Perceiving & evaluating other people

1. Perceiving & evaluating other people • Why do we evaluate others? • all of us are naïve psychologists • Are we accurate? • often • however, our judgments can suffer from a number of biases • when not using all our resources • when we have limited information • when we have hidden motives/goals • e.g., our self-esteem is threatened

2. Social Comparison • Downward social comparison • Compare ourselves to others who are not as good (i.e. could be worse!) • Upward social comparison • Comparing ourselves to others who are doing better (gives us hope/creates optimism)

3. Self-fulfilling Prophecies • When our beliefs and expectations create reality • Beliefs & expectations influence our behavior & others’ • Pygmalion effect • person A believes that person B has a particular characteristic • person B may begin to behave in accordance with that characteristic

4. Studies of the Self-fulfilling Prophecy • Rosenthal & Fode • tested whether labeling would affect outcome • divided students into 2 groups and gave them randomly selected rats • 1 group was told they had a group of “super genius” rats and the other was told they had a group of “super moron” rats • all students told to train rats to run mazes • “genius” rat group ended up doing better than the “moron” rat group b/c of the expectations of the students

5. Attributions from behavior • Attribution • a claim about the cause of someone’s behavior • seeking a reason for the occurrence of events/behaviors • Heider • early researcher • we intuitively attribute others’ actions to personality characteristics

6. Person vs. Situation Attributions • Have to decide whether behavior is due to something about personality, or whether anyone would do same thing in that situation • Kelley’s 3 questions in making an attribution • does this person regularly behave this way in this situation? [distictiveness] • do others regularly behave this way in this situation? [consensus] • does this person behave this way in many other situations? [consistency] • Example: Susan is angry while driving in a traffic jam

7. (1) Does Susan regularly get angry in traffic jams? (2) Do many other people get angry in traffic jams? (3) Does Susan get angry in many other situations? YES NO YES NO NO YES No personality or situational attribution Situational attribution: traffic jams make people mad Personality attribution, general Personality attribution, particular Kelley’s Attributional Logic

8. Kelley – in summary • When are we likely to make internal attributions? • Low consensus • High consistency • Low distinctiveness (see example with “boss insulting customer” on p. 683)

9. Person bias in attributions • People give too much weight to personality and not enough to situational variables • Known as person bias • a.k.a. fundamental attribution error • Conditions promoting person bias • when task has goal of assessment of personality • when person is cognitively loaded • Conditions promoting a situation bias • when goal is to judge the situation

10. Two-stage Model of Attributions • First stage is rapid & automatic • bias according to goal (person/situation) • Second stage is slower & controlled • won’t occur if cognitively loaded • we correct our automatic attribution

11. Automatic Attribution Controlled Attribution Observer’s goal Revision: could be a funny show Person: Joe laughs easily What kind of person is Joe? Situation: the TV show is funny Revision: maybe Joe laughs easily How funny is the TV comedy? Two-stage Model of Attributions Book example: Joe laughs hysterically while watching a TV comedy. What can we conclude?

12. 0.70 0.60 0.50 0.40 0.30 0.20 0 United States India 8 11 15 Adult Cross-cultural differences • Western culture • people are in charge of own destinies • more attributions to personality • Some Eastern cultures • fate in charge of destiny • more attributions to situation Attributions to internal disposition Age (years)

13. Actor-Observer Bias • Attribute personality causes of behavior when evaluating someone else’s behavior • Attribute situational when evaluating our own behavior • Why? • hypothesis 1: • we know our behavior changes from situation to situation, but we don’t know this about others • hypothesis 2: • when we see others perform an action, we concentrate on actor, not situation -- when we perform an action, we see environment, not person

14. Prior Information Effects • Mental representations of people (schemas) can effect our interpretation of them • Kelley’s study • students had a guest speaker • before the speaker came, half got a written bio saying speaker was “very warm”, half got bio saying speaker was “rather cold” • “very warm” group rated guest more positively than “rather cold” group

15. Effects of Personal Appearance • The attractiveness bias • physically attractive people are rated higher on intelligence, competence, sociability, morality • studies • teachers rate attractive children as smarter, and higher achieving • adults attribute cause of unattractive child’s misbehavior to personality, attractive child’s to situation • judges give longer prison sentences to unattractive people

16. Effects of Personal Appearance • The baby-face bias • people with rounder heads, large eyes, small jawbones, etc. rated as more naïve, honest, helpless, kind, and warm than mature-faced • generalize to animals, women, babies

17. Attitudes • What is an attitude? • predisposition to behave in a certain way toward some people, group, or objects • can be negative or positive • Cognitive dissonance theory • Festinger • we we need our attitudes to be consistent with our behavior • it is uncomfortable for us when they aren’t • we seek ways to decrease discomfort caused by inconsistency

18. Dissonance-reducing Mechanisms • Avoiding dissonant information • we attend to information in support of our existing views, rather than information that doesn’t support them • Firming up an attitude to be consistent with an action • once we’ve made a choice to do something, lingering doubts about our actions would cause dissonance, so we are motivated to set them aside

19. Dissonance-reducing Mechanisms • Changing an attitude to justify an action • when a person does something counter to their stated beliefs, then justify the deed by modifying their attitude • Insufficient-justification effect • change in attitude that occurs because person cannot justify an already completed action without modifying attitude • optimizing conditions include external justification, free choice, when action would cause harm

20. Insufficient-justification effect • Festinger & Carlsmith (1959) • gave subjects a boring task, then asked subjects to lie to the next subject and say the experiment was exciting • paid ½ the subjects $1, other ½ $20 • then asked subjects to rate boringness of task • $1 group rated the task as far more fun than the $20 group • each group needed a justification for lying • $20 group had an external justification of money • since $1 isn’t very much money, $1 group said task was fun

21. Using Attitudes as Ways to “Justify” Injustice • Just-world bias • a tendency to believe that life is fair • it would seem horrible to think that you can be a really good person and bad things could happen to you anyway • Just-world bias leads to “blaming the victim” • we explain others’ misfortunes as being their fault • e.g., she deserved to be raped, what was she doing in that neighborhood anyway?

22. Stereotypes • What is a stereotype? • schemas about a group of people • a belief held by members of one group about members of another group • how can we study stereotypes? • early studies just asked people • today’s society is sensitized to harmful effects of stereotyping • need different ways of studying

23. Studying stereotypes • 3 levels of stereotypes in today’s research • public • what we say to others about a group • private • what we consciously think about a group, but don’t say to others • implicit • unconscious mental associations guiding our judgments and actions without our conscious awareness

24. Implicit Stereotypes • Use of priming: subject doesn’t know stereotype is being activated, can’t work to suppress it • another study • flash pictures of Black vs. White faces subliminally • give incomplete words like “hos_____,” subjects seeing Black make “hostile,” seeing White make “hospital” Assign: Go to my website and click on Implicit Social Attitudes This will take you to the link you need to take the Harvard IAT. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ (or click this of you are online now )

25. Implicit Stereotypes • Devine’s automaticity theory • stereotypes about African-Americans are so prevalent in our culture that we all hold them • these stereotypes are automatically activated whenever we come into contact with an African-American • we have to actively push them back down if we don’t wish to act in a prejudiced way. • Overcoming prejudice is possible, but takes work