Chapter 4: Social Perception-The study of how we form impressions of other people and draw inferences about them, explaining why behave as they do
Evolution and Facial Expressions
Darwin: humans encode: express emotions in the same way that all others can decode: interpret them
Emblems: non-verbal gestures with well-understood definitions in a given culture, usually have direct verbal translation like OK sign
First Impressions
Thin-slicing: drawing meaningful conclusions about someone’s personality/skills based off of extremely brief sample of behavior
Primacy effect: what is learned first about another colors how you see info presented next
Belief Perseverance: standing by initial conclusions even when subsequently learned information suggests you shouldn’t
Attribution
Internal attribution: deciding that cause of person’s behavior is something about them, i.e. disposition, personality, attitudes, or character
External attribution: deciding something in the situation, not in personality caused behavior
Covariation model: examine multiple behaviors from different times and situations to answer
- Consensus information: how other people behave toward same stimulus
- Distinctiveness information: how person responds to other stimuli
- Consistency information: frequency with which observed behavior between same person and same stimulus occurs across time and circumstances
Perceptual salience: seeming importance of information that is the focus of people’s attention
Two step attribution process: make initial automatic internal attribution, then maybe attempt to adjust attribution by considering situation
Self-serving attributions: people tend to take credit for successes by making internal attributions but blame situation for failures by making external attributions
Belief in a just world: assumption that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get, try to convince self that it won’t happen to them
Bias blind spot: tendency to think others are more susceptible to attributional biases than we are