Chapter 16 Flashcards
(35 cards)
What is person perception?
the process of forming impression of others
What is social psychology?
branch of psychology concerned with the way individuals’ thoughts, emotions and behaviour are influenced by others.
What is the effect of physical appearance in person perception?
- people tend to attribute desirable characteristics (sociable, friendly, etc) to people who are attractive.
- people with baby faces are usually perceived as honest
What is cognitive schemas (social schemas).
- organized clusters of ideas about categories of social events and people.
- eg. the frat rat, the wimp etc.
What is stereotyping?
- Expecting someone to have certain characteristics just because they belong to a specific group.
- eg. assuming someone is smart because they are asian
What is stereotyping usually based on?
- based on sex, age, ethnic group, occupation
What is prejudice and discrimination?
- having a negative attitude toward someone because they are from a specific group.
- acting on that attitude.
What causes transmission of prejudice
- observational learning and operant conditioning
how does subjectivity influence person perception?
- stereotypes and other schemas can lead people to see what they expect to see and overestimate how they see it (illusion correlation)
What do evolutionary theorists say about person perception?
- that our biases were influenced by our ancestors
- eg. the effects of physical appearance = due to reproduction potential in women and accumulation of material resources in men
- eg. cognitive schemas = due to the need to distinguish friends (ingroup) from foe (out group)
what influences subjectivity in person perception?
- spotlight effect = in which, you tend to think that the social spotlight is shining bright on you more than it actually is (eg. leaving class early and thinking everyone is watching you)
- illusion of asymmetric insight = when you think you know people better than they know themselves or when you think you know someone else more than they know you.
What are attributions?
the inferences people make about the causes of events, other’s behaviours and own behaviour
Compare internal and external attributions.
Internal = relating the cause to personal dispositions like feelings, abilities, traits
external = relating the cause to external constraints or situational demands
Who is Fitz Heider?
first person to describe how people make attributions.
who created the covariation model?
Harold Kelly
What is the covariation model?
- it states that people often make inferences to explain why other people and ourselves behave in a certain way
What does the fundamental attribution error implies?
- that people are most likely to make internal attributions towards other people and external attributions to themselves.
what is a defensive attribution?
- the tendency to blame the victim for their misfortune so that one may feel less likely to be victimized in a similar way.
eg. when your friend gets mugged. you blame them for what happened (due to their carelessness or stupidity) to avoid thinking that the cause of their misfortunate can happen to you as well.
What is self serving bias?
- attributing positive outcomes to personal factors (internal) and attributing negative outcomes to external factors (external)
eg. if you win a competition it’s because of your own ability but if you loose, you blame it on the judge’s unfair scoring.
In terms of cultural influences, differentiate individualism and collectivism. Which countries practice what?
- individualism = prioritizing personal goals instead of the group’s goal and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes instead of group membership
eg. america and canada are all for independence, self-esteem, self-reliance - collectivism = prioritizing group goals instead of personal goals and defining one’s identity in terms of the groups they belong to (family, country, social class)
eg. Asian counties = more on obedience, and loyalty and reliability
What does Gilbert have to say about the nature of attribution
- that it favours fundamental attribution error
- Gilbert implies that when one attributes a behaviour, they automatically attribute it to internal causes. AND they MAY possibly spend more time to attribute the behaviour to external causes (usually tougher). Explains why, people tend to do attribute other people’s behaviour internally rather than externally.
According to Horsfede’s rankings of national culture’s individualism, where does Canada stand?
Fourth from US
What does interpersonal attraction mean?
- refers to positive feelings towards another (liking, friendship, admiring, lust)
What are the key factors in attraction?
- physical appearance
- matching hypothesis
- similarity
- reciprocity
- romantic ideals
