First Impressions
Key characteristics when forming first impressions
Elderly person:
Low competence + High warmth
-> Feel protective of them
Homeless person
Low competence + low trustworthiness
-> Feel distain (robbing them of their humanity)
Charming Successful CEO
High competence + High trustworthiness
-> We admire them
High competance + low warmth = we fear them
How accurate are our first impressions?
Impressions from faces
- Inferred emotional expression
- Not very accurate
Impressions from other sources
- Not very accurate
- Somewhat accurate at judgments of what they are generally like (i.e. Extraversion)
Primacy Effect
The first pieces of information we encounter being remembered more strongly
Factors that limit accuracy in impression formation
Heuristics
Mental shortcut to get impression of someone
Heuristics - Transference
Applying the schema of someone you already know to understand someone new
Heuristics - False Consensus
Assuming everyone is the same as us, especially people we know and like
Impression Management
Self promotion
- being seen as competent
Ingratiation
- being seen as likeable
Exemplification
- being seen as dedicated
Intimidation
- being seen as dominant
Supplication
- being seen as needy
Confirmation Bias
Tendency to seek out and prefer info that supports our preexisting beliefs
Attributions
Causal explanations we assign to the causes of an event, action, or outcome (Hieder, 1952)
Attribution Theory
When explaining others behaviour, we tend to attribute the behaviour to internal or external factors
Dispositions/Internal factors
traits, values, attitudes, beliefs, intentions, skills
Situations/External factors
Events, weather, aspects of a context, circumstances, accidents, chance, other ppl’s actions
Self Serving Bias
Tendency to explain our success with internal factors and to explain our failures with external factors
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)
When explaining the behaviours of others, we tend to overestimate internal factors and underestimate external factors
-> Can be overridden with cognitive effort
-> Has cultural variation
Ex. You overhear passenger insisting to be moved from an aisle to window seat
Individualistic society (USA, Canada, Netherlands, Australia)
Collectivistic society (China, Japan, LA, Eastern Europe)
Stereotypes
Mental beliefs/schemas/associations we have about groups of people
-> Ex. Generalization
Automatic associations: not judgments, can be positive or negative
Where do Stereotypes come from?
Stereotypes - causes for inaccuracy
Prejudice
Discrimination
Negative behaviours directed against people because of their
group membership; differential treatment
-> Often steming from prejudice attitudes
Social Categorization
Humans naturally categorize the world into different social groups on a shared characteristic(s) or attributes
- Race, gender, age, height
- Sports teams
- Shared beliefs
- Personal preferences/hobbies