Unit 4: Chapter 4-Perceiving Persons

Question 1

Define social perception.

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Describe how the perception of other people can be influenced by their physical appearance.

Answer 2

Height, weight, expression, facial symmetry and all kinds of factors impact our snap judgments of people.

For example, men with more “baby faced” features were less likely to be convicted of crimes but more likely to be convicted if they were accused of negligence.

Question 3

Define scripts.

Answer 3

expected behaviour of individuals in a particular setting

Question 4

What are the functions of scripts in social perception?

Answer 4

It creates expected action.

Question 5

I want a card about how our perception of mind impacts our perception of others

Question 6

Identify the six “primary” emotions expressed by the face that people can recognize, regardless of culture.

Answer 6

happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. 111

Question 7

Describe how people use non-verbal cues such as eye contact to judge others.

Answer 7

dumb question

Question 8

Which channels of communication are most likely to reveal that someone is lying? Are these channels the same as the channels that perceivers use to detect deception?

Answer 8

the body, as opposed to the face. No, people tend to look at cues that aren’t very telling. For example, people believe others to lie when they avert their eyes but that’s not scientifically supported

Question 9

Distinguish between personal and situational attributions.

Answer 9

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

Attribution to factors external to an actor, such as the task, other people, or luck pp 118

Question 10

Briefly describe Jones and Davis’s correspondent inference theory.

Answer 10

Jones and Davis’s correspondent inference theory predicts that people try to infer from an action whether the act corresponds to an enduring personal trait of the actor.

Question 11

What are the three factors in Jones and Davi’s correspondent theory that help us inference human behaviour?

Answer 11

1) Persons degree of choice (eg how much assumed freedom a person has)
2) We infer from people who take actions outside the norm or script
3) We infer when we have single-factor outcomes from actions taken (eg. staying in a job that has three major advantages does not tell us which advantage the person prefers)

Question 12

Briefly describe Kelley’s covariation theory and list the three ways people gather sitautional evidence of behaviour.

Answer 12

Humans behave like scientists and observe behaviour with the assumption that situational causes of behaviour most be present in order to effect the cause. There are 3 ways a person gathers evidence of a situational ‘main effect’: consensus distinctiveness and consistency

Question 13

Describe Kelly’s 3 factors for humans to observe situational main effects?

Answer 13

Consensus: (Like with google reviews-is the movie good?)
Distinctiveness: (If the person likes all movies we dont know if the movie is good)
Consistency: (obvious)

Question 14

What are cognitive heuristics (in general)?

Answer 14

“cognitive heuristics”— information-processing rules of thumb that enable us to think in ways that are quick and easy but that often lead to error

Question 15

Define the availability heuristic and give a personal example.

Answer 15

The tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances of it come to mind.

Question 16

The availability heuristic tends to lead people to two errors. Define the false-consensus effect and the base-rate fallacy.

Answer 16

FCE: The tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes, and behaviors. (everybody likes rap)

BRF: The finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information presented in the form of numerical base rates. (people buy lottery tickets because the power of the story of someone winning is more convincing than the data)

Question 17

Explain how the availability heuristic can give rise to the false-consensus effect and the base-rate fallacy.

Answer 17

AH: Everytime I was in a thunderstorm, I was struck by lightning, therefore it is common to be struck by lightning.
FCE: Being struck by lightning must be the experience common to others as well
BRF: I have read the data on being struck by lightning, but the stories of my own experience and of my ol’ pal ‘sparky’ ake me believe it is common to be struck by lightning.

Question 18

Define counter-factual thinking. When is counter-factual thinking likely to occur?

Answer 18

The tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not.

Research shows that we are more likely to think about what might have been, often with feelings of regret, after negative outcomes that result from actions that we take rather than from actions we fail to take

Question 19

Define the fundamental attribution error.

Answer 19

The tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the impact of situations on other people’s behavior. [It is highly pervasive]

Question 20

Summarize the two-step-process model that explains the occurrence of the fundamental attribution error.

Answer 20

: First, we identify the behavior and make a quick personal attribution, then we correct or adjust that inference to account for situational influences. At least for those raised in a Western culture, the first step is simple and automatic, like a reflex; the second requires attention, thought, and effort.

Question 21

What factors make the fundamental attribution error less likely to occur?

Answer 21

-need for self esteem boosts liklihood, cultural dispositions as well

wealrh?

Question 22

What is the “belief in a just world”? What function does this belief serve?

Answer 22

The belief that individuals get what they deserve in life, an orientation that leads people to disparage victims.

To believe otherwise is to concede that we, too, are vulnerable to the cruel twists and turns of fate. p131

Question 23

Define impression formation

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Describe the summation model and the averaging model of impression formation. Illustrate each model with an example.

Answer 24

If you are more impressed (by adding more traits) then you are intuitively following a summation model of impression formation: The more positive traits there are, the better. If you are less impressed, then you are using an averaging model: The higher the average value of all the various traits, the better.

Question 25

Describe information integration theory.

Answer 25

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

Question 26

How do characteristics of the perceiver influence impression formation? (II theory)

Answer 26

Part of the reason for differences among perceivers is that we tend to use ourselves as a standard, or frame of reference, when evaluating others. Compared with the inert couch potato, for example, the high-energy athlete is more likely to see others as less active. A perceiver’s current mood state can also influence the impressions formed of others (133) Priming

Question 27

How do characteristics of the target influence impression formation?

Answer 27

-Over the years, research has shown that people exhibit a trait negativity bias, the tendency for negative information to weigh more heavily on our impressions than positive information negativity bias innuendo effect (excluding things in an interview like saying someone is hard working but excluding their politness.) primacy effect (when we are presented the info/what order) p 138

Question 28

Define priming

Answer 28

The tendency for recently used or perceived words or ideas to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information O(I just read about Marx, so now all my political commentaries are from that lense)

Question 29

Describe implicit personality theory and explain how the assumption of an implicit personality can affect a person’s impression of other people.

Question 30

What are central traits?

Answer 30

Traits that exert a powerful influence on overall impressions. (cold vs warm is more central than polite vs blunt).

Question 31

How do central traits affect a person’s impression of other people?

Answer 31

Moral traits supercede 'warmth' traits and warmth is above less positive traits. Negative traits, especially those presented first make a harder impression.

Question 32

What is the primacy effect with respect to impression formation?

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Provide two main explanations for the primary effect.

Answer 33

There are two basic explanations. The first is that once perceivers think they have formed an accurate impression of someone, they tend to pay less attention to subsequent information. change-of-meaning hypothesis. Once people have formed an impression, they start to interpret inconsistent information in light of that impression

Question 34

Describe how people’s beliefs can create the reality they expect (for example, belief perseverance and self-fulfilling prophecy).

Answer 34

The tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited. The process by which one’s expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations (toilet paper shortage)

Question 35

What are the steps of the self fulfilling prophecy

Answer 35

First, a perceiver forms an impression of a target person, which may be based on interactions with the target or on other information. Second, the perceiver behaves in a manner that is consistent with that first impression. Third, the target person unwittingly adjusts his or her behavior to the perceiver’s actions.

Question 36

What is biased experience sampling and what is it an explanation of?

Answer 36

It is about how our negative attributions of others tend to persist. According to Denrell, this is because we tend to cut ourselves off of futher interactions with things and people we don't like, not giving them an opportunity to change our perceptions.