1. Perceiving Other Persons and the World Around Us
CHAPTER 3
Perceiving Other Persons and the World Around Us

2. Perceiving the physical world
Perception is organized: Gestalt principles of perceptual organization
Perception is selective: focus of attention and figure/ground contrasts
Internal factors affecting perception: motives, needs, values, past experience
External factors affecting perception: perceptual salience is affected by intensity, color, size, motion, and novelty

3. Similarity principle (color)

4. Similarity principle (shape)

5. Similarity principle (size)

6. Proximity principle

7. Continuity principle (the Big Dipper)

8. Common fate principle

9. Closure principle

10. Figure/ground contrast

11. Illusory movement

12. Ambiguous figure

13. Ambiguous figure

15. Ambiguous figure (figure/ground contrast and closure)

16. Ambiguous figure (figure/ground contrast and closure)

18. Ambiguous picture

20. Impossible figure (tuning fork)

21. Impossible figure (elephant)

22. Perceiving the physical world
Perception is organized: Gestalt principles of perceptual organization
Perception is selective: focus of attention and figure/ground contrasts
Internal factors affecting perception: motives, needs, values, past experience
External factors affecting perception: perceptual salience is affected by intensity, color, size, motion, and novelty

23. Social cognition: understanding people
Social perception and attention: standing out from the crowd: social salience, unexpected events, inconsistent information
Salience influences causal attribution (social inference)
Salience influences the extremity of evaluations and emotional reactions
Salience influences memory for the person or event
Person memory
Influenced by the goals of impression formation, empathy, self-reference, and expectancy of future interaction
Ironically, anticipated interaction works better than actual interaction does

24. Social cognition processes: Attention, memory, and inference
Increased salience
of the other person

25. Social cognition: understanding people
Social perception and attention: standing out from the crowd: social salience, unexpected events, inconsistent information
Salience influences causal attribution (social inference)
Salience influences extremity of evaluations and emotional reactions
Salience influences memory for the person or event
Person memory
Influenced by the goals of impression formation, empathy, self-reference, and expectancy of future interaction
Ironically, anticipated interaction works better than actual interaction does

26. Social cognition: understanding people
Inference: drawing conclusions from social information
Representativeness heuristic
Illusory correlation
Attribution: understanding the causes of others’ behavior
Consistency, consensus, and distinctiveness information
Attribution to an internal cause, an external cause, or a unique circumstance (prototypical data patterns)

27. Calvin became visibly upset when the new boss criticized him.
High consensus, high distinctiveness, high consistency:
This is a boss from hell. (external attribution)
Low consensus, low distinctiveness, high consistency:
Calvin is thin-skinned and easily upset. (internal attribution)
Low consensus, low distinctiveness, low consistency:
Calvin is feeling particularly vulnerable today. (unique circumstance attribution)

28. Lee filled out the sales contract incorrectly.
High consensus, high distinctiveness, high consistency:
This particular sales contract is complicated and confusing. (external attribution)
Low consensus, low distinctiveness, high consistency:
Lee doesn’t know how to do contracts. (internal attribution)
Low consensus, low distinctiveness, low consistency:
Lee forgot and left her glasses home today! (unique circumstance attribution)

29. Social cognition: understanding people
Causal attribution: some implications for work settings
Internal versus external causal locus: affects judgments of personal responsibility and praise versus blame
Stable versus unstable causal influence: affects judgments of what the outcome(s) will be in the future

30. Ability / lack of Task ease / Internal External Stable Unstable
Task difficulty
Effort /
Lack of effort
Good / bad
“luck”
Stable
Unstable

31. When social perception fails: common errors in our efforts to understand others
Overestimating the role of internal causes:
the fundamental attribution error
The self-serving bias: taking credit for success, avoiding blame for failure
Self-enhancement
Self-protection

33. Social perception: its role in job interviews and performance appraisals
The Halo Effect: how overall impressions shape judgments
Social perception and the job interview
The relative impact of positive versus negative information (negative information counts more)
Comparisons against other people also play a role
Visual information: appearance makes a difference
Nonverbal cues can have different effects, depending on the context
Social perception and performance appraisal: the role of evaluators’ attributions about one’s performance

34. Impression management: managing the impressions other people have of us
Tactics of self-presentation
Enhancement strategies
Entitlement strategies
Ingratiation strategies
Excuses
Excessive use of these strategies can backfire!