Chapter 4

Question 1

A general term for the processes by which people come to understand one another.

Answer 1

Social perception

Question 2

What are the processes of social perception

Answer 2

1. Observation of persons, situations, and behavior
2. Attributions (causes)
3. Integration (form impression)
4. Confirmation

Sometimes we make snap judgements from the observation of persons, situations, and behavior, omitting step 2 and 3

Question 3

The process by which people attribute humanlike mental states to various animate and inanimate objects, including other people

Answer 3

Mind perception

Question 4

A group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of behavior.

Answer 4

Attribution Theory

Question 5

What are the two categories of causal attributions?

Answer 5

1. Personal
2. Situational

Question 6

What is the attribution theory trying to determine?

Answer 6

To understand people’s perceptions of causality, not determine the true causes of an event.

Question 7

Attribution to internal characteristics of an actor, such as ability, personality, mood, or effort

Answer 7

Personal Attribution

Question 8

What is an example of a personal attribution?

Answer 8

1. Dispositions (attitudes)
2. Personality traits
3. Mood
4. Effort

Question 9

Attribution to internal characteristics of an actor, such as the person’s attitude or belief system.

Answer 9

Dispositional attribution

Question 10

What is an example of a dispositional attribution?

Answer 10

The behavior being observed is caused by a specific attitude or belief system.

Question 11

A theory that predicts people try to infer from an action whether the act corresponds to an enduring personal trait of the actor.

What question should we be asking ourselves?

Answer 11

Jones’s Correspondent Inference Theory

Does the behavior match what we know about the personality?

Question 12

What attributions might one make about behavior based on the Jones’s Correspondent Inference Theory?

Answer 12

1. If the behavior is consistent to a personality trait, we are much more likely to explain the causes of behavior due to personal attributes
2. If the behavior does not match up with the personality trait, we are much more likely to explain the causes of behavior due to situational attributes

Question 13

How does the Jones’s Correspondence Inference Theory account for attributions?

Answer 13

People use various cues (personal, dispositional, and situational) to make attributions, such as

1. The person’s behavior in other situations
2. The person’s expressed beliefs and values
3. The social norms and expectations of the situation

Question 14

What are the main factors that help people make attribution inferences?

Answer 14

1. The degree of choice involved in the behavior
2. The expectedness of the behavior
3. The intended consequence of the behavior

Details:
1. The first factor is a person’s degree of choice. Behavior that is freely chosen is more informative about a person than behavior that is coerced by the situation
2. The second factor that leads us to make dispositional inferences is the expectedness of behavior. An action tells us more about a person when it departs from the norm than when it is typical, part of a social role, or otherwise expected under circumstances (Example: people think they know more about a student that wears a three piece suit vs blue jeans to class)
3. Third, social perceivers take into account the intended effects or consequences of someone’s behavior. Acts that produce many desirable outcomes do not reveal a person’s specific motives as clearly as acts that produce only a single desirable outcome. (Example: You will be more uncertain about why a person would stay at a job that is high-paying, enjoyable, and in an attractive locations vs why a person would stay at a job that is only high-paying.)

Question 15

What are the implications of the Jones & Harris (1967) study

Answer 15

1. Awareness of the fundamental attribution error
2. Importance of context
3. Could lead to misunderstandings or misjudgments in social interactions

Details:
1. Awareness of the fundamental attribution error: The study highlights the tendency to overemphasize dispositional explanations for others’ behavior.
2. Importance of context: The study emphasizes the importance of considering the context in which behaviors occur. People’s behavior is often influenced by situational factors, such as social norms, expectations, and constraints, and it is important to take these factors into account when making judgments about others.
3. Social Interactions: The study suggests that people may be quick to make dispositional attributions about other’s behavior, even when situational factors are present. This could lead to misunderstandings or misjudgments in social interactions, which could have negative consequences for relationships.
4. Applications in real-world settings: Legal system example, the study suggests that jurors may be inclined to make dispositional attributions about a defendant’s behavior, even when situational factors (such as coercion or self-defense) are present.

Question 16

What are the interpretations of the Jones & Harris (1967) study?

