Social Perception Notes

Mental structures that help form impressions based on past experiences and knowledge.
Types of schemas:
- Person schemas: "what type of person is your best friend?"
- Role schemas: "flight attendant, teacher, mother"
- Scripts: "funeral, concert, graduation"
- Self schemas: "who you are, your qualities, your strengths or weaknesses"

The first impression carries more weight than later information.
Example: Meeting a classmate who seems cold in the first meeting, making it hard to change the opinion later.

Later information overshadows early information.
Example: Meeting a person that seems nice initially, but later finding out they committed a serious crime.
Primacy effect is more common and long-lasting than recency effect.

In the absence of contrary information, people tend to assume the best of others.
Humans are biased towards negativity:
- Negative information attracts attention and has a big effect on later impression.
- Reasons:
  - The information is unusual, distinctive, and extreme.
  - The information indirectly signifies potential danger.

Personal ways of characterizing other people.
Example: Humor vs. intelligence as the most important principle for forming impressions.
Different personal constructs lead to different impressions of the same person.

Appearance is the first information received and is influential.
Appealing physical appearance leads to perceptions of being good, interesting, and competent.
Attractive male executives are perceived as more competent, while attractive female executives may be perceived as less competent.

Schemas are resistant to change as they provide a structure to social encounters.
People disregard or reinterpret information that goes against their schema.

Participants formed impressions of a target individual making good or bad decisions.
Participants predicted scores of 24/25 for good decision-makers and 10/25 for bad decision-makers.
Even when informed that the information was false, participants maintained impressions, predicting 19/25 and 14/25.

Trial lawyers introduce irrelevant or inadmissible evidence, which influences the jury's impression even if the judge instructs them to disregard it.

Bookkeeping: Gradual change in the face of repeated evidence. Example: Changing opinion about teens being spoilt after meeting responsible teens.
Conversion: A sudden and massive change once disconfirming evidence is encountered. Example: Thinking people with tattoos are dangerous, but then a doctor with tattoos saves your life.
Subtyping: Adding a subcategory to accommodate disconfirming evidence. Example: "Men are violent," but thinking encounters are an exception.

The process of assigning a cause to our own behavior and that of others.
People as naïve psychologists:
- Fritz Heider (1958) believed that people are intuitive psychologists who build causal theories of human behavior.

Internal attribution: Behavior due to internal factors (personality, abilities). Example: "He failed the test because he is lazy."
External attribution: Behavior due to external factors (situations, social pressure). Example: "He failed the test because he was sick."

The fundamental attribution error: Over-attributing others’ behavior to internal factors, undermining external factors.
Assumed similarity bias: Thinking of someone as similar to ourselves and expecting them to behave like we do.
The halo effect: Judgments of a person’s character are influenced by the original perception.
The actor-observer bias: Attributing one’s own behavior to external causes, but the behavior of others to internal causes.
The self-serving bias: Claiming success is due to own efforts, failure to circumstances beyond control.

"After getting a bad grade, Jamie says the teacher made the test too hard. When Alex gets a bad grade, Jamie says Alex is just lazy."
"Maria won the race and said it was because she trained hard. When she lost, she blamed the heat."
"Tom thinks his classmate is rude for not saying hi, and nothing excuses his behavior."
"Lila says her coworker missed a deadline because she’s irresponsible, but when Lila misses a deadline, she blames a family emergency."