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2006 Pearson Education Canada3-1

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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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:

Mental structures people use to organizeinformation about the social world

Schemas affect what we:

Notice

Think about

Remember

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We have schemas for:

People Ourselves

Social roles

Objects Events

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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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Two kinds of accessibility:

Chronic accessibility:

Due to past experience

Traits describing alcoholism chronicallyaccessible if you were raised by alcoholics

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Temporary accessibility:

Whatever happens just prior to an event canmake schemas accessible

Happens through priming

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Perceptual salience:

Information that is the focus of peoplesattention

People tend to overestimate the causal role

of perceptually salient information

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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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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:

Taking credit for our successes (internalattribution)

Blaming others or situations for our failures

(external attribution)

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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 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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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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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?

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