Social Beliefs and Judgements

3.1 Forming Impressions of People

Social perception/ Social Belief

The study of how we form impressions of and make inferences (early conclusion) about other
people.

- Observe and make impression to other people

*Not all impressions are accurate, need to be more observant

3.2 Nonverbal Behaviour

Non-verbal Communication

The way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words (including
nonverbal cues).

- No speaking and no voice coming out

Nonverbal cues :-

- Facial expression
- Tone of voice
- Gestures
- Body position (personal space between people)
- The use of touch
- Gaze/ staring

Facial expression

Six major emotional expressions

- Anger
- Happiness
- Surprise
- Fear
- Disgust
- Sadness

Universal emotional expressions – people express these emotions in the same way
How to read facial expression

Eyebrow face downwards – angry

Mouth in the n-shaped – sad

Other emotions (less universality)

- Guilt
- Shame
- Embarrassment
- Pride

These emotions are closely tied to social interaction

Decoding facial expressions accurately is more complicated than we have indicated

1. Affect blends occur (mixed emotions)

2. People try to appear less emotional so that no one know how they feel
- Men more likely to hide their expression
3. Culture ; staring or gazing

Example of display rule differences:

a) American culture norms discourage emotional displays in men such as grief or crying

Allow women facial display of such emotion

b) Japanese women will often hide a wide smile behind their hands (smile politely)

Western women allowed, encouraged to smile broadly and often

Emblems

Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture; usually have direct
verbal translations, like the ‘OK’ sign.

Not universal

Implicit Personality Theory

A type of schema (mental shortcuts) people use to group various kinds of personality traits together

- Link two information together

Example: many people believe that someone who is kind is generous as well.
 Physical attractiveness – presume ‘what is beautiful is good’.

Schemas

- Lead us off the right track

- Make the wrong assumptions about an individual
- Resort to stereotypical thinking, believe that the individual is like all the other members of
his or her group.

Attribution theory

- Try to assign a label or personality traits that can describe individual behaviour

Internal Attribution (inside)

The inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person,
such as attitude, character, or personality.

- Inside of a person

Example: When someone donates money to a beggar, we will assume that the person is very
generous.

External Attribution

The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he
or she is in. The assumption is that most people would respond the same way in that situation.

Nature of Attribution Process:

1. Satisfied spouses (married couple) tend to show one pattern:

Internal attributions for their partners’ positive behaviours

- Example: She helped me because she’s such a generous person.

External attributions for their partners’ negative behaviours

- Example: He said something mean because he’s so stressed at work this week.

1. Spouses in distressed marriage display opposite pattern:

Their partners’ positive behaviours are chalked up to external causes

- Example: She helped me because she wanted to impress our friends

Negative behaviours are attributed to internal causes

 - Example: He said something mean because he’s a totally self-centered jerk.

PARTNERS’ BEHAVIOURS SATISFIED SPOUSES DISSATISFIED SPOUSES

POSITIVE INTERNAL ATTRIBUTION EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION
NEGATIVE EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION INTERNAL ATTRIBUTION

Harold Kelley’s major contribution to attribution theory was the idea that we notice and think about
more than one piece of information when form an impression of another person.

- Need to gather more information before can make internal or external attribution

Covariation Model

A theory that states that to form an attribution about what caused a person’s behaviour, we
systematically note the pattern between the presence of possible causal factors and whether or not
the behaviour occurs.

Consensus Information (everyone)

Information about the extent to which other people behave the same way toward the same stimulus
as the actor (person try to observe and behaviour) does.

Distinctiveness information

Information about the extent to which one particular actor behaves in the same way to different
stimuli.

Consistency Information

Information about the extent to which the behaviour between one actor and one stimulus is the
same across time and circumstances.

Internal versus external Attributions.

- People are most likely to make an internal attribution when consensus and distinctiveness
are low but consistency is high.
- Most likely to make an external attribution when consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency
are all high.
- Example: Why did the boss (actor) yell (behaviour) at his employee, Hannah? (stimuli)
 Consensus Distinctiveness Consistency
People are likely to LOW LOW HIGH
make internal The boss is the only The boss yells at all The boss yells at
attribution – it was person working in the the employees. Hannah almost every
something about the store who yells at time he sees her.
boss Hannah.
People are likely to HIGH HIGH HIGH
make external All the employees yell The boss doesn’t yell The boss yells at
attribution – it was at Hannah. at any of the other Hannah almost every
something about the employees besides time he sees her.
Hannah Hannah.
People are likely to LOW OR HIGH LOW OR HIGH LOW
think it was something This is the first time
peculiar/ odd about that boss has yelled at
circumstances Hannah.

Specific errors or biases weakens the attribution process.

One common shortcut is the correspondence bias.

Correspondence Bias

The tendency to believe that people’s behaviour matches (corresponds to) their dispositions
(personality).

