Social Psychology Exam 1; Ch. 4 Flashcards

Front 1

Social Perception

Back 1

What is it?

-process in which we come to understand other people and their behavior

Front 2

How do we form judgements?

Back 2

looks, dress, attitude

Front 3

Sources of social perception

Back 3

1.Target characteristics

2. Situations

3. Behavior

4.Perceivers

Front 4

1. Target Characteristics

Back 4

-Snap Judgements

-Facial Traits

Front 5

Snap Judgements

Back 5

-Snap Judgements: judgements based on the way people look

Front 6

Facial Traits

Back 6

-Facial Traits: infer traits based on facial features...

--baby faces(large eyes/forehead, round cheeks)=kind, but naive and weak

--mature(small eyes/forehead, angular jaw/chin)=competent, but cold and untrustworthy

---real life impact:legal treatment/job employment & success

Front 7

2. Situations

Back 7

-scripts

-attribution theories (correspondent inference theory, covariation theory)

-attributional biases (fundamental attribution error, actor observer effect)

--explaining prisoner abuse

Front 8

Scripts

Back 8

we have "scripts" for situations; help us understand goals, behaviors, and outcomes likely to occur in a particular setting

Front 9

Attribution Theories

Back 9

-describe how we observe, analyze, and explain others' behavior

--distributional attributions: ability, personality, mood, effort

--situational attributions: environment, task, others, luck

Front 10

Correspondent Inference Theory

Back 10

-given any person's slice of behavior, can we infer a characteristic about the individual or is there more about the situation we need to figure out?

-3 FACTORS:

1.degree of choice:did they have a choice to act this way?

2. Expectedness of behavior:(acting loud in party setting-expected to act that way) but...still loud in library setting-more indicative of who they really are; more indicative in an unexpected situation

3. number of intended effects:what else is underlying the behavior-what effects are intended

**when behavior is freely chosen, not a function of situational expectation, only one intended effect--gives us valuable info a/o type of person they are**

Front 11

Covariation Theory

Back 11

we attribute behavior to potential causes that co-occur w/ the behavior

1.consensus-other people's behaviors in situation

2.distinctiveness-actor's behavior towards stimulus

3.consistency-actor's behaviors toward same stimulus on other occasions

ex. new Restaurant recommendation from friend:

-1. do others like it? 2. does she like all restaurants? 3. does she like the restaurant the 2nd time?

*when do we make dispositional vs. situational attributions? 1.low(no one likes) 2. low(likes all places) 3.high(continues to like it)

Front 12

Attributional Biases

Back 12

-(includes fundamental attribution error, and actor observer effect)

-do people analyze behavior rationally?

-depends on time, motivation, and cognitive capacity

Front 13

Fundamental Attribution Error

Back 13

-tendency to overestimate role of personal factors and underestimate the role of situations when explaining other's actions

Front 14

Actor Observer Effect

Back 14

-tendency to make personal attributions for behavior of others and situational attributions for ourselves

*we have access to our own thoughts/feelings

*we're motivated to see ourselves positively

Front 15

Explaining Prisoner Abuse

Back 15

-dispositional attributions:"Bad apples" that choose environments with power to hurt others

--*motivated to believe we could never be like that

-situational attribution:chain of command, unprepared to handle interrogation situations/being abroad in prison setting

Front 16

3. Behavior

Back 16

-behavior gives clues about inner states;nonverbal cues?

--body language, physical touch, facial expressions, eye gaze (anger, fear, surprise, sadness, joy, disgust=cross-culturally recognizable emotions through observing nonverbal cues)

Front 17

Who Can Tell the Truth?

Back 17

-we are overconfident in our ability to tell if someone is telling the truth

-we are also more likely to assume people are telling the truth

--remember exercise of ranking associated professions with truth-detecting abilities, the results

Front 18

Detecting Deception

Back 18

*Why is it so hard?

-we often pay attention to cues that are easy to control...words/content and facial expressions

*What should we pay attention to?

1.verbal cues:what we don't say

--shorter messages&fewer self-references

2.paraverbal cues: how we say it

--more speech errors and hesitations

3.nonverbal cues:what we do

--less eye-contact, & fewer gestures

Front 19

Lying Online

Back 19

*goal of study, determine if it is easier to detect lies face to face?*

H1:Online

H2:Online>FTF...focus on messages over social cues

H3:medium affects perceptions of partners, but not actual accuracy in lie detectoin

Front 20

Nonverbal Race Bias on TV

Back 20

-clips silenced & edited to show one partner

-white characters edited more pos. nonverbal behavs. than black characters (Study 1)

-prior exposure to nonverbal bias was pos. correlated w. race IAT scores (Study 2)

-IAT scores were higher among those exposed to pro-white vs. pro-black clips (Study 3A/3B)

-evaluative bias & self-reports were consistent w/ clips they watched (Study 4)

Front 21

4. Perceivers

Back 21

-people differ in impressions of the same target

--ratings by the same perceiver are often more consistent than ratings of the same target

-personal factors that affect social perception:

--traits, moods, values/beliefs, culture, lay theories

Front 22

Cultural Influences on Attributions

Back 22

-culture shapes our attributions

--individualists view people as motivated by internal forces & responsible for their own actions

--collectivists emphasize the relationship b/w individuals & their social surroundings

Front 23

Lay Theories

Back 23

*incremental theorists:see personality/traits as malleable (envir. has an effect)

*entity theorists:see personality traits as fixed

-give more weight to traits (vs. situations) in explaining people's behaviors

-less likely to revise their trait judgements in the presence of contradictory info.

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Two Views of Social Perception

Back 24

1. Social perception is a quick and relatively automatic process

2. Social perception is a relatively effortful process

Front 25

Impression Accuracy

Back 25

-what is "accurate" is often unclear or unknowable

-snap judgements do NOT necessarily result in error

*when are perceptions most accurate?

-experience, predicting behaviors rather than personalities, accuracy goal