Lecturer: Eric Vassilikos Perception Lecturer: Eric Vassilikos

Impression formation Asch’s (1946) Configural Model: Central traits: Traits that have disproportionate influence on the configuration of final impressions Peripheral traits: Traits that have insignificant influence on the configuration of final impressions Central traits influence the meaning of other traits and the perceived relationship between traits

Asch’s Experiment Intelligent Skillful Industrious ________  Warm/cold or polite/blunt Determined Practical Cautious Impression traits: Wise, happy, reliable, generous

Central traits Intrinsic degree of correlation with other traits Function of context Social vs. intellectual dimension Universal dimensions of social cognition: Warmth and competence (Fiske, Cuddy & Glick, 2007)

Biases in impression formation Primacy Earlier presented information influence the final impression disproportionately Recency Later presented information influence the final impression disproportionately Positivity/negativity Distinctive or unusual information Information poses potential threat

Biases in impression formation Personal constructs (Kelly, 1955) Idiosyncratic/Personal ways of characterising other people, usually in terms of bipolar dimensions Implicit personality theories Explaining behaviour based on idiosyncratic principles regarding how traits interrelate

Biases in impression formation Stereotypes Widely shared and simplified evaluative image of a social group and its members Social judgeability How socially acceptable is it to judge a specific target? Physical appearance

Social schemas Cognitive structures that represent knowledge about a concept/stimulus, including its attributes and the relations among them. Top-down instead of bottom-up processing Theory-driven (emphasis on prior knowledge) instead of data driven processing (emphasis on seeking information)

Types of schemas They influence: Person schema Role schema The encoding of new information The retaining of old information Inferences about missing information Person schema Role schema Script (event schema) Content-free schema Self-schema

Schema use Salience A stimulus is salient when: Cues What makes a stimulus stand out among other stimuli and attract attention A stimulus is salient when: It is novel or figural It demonstrates unusual behaviour It is subjectively important It dominates the visual field You are compelled to notice it Cues

Selective perception Preparatory set Orientation Motivation Stimuli we naturally find salient (e.g. toys to a child) Orientation Motivation Familiarity Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance The cognitive consistency assumption Postulate: People try to reduce inconsistency among cognitions, because they find it unpleasant, while striving to maintain harmony among their beliefs and avoid dissonance People will try to reduce dissonance by changing one or more inconsistent cognitions by: Looking for additional evidence to bolster existing cognitions Looking for additional evidence to refute dissonant cognitions Derogating the source of dissonant cognitions Selective exposure hypothesis

Impression management Five basic strategies Exemplification Becoming the example Ingratiation Charming the others Self-promotion Promoting one’s abilities Supplication Projecting an image of weakness aiming at attracting help Intimidation Projecting an image of potentially dangerous and probably provocative behavior

Impression management Examples of tactics Playing safe Playing dumb Citing experts Disclosing the overcoming of obstacles Opinion conformity Doing favours

Attribution How do we assign a cause to our own behaviour, and to the behaviour of others.

Jones & Davis’ correspondent influence Postulate: People’s behaviour tends to correspond to underlying dispositions (traits) Cues for correspondent inferences Freely chosen behaviour The chosen behaviour’s non-common (exclusive) effects Socially undesirable behaviour Behaviour with hedonic relevance (important direct consequences) for us Behaviour high in personalism (benefit or harm expressly intended for us)

Kelley’s covariation (ANOVA) model Postulate: People attribute causes to factors that covary (i.e. change systematically in the same direction) with the behaviour they’re trying to explain Cues for covariation inferences Consistency of the behaviour Distinctiveness of the behaviour Consensus among observed behaviours

Self-serving biases in attribution Attributional distortions that protect or enhance our self-esteem: Self-handicapping: Publicly making external attributions in advance for an anticipated failure or poor performance Illusion of control: Belief that we have more control over our world than we really do Belief in a just world: Belief that the world is a just and predictable place where good things happen to ‘good people’ and bad things to ‘bad people’

Intergroup attribution Ethnocentrism: Evaluative preference for all aspects of our own group relative to other groups Ultimate attribution error (Pettigrew, 1979): We tend to attribute bad outgroup and good ingroup behaviour internally, and good outgroup and bad ingroup behaviour externally Emphasis on sociohistorical context and the parallel use of stereotypes (Tajfel, 1981)