- Tend to believe behaviour matching with personality

Many social psychologists call it the fundamental attribution error.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Tendency to explain someone’s behaviour based on internal factors, such as personality, and to
underestimate the influence that external factors, such as situational influences.

- Ignoring external factors and focus on internal factors

Perceptual Salience

The seeming importance of information that is the focus of people’s attention.

- Focus on things that is highlighted

Two-steps process when we make attributions

1. First, we make an internal attribution; we assume that a person’s behaviour was due to
something about that person.
2. We attempt to adjust this attribution by considering the situation the person was in. We
often don’t make enough of an adjustment
 - Do not observe in wider picture.

Self- serving Attributions

Explanations for one’s successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one’s
failures that blame external, situational factors.

- Praise yourself when success in something

- Blame others but not yourself once you face failure

Defensive Attributions

Explanation for behaviour or outcomes (e.g., tragic events) that avoid feelings of vulnerability and
mortality, influenced by the need to secure.

- Defend ourselves to feel secure

Why do we make self-serving attributions?

1. Most people try to maintain their self-esteem

- Likely to engage in self-serving attributions when we fail at something
- Feel like we can’t improve it
- Likely to attribute our current failure to internal causes if we believe we can improve
(believe that is something to improve even though we face failure)
2. We want people to think well of us and admire us
- Telling others that our poor performance was due to external cause (making excuses)
3. We know more about our own efforts than other people.

Belief in a Just World – good things happen only to good people; bad things happen only to bad
people.

The Just World belief has unfortunate consequences:

- Victims of crimes or accidents often seen as causing their fate

- Rape victims are to blame for the rape.
- Social and economic injustices are considered fair

Individualist Culture

Values inherent in individualist Western cultures cause people to develop analytic thinking style

- If you are an independent person, you are more likely to develop analytic style because
always think by yourself instead of asking people.

Involves focusing on properties of objects and pay less attention to the context/ surrounding.
Collectivist Culture

Values of collectivistic cultures (East Asia) cause people to develop holistic thinking style (overall).

- Interdependent

Focus on ‘whole picture’ (or people) and the context that surrounds that object

3.5 Social Cognition

Social Cognition

How people think about themselves and the social world, or more specifically, how people select,
interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions.

2 types of Social Cognition:

1. Quick and automatic ‘without thinking’

- Without consciously deliberate one’s own thoughts, perception, and assumptions.
2. Controlled thinking that is effortful and deliberate
- Pausing think about self and environment, carefully selecting the right course of action
- Carefully controlling what you think

Automatic Thinking

Thinking that is unconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless.

- Happen automatically

Schemes

Mental structures people use to organise their knowledge about the social world around themes or
subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember.

- More formally people use schemes

Functions of Schemas

- Schemas help us organise and make sense of the world

- To fill in the gaps of our knowledge

When someone mention a specific term, you know it’s related to you.

Example: Name
Schemas as Memory Guides

- Help people fill in the blanks when they are trying to remember things

Some schemas are easier to access in our minds

Priming

The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept.

- Brain is preparing and warming up about what is going to happen

Our schemas Come True with the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

1. Have an expectation (positive/negative) about what another person is like

2. Once you have an expectation, it will influence how they act toward that person
3. Cause that person to behave consistently with people’s original expectations, making it
come true

Example: If students are place in the last class, teacher will assume that those students will not ace
for their examination. Hence, those students will behave the same way as teacher did by not study
well for their examination.

Limits of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

1. People’s true nature can win out social interaction.

2. Self-fulfilling prophecies are likely to occur when people are distracted.
- Not focusing on themselves, losing track of themselves

What shortcuts do people use?

- Use schemas to understand new situations

Mental Strategies and Shortcuts

Judgmental Heuristics

Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently.

- Make judgment quickly and efficiently

*Heuristics are inadequate for the job at hand or are misapplied, leading to faulty judgments

Availability heuristics

A mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring
something to mind.

Representativeness heuristics

A mental shortcut whereby people classify something 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.

Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic

A mental shortcut whereby people use a number or value as starting point and then adjust
insufficiently from this anchor.

Example: Donation; when my friend donates RM50. I will anchor whether should I donate above
RM50 or below.

Controlled Thinking

Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful.

- Conscious because controlling our brain to respond to a situation

- People are fully aware of what they are thinking
- Requires mental energy

Counterfactual thinking

Mentally changing some aspects of the past as a way of imagining what might have been.

- Mentally in brain changing something already happened in the past imagine what could
have happen

Example: ‘If only I had answered that one question differently, I would have passed the test’.

- Usually happen to depression individual

Thought Suppression

The attempt to avoid thinking about the something we would prefer to forget.

- Suppress memory and thinking

Irony is that when people are trying hardest not to think about something if tired or preoccupied
(under cognitive load), these thoughts likely to spill out.

Example: Trying your best to hide items that is embarrassing from your friends.

Overconfidence Barrier

The fact that people usually have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgments.

Ways to improve

- Ask for opinions so that you will not stuck in your own judgment not knowing it is false.