Social Perception
The power of first impressions?
How do we interpret other peoples behaviours?
 Have you ever not been able to explain your
behaviour?? Or thought hmm well that was DUMB after
doing something?
Try to be nice….
What FIRST IMPRESSIONS did you have of me when I
first walked in? What are some things you noticed? Have
these impressions changed over the past several weeks?
First Impressions
Primacy Effect
The tendency to form opinions about others based on first
impressions
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1rwRT229Uo
Kelley (1950) Guest lecturer
experiment
 Before lecturer arrived, students were given a note
 “People who know him consider him to be a rather cold
person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined”
 “People who know him consider him to be a rather warm
person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined”
Kelley (1950) Guest lecturer
experiment
 Asked to rate lecturer on several traits
 Humourous, sociable, considerate
 Results
 The lecturer gave the same talk to all the students.
Those who had warm in their descriptions rated the
lecture more favorably and were more likely to ask
questions and interact with the lecturer
 The students with cold in their descriptions rated the
lecturer as aloof and unsociable. Only 32% said they
wanted to ask him a question or interact with him,
compared to 56% in the group that heard him
described as warm.
Social Cognition
 Definition:
 Broad: How people think about themselves and the
social world
 Specific: How people select, interpret, remember and
use social information to make judgments and decisions
 Can involve automatic or controlled thinking
Schemas
 Mental structures that people use to organize their
knowledge about the world
Different Types of Schemas
 schemas about objects
 schemas about ourselves
 schemas about other people
 schemas about groups of people
 schemas about events
What do schemas do?
 Effects of schemas
 Influence what we notice, think about, and remember
 Schemas act as filters
 Screen out information that is inconsistent with them
 We often attend only to schema-consistent
information
Accessibility and Schemas
 Accessibility: the extent to which schemas and
concepts are at the forefront of people’s minds
 The more accessible a schema is, the more likely we will
be to apply that schema when making judgments
Why do we have schemas?
 We need to be able to relate new experiences to past
ones.
 We need to interpret ambiguous information
Accessibility and schemas
 Chronic accessibility: Due to past experience
 Temporary accessibility
 Priming: bringing a schema or concept to the forefront of
people’s minds
Higgins, Rholes and Jones, 1977
“Donald” experiment

Cover story: participants would take part 2 studies:
1) Perception experiment
- Memorize words while identifying colours
2) Reading comprehension
- Read Donald passage and rated him
What Do Schemas Do?
 provide clarity in ambiguous situations
Word Condition 1
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
reckless
conceited
aloof
stubborn
furniture
corner
tree
pho n e
(Higgins, Rholes, & Jones, 1977)
Word Condition 2
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
adventurous
self-confident
independent
persistent
furniture
corner
tree
pho n e
What Do Schemas Do?
 Donald…
 …climbed Mt. McKinley, shot the Colorado rapids in a kayak,
drove in a demolition derby…
 …didn’t really need to rely on anyone…
 …only rarely did he change his mind…
(Higgins, Rholes, & Jones, 1977)
What Do Schemas Do?
 Donald…
 …climbed Mt. McKinley, shot the Colorado rapids in a kayak,
drove in a demolition derby…
 …didn’t really need to rely on anyone…
 …only rarely did he change his mind…
 How likable is Donald? Reckless? Adventuresome?
(Higgins, Rholes, & Jones, 1977)
What Do Schemas Do?
 positive words = more positive impression (i.e., likable,
adventuresome)
 negative words = more negative impression (i.e., not
likable, reckless)
 the schema that is salient (adventuresome, reckless)
influences how you perceive the story
(Higgins, Rholes, & Jones, 1977)
Problems with schemas
 Schemas are hard to change
 Once we have decided that we believe something, we
will tend to keep on believing it, even in the face of
disconfirming evidence.
 Particularly if other people know of our belief, it can be
embarrassing to climb down from our previous
assertions. It is also difficult to remove a belief which
has been woven into a wider web of belief, without
disturbing those other beliefs.
 Perseverance effect: beliefs persist even after
disconfirming evidence
Problems with Schemas
 schemas are resistant to change
 People are motivated to maintain the schema (Ross,
Lepper, & Hubbard, 1975)
 participants shown research findings that either
a) non-risky firefighters make the best
b) risky firefighters make the best
 told the findings were bogus
 participants held on to their original beliefs
(Anderson, Lepper, & Ross, 1980)
Why are schemas so hard to
change?
 Why?
 Human memory is reconstructive, adding information to
that which is actually noticed
 Reconstructions are schema-consistent, further
reinforcing the schema
Self-fulfilling prophecy
 Jacobson (1968)
 Administered IQ tests
 Randomly assigned students to be “bloomers”
 Tested IQ at end of year
 Results?
Students who were labelled as “bloomers” did better in
the class.
Scenario 1
A student asks her teacher for an extension on an
assignment that she had one month to complete.
Scenario 2
 A teenage boy comes up past his curfew for the 3rd
time in one month
Scenario 3
You are angry with your sister because it is taking her a
long time to get ready for school.
The Attribution Process
 Attribution = Judging people by observing and
determining cause of behavior
 Trait attribution
 Traits, abilities, characteristics of person
 Situational attribution
 Environmental causes
Fundamental Attribution Error
 The tendency to rely more on trait attributions
than situational
 Reasons for this not entirely clear
 Varies by culture
 Individualistic cultures emphasize individual behavior
and success over group; more likely to make
fundamental attribution errors
 Collectivistic cultures emphasize group over individual
Scenario 1
A student asks her teacher for an extension on an
assignment that she had one month to complete’
Scenario 2
 A teenage boy comes up past his curfew for the 3rd
time in one month
Scenario 3
You are angry with your sister because it is taking her a
long time to get ready for school.
Building Task
How much did you contribute to groups overall success?
https://sites.google.com/a/sunsetparkhighschool.org/psyc
hology/sociocultural/activity-fundamental-attribution-error
Actor/Observer Bias
 When observing own behavior take more
situational factors into account
 Appears self-serving, but not always
 Factors:
 Cannot see own behavior, focused outward
 Have different knowledge about self than other
Self-Serving Bias
 Tendency to make trait attributions for successes,
situational attributions for failures
 Helps protect self-esteem
 May become too self-serving and hurt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbWmBUONtFY
Paragraph
Explain a time or multiple times you have fallen for the
Fundamental Attribution Error or Self Serving Bias