PSYC 1002 Chapter Notes - Chapter 13: Fundamental Attribution Error, Social Perception, Fritz Heider
2 May 2018
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PSYC 1002
Chapter 13: Social Behaviour
• Social Psychology: the branch of psychology concerned with the way idiidual’s
thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influences by others
• Social psychologists focuses on how we affect others and how they affect us, they study
how people are affected by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others, their
iteest is ot liited to idiiduals’ iteatios ith othes, as people a egage i
social behaviour eve he the’e aloe
• Look at social psychology as having three dimensions: Affect-how do you feel?,
Behaviours-how do you at?, Cognitions-what do you think about?
Person Perception: Forming Impressions of Others
• Person Perception: the process of forming impressions of others
Effects of Physical Appearance:
• Studies have shown that judgments of others personality are often swayed by their
appearance, especially their physical attractiveness
• People tend to ascribe desirable personality characteristics such as intelligence,
competence, warmth, and friendliness to those who are good-looking
• Research findings suggest that little correlation exists between attractiveness and
personality traits, although attractive people do tend to have more friends and better
social skills overall
• Extremely attractive people are vastly overrepresented in the entertainment media,
where they are mostly portrayed in a highly favorable, also our perceptions are swayed
by our desire to bond with attractive people
• Observers are also quick to draw inferences about people based on how they move,
talk, and gesture, their style of nonverbal expressiveness, based on ten seconds of
videotape, participants can guess strangers sexual orientation with decent accuracy
• Based on similar thi slies of ehaiou, osees a ake auate judgets of
idiiduals’ aial pejudie, social status, and intelligence, even static photographs can
provide telling cues about personality, one study found that participants were able to
make meaigful ifeees aout stiulus pesos’ etaesio, opeess to
experience, agreeableness, and self-esteem based on simple photographs
Cognitive Schemas:
• Social schemas: organized clusters of ideas about categories of social events and people
• Individuals depend on social schemas because the schemas help them to efficiently
process and store the wealth of information that they take in about others in their
interactions, people routinely place one another in categories, and these categories
influence the process of person perception
• Self-shea: a itegated set of eoies, eliefs, ad geealizatios aout oe’s
behavior in a given domain
• People who are self-schematic for that domain would show differences in how they
processed and remembered information about themselves in that domain, affecting
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how efficiently they process information related to that domain, how easily they can
make judgments about themselves in that domain, and how resistant they are to
counter information about themselves in that domain
Stereotypes:
• Stereotypes: widely held beliefs that people have certain characteristics because of their
membership in a particular group
• The most common stereotypes in our society are those based on sex, age, and
membership in ethnic or occupational groups, people who subscribe to traditional
gender stereotypes tend to assume that women are emotional, submissive, illogical, and
passive, while men are unemotional, dominant, logical, and aggressive, age stereotypes
suggest that elderly people are slow, feeble, rigid, forgetful, and asexual, Jews are
mercenary, Germans are methodical, Italians are passionate examples of common
ethnic stereotypes, Occupational stereotypes suggest that lawyers are manipulative,
accountants are conforming, artists are moody
• Stereotyping is a cognitive process that is frequently automatic and that saves on the
time and effort required to get a handle on people individually
• Stereotypes save energy by simplifying our social world. However, this conservation of
energy often comes at some cost in terms of accuracy
• Stereotypes frequently are broad overgeneralizations that ignore the diversity within
social groups and foster inaccurate perceptions of people
• Our stereotypes also affect us; they influence our conceptualizations of our social
environment, but the ifluee of ou steeotpes o us does’t ed thee; the a
also directly affect our own behaviour
Subjectivity and Bias in Person Perception:
• Stereotypes and other schemas create biases in person perception that frequently lead
to ofiatio of people’s epetatios aout othes
• People not only see what they expect to see, but also tend to overestimate how often
they see it
