Chapter 4: Social Cognition and Person Perception

Chapter 4: Social Cognition and Person Perception

•  Law of Contagion

•  Law of Similarity

•  Social Cognition

•  The process by which people think about and make sense of people

–  Making those split-second decisions about people and how people understand a social situation

•  Thinking about Objects vs. People: Similarities

•  Cognitive misers

•  We try to think as little as possible

•  Snap judgments

Social Categorization

•  See members within an outgroup as more alike than they really are

•  Why Does This Happen?

–  Little contact between groups

–  Groups that compete

–  Few members in the outgroup

Schemas

•  Cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus

•  For example, “pit bull”

–  prototype

Types of Schemas

•  Person schemas

–  Mr. Warm and Mr. Cold

•  Self-schemas

–  Form the core of our self-concept

•  Role schemas

–  The behaviors expected of people in those roles: Achieved and Ascribed Roles

•  Event schemas

–  scripts

•  Gender schemas

–  Male vs. female qualities of “things”

Benefits of Schemas

1. Schemas direct attention and guide
the encoding of schema-relevant information

2. Schemas guide memory

Cohen (1981) “waitress vs. librarian

3. Schemas influence judgment

•  More complex our schemas are the less extreme our evaluations are of that group

•  Linville and Jones (1980)

4. Schemas influence our behavior

•  Synder, Tanke, & Berscheid (1977)

•  Results showed the men talked warmer and friendlier to the women they thought were attractive

•  In the unattractive condition, the men were short, cold, and less friendly

Heuristics

1. Anchoring and Adjustment heuristic
Uncertain judgements

•  Start with a reference point (anchor) and then adjust it insufficiently to reach a final conclusion

2. Availability heuristic

•  The practice of estimating the frequency of an event according to the ease with which instances of the event can be recalled

3. Representative heuristic

•  Gauging the probability that a person belongs to a particular social group by assessing how similar the person’s characteristics are to the “typical” group member’s

4. Simulation heuristic

•  The ease of mentally undoing an event

•  AKA counterfactual thinking…imagining what might have been

Magical Thinking

•  Based on irrational assumptions

1. Law of Contagion

2. Law of Similarity

3. Law of Thought

Person Perception

•  How we interpret other people.

–  Situational vs. Dispositional

•  Nonverbal communication

–  Depends on context & person gesturing

•  Eye contact

–  Contradictory meaning & sex difference

•  Cross-cultural differences

Do’s & Taboo’s of Gestures

•  Shaking Hands

•  Touching

•  Personal Space

•  Eye Contact

Meaning of “Thumbs Up” Gesture

•  In North America, Russia, and France, means:

•  In Nigeria, it is a:

•  In Japan, China, and Korea, it is used in:

•  Meaning of “That Person is Crazy” Gesture

•  In Argentina, it means:

•  In North America, Russia, Japan, France, and Germany, it means:

•  Meaning of “O.K.” Gesture

•  In Laos and France, it means:

•  In Japan, it means:

•  In U.S. and Russia, it means:

•  In Arab states, it expresses:

Facial Expressions

1. Anger 4. Happiness

2. Disgust 5. Sadness

3. Fear 6. Surprise

7. Contempt

Paralanguage

•  Variations in speech other than the actual verbal content

•  Can be used to detect lying

•  Accuracy barely exceeds chance

•  Easiest to detect when the person has
the greatest motivation to lie

Ekman and O’Sullivan (1991)

•  Compared lie detecting ability of four groups:
1. Police Detectives
2. U.S. Custom Agents
3. CIA
4. Secret Service

•  Secret Service:

•  Inaccurate judges focus on:

•  Accurate judges focus on:

Making Attributions

•  Using information to make judgments about the causes of behavior

•  Heider’s (1958) ”Naive Psychology”

1. Look for internal causes of behavior

2. Cues play an important role

3. B = ƒ(P,E)

4. Covariation principle

Kelley (1967) Covariation Model

•  3 types of information:

•  Consensus: How behavior varies across people

•  Consistency: How behavior varies across settings and time

•  Distinctiveness: How behavior varies across targets

•  Biases in Attribution

•  Why would an individual engage in a biased search? 4 attributional biases:

1. Self-serving bias

2. Actor-observer bias

3. Correspondence bias

4. Confirmation bias

•  Unscramble These Words: caught on Jim coat fence his the

Self-Serving Bias

•  Tendency for individuals to internalize successes and externalize failures

–  Cognitive & motivational explanation

•  Actor-Observer Bias

•  Tendency for individuals to view their
own behavior as situationally caused, but view others’ behavior as internally caused

•  Why?

–  Figure/Ground

–  Self-Knowledge

•  Can it be reversed?

•  Storms (1973)

–  Pts. videotaped during a 5 min talk

–  One camera viewed the actor’s point of view; the other viewed the observer’s point of view

Confirmation Bias

•  If there is a “3” on one side of the card, then there is a “D” on the other.

•  Which card do you turn over?

•  POINT: We try to prove our hypotheses correct without seeing if they can be disproved

Dual-Process Models

•  First attributions are spontaneous and effortless

•  Second attributions are deliberate and effortful