Quiz 5: Social beliefs and judgments

First Impressions

The initial judgments formed about a person based on minimal information.

Thin Slices of Information

Small amounts of information used to make quick judgments about others.

Accuracy of Judgments

The evaluation of how correct our assessments are regarding others' personalities or traits.

Physical Cues

Visual aspects such as appearance and behavior that influence first impressions.

Halo Effect

A cognitive bias where one positive trait leads to the assumption of other positive traits.

Negativity Bias

The tendency for negative traits to impact overall impressions more significantly than positive traits.

Cognitive Efficiency

The simplified processing of information, often relying on heuristics or generalizations.

Central Traits

Traits that significantly influence overall impressions of a person.

Information Integration Theory

The theory that impressions are formed by adding or averaging traits.

Salience

The quality of certain information that makes it stand out and captures attention more than other information.

Categorization

The automatic process of grouping stimuli based on shared characteristics.

Covariation Model

A theory that describes how we make attributions based on the relationship between behavior and situational factors.

Motivated Inferences

The tendency of individuals to seek to understand others' behaviors as intentional and reflecting their traits.

Individuated Impressions

Impressions formed through thoughtful consideration rather than automatic categorization.

Priming

The influence of recent experiences on the accessibility of schemas and traits.

Attractiveness Bias

The tendency for physically attractive individuals to receive preferential treatment.

Implicit Personality Theories

Beliefs about the relationships between different traits and behaviors that guide our judgments of others.

Situational Context

The external circumstances that can influence the interpretation of behaviors and attributions.

Consistency, Consensus, Distinctiveness

The three components of the Covariation Model used to determine the type of attribution made for a behavior.

Schema

Mental structures that help organize knowledge and guide our understanding of others.

Personality Characteristics

Attributes or traits that define an individual's behavior and interactions with others.

Efran & Patterson(1976)

Examined Canadian federal election: attractive candidates received 2.5 times the votes of unattractive candidates

Reing & Kernama (1993)

Attractive fund raisers for the AHA had 42% compliance , unattractive =23%

Hamermesh & Biddle (1994)

Attractive individuals receive 12-14% higher salaries than unattractive people

Stewart (1980)

Attractive people are two times more likely to avoid incarceration for the same crime as unattractive people

Effects of salience

• Draws/shifts attention to target

• Influences perceptions of causality

• Produces more extreme judgments

• Enhances consistency of judgments

Dual Processing

• Individuated impressions typically used when...

  • High motivation to be accurate (e.g., social consequences for inaccuracy)

  • Target not easily categorized/doesn’t fit category

  • Requires more cognitive effort than category-based impressions

Assimilation

• Biases judgments in the same direction as the context(viewed as similar)

• More common when using category-based processing

Contrast

• Biases judgments away from the context(viewed as different)

• More common when using individuated information

Prototypes

A typical (or the best) example of a category

A mountain gorilla is the prototype of all gorilla

Exemplars

A specific example of an item from a category

Could be a mountain gorilla, silverback gorilla, etc.

Correspondent Inference Theory (Jones & Davis, 1965)

We rely on observable behaviors to make inferences about the corresponding underlying traits that produced them

If someone did a ‘kind’ behavior we may label them as a ‘kind’ person

If someone behaved with little thought to the consequences, we may label them as an impulsive person

The Covariation Model

1)We make attributions using information about covariation

Coverartion:

varying together; a cause must be present when an event occurs, and absent when it doesn’t occur

2)In Kelly’s model, we use three types of information:

consistency, consensus, distinctness

Consistency

high(the person often behaves like this) or low (person very seldom behaves like this)

Consensus

high(most people behave like this) or low (few people have like this)

distinctiveness

height (the person doesn't behave like this in other situations) or low (the person does behave like this in other citations)

The Covariation Model Scoring

• Scoring High in the three categories shows an external attribution

• Scoring low in the three categories shows an internal attribution

• Different combinations can result in either internal and/or external attribution