Chapter 3 (Percieving individuals)

Question 1

What is a mental representation

Answer 1

Information and knowledge an individual has stored in memory

impressions and stereotypes are also this

Question 2

What are raw materials for impressions and its 5 aspects

Answer 2

raw material are the things that we believe reflect the personality of the person

1. Physical appearance (we like attractiveness, baby face)
2. Body language (we like people that have a lot)
3. Environment (the spaces they occupy and choose)
4. Behaviour (most useful one)
5. Familiarity (we like people we see more)

Question 3

What is special about body language impression and lie deception

Answer 3

• we like people with a lot of body language
• impressions about personality are quite accurate
• lie detection is very bad normally, but can be improved if people focus on better cues

Question 4

What is mere exposure

Answer 4

when just the exposure to a stimulus (without a reward) increases liking of it
this is why familiarity plays a role in impressions

Question 5

What is salience

Answer 5

how much a cue of impression grabs out attention (how much it stands out)

Question 6

In what 3 ways can knowledge (about a person) be more accessible

Answer 6

When knowledge is more accessible, it has much more influence on the interpretation

1. Concurrent activation (together with other)
2. Recent activation (if it has been activated not long ago)
3. Frequent activation (it has been activated a lot)

Question 7

What is priming

what does it mean its subliminal

Answer 7

priming means a mental representation is more accessable because it has been recently activated
–> it can stay as long as 24 hours
subliminal means its unconsciously acitvated but still effective

Question 8

What are correspondent inferences

Answer 8

When we assess others behaviour to their personality

Question 9

What three conditions have to be true for a correspondent inference to be justified

Answer 9

1. The behaviour is actively chosen
2. The behaviour is unique in its effect
3. the behaviour is unexpected

Question 10

What is the correspondence bias and how can it be reduced

Answer 10

When we assess someones personality because of his or her behaviour, even tho there could be other explanations
it can be reduced by
- paying attention to circumstances
- culture

Question 11

What is superficial processing in impressions

Answer 11

making an impression of someone though accessible information with little effort
here a single attribute is used
very often this is guided by a past impression of a person

Question 12

What is systematic processing in impressions

Answer 12

making an effortful impression with a lot of information
here many attributes are integrated
this requires motivation and ability to process

Question 13

What is causal attribution when it comes to impressions

Answer 13

its the judgment about the cause of a behaviour or event

this is central to our perception of other people

Question 14

What 3 things does it depend on what cause we assess to a behaviour

Answer 14

1. Salience of CAuse
2. Accessability
3. Other information about causal factors

Question 15

What is discounting in impressions

Answer 15

changing the belief of cause for a behaviour because there is a better one
this correction is hard and requires effort

Question 16

What are implicit personality theories

Answer 16

we expect that certain traits go together (generous and nice)
here we also make a lot of causal links
this is why people infer many positive qualities to a person if the first is good

Question 17

do we give more weight to negative or positive information when forming impressions

Answer 17

negative

Question 18

What are the three motivations in forming impressions

Answer 18

1. motive for accuracy
2. motive for connectedness/valuing me and mine (we want good impressions for us and people we are connected with)
3. motive to undo biases

Question 19

What does it mean that we defend impressions

Answer 19

impressions resist change (conservatism)
they can thereby lead even to confirmation biases
this can happen, even if the first impression is proven wrong

Question 20

What is the primacy effect in impressions

Answer 20

the pattern when early information is more impactful than later information

Question 21

What is the perseverance bias

Answer 21

when information keeps having an effect, even if the information is proven as wrong

Question 22

What is the self fulfilling prophecy in forming impressions and what are its limits

Answer 22

when the expectations affect´the person to act in that way, which means that impressions turn into realtiy
this is not as strong when the percieved person knows about the impressions of others on him or the percieved person has strong views about him or herself

Question 23

What happenes to us and our impression of someone when he or she does something really differnet

Answer 23

this challenges our understanding and our social relationship with the person
we engage in more extensive processing, which means we thing more about this (and other) unexpected behaviour
even this may not even change our impression of the person, and might just explain the behaviour away

Question 24

what kinds of people we know have the most complex impressions

Answer 24

• people we spend a lot of time with
• people we have a lot of causal links for
• people we know in many different contexts (at home/at work/with friends)

Question 25

explain the difference in culture when it comes to impressions

Answer 25

- collectivists assess behaviour more to the situation, individualists think it is more because of the personality collectivists think are less resistant when it comes to changing the impression of a person