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Chapter Three
Social Cognition andSocial Perception: How
We Perceive and Think
about the Social World
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People as Everyday Theorists:
Schemas and Their Influence
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Schemas and Their Influence
Social Cognition:
How people select, interpret, remember, anduse social information
Social Perception:
How we form impressions of and make
inferences about othersAllow us to make complex judgments very
rapidly, however can also lead to mistakes
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Schemas and Their Influence
Schemas:
Mental structures people use to organizeinformation about the social world
Schemas affect what we:
Notice
Think about
Remember
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Schemas and Their Influence
We have schemas for:
People Ourselves
Social roles
Objects Events
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Schemas and Their Influence
Carli (1999) Jack & Barbara Study:
Participants read story involving a couple
At end of story, the man either proposed to or rapedthe woman
Proposal scenario: Participants incorrectly remembered facts consistent with a
proposal schema (e.g., he gave her roses) Rape scenario:
Participants incorrectly remembered rape-consistent facts(e.g., he liked to drink)
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Applications: Social Psychology in the
Courtroom
Story order:
Lawyers present evidence in order itoccurred
Want to create a story the jury will believe
Witness order:
Lawyers present witnesses in the sequencethat will have greatest impact, even if eventsout of order
Which order is most effective?
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Applications: Social Psychology in the
Courtroom
Pennington and Hastie (1990):
Mock trial with Prosecutor story order/Defense witness order:
78% conviction rate
Researchers argue:
US conviction rate in felony trials (80%) is so high
because prosecutors use story order, defenders
use witness order
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Which Schemas are Applied?
Accessibility and Priming
Accessibility:
Extent to which schemas are at the front ofour minds and therefore likely to be used in
making judgments
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Which Schemas are Applied?
Accessibility and Priming
Two kinds of accessibility:
Chronic accessibility:
Due to past experience
Traits describing alcoholism chronicallyaccessible if you were raised by alcoholics
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Which Schemas are Applied?
Accessibility and Priming
Temporary accessibility:
Whatever happens just prior to an event canmake schemas accessible
Happens through priming
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Which Schemas are Applied?
Accessibility and Priming
Priming:
When a recent experience increasesaccessibility of certain traits, making it likely
that we will use those traits in interpreting
someones behaviour
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Insert Figure 3.1 Here
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Which Schemas are Applied?
Accessibility and Priming
Higgins, Rholes and Jones (1977):
Unrelated second study paradigm Perception study: memorizing list of
words
Positive condition: adventurous, self-confident Negative condition: reckless, conceited, aloof
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Which Schemas are Applied?
Accessibility and Priming
Higgins, et al. (1977) cont.:
Reading comprehension study: Read aboutDonald and gave impressions of him
How did participants interpret Donalds
behaviour?
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Insert Figure 3.2 Here
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Which Schemas are Applied?
Accessibility and Priming
Higgins, et al. (1977) cont.:
Positive prime condition: Formed impressions of Donald as likeable, and
enjoying new challenges
Negative prime condition:
Formed impressions of Donald as stuck up andone who took needless chances
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Mental Strategies and Shortcuts:
Heuristics
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Mental Strategies and Shortcuts:
Heuristics
How do you make typical decisions? Do you:
Conduct a thorough search of every optionavailable?
Weigh pros and cons of each alternative?
Or do you:
Use mental strategies and shortcuts to save timeand effort?
