SOCIAL
PERCEPTION
Prepared by:
Jaya V. Cajalne, RPm
TWO TOPICS:
1. OBJECT PERCETION
2. PERSON PERCEPTION
1. OBJECT PERCEPTION
It focuses on the effects of emotional states,
motives and values on the ease or difficulty with
which objects are perceived and judged.
Social Meanings are often attached to stimulus
objects.
[Link] PERCEPTION
It focuses on how we come to know about other
people’s intentions, attitudes, emotions, ideas and
possible behavior so that we can eventually describe
them, explain their behavior and form and change
our impressions, opinions and feelings about them.
It is relevant for understanding human interaction
since interaction is mediated by the feelings,
thoughts and perceptions that individuals have about
each other.
Social Perception deals with:
How do we
regard others?
What
What processes
processes are
are
involved
involved inin how
how wewe
come
come to to understand
understand
and
and evaluate
evaluate others?
others?
The Initial Processing: Selective Attention
and Coding
SELECTIVE ATTENTION
It is the way we focus on only certain stimuli out of all the stimuli
reaching us through the various senses at any given time.
“filtering mechanism: It analyzes incoming information in terms of
its sensory qualities and meaning, then weakens the irrelevant
signals thereby reducing the information load and enabling an
individual to concentrate on the most important information.
PERCEPTION is HIGHLY SELECTIVE
Nature of Inference Process
INFERENCE PROCESS
1. TEMPORAL EXTENSION
The perceiver regards a momentary characteristics of the person as if it were an enduring
attitude.
2. Assigning some of the traits of a familiar
person to the stimulus person he resembles.
3. Categorization or Classification
INFERENCE PROCESS
4. Inference by Analogy
A. Metaphorical Generalization B. Functional Inference
A person leaps from a physical A person bases a conclusion about
characteristic to a direct inference about some personality on the functioning of some physical
personality attribute. attribute.
The inference is made possible by the
direct applicability to the personality attribute
of the meanings attached to the physical
characteristic.
FORMING IMPRESSIONS
Impression Formation refers to the
process by which one integrates and
organizes various sources of information
and inferences about another into a
consistent meaningful whole or an overall
judgment.
Cues in Impression Formation
Following three factors:
1. Stimulus person’s characteristics or behavior
2. Characteristics of the perceiver himself
3. The context or the situation the stimulus person is seen to be
in.
1. Verbal Cues 2. Non Verbal Cues
What the stimulus person says can a. Physical Appearance
give a lot of information about b. Facial Expressions
him? c. Paralanguage
d. Eye Contact
e. Gesture
Essential Features of Impression Formation
1. EVALUATION
This is the main dimension in person perception.
It is considered the most important and most powerful aspect
of first impressions.
LIKING VS. DISLIKING
Essential Features of Impression Formation
2. CONSISTENCY
This refers to the extent to which the information or
characteristics and traits that are perceived in other people in
agreement or in harmony with one another or with our
overall impression.
Evaluative Consistency
Descriptive Consistency
Process Involved in Forming Impressions
How do people form an impression of someone when they have
many pieces of information about him/her?
Process Involved in Forming Impressions
1. Additive Model- a perceiver had previously evaluated
positively some known characteristics or traits of the
stimulus person. Upon obtaining new positive informations
about the same person, the perceiver simply combines the
old and new positive informations.
2. Averaging Model- All available information about the
stimulus person are regarded as equally important in the
impression formation. Averaging tends to equalize the
weight given to all the perceived informations and traits.
Process Involved in Forming Impressions
3. Central Traits Effect- Research By Asch Solomon in 1940, it
indicates that not all traits are equal, and therefore a simple
averaging model will sometimes not account for final overall
impression. Central traits tend to be dominant, exerting a
disproportionate influence on people’s overall impressions and
causing them to assume the presence of other traits.
4. Weighted Averaging Model- This attempts to reconcile the
averaging model to the central traits effect. The revised model
of Norman Anderson, stated that people assign certain scale
values to traits, they also assign specific weights which
determines their importance to overall impression.
Some Evaluative Biases
1. Halo Effect- involves having general impression of someone
as favorable/good or unfavorable/bad and this affects our
perception of many of his/her other more specific traits.
2. Assumed Similarity- there is strong tendency of people to
assume that others are similar to them.
3. Positive Bias/ Leniency effect- General tendency to express
positive evaluations of people more often than negative
evaluations.
4. Negativity Bias- The tendency of people to give more
weight to unfavorable attributes or negative traits.
Sources of Errors in Perception
1. False Consensus Error
2. Perception of Similarity Because of Liking
3. Primacy Effect and Recency Effect
4. Belief Perseverance
5. Cognitive Confirmatory Bias
6. Behavioral Confirmatory Bias
7. Overconfidence Effect
8. Hindsight Bias
9. Self-Serving Bias
A Instruction: Choose one Sources of Errors in Perception. Prepare a powerpoint presentation
and discuss it to class in great detail.
S
1. Sources of Errors in Perception
S
I 2. False Consensus Error
G 3. Perception of Similarity Because of Liking
4. Primacy Effect and Recency Effect
N 5. Belief Perseverance
M 6. Cognitive Confirmatory Bias
E 7. Behavioral Confirmatory Bias
8. Overconfidence Effect
N 9. Hindsight Bias
T [Link]-Serving Bias
FORMING IMPRESSIONS
Through Stereotyping
Stereotyping is the assigning of
generalized and value-laden impressions
that people of one group use to
characterize those of another group.
Three Characteristics of Stereotyping
1. Categorization of persons – People are categorized
according to certain identifying characteristics such as
ethic background.
2. Consensus on attributed traits- Perceivers agree on the
attributes that the persons in the category possess.
3. Discrepancy between attributed and actual traits- The fact
that stereotype is generalization, the perceiver has the
impression that all persons in a given class possess the
trait assigned to that class. He is forced to ignored
individual differences.
Making Attributes
Attribution- The process by which people use dispositional
and/or situational information to make inferences about the
causes of behavior or events.
Native Psychology
Fritz Heider (1958)- First Social Psychologist to formally
analyze how people attempt to understand the causes
behind behavior.
Heider believed that everybody has a general theory of
human behavior called “Native Psychology”
In seeking attribution Heider believed people are
motivated by two primary needs: The need to form a
coherent view of the world & The need to gain control of
the environment.
Two Types of Attribution
1. Dispositional Attribution- The assumption that a person’s
behavior is determined by internal factors such as
personality traits, moods, attitudes, abilities or effort.
2. Situational Attribution- The assumption that a person’s
behavior is determined by external factors such as luck,
other people’s actions, social pressure or the nature of the
situation.
Biases in Attribution
1. Fundamental Attribution Error- Refers to the tendency of
people to attribute the stimulus person’s actions to this
person’s own personal characteristics, and the two
underestimate the effect of environmental factors.
2. Actor-Observer Effect-This is the tendency for people to
attribute their own behavior to external causes or
situational factors but to attribute the behavior of others to
internal or dispositional factors.
3. Motivational Attribution Error/ Self-serving Bias- Our
performance results either success or failure. The nature of
attribution process is decidedly self-protective in failure
situations and self-enhancing in success situations.
