Perception Lecturer: Eric Vassilikos. Impression formation Asch’s (1946) Configural Model:...
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Transcript of Perception Lecturer: Eric Vassilikos. Impression formation Asch’s (1946) Configural Model:...
Perception
Lecturer:
Eric Vassilikos
Impression formation Asch’s (1946) Configural Model:
Central traits: Traits that have disproportionate influence on the configuration of final impressions
Peripheral traits: Traits that have insignificant influence on the configuration of final impressions
Central traits influence the meaning of other traits and the perceived relationship between traits
Asch’s Experiment Intelligent Skillful Industrious ________ Warm/cold or polite/blunt Determined Practical Cautious
Impression traits: Wise, happy, reliable, generous
Central traits
Intrinsic degree of correlation with other traits
Function of context Social vs. intellectual dimension
Universal dimensions of social cognition: Warmth and competence (Fiske, Cuddy & Glick, 2007)
Biases in impression formation Primacy
Earlier presented information influence the final impression disproportionately
Recency Later presented information influence
the final impression disproportionately Positivity/negativity
Distinctive or unusual information Information poses potential threat
Biases in impression formation
Personal constructs (Kelly, 1955) Idiosyncratic/Personal ways of
characterising other people, usually in terms of bipolar dimensions
Implicit personality theories Explaining behaviour based on
idiosyncratic principles regarding how traits interrelate
Biases in impression formation
Stereotypes Widely shared and simplified evaluative
image of a social group and its members
Social judgeability How socially acceptable is it to judge a
specific target?
Physical appearance
Social schemas Cognitive structures that represent
knowledge about a concept/stimulus, including its attributes and the relations among them.
Top-down instead of bottom-up processing Theory-driven (emphasis on prior
knowledge) instead of data driven processing (emphasis on seeking information)
Types of schemas
They influence: The encoding of new information The retaining of old information Inferences about missing information
Person schema Role schema Script (event schema) Content-free schema Self-schema
Schema use Salience
What makes a stimulus stand out among other stimuli and attract attention
A stimulus is salient when: It is novel or figural It demonstrates unusual behaviour It is subjectively important It dominates the visual field You are compelled to notice it
Cues
Selective perception
Preparatory set Stimuli we naturally find salient (e.g. toys to a
child)
Orientation Motivation Familiarity Cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance The cognitive consistency assumption
Postulate: People try to reduce inconsistency among cognitions, because they find it unpleasant, while striving to maintain harmony among their beliefs and avoid dissonance
People will try to reduce dissonance by changing one or more inconsistent cognitions by: Looking for additional evidence to bolster
existing cognitions Looking for additional evidence to refute
dissonant cognitions Derogating the source of dissonant cognitions
Selective exposure hypothesis
Impression management Five basic strategies
Exemplification Becoming the example
Ingratiation Charming the others
Self-promotion Promoting one’s abilities
Supplication Projecting an image of weakness aiming at attracting help
Intimidation Projecting an image of potentially dangerous and probably
provocative behavior
Impression management
Examples of tactics
Playing safe
Playing dumb
Citing experts
Disclosing the overcoming of obstacles
Opinion conformity
Doing favours
Attribution
How do we assign a cause to our own behaviour, and to the behaviour of others.
Jones & Davis’ correspondent influence
Postulate: People’s behaviour tends to correspond to underlying dispositions (traits)
Cues for correspondent inferences Freely chosen behaviour The chosen behaviour’s non-common (exclusive)
effects Socially undesirable behaviour Behaviour with hedonic relevance (important direct
consequences) for us Behaviour high in personalism (benefit or harm
expressly intended for us)
Kelley’s covariation (ANOVA) model
Postulate: People attribute causes to factors that covary (i.e. change systematically in the same direction) with the behaviour they’re trying to explain
Cues for covariation inferences Consistency of the behaviour Distinctiveness of the behaviour Consensus among observed behaviours
Self-serving biases in attribution
Attributional distortions that protect or enhance our self-esteem: Self-handicapping: Publicly making external
attributions in advance for an anticipated failure or poor performance
Illusion of control: Belief that we have more control over our world than we really do
Belief in a just world: Belief that the world is a just and predictable place where good things happen to ‘good people’ and bad things to ‘bad people’
Intergroup attribution Ethnocentrism: Evaluative preference for all
aspects of our own group relative to other groups
Ultimate attribution error (Pettigrew, 1979): We tend to attribute bad outgroup and good ingroup behaviour internally, and good outgroup and bad ingroup behaviour externally
Emphasis on sociohistorical context and the parallel use of stereotypes (Tajfel, 1981)