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Mental Strategies and Shortcuts:
Heuristics
Judgmental heuristics:
Mental shortcuts people use to makejudgments quickly and efficiently
Reliance on heuristics however does not:
Always lead to accurate inferences
Always lead to the best decision
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How Easily Does it Come to Mind? The
Availability Heuristic
Availability:
How easy or difficult it is to bring a schema orconcept to mind
Availability heuristic:
Mental rule of thumb whereby people base
judgments on the ease with which they can
bring something to mind
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How Similar is A to B? The
Representativeness Heuristic
Representativeness Heuristic:
Mental shortcut whereby people classifysomething according to how similar it is to a
typical case
Base rate information:
Information about the frequency of members
of different categories in the population
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How Similar is A to B? The
Representativeness Heuristic
Kahneman and Tversky (1973): Engineer and
lawyer problem Read description of Jack, a man drawn
from pool of: 70 engineers and 30 lawyers
30 engineers and 70 lawyers Description of Jack
Stereotypic engineering traits (careful, likes math)
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How Similar is A to B? The
Representativeness Heuristic
Kahneman and Tversky (1973) found that
participants: Based estimates on trait information
Judged him just as likely to be an engineer
when there were 70 as when there were 30
Ignored base rate information
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Taking Things at Face Value: The
Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic
Anchoring and adjustment heuristic:
Mental shortcut whereby people use anumber or value as a starting point andadjust their answer away from this anchor
People often fail to adjust sufficiently away
from the anchor People often use completely arbitrary
anchors
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Try It! Reasoning Quiz
1. Consider the letter R in the English language. Do you thinkthat this letter occurs more often as the first letter of words(e.g., rope) or more often as the third letter of words (e.g.,park)?
a) The first letter
b) The third letter
c) About equally often as the first and third letter
Answer: b) the third letter. Most people think the answer is a)
because of the availability heuristic
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Try It! Reasoning Quiz
2. Which of these do you think causes more fatalities in Canada?
a) accidental death
b) death from strokesc) each causes about the same number of deaths
Answer: b) strokes (16,051 per year).People assume a) accidental death (8,626 per year) is correct
because media reports of accidents make them moreavailable.
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Try It! Reasoning Quiz
3. Suppose you flipped a fair coin six times. Which sequence ismore likely to occur?
a) HTTHTH
b) HHHTTT
c) Both sequences are equally likely
Answer: c) Both are equally likely. People assume the answeris a) because that sequence looksmore random(representativeness heuristic).
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Try It! Reasoning Quiz
4. After observing the sequence TTTTT, what is the probability thatthe next coin flip will be heads?
a) less than 0.5b) 0.5
c) greater than 0.5
Answer: b) 0.5. People assume that the answer is c) because
they feel that after five tails in a row, a flip of heads is morelikely. This gamblers fallacy is the belief that prior randomevents can influence subsequent random events. The fallacy islikely due to the representativeness heuristic
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Automatic Versus Controlled Thinking
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Automatic Versus Controlled Thinking
Automatic processing:
Thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional,involuntary, and effortless Automatically stereotyping people
Controlled processing:
Thinking that is conscious, intentional,voluntary, and effortful Wondering whats for lunch?
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Automatic Versus Controlled
Thinking
Gilbert (1991, 1993, 1998): Automatic Believing
Seeing is believing Initially believe everything as a default
Need to unaccept when necessary
When tired or distracted, can accept
falsehoods
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Insert Figure 3.3 Here
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Application: Is Automatic Thinking
Lethal?
Correll et al. (2002) Police video game study:
Have to determine whether or not to shoot atarget who is either:
White or Black
Armed or unarmed
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Application: Is Automatic Thinking
Lethal?
Correll et al. (2002) found:
Participants more likely to shoot at blacktargets, whether or not they were armed
Shooter bias likely rooted in stereotyped
beliefs about black men
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Causal Attribution: Answering the
Why Question
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The Nature of the Attributional Process
Attribution theory:
A description of the way in which peopleexplain the causes of their own and other
peoples behaviour
Fritz Heider (1958): People can make either
Internal attributions
External attributions
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The Nature of the Attributional Process
Internal Attribution:
Assigning the causality of a personsbehaviour internally Behaviour is due to personality, disposition, etc.
External Attribution:
Assigning the causality of a personsbehaviour externally Behaviour is due to situations, environment, etc.
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Applications: Adjusting to College or
University Life
Wilson and Linville (1982, 1985):
Noticed students attribute first year difficulties
internally (personal inadequacies)
Showed students videos of older students talking
about how common first year problems are
Found: Students in treatment group improved grades
more and were less likely to drop out than control
group
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The Fundamental Attribution Error:
People as Personality Psychologists
Fritz Heider (1958): People tend to prefer
internal attributions over external ones
Fundamental attribution error:
Tendency to overestimate the extent to which
peoples behaviour is due to internal,
dispositional factors and to underestimatethe role of situational factors
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The Fundamental Attribution Error
Jones and Harris (1967) Castro essay study:
Had students read essay either supporting oropposing Fidel Castros rule in Cuba
Told that the essay writer either had
Free choice of which side to take
No choice
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The Fundamental Attribution Error
Later asked participants to estimate the
writers true attitude
Found people ignored choice manipulation
People assume arguments are indicative of
writers opinion, even when the writer had no
choicein what to write
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Insert Figure 3.4 Here
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Blaming the Victim
Fundamental attribution error can lead us to
blame victims of crimes for their plight
Walster et. al: People tend to blame rape
victims for the attack
Summers and Feldman (1984): Battered
wives are seen as responsible for husbandsbehaviour
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The Role of Perceptual Salience
Why do we commit the fundamentalattribution error?
