Person Perception and Social Attributions

PERSON PERCEPTION

Overview

• Person perception: The way individuals think about, appraise, and evaluate others.
• Impression formation: Development of a mental schema about an individual or group.

Key Concepts

Attitudes and Persuasion

• Attitudes can shift via central and peripheral routes.
• Identity is influenced by the "looking glass self," reflecting how one perceives others view them.

Skills in Person Perception

• Human beings excel in person perception leading to:
  • Capacity to identify and remember countless individuals.
  • Quick and effortless formulation of impressions (Carlston & Skowronski, 2005; Fletcher-Watson et al., 2008).
  • Early impressions can be remarkably accurate, according to research (Ambady et al., 2000).

Complexity of Person Perception

• Person perception is a mutual process; while we learn about others, they learn about us, sometimes complicating accurate perceptions.

Initial Impression Formation

• First impressions often rely heavily on physical attributes and nonverbal cues, such as:
  • Facial expressions, body language, touch, tone of voice, interpersonal distance.

Nonverbal Communication

• Nonverbal cues serve distinct purposes:
  • Indicate self vs. other-concern (e.g. crossing arms vs. leaning in).
  • Can enhance or contradict verbal communication.

Cultural Variance

• Nonverbal behaviors differ across cultures:
  • Eye contact, physical closeness, expressiveness, speech volume, and gesturing.

Understanding Through Traits

• People possess numerous traits that inform our perceptions of them, including:
  • Traits like fun, serious, determined, creative, etc.
• Central traits (e.g., warmth vs. coldness) strongly influence overall impressions.

Impact of Context

• Warmth and competence influences evaluations, especially in female assessments (Fiske et al., 2007).
• The context in which we judge character traits (e.g., warm room vs. cold room) significantly affects evaluation outcomes (Williams & Bargh, 2008).

Impression Formation Mechanisms

• Primacy Effect: Initial information holds more influence than subsequent details.
• Recency Effect: Recently acquired information is weighted heavily in evaluations.

Assimilation vs. Contrast

• Judgments can shift toward expectations (assimilation) or away from them (contrast) depending on prior anchoring points.

Social Attributions

Definitions

• Causal Attributions: Inferences regarding the cause of events.
• Social Attributions: Specific inferences regarding the causes of a person’s behavior.

Types of Attributions

• Dispositional Attribution: Suggesting behavior is caused by person's traits.
• Situational Attribution: Asserting behavior is a response to situational factors.

Biases in Attribution

• Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE): Overestimation of personal factors and underestimation of situational influences.
• Self-Serving Bias: Attributing successes to internal factors and failures to external ones.
• Actor-Observer Bias: Differentiated attribution tendencies between self and others.

Evaluating Attribution Information

Covariation Principle

• Behavior interpretation relies on:
  • Consistency: Does the behavior repeat in the same situation?
  • Distinctiveness: Does the behavior occur only in this situation or in all situations?
  • Consensus: Is this behavior typical among others in the same situation?

Conclusion

• Effective person perception and social attributions depend significantly on our cognitive processes and contextual evaluations. We must navigate misunderstandings and biases to form accurate impressions of others.