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)