1. Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Chapter 4
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

2. Social Perception
The process by which people come to understand one another.
We’ll look at:
The “raw data” of social perception
How we explain and analyze behavior
How we integrate our observations into coherent impressions of other persons
How our impressions can subtly create a distorted picture of reality

3. The Elements of Social Perception
Observation
The Elements of Social Perception

4. Putting Common Sense to the Test…
True or False?
The impressions we form of others are influenced by superficial aspects of their appearance.
Answer: True… Let’s see why!

5. Observation: The Elements of Social Perception—Persons
First impressions are often subtly influenced by different aspects of a person’s appearance.
We prejudge people based on facial features.
We read traits from faces, as well as read traits into faces, based on prior information.
We judge “baby-faced” adults differently than “mature-faced” adults.

6. Table 4.1: First Impressions in a Fraction of a Second

7. Why Do We Judge “Baby-Faced” Adults Differently?
Three possible explanations:
Humans are genetically programmed to respond gently to infantile features.
We learn to associate infantile features with helplessness and then generalize this expectation to baby-faced adults.
There is an actual link between physical appearance and behavior.

8. Observation: The Elements of Social Perception—Situations
We often have “scripts” or preset notions about certain types of situations.
Enables us to anticipate the goals, behaviors, and outcomes likely to occur in a particular setting
These scripts help us understand other people’s verbal and nonverbal behavior.

9. How Do Scripts Influence Social Perception?
We sometimes see what we expect to see in a particular situation.
People use what they know about social situations to explain the causes of human behavior.

10. Observation: The Elements of Social Perception—Behavioral Evidence
We derive meaning from our observations by dividing the continuous stream of behavior into discrete units.
How we divide a stream of behavior can influence perception in important ways.

11. Silent Language of Nonverbal Behavior
Behavioral cues are used to identify a person’s inner states, as well as his or her actions.
What kinds of nonverbal cues do people use?
Facial expressions of emotion

12. Figure 4.1: How Good are People at Identifying Emotions in the Face?
Insert Figure 4.1: How Good are People at Identifying Emotions in the Face? about here
From H.A. Elfenbein and N. Ambady, "On the Universality and Cultural Specificity of Emotion Recognition: A Meta-Analysis," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 128, 2002, pp Reprinted with permission.

13. Elfenbein & Ambady (2003)

14. Figure 4.2: Some Common E-mail “Emoticons”
Reprinted with permission from "Smileys" © O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. Orders and Information: ,

15. Other Nonverbal Cues Body language Eye contact or gaze Physical touch
Cultural differences

16. Putting Common Sense to the Test…
True or False?
Adaptively, people are skilled at knowing when someone is lying rather than telling the truth.
Answer: False… Let’s see why!

17. Distinguishing Truth from Deception
Freud: “No mortal can keep a secret… betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”
Channels of communication differ in terms of ease of control.
Face is relatively easier for deceivers to control.
Nervous movements of our body are hard to control.

18. Table 4.2: Can the “Experts” Distinguish Truth and Deception?
From P. Ekman and M. O'Sullivan, "Who Can Catch a Liar?" American Psychologist, 46, , Copyright © 1991 American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission.

19. Why Do We Have Difficulty Detecting Deception?
Mismatch between the behavioral cues that actually signal deception and the ones used to detect deception.
Four channels of communication provide relevant information:
Words: Cannot be trusted
Face: Controllable
Body: Somewhat more revealing than face
Voice: Most revealing cue

20. From Elements to Dispositions
Attribution
From Elements to Dispositions

21. Attribution Theories
Attribution theory describes the process by which we make attributions.
Heider: Explanations can be grouped into two categories:
Personal Attributions
Situational Attributions

22. Jones’s Correspondent Inference Theory
People try to infer from an action whether the act itself corresponds to an enduring personal characteristic of the actor.
People make inferences on the basis of three factors:
Person’s degree of choice
Expectedness of the behavior
Intended effects or consequences of someone’s behavior

23. Figure 4.3: What Does this Speechwriter Really Believe?
Reprinted from Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 3, "The Attribution of Attitudes," by E.G. Jones and K.E. Harris, pp Copyright (c) 1967, with permission from Elsevier.

24. Kelley’s Covariation Theory
People make attributions using the covariation principle.
Three kinds of covariation are useful:
Consensus: How are other people reacting to the same stimulus?
Distinctiveness: Is the person’s behavior consistent over time?
Consistency: Does the person react the same or differently to different stimuli?

25. Figure 4.4: Kelley’s Covariation Theory

26. Attributional Biases
Do we really analyze behavior in a rational, logical manner?
Do we really have the time, motivation, or cognitive capacity for such elaborate and mindful processes?
The answer?
Sometimes yes…Sometimes no.

27. Cognitive Heuristics
Cognitive heuristics are information-processing rules of thumb.
Enable us to think in ways that are quick and easy
Problem is that using cognitive heuristics can frequently lead to error.

28. Availability Heuristic
The tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances of it come to mind.
Problems with relying on the availability heuristic:
False-consensus effect
Base-rate fallacy
Counterfactual thinking

29. Table 4.3: The False Consensus Effect

30. Putting Common Sense to the Test…
True or False?
Like social psychologists, people are sensitive to situational causes when explaining the behavior of others.
Answer: False… Let’s see why!

31. Fundamental Attribution Error
When we explain other people’s behavior we tend to:
Overestimate the role of personal factors, and
Overlook the impact of situations
Let’s take another look at the Jones and Harris (1967) study…

32. Figure 4.3: What Does this Speechwriter Really Believe? A Second Look
Reprinted from Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 3, "The Attribution of Attitudes," by E.G. Jones and K.E. Harris, pp Copyright (c) 1967, with permission from Elsevier.