Answer 16

1. Fundamental attribution error: The study is often cited as evidence of this error, as participants tended to rate the pro-castro student as actually having pro-castro attitude, even when they were told that the student had been assigned to write the essay and had no choice in the matter. This suggests that participants were overemphasizing the student’s dispositional factors (such as their beliefs or attitudes) while underemphasizing the situational factors (such as the assignment they were given)
2. Perceptual salience: Participants were more likely to attribute the essay writer’s attitude to their dispositional factors when they were able to clearly see the writer’s behavior (i.e., writing a pro-Castro essay) and had limited information about the situation (i.e., the requirement to write the essay).
3. Culture and ideology: Some researchers have suggested that the study’s findings may be influenced by culture and ideological factors. For example, where people are seen as independent and responsible for their own behaviors, compared to collectivistic cultures, where people are seen as interdependent and influenced by social norms and expectations

Question 17

The theory that in order for something to be the cause of a behavior, it must be present when the behavior occurs and absent when it does not.

Answer 17

Kelley’s Covariation Theory

Question 18

What are the different kinds of information within the covariation principle?

Answer 18

1. consensus information
2. distinctiveness information
3. consistency information

Question 19

The type of covariation principle to see how different persons react to the same stimulus

Answer 19

Consensus information

Question 20

The type of covariation principle to see how the same person reacts to different stimuli

Answer 20

Distinctiveness information

Question 21

The type of covariation principle to see what happens to the behavior at another time when the person and the stimulus both remain the same.

Answer 21

Consistency information

Question 22

What is an example of consensus information?

Answer 22

a person walks out of the movie theater and yells “Great flick!”

You would ask yourself “What do other moviegoers think about this film?”

Question 23

What is an example of distinctiveness information?

Answer 23

a person walks out of the movie theater and yells “Great flick!”

You would ask yourself “What does this moviegoer think of other films?”

Question 24

What is an example of consistency information?

Answer 24

a person walks out of the movie theater and yells “Great flick!”

You would ask yourself “How does this moviegoer feel about this film on other occasions?

Question 25

Name the different attribution biases

Answer 25

1. Availability Heuristic
2. False-consensus Effect
3. Base-rate Fallacy
4. Counterfactual Thinking
5. Fundamental Attribution Error

Question 26

The tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances of it come to mind. Estimates are heavily influenced by events that are readily available in memory.

Answer 26

availability heuristic

Question 27

What is an example of the availability heuristic attribution bias and what are two consequences?

Answer 27

It is easier to think of more words that begin with the letter R than of words that have R as the third letter, although there are actually more words that have R as the third letter.

Consequences
1. false-sense consensus effect
2. base-rate fallacy

Question 28

The tendency for people to overestimate the extend to which others share their opinions, attributes, and behaviors.

Answer 28

False-consensus effect

Question 29

What is an example of the false-consensus effect attribution bias?

Answer 29

In a study by Joachim Krueger (2000) asked participants to indicate whether or not they had certain personality traits. Then they were asked to estimate the percentage of people in general who have these same traits

Question 30

The finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information presented in the form of numerical base rates. Instead are influence more by graphic, dramatic events which can lead to misperceptions of risk

Answer 30

base-rate fallacy attribution bias

Question 31

What is an examples of the base-rate fallacy attribution bias?

Answer 31

1. The sight of a multi-million dollar lottery winner celebrating on TV
2. A photograph of bodies being pulled from the wreckage of a plane crash.

Question 32

The tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not. The psychological impact of positive or negative events depends on the way we think about “What might have been”

Answer 32

Counterfactual thinking attribution bias

Question 33

What might one feel when imagining a better outcome than the actual result and vice versa.

Answer 33

1. If we imagine a better outcome than the actual result = disappointment, regret, and frustration.
2. If we imagine a worse outcome than the actual result = relief and satisfaction to elation

Question 34

The tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the impact of situational causes on other people’s behavior.

Answer 34

Fundamental Attribution Error

Question 35

What is an example of a fundamental attribution error?

Answer 35

A parent may be surprised to hear that their impossibly mischievous child is a perfect angel in the classroom

(Parent is underestimating how the child’s behavior is influenced by a classroom setting)

Question 36

Describe how the Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz (1977) study demonstrated the fundamental attribution error.

Answer 36

Overall, the study demonstrated the fundamental attribution error by showing that participants tended to overemphasize dispositional factors (the questioner’s intelligence) and underemphasize situational factors (the difficulty of the questions) when explaining the questioner’s success.

