Social Perception

Social Psychology BS VII

Instructor: Ms.Mona Khurshid
Impression Formation And Impression
Management
 Combining information about others
 When we meet another person for the first time, we are—quite literally—
flooded with information. We can see, at a glance, how they look and dress,
how they speak, and how they behave. Although the amount of information
reaching us is large, we somehow manage to combine it into an initial first
impression of this person—
 A mental representation that is the basis for our reactions to him or her.
The Beginning Of Research On First
Impression
 Asch’s Research on Central and Peripheral Traits
 Asch and gestalt psychologist: “The whole is often greater than the sum of it’s
parts”
 We do not simply add traits, we relate them
How Quickly Are First Impressions
Formed— and Are They Accurate?
 Is first impression last impression?
 Thin slices: Refers to small amounts of information about others we use to
form first impressions of them.
 In one study on this topic (Willis & Todorov, 2006), participants viewed faces
of strangers for very brief periods of time: one-tenth of a second, half a
second, or a second.
 First impression is formed very quickly but what about it’s accuracy?
Factors Determining The Accuracy

 Level of confidence in judgments

 Experience
Implicit Personality Theories:

 Schemas That Shape First Impressions

 Beliefs about what traits or characteristics tend to go together (e.g., Sedikes
& Anderson, 1994).
 Birth order and personality
 our impressions of others are often strongly shaped by our beliefs about what
traits or characteristics go together
Impression Management:

 Tactics for “Looking Good” to Others

 Tactics of impression management
1. Self-enhancement (physical and professional appearance) efforts to
increase their appeal to others—and
2. Other enhancement (ingratiation—flattering) efforts to make the target
person feel good in various ways, flattering others in various ways.
 Does Impression Management Work?
 The answer is yes, used with skill and care
 slime effect—a tendency to form very negative impressions of others who play
up to their superiors, but treat subordinates with disdain and contempt
 Why do people engage in impression management?
 to enhance others’ reactions to them.
 may serve to boost the moods of people who engage in it.
 we generally engage in impression management in order to increase others’
evaluations of us, there may be some extra benefits to such tactics for the
people who use them: Attempting to “look good” to others can often make us
feel better in very basic ways
Attribution

Attribution Theory
A description of the way in which people explain
the causes of their own and other people’s
behavior
The Nature of the Attribution Process
 Fritz Heider (1958)
 When trying to decide why people behave as
they do.
The Covariation Model: Internal Versus
External Attributions
Internal Attribution
 The inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because
of something about the person, such as attitude, character, or
personality.
 Occurs quickly , spontaneously
External Attribution
 The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of
something about the situation he or she is in, with the
assumption that most people would respond the same way in
that situation.
 For Example: why a father has just yelled at his young
Kelley’s Theory Of Causal
Attributions
 The covariation model focus on three different types of information regarding the actor (your boss, the
target of your attributional efforts) and the stimulus (Hannah, the person on the receiving end of the
action in question).

1. Consensus information refers to how other people behave toward the

same stimulus—in this case, Hannah. Do other people at work also yell at
or criticize Hannah?
2. Distinctiveness information refers to how a person responds to other
stimuli—in this case, everything other than Hannah. Is Hannah the only
employee whom your boss criticizes publicly?
3. Consistency information refers to the frequency with which the
observed behavior between the same person and the same stimulus
occurs across time and circumstances. Does your boss criticize Hannah
regularly and frequently, the store is empty of full of people.
 ARE THE EVENTS IN OUR LIVES
“MEANT TO BE,” OR DO WE
MAKE THEM HAPPEN?
 FATE ATTRIBUTIONS VERSUS
PERSONAL CHOICE
 Research findings indicate that
improbable but important events
are often attributed to fate
rather than to personal actions.
Attribution: Some Basic Sources of Error

 The correspondence bias/fundamental attribution error: overestimating the

role of dispositional causes instead of situational causes.
 We tend to perceive others as acting as they do because
they are “that kind of person,” rather than because of the
many external factors that may influence their behavior.
 Overlook situational factors.
A study of 20 paired
traits by (Nisbett et
al, 1973).
Participants in the study shown here
were asked to indicate
which of the traits in 20 pairs of
traits were true of themselves
and several other people (their best
friend, fathers, etc.). They
also had the option of choosing
another response: “Depends
on the situation.” They were much
more likely to do this with
respect to their own behavior than
that of other persons. In
other words, they recognized that
their own actions were
strongly influenced by external
causes, but assumed that the
actions of other persons stem
primarily from internal causes,
such as their own traits. (Source:
Based on data from Nisbett et
Why Does The Fundamental Attribution
Error Occur?
1. We focus on actions and contexts but ignore the situation.
2. Notices situational causes with insufficient weightage.
3. Focus on underlying characteristics
4. We perceive that we are less likely to fall victim to the correspondence
bias than others.
The Actor-Observer Effect

 The tendency to attribute our own behavior to situational (external) causes

but that of others to dispositional (internal) ones.
 when we see another person trip and fall, we tend to
attribute this event to his or her clumsiness. If we trip,
however, we are more likely to attribute this event to
situational causes, such as ice on the sidewalk.
 Why we do so?
 We are quite aware of the many external factors affecting our own actions
but are less aware of such factors when we turn our attention to the actions
of other people.
Self-Serving Bias

 self-serving bias
 The tendency to attribute positive outcomes to internal causes (e.g.,
one’s own traits or characteristics) but negative outcomes or events to
external causes (e.g., chance, task difficulty).
Why?
 Cognitive (we are programmed) and motivational factors (protecting
self-esteem)
 The cognitive model suggests that the self-serving bias stems mainly
from certain tendencies in the way we process social information.
 The motivational explanation suggests that the self-serving bias stems
from our need to protect and enhance our self-esteem or the related
desire to look good to others.
Assignment
Write the practical implications of attribution theory, impression management,
and impression formation.
Deadline: November (Wednesday) 15, 2023