1. 1 Perceiving & evaluating other people zWhy do we evaluate others? yall of us are naïve psychologists zAre we accurate? yoften yhowever, our judgments can suffer from a number of biases xanalogy: bias/ perceptual illusion; gives cue to normal processing

2. 2 Attributions from behavior zAttribution ya claim about the cause of someone’s behavior yHeider xIs behavior due to unique personal trait or is it a normal human behavior given the situation?

3. 3 Person vs. Situation Attributions zKelley’s 3 questions ydoes this person regularly behave this way in this situation? ydo others regularly behave this way in this situation? ydoes this person behave this way in many other situations?

4. 4 Kelley’s Attributional Logic (1) Does Susan regularly get angry in traffic jams? YES (2) Do many other people get angry in traffic jams? NO YES (3) Does Susan get angry in many other situations? No personality or situational attribution Situational attribution: traffic jams make people mad Personality attribution, general Personality attribution, particular YESNO

5. 5 Person bias in attributions zPeople give too much weight to personality and not enough to situational variables zConditions promoting person bias ytask has goal of assessment of personality yobserver is cognitively loaded (busy with other task) zConditions promoting a situation bias ywhen goal is to judge the situation

6. 6 Two-stage Model of Attributions zFirst stage is rapid & automatic ybias according to goal (person/situation) zSecond stage is slower & controlled ywon’t occur if cognitively loaded ywe correct our automatic attribution

7. 7 Two-stage Model of Attributions What kind of person is Joe? How funny is the TV comedy? Person: Joe laughs easily Situation: the TV show is funny Observer’s goal Automatic Attribution Controlled Attribution Revision: could be a funny show Revision: maybe Joe laughs easily Book example: Joe laughs hysterically while watching a TV comedy. What can we conclude?

8. 8 Cross-cultural differences zWestern culture ypeople are in charge of own destinies ymore attributions to personality zSome Eastern cultures yfate in charge of destiny ymore attributions to situation Age (years) 8 11 15 Adult 0.70 0.60 0.50 0.40 0.30 0.20 0 United States India Attributions to internal disposition

9. 9 Does the trait describe: 1. You? 2. A close friend? 3. A professor zOutgoing zcalm zagreeable zshrewd zself-disciplined ztidy Y N D YES NODepends on situation

10. 10 Actor-Observer Discrepancy zOthers’ behavior: Person bias zOwn behavior: Situation bias zWhy? yhypothesis 1: Knowledge across situations yhypothesis 2: visual orientation

11. 11 Prior Information Effects zMental representations of people (schemas) can effect our interpretation of them yKelley’s study xguest speaker xstudents: half got written bio saying speaker was “very warm”, half got bio saying speaker was “rather cold” x“very warm” group rated guest more positively than “rather cold” group

12. 12 Effects of Personal Appearance zThe attractiveness bias yphysically attractive people are rated higher on intelligence, competence, sociability, morality ystudies xteachers rate attractive children as smarter, and higher achieving xadults attribute cause of unattractive child’s misbehavior to personality, attractive child’s to situation xjudges give longer prison sentences to unattractive people

13. 13 Stereotypes zWhat is a stereotype? yschemas about a group of people ya belief held by members of one group about members of another group yhow can we study stereotypes? xearly studies just asked people xtoday’s society is sensitized to harmful effects of stereotyping xneed different ways of studying

14. 14 Studying stereotypes z3 levels of stereotypes ypublic xwhat we say to others about a group yprivate xwhat we consciously think about a group, but don’t say to others yimplicit xunconscious mental associations guiding our judgments and actions without our conscious awareness

15. 15 Implicit Stereotypes zUse of priming: subject doesn’t know stereotype is being activated, can’t work to suppress it yBargh study xword lists, some include e.g. “gray,” “Bingo,” “Florida” xobserved subjects walking to elevators ystudies on racial stereoptypes

16. 16 Implicit Stereotypes zDevine’s automaticity theory yracial stereotypes are so prevalent in our culture that we all hold them ystereotypes are automatically activated ywe have to actively resist them if we don’t wish to act in a prejudiced way. yOvercoming prejudice is possible, but takes work

17. 17 Self-fulfilling Prophecies zBeliefs & expectations create reality by influencing our behavior & others’ zPygmalion effect (liberal arts pop quiz: Who was Pygmalion?) yperson A believes that person B has a particular characteristic yperson B may begin to behave in accordance with that characteristic

18. 18 Studies of the Self-fulfilling Prophecy zRosenthal & Fode ygave 2 groups of students randomly selected rats ytold Group 1 they had “super genius” rats ytold Group 2 they had “super moron” rats yall students told to train rats to run mazes y“genius” rat group ended up doing better than the “moron” rat group

19. 19 Studies of the Self-fulfilling Prophecy zRosenthal & Jacobson ywent to a school and did IQ tests with kids ytold teachers test was a “spurters” test yrandomly selected several kids and told the teacher they were spurters ydid another IQ test at end of year y“spurters” showed significant improvements in their IQ scores yreason: teacher’s expectations of them