Lernmaterialien für Social Perception an der Universität Bremen

Everyone is a naïve psychologist because always try to explain & make sense of other people’s behavior.

A psychologist of common sense

1. The centrality of the notion of intention (behavior is regarded as expression of underlying intentions) 
2. A difference between two types of causes (External or situational vs. Internal or dispositional causes)
3. A tendency to attribute behavior to the actor (overestimate the weight of dispositional causes)

Inferring correspondent intentions and dispositions for observed intentional behavior under certain situations.

-> correspondent inference = dispositional attribution (could be also called a Dispositional attribution theory)

• Analysis of non-common effects: Observers infer intentions behind actions by comparing the consequences of behavioral options that were open to the actor and identifying distinctive outcomes.
• Correspondence bias: The proposed tendency to interfere a personal disposition corresponding to observed behavior even when the behavior was determined by the situation (e.g. pro Fidel Castro essays)

Behavior is more likely to be attributed to an underlying disposition if…

• It is freely chosen
• It is uncommon  
• It has hedonistic relevance (behavior has an impact on me – negative or positive)
• It is socially undesirable (Person is unkind)
• It is