Perceiving & evaluating
other people
Why do we evaluate others?
all of us are naïve psychologists
Are we accurate?
often
however, our judgments can suffer from a
number of biases
when not using all our resources
when we have limited information
when we have hidden motives/goals
• e.g., our self-esteem is threatened
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Social Comparison
 Downward social comparison
Compare ourselves to others who are not
as good (i.e. could be worse!)
 Upward social comparison
Comparing ourselves to others who are
doing better (gives us hope/creates
optimism)
2
Self-fulfilling Prophecies
When our beliefs and expectations
create reality
Beliefs & expectations influence our
behavior & others’
Pygmalion effect
person A believes that person B has a
particular characteristic
person B may begin to behave in
accordance with that characteristic
3
Studies of the Self-fulfilling
Prophecy
 Rosenthal & Fode
tested whether labeling would affect outcome
divided students into 2 groups and gave them
randomly selected rats
1 group was told they had a group of “super genius”
rats and the other was told they had a group of
“super moron” rats
all students told to train rats to run mazes
“genius” rat group ended up doing better than the
“moron” rat group b/c of the expectations of the
students
4
Attributions from behavior
Attribution
a claim about the cause of
someone’s behavior
seeking a reason for the occurrence
of events/behaviors
Heider
early researcher
we intuitively attribute others’ actions to
personality characteristics
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Person vs. Situation
Attributions
 Have to decide whether behavior is due to
something about personality, or whether
anyone would do same thing in that situation
 Kelley’s 3 questions in making an attribution
does this person regularly behave this way in this
situation? [distictiveness]
do others regularly behave this way in this situation?
[consensus]
does this person behave this way in many other
situations? [consistency]
 Example: Susan is angry while driving in a
traffic jam
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Kelley’s Attributional
Logic
(1) Does Susan
regularly get
angry in traffic
jams?
NO
No personality
or situational
attribution
YES
(2) Do many
other people
get angry in
traffic jams?
YES
Situational
attribution:
traffic jams
make people
mad
NO
(3) Does Susan
get angry in
many other
situations?
YES
NO
Personality
attribution,
general
Personality
attribution,
particular
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Kelley – in summary
 When are we likely to make internal
attributions?
Low consensus
High consistency
Low distinctiveness
(see example with “boss insulting customer” on p. 683)
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Person bias in attributions
 People give too much weight to personality
and not enough to situational variables
 Known as person bias
a.k.a. fundamental attribution error
 Conditions promoting person bias
when task has goal of assessment of personality
when person is cognitively loaded
 Conditions promoting a situation bias
when goal is to judge the situation
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Two-stage Model of
Attributions
First stage is rapid & automatic
bias according to goal
(person/situation)
Second stage is slower &
controlled
won’t occur if cognitively loaded
we correct our automatic attribution
10
Two-stage Model of
Attributions
Book example: Joe laughs hysterically while watching a TV
comedy. What can we conclude?
Observer’s goal
Automatic
Attribution
Controlled
Attribution
What kind of
person is Joe?
Person: Joe
laughs
easily
Revision:
could be a
funny show
How funny is the
TV comedy?
Situation:
the TV show
is funny
Revision:
maybe Joe
laughs easily
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Cross-cultural differences
0.70
United States
Attributions to internal
disposition
 Western culture
people are in charge
of own destinies
more attributions to
personality
 Some Eastern cultures
fate in charge of
destiny
more attributions to
situation
0.60
0.50
0.40
0.30
India
0.20
0
8
11
15
Adult
Age (years)
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Actor-Observer Bias
 Attribute personality causes of behavior
when evaluating someone else’s behavior
 Attribute situational when evaluating our own
behavior
 Why?
hypothesis 1:
we know our behavior changes from situation to
situation, but we don’t know this about others
hypothesis 2:
when we see others perform an action, we
concentrate on actor, not situation -- when we
perform an action, we see environment, not person
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Prior Information Effects
Mental representations of people
(schemas) can effect our interpretation
of them
Kelley’s study
students had a guest speaker
before the speaker came, half got a written bio
saying speaker was “very warm”, half got bio
saying speaker was “rather cold”
“very warm” group rated guest more positively
than “rather cold” group
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Effects of Personal
Appearance
The attractiveness bias
physically attractive people are rated higher
on intelligence, competence, sociability,
morality
studies
teachers rate attractive children as smarter, and
higher achieving
adults attribute cause of unattractive child’s
misbehavior to personality, attractive child’s to
situation
judges give longer prison sentences to
unattractive people
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Effects of Personal
Appearance
The baby-face bias
people with rounder heads, large
eyes, small jawbones, etc. rated as
more naïve, honest, helpless, kind,
and warm than mature-faced
generalize to animals, women, babies
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Attitudes
 What is an attitude?
predisposition to behave in a certain way toward
some people, group, or objects
can be negative or positive
 Cognitive dissonance theory
Festinger
we we need our attitudes to be consistent with our
behavior
it is uncomfortable for us when they aren’t
we seek ways to decrease discomfort caused by
inconsistency
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Dissonance-reducing
Mechanisms
Avoiding dissonant information
we attend to information in support of our
existing views, rather than information that
doesn’t support them
Firming up an attitude to be consistent
with an action
once we’ve made a choice to do
something, lingering doubts about our
actions would cause dissonance, so we are
motivated to set them aside
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Dissonance-reducing
Mechanisms
 Changing an attitude to justify an action
when a person does something counter to
their stated beliefs, then justify the deed
by modifying their attitude
Insufficient-justification effect
change in attitude that occurs because
person cannot justify an already completed
action without modifying attitude
optimizing conditions include external
justification, free choice, when action would
cause harm
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Insufficient-justification
effect
 Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)
gave subjects a boring task, then asked subjects
to lie to the next subject and say the experiment
was exciting
paid ½ the subjects $1, other ½ $20
then asked subjects to rate boringness of task
$1 group rated the task as far more fun than the
$20 group
each group needed a justification for lying
$20 group had an external justification of money
since $1 isn’t very much money, $1 group said task
was fun
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Using Attitudes as Ways to
“Justify” Injustice
 Just-world bias
a tendency to believe that life is fair
it would seem horrible to think that you can
be a really good person and bad things could
happen to you anyway
 Just-world bias leads to “blaming the victim”
we explain others’ misfortunes as being
their fault
e.g., she deserved to be raped, what was
she doing in that neighborhood anyway?
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Stereotypes
What is a stereotype?
schemas about a group of people
a belief held by members of one group
about members of another group
how can we study stereotypes?
early studies just asked people
today’s society is sensitized to harmful effects
of stereotyping
need different ways of studying
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Studying stereotypes
3 levels of stereotypes in today’s
research
public
what we say to others about a group
private
what we consciously think about a group, but
don’t say to others
implicit
unconscious mental associations guiding our
judgments and actions without our conscious
awareness
23
Implicit Stereotypes
Use of priming: subject doesn’t know
stereotype is being activated, can’t
work to suppress it
another study
flash pictures of Black vs. White faces subliminally
give incomplete words like “hos_____,” subjects seeing
Black make “hostile,” seeing White make “hospital”
Assign: Go to my website and click on Implicit Social Attitudes
This will take you to the link you need to take the Harvard IAT.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
(or click this of you are online now )
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Implicit Stereotypes
Devine’s automaticity theory
stereotypes about African-Americans are so
prevalent in our culture that we all hold them
these stereotypes are automatically
activated whenever we come into contact
with an African-American
we have to actively push them back down if
we don’t wish to act in a prejudiced way.
Overcoming prejudice is possible, but takes
work
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