Lecture 4: Person Perception

Question 1

Categorisation

McGarty (1999)

Answer 1

“the process of understanding what something is by knowing what other things its equivalent to and what things it is different from”

Question 2

‘all or nothing”

problems

Answer 2

• doesn’t capture flexibility of human perception

- belongs to category but doesn’t share all associated features

Question 3

Prototypes

Answer 3

=the most representative members of a category

• drawn from stereotypes
• slower when categorising people less representative/prototypical

Question 4

Illusory correlation

Answer 4

describes belief that two variables are associated with one another when in fact there is little or no actual association (Hamilton & Gifford 1976)

Question 5

Category is heterogeneous

Answer 5

=perceived to be made up of many different sorts of people who are all similar to each other

Question 6

Outgroup homogeneity effect

Answer 6

=have more detailed/varied impression of own social category as have more experience with people within our own category

Question 7

Why do we categorise?

Answer 7

-saves time/social processing=cognitive misers
-classifies and refines perception of the world
=world more predictable/less uncertainty

Question 8

Why do we categorise?

Answer 8

-saves time/social processing=cognitive misers
-classifies and refines perception of the world
=world more predictable/less uncertainty

Question 9

Individuation

Answer 9

seeing a person as an idiosyncratic individual with unique characteristics rather than an interchangeable group member
8ability to differentiate between group members based on their individual attributes

Question 10

Fiske & Neuberg 1990

Answer 10

perception based on a continuum from categorisation through to individuation

-individuation when heuristic processing is difficult
eg oxford educated bricklayer

people begin cognitive miser mode of processing-try to fit the target person to a category
-if no good fit, individuated mode of perception, moving along continuum and invoking attribute-based approach

Question 11

Brewer 1988

Answer 11

• either heuristic (category) or systematic (individuated) approached used when forming impressions
• mode of perception change under conditions that favour/don’t favour one or the other

Question 12

Side effects of categorisation: Prejudice

Answer 12

-recall pos in-group neg outgroup (Howard & Rothbart 1980)

Question 13

Stereotype inconsistent info

Answer 13

• better remembered as attention grabbing
• requires cognitive effort
• cognitive overload encourages use of heuristics, reducing memory for inconsistent info (Srull 1981)

Question 14

Side effects of categorisation: behavioural assimilation

Answer 14

=acting in line with stereotype associated with a category

Question 15

Side effect of categorisation: stereotype threat

Answer 15

=predicament felt by people in situations where they could conform to negative stereotype associated with their own group membership (Steele, 1997)

Question 16

Side effect of categorisation: stereotype threat

Answer 16

=predicament felt by people in situations where they could conform to negative stereotype associated with their own group membership (Steele, 1997)
*may underperform

Question 17

Ways to alleviate negative effects of stereotype threat

Answer 17

• Drawing on multiple identities: whether or not stereotype threat arises may depend on which identity is salient at a particular time
• Reappraising the threatening situation: threat appraisals generate physiological responses and impair performance whereas challenge appraisals facilitate performance by inducing adaptive stress responses