Situational causes of anothers behaviour arevirtually invisible to us
We focus attention on people, notsurrounding situation
Often we dont have situational informationavailable to us
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The Role of Perceptual Salience
Perceptual salience:
Information that is the focus of peoplesattention
People tend to overestimate the causal role
of perceptually salient information
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The Role of Perceptual Salience
Taylor and Fiske (1975) Perceptual salience
study:
Six participants watched two confederateshave a conversation
Researchers manipulated perceptual
salience by either Making one speaker visible, one not
Making both speakers visible
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Insert Figure 3.5 Here
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The Role of Perceptual Salience
Taylor and Fiske (1975) found:
The person participants could see best wasthe one judged to have the most active role
in the conversation
If participants could see both, they rated both
as equally influential on the conversation
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The Role of Culture
Western culture emphasizes the individual
and socializes us to prefer dispositional
attributions
Eastern cultures emphasize interdependence
and socializes people to prefer situational
attributions
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The Role of Culture
Morris and Peng (1994):
Study of articles in Chinese and English-language newspapers
Two similar mass murders
Chinese graduate student in Iowa
Caucasian postal worker in Michigan
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The Role of Culture
Morris and Peng (1994):
Coded articles about the two crimes inChinese vs. U.S. newspapers
Found: U.S. newspaper made significantly more
dispositional attributions for both crimes
U.S. newspaper used terms like sinister edgeand disturbed man, Chinese paper stressedkillers isolation from the Chinese community
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The Actor/Observer Difference
Our use of the fundamental attribution error
applies more to the behaviour of others than
to our own behaviour
Actor/observer difference:
Tendency to see other peoples behaviour as
dispositionally caused, while our ownbehaviour is seen as more situationally
caused
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The Actor/Observer Difference
Why do people show the actor/observer
difference?
Perceptual salience
We notice our own situation more than our
behaviour
Information availability Actors have more information about themselves
than observers do
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Self-Serving Attributions
Sometimes our biased processing has a
motivational basis
As a result, we use attributions that protect
our self-esteem and our belief in a just world
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Self-Serving Attributions
Self-serving attributions:
Taking credit for our successes (internalattribution)
Blaming others or situations for our failures
(external attribution)
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Self-Serving Attributions
Attributions and sports performance:
Lau and Russell (1980) found: 80% of attributions made by coaches and players
for winning performances were internal
Roesch and Amirkhan (1997) found:
Less experienced athletes were more likely tomake self-serving attributions than experienced
athletes
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Self-Serving Attributions
Self-serving attributions lead people to:
Believe their actions are rational anddefensible
Believe that the actions of others are
unreasonable and unjustified
Remember their own contributions to groupwork better than contributions of others
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Self-Serving Attributions
Defensive attributions:
Explanations for behaviour that defend usfrom feelings of vulnerability and mortality
Unrealistic Optimism:
Form of defensive attribution in which we
believe good things are more likely tohappen to us than to others
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Self-Serving Attributions
Belief in a just world (Lerner, 1980):
Form of defensive attribution in which weassume that bad things happen to bad
people and good things happen to good
people
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Critical Thinking Questions
Schemas may improve efficiency, but what
costs are associated with using schemas?
How might high school students use the
availability, representativeness, and
anchoring and adjustment heuristics whenmaking decisions about college or university
applications?
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Critical Thinking Questions
In what way is automatic thinking beneficial,
and in what way is it harmful?
When we are threatened, we often try to
comfort ourselves through our belief in a just
world. How might this defensive attributionhave operated in the aftermath of the events
of September 11?