33. Figure 4.5: Fundamental Attribution Error and the TV Quiz Show
From L. Ross, T.M. Amabile, and J.L. Steinmetz, "Social Roles, Social Control, and Biases in Social Perception Processes," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, Copyright (c) by the American Psychological Association. Adapted with permission.

34. Figure 4.6: Two-Step Model of the Attribution Process

35. Findings Supporting the Two-Step Model of the Attributional Process
People often form a quick impression based on a brief sample of behavior.
More likely to commit the F.A.E. when one is cognitively busy or distracted.

36. Why Are Personal Attributions Automatic?
Heider: People see dispositions in behavior because of a perceptual bias.
Actor is the conspicuous figure of your attention.
The situation fades into the background.
So people attribute events to factors that are perceptually conspicuous or salient.

37. Actor-Observer Effect
Our tendency to make personal attributions for the behavior of others and situational attributions for ourselves.

38. Figure 4.7: Fundamental Attribution Error: A Western Bias?
From J.G. Miller (1984) "Culture and the Development of Everyday Social Explanation," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, Copyright (c) 1984 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted with permission.

39. Figure 4.8: Attributions Within Cultural Frames
From Y. Hong, M.W. Morris, C. Chiu and V. Benet-Martinez, "Multicultural Minds: A Dynamic Constructivist Approach to Culture and Cognition," American Psychologist, 55, , Copyright © 2000 American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission.

40. Motivational Biases
Dunning (2001): The need for self-esteem biases social perceptions in subtle ways.
Belief in a Just World: The belief that individuals get what they deserve in life.
Can lead to a tendency to disparage victims

41. From Dispositions to Impressions
Integration
From Dispositions to Impressions

42. Information Integration: The Arithmetic
How do we combine personal attributions into a single coherent picture of the person?
Summation model or averaging model?
Information Integration Theory: Impressions formed of others are based on:
Personal dispositions of the perceiver; and
A weighted average of a target person’s traits

43. Perceiver Characteristics
We differ in the kinds of impressions we form of others.
Our current, temporary mood can influence the impressions we form of others.
To some extent, impression formation is in the eye of the beholder.

44. Priming Effects
The tendency for recently used words to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information.
Priming can influence person impressions.
Motivations, as well as social behaviors, can be influenced by priming.

45. Bargh & Chartrand (1999)

46. Figure 4.9: The Priming of Social Behavior Without Awareness
From J.A. Bargh, M. Chen and L. Burrows (1996) "Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation and Action," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, Copyright (c) 1971 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission.

47. Target Characteristics
All traits are not created equal.
The valence of a trait affects its impact on our impressions.
Trait Negativity Bias

48. Implicit Personality Theories
Implicit Personality Theory: A network of assumptions that we make about the relationships among traits and behaviors.
Central Traits: Traits that exert a powerful influence on overall impressions.
e.g., warm and cold vs. polite and blunt

49. Rated This Person More Positively
Asch (1946)
One group read this description:
Other group read this description:
Intelligent
Industrious
Impulsive
Critical
Stubborn
Envious
Envious
Stubborn
Critical
Impulsive
Industrious
Intelligent
Rated This Person More Positively

50. The Primacy Effect
The tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later.
What accounts for this primacy effect?
There are two basic explanations.

51. Primacy Effect: Explanation #1
Once we think we have formed an accurate impression of someone, we pay less attention to subsequent information.
People differ in their need for closure.
Desire to reduce ambiguity
Primacy effect less likely to occur for those who are lower in their need for closure

52. Primacy Effect: Explanation #2
Change of Meaning Hypothesis
Once we have formed an impression, we start to interpret inconsistent information in light of that impression.
The meaning of a trait can be malleable.

53. From Impressions to Reality
Confirmation Biases
From Impressions to Reality

54. Putting Common Sense to the Test…
True or False?
People are slow to change their first impressions on the basis of new information.
Answer: True… Let’s see why!

55. Confirmation Bias
Once we make up our mind about something, how likely are we to change it, even when confronted with new evidence?
Confirmation Bias: Our tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs.

56. Figure 4.10: Mixed Evidence: Does It Extinguish or Fuel First Impressions?
Darley and Gross, 1983.

57. Perseverance of Beliefs
We interpret ambiguous events in ways that confirm our existing beliefs.
Belief Perseverance: The tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited.
Can be reduced or eliminated when we are asked to consider why alternative explanations may be true.

58. Confirmatory Hypothesis Testing
Do we seek information objectively or are we inclined to confirm the suspicions we already hold?
Situational circumstances can influence our tendency to engage in confirmatory hypothesis testing.

59. Putting Common Sense to the Test…
True or False?
The notion that we can create a “self-fulfilling prophecy” by getting others to behave in ways we expect is a myth.
Answer: False… Let’s see why!

60. The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
The process by which one’s expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations.
Rosenthal & Jacobson’s (1968) “Pygmalion in the Classroom” study

61. Figure 4.11: The Self-fulfilling Prophecy as a Three-Step Process

62. Social Perception
The Bottom Line

63. Figure 4.12: The Processes of Social Perception

64. Putting Common Sense to the Test…
True or False?
People are more accurate at judging the personalities of friends and acquaintances than of strangers.
Answer: True… Let’s see why!

65. How Accurate Are People’s Impressions of Each Other?
Question is provocative, but hard to answer.
Problems:
Often exhibit biases in our social perceptions
Often have little awareness of our limitations, leading us to feel overconfident in our judgments
But remember that biases do NOT necessarily result in error.

66. Reasons Why We Can Be Competent Social Perceivers
The more experience we have with each other, the more accurate we are.
Although not good at making global judgments of others, we are able to make more circumscribed predictions.
Our social perception skills can be enhanced.
We can form more accurate impressions of others when we are motivated.