Question 37

In the Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz (1977) study, what were the participants asked to do?

Answer 37

Participants were asked to watch a game show and then make judgments about the intelligence of the contestants and the questioners. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three roles: a contestant, a questioner, or an observer.

During the game show, the questioner was given the opportunity to ask the contestant a series of difficult questions, and the contestant was given the opportunity to either answer the questions or pass them on to the observer. Participants in the observer role watched the game show and were not actively involved in the game.

After the game show, participants were asked to rate the intelligence of the questioner and the contestant. They were also asked to explain why the questioner did better than the contestant.

Question 38

Gilbert & Malone (1995): Two-step process for attributions

Answer 38

The problem
Stems in part from how we make attributions. Attribution theorists used to assume that people survey all the evidence and then decide on whether to make a personal or a situational attribution. Instead, it appears that social perception is a two-step process:

1. We identify the behavior and make a quick personal attribution
2. Then we correct or adjust that inference to account for situational influences.

Question 39

The process of integrating information about a person to form a coherent impression.

Answer 39

Impression formation

Question 40

The theory that impressions are based on (1) perceiver dispositions and (2) a weighted average of a target person’s traits.

Answer 40

Information Integration Theory

Question 41

The tendency for recently used or perceived words or ideas to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information

Answer 41

Priming

Question 42

What are the methods of the Higgins, Rholes, & Jones (1977) study?

Answer 42

The study used a between-subjects (exposed to one condition) design to investigate the effects of self-discrepancies on emotional experience. Participants were assigned to one of three conditions based on their self-concepts, listened to an audio recording designed to induce sadness or anger, and then rated their emotional experience.

Details:
The study investigated the effects of self-discrepancies on emotional experience. It involved a between-subjects design, where participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: actual-ought, actual-ideal, or actual-no ought/ideal

Participants were given a questionnaire to assess their self-concepts. The questionnaire included items such as “I am…” followed by a list of adjectives, and participants were asked to rate how accurately each adjective described them.

Participants then listened to an audio recording of a description of a person who had just been in a car accident. The description was designed to induce either sadness or anger.

After listening to the recording, participants were asked to rate their emotional experience. They were asked to rate their experience level of sadness or anger on a scale from 0-8.

Question 43

What are the findings of the Higgins, Rholes, & Jones (1977) study?

Answer 43

Overall, the study found that self-discrepancies can affect emotional experience in different ways, depending on the type of self-discrepancy, the type of emotion induced, and the direction of the emotional experience. The study is important for demonstrating the role of self-concept in emotional experience.

Details:
1. Self-discrepancies and emotional experience: Participants in the actual-ought and actual-ideal conditions, who experience self-discrepancies between their actual self-concepts and their “ought” or “ideal” self-concepts, respectively, reported more intense emotions than those in the actual-no ought/ideal condition, who did not experience self-discrepancies. This effects was stronger for sadness than for anger.
2. Emotional induction: The study also found that the type of emotion induced (sadness or anger) affected the relationship between self-discrepancies and emotional experience. Self-discrepancies had a stronger effect on emotional experience when sadness was induced, compared to when anger was induced
3. Types of self-discrepancy: The study also found that the type of self-discrepancy (actual-ought or actual-idea) affected the direction of the emotional experience. Self-discrepancies in the “ought” self-concept led to feelings of anxiety and guilt, while self-discrepancies in the “ideal” self-concept led to feelings of disappointment and frustration.

Question 44

The tendency for negative information to carry more weight than positive information when forming impressions of others. In other words, people tend to place greater emphasis on negative traits or behaviors when evaluating others, even when the positive traits or behaviors are equally present or more prominent.

Answer 44

Trait negativity bias

Question 45

According to trait negativity bias, if someone is described as both intelligent and dishonest, which trait would have a greater impact on the overall impression of the person?

Answer 45

The trait dishonesty will have a more significant impact on the overall impression of that person

Question 46

The tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later.

Answer 46

Primacy effect

Question 47

A concept that refers to the idea that stereotypes can change over time as a results of changes in the social and cultural context. Suggesting that the meanings of stereotypes can shift as the cultural and social norms that they are based on change.

Answer 47

Change-of-meaning hypothesis

Question 48

How does primacy effect influence impression formation?

