43

Define the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Answer 43

The self-fulfilling prophecy describes the process by which one’s expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations. It is a three-step process: 1) a perceiver forms an impression of the target person, 2) the perceiver behaves in a way that is consistent with their impression, and 3) the target unwittingly adjusts their behaviour to the perceiver’s actions with the result of confirming the perceiver’s first impression.

Question 44

Summarize of the process of social perception.

Answer 44

The process begins with the observation of persons, situations, and behaviours (by a perceiver). Sometimes we make snap judgments from these cues and quickly form impressions. At other times, we form impressions only after making attributions and integrating these attributions. Either way, our impressions are subject to confirmation biases and the risk of a self-fulfilling prophecy.