1. Person Perception
Lecture 8

2. Person Perception Midterm 1 Social Information Attribution
Self-serving Biases
Prediction

3. Midterm 1
Date:
Friday, October 15th
Time:
3 - 4:04 pm

4. Midterm 1 Locations Locations: AA112, AC223, HW215, HW216, SY110
Room assignments by last name:
AA112: Last names from A - Di
AC223: Last names from Do - M
HW215: Last names from N - Pl
HW216: Last names from Po - Su
SY110: Last names from Sy - Z

5. Midterm 1 Format: 30 Multiple choice questions 3% each 5 Matching

6. Material covered by Midterm 1
Lectures 1 - 8
All textbook and supplemental readings that are assigned with Lectures 1 - 8
Films from Lecture 6 will be on Midterm 2, NOT Midterm 1

7. Preparing for Exam Review sheet and practise questions:
Blackboard -> Intro to Social Psych -> Exams

8. Preparing for exam How to use review sheet:
Questions will be asked on a subset of topics
For each topic:
Write a few sentences in your own words of what the topic means
Come up with an example from your life of when that happened

9. Preparing for exam Practise questions: 5 multiple choice
Example matching
Give you a flavour for how I ask questions

10. Preparing for exam External factors: Get 8 hours sleep before exam
Eat both breakfast and lunch on 10/15
Eat a snack around 2:30
MAKE SURE THEY ALL INCLUDE PROTEIN

11. Social Information What Goes Into Person Perception? Behaviour Context
Schemas!

12. Behavioural Input Verbal Behaviour Nonverbal Behaviour Emblems
Power of Behavioural Input: “Thin Slices”

13. Emblems Gestures that have well-understood meaning within a culture
Effectively: nonverbal language

14. “Thin Slices”
Approach within social psychology focused on the attributional power of brief exposure to others

15. SES in Social Interactions
How quickly can you detect someone’s socio- economic status (SES)?

16. SES in Social Interactions
Kraus & Keltner (2009)
Method:

17. SES in Social Interactions

18. SES in Social Interactions
Kraus & Keltner (2009)
Results:
Naive observers accurately detected parents’ income, mothers’ education, and subjective SES
Relative to high SES participants, low SES participants spent less time:
Grooming, doodling, manipulating objects

19. Context

20. Context

21. Context Context matters Provides additional input
Can completely change attribution

22. Schemas
What you expect is what you get

23. Attribution
Explanation for an observed behaviour of another social object

24. Attribution How Automatic is Attribution? Attribution Theory
Internal/External Attributions
Fundamental (?) Attribution Error
Covariation Theory

25. Ease of Attribution
Heider & Simmel (1944)

26. Automaticity of Attributions
How Automatic is an Attribution?
Very
Attributions = Pattern Matching

27. Attribution Theory Primary Question:
Do we attribute behaviour to something about the person (“internal”) or something about the situation (“external”)?

28. Internal Attribution
Attributing a person’s behaviour to something intrinsic to that person
Personality, disposition, attitude, or character

29. External Attribution
Attributing a person’s behaviour to something about the situation in which the behaviour occurred
Specifically not changing beliefs regarding person’s character or personality

30. Fundamental Attribution Error
AKA, “FAE”
When perceiving others:
Tendency to overestimate the influence of internal causes for behaviour and underestimate external causes
When perceiving self:
Much more likely to attribute own behaviour to external causes

31. Fundamental Attribution Error
Jones & Harris (1967)
Method:

32. Fundamental Attribution Error
Jones & Harris (1967)
Results:
Choice
No Choice

33. Perceptual Salience
Tendency to overestimate the causal role of information that grabs our attention

34. Two-Step Process of Attribution
Same process as Anchoring & Adjustment Heuristic
Make an internal attribution
Attempt to adjust away from internal attribution by considering situational constraints

35. How Fundamental is the FAE?
Gang Lu (卢刚)
Recent Physics Ph.D. from University of Iowa
On 1991/11/01, he killed 4 faculty, 1 Ph.D. Student, and paralysed a student researcher

36. How Fundamental is the FAE?
Morris & Peng (1994)
Method: Analysed Chinese- and English-language newspaper articles written about Gang Lu
Results:

37. Correspondence Bias
Tendency to infer that a person’s behaviour corresponds to their disposition, personality, or attitude

38. Covariation Theory Assumption: People are lay statisticians
3 Factors of Attribution:
Consensus
Distinctiveness
Consistency

39. Consensus Do other people behave in this way?
Behaviour unique to person

40. Distinctiveness Does this person behave like this with other stimuli?
Behaviour unique to situation

41. Consistency Does the person behave like this over time?
Behaviour unique to this moment in time

42. Covariation Theory ↓ ↑ ↑ or ↓ 3 Patterns Lead to 3 Attributions:
Consensus
Distinctiveness
Consistency
Attribution ↓ ↑
Internal
External
↑ or ↓
Situational

43. Self-Serving Biases Self-Serving Attributions Defensive Attributions:
Unrealistic Optimism
Just World Hypothesis
False Consensus Effect
Ultimate Attribution Error

44. Self-Serving Attributions
You do really well on a test. Is this because:
You are smart
The test was easy
You do really poorly on a test. Is this because:
You are dumb
The test was hard

45. Self-Serving Attributions
Positive outcome for Self:
Explain it in terms of internal factors
Negative outcome for Self:
Explain it in terms of external factors

46. Unrealistic Optimism Tendency to expect:
Bad things are less likely to happen to you than to other people
Good things are more likely to happen to you than other people

47. Just World Hypothesis
Belief that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people
Leads to rejection of victims

48. False Consensus Error
Assumption that more people share your beliefs, attitudes, and preferences than actually do

49. Ultimate Attribution Error
Tendency to make internal attributions about an entire social group’s disposition based on the behaviour of one group member
Only applies to social outgroups

50. Prediction How Good Are We At Predicting?
Implicit Personality Theories

51. How Good Are We at Prediction?
Demo!
Need 6 volunteers!

52. Implicit Personality Theories
Type of schema used to group certain personality traits together
E.g., Jane is warm. Will Jane lend Jeric $10 for lunch?

53. “We see people and things not as they are, but as we are.”
Next lecture:
Conformity and Dissent
Relevant Websites:
How good at you at perceiving other people’s personality?
What your stuff says about you:

54. Alexa’s Survey