Answer 48

1. Interpretation: The first information received can influence the interpretation of subsequent information, leading to a confirmation bias. People tend to interpret later information in light of the initial information, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy
2. Memory: The first information received is more likely to be remembered and recalled than later information, leading to a greater impact on overall impressions.
3. Attention: The first information received captures more attention and cognitive resources, making it more salient and influential in impression formation.

Question 49

How does change-of-meaning hypothesis influence impression formation?

Answer 49

The hypothesis has an impact on impression formation because it suggests that stereotypes are dynamic and subject to modification. This means that impressions formed based on stereotypes can also change over time as the cultural and social norms they are based on change. It highlights the need to challenge and reevaluate stereotypes in order to promote greater understanding and acceptance of diverse groups, and to form more accurate and fair impression of others.

Example:
If someone forms an impression of an individual based on a stereotype that is currently accepted by society, but later the cultural and social norms change such that the stereotype is no longer accepted or is viewed as offensive, then the impression of that individual may also change. The meaning of the stereotype has shifted, and so the impression formed based on that stereotype will also shift.

Question 50

The tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs.

Answer 50

Confirmation Bias

Question 51

The tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited

Answer 51

Belief perseverance

Question 52

What is a good example of belief perseverance?

Answer 52

Example: Vaccinations & Autism

1988 article: Wakefield et al., published a journal article linking vaccines to diagnoses of autism

2010 - article is retracted because research has failed to support any causal link

Despite article being retracted, people still believe that vaccines cause autism

Question 53

The process by which one’s expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations.

Answer 53

self-fulfilling prophecy

Question 54

What is a good example of self-fulfilling prophecy?

Answer 54

In the study by Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968), teachers were told that certain students in their class had been identified as “spurters,” or students who were expected to have a significant growth in intellectual capacity over the course of the year.

In reality, the “spurters” were randomly selected students, and there was no actual evidence that they were more likely to experience intellectual growth than any other students. However, the teachers’ expectations influenced their behavior towards the “spurters,” such as giving them more positive feedback, more opportunities to respond in class, and more time to work on assignments.

At the end of the year, the researchers found that the “spurters” had indeed shown greater intellectual growth than the other students in the class. The researchers attributed this difference to the teachers’ expectations and behaviors towards the “spurters.”

Overall, the study by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) demonstrates the self-fulfilling prophecy, as the teachers’ expectations about the “spurters” influenced their behavior towards those students, which in turn influenced the students’ actual intellectual growth. The study provides evidence for the powerful role of expectations and beliefs in shaping social interactions and outcomes.

Question 55

A cognition bias that involves seeking out and interpreting information in a way that confirms pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses, while ignoring or discounting information that does not fit with those beliefs or hypotheses. This bias can lead to inaccurate or distorted judgments and can contribute to the maintenance of stereotypes and other biased beliefs.

Answer 55

Confirmatory Hypothesis Testing

Question 56

What is a good example of confirmatory hypothesis testing?

Answer 56

The study by Snyder and Swann (1978) demonstrates the phenomenon of confirmatory hypothesis testing. In the study, participants were given a piece of information (the interviewee’s supposed personality type), and then they formed a hypothesis or expectation about the interviewee’s future job performance based on that information. The participants then sought out information that confirmed their hypothesis and ignored or discounted information that did not fit with their initial expectation.

Specifically, the participants who were told that the interviewee was an extrovert predicted better job performance and rated the interviewee more positively than those who were told that the interviewee was an introvert. This suggests that the participants selectively attended to and interpreted information in a way that was consistent with their initial hypothesis or expectation, while ignoring or discounting information that contradicted it.

Furthermore, the actual job performance of the interviewee was found to be consistent with the participants’ initial expectations. This suggests that the participants’ confirmatory hypothesis testing influenced their subsequent behavior and evaluations, which in turn influenced the interviewee’s actual job performance.

Overall, the study by Snyder and Swann (1978) demonstrates both the self-fulfilling prophecy and confirmatory hypothesis testing, as the participants’ initial expectations about the interviewee’s personality influenced their subsequent behavior and evaluations, which in turn influenced the interviewee’s actual job performance, and the participants selectively attended to and interpreted information in a way that was consistent with their initial hypothesis or expectation.