• Illusory correlation: occurs when people estimate that they have encountered more
confirmations of an association between social traits than they have actually seen
• After dealing with a pushy female customer, a salesman who holds traditional gender
stereotypes might characterize the oa as eotioal he might characterize a male
who exhibits the same push ehaiou as aggessie
An Evolutionary Perspective on Bias in Person Perception:
• Evolutionary psychologists argue that many biases in person perception, such as the
tendency to quickly categorize people into in groups and outgroups, exist because they
were adaptive in humans ancestral past
• In-group: a group that one belongs to and identifies with
• Outgroup: a group that one does not belong to or identify with
Attribution Processes: Explaining Behaviour:
• Attributions: inferences that people draw about the causes of events, others behaviour,
and their own behaviour
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• The a deteie ehaiou o if it’s ot oet this a e poleati fo ou soial
interactions
Internal versus External Attributes:
• Fritz Heider was the first person to describe how people make attributions
• Internal attributes: ascribe the causes of behaviour to personal dispositions, traits,
abilities, and feelings
• External attributes: ascribe the causes of behaviour to situational demands and
environmental constraints
• Fo eaple, if a fied’s usiess fails, ou ight attiute it to his o her lack of
usiess aue a iteal, pesoal fato o to egatie teds i the atio’s
economic climate (an external, situational explanation)
Attributions for Success and Failure:
• According to Weiner, the stable–unstable dimension in attribution cuts across the
internal–external dimension, creating four types of attributions for success and failure
• Example, ou’e oteplatig h ou failed to get a jo that ou ated. You ight
attribute your setback to internal factors that are stable (lack of ability) or unstable
(inadequate effort to put together an eye-catching résumé). Or you might attribute your
setback to external factors that are stable (too much outstanding competition) or
unstable (bad luck). If you got the job, your explanations for your success would fall into
the same four categories: internal–stable (your excellent ability), internal–unstable
(your hard work to assemble a superb résumé), external–stable (lack of top-flight
competition), and external–unstable (good luck)
Bias in Attributes:
• Attributions are only inferences, they may not be correct explanations for events
• Fundamental attribution error: refers to observers bias in favour of internal attributions
in explaining others behaviour
• In many instances, an internal attributio a ot e a eo however, observers
hae a uious tede to oeestiate the likelihood that a ato’s ehaiou
reflects personal qualities rather than situational factors
• Actor-observer bias: actors favour external attributions for their behaviour, whereas
observers are more likely to explain the same behaviour with internal attributions
• Defensive Attributions: a tendency to blame victims for their misfortune, so that one
feels less likely to be victimized in a similar way
• Ex. a friend gets mugged and severely beaten, you may attribute the mugging to your
fied’s aelessess o stupidit
Culture and Attributional Tendencies:
• Idiidualis: ioles puttig pesoal goals ahead of goup goals ad defiig oe’s
identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group memberships
• Colletiis: ioles puttig goup goals ahead of pesoal goals ad defiig oe’s
identity in terms of the groups one belongs to
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Document Summary
Person perception: forming impressions of others: person perception: the process of forming impressions of others. Cognitive schemas: social schemas: organized clusters of ideas about categories of social events and people. In-group: a group that one belongs to and identifies with: outgroup: a group that one does not belong to or identify with. Attribution processes: explaining behaviour: attributions: inferences that people draw about the causes of events, others behaviour, and their own behaviour, the(cid:455) (cid:272)a(cid:374) dete(cid:396)(cid:373)i(cid:374)e (cid:271)eha(cid:448)iou(cid:396) o if it"s (cid:374)ot (cid:272)o(cid:396)(cid:396)e(cid:272)t this (cid:272)a(cid:374) (cid:271)e p(cid:396)o(cid:271)le(cid:373)ati(cid:272) fo(cid:396) ou(cid:396) so(cid:272)ial interactions. Internal versus external attributes: fritz heider was the first person to describe how people make attributions. You (cid:373)ight attribute your setback to internal factors that are stable (lack of ability) or unstable (inadequate effort to put together an eye-catching r sum ). Or you might attribute your setback to external factors that are stable (too much outstanding competition) or unstable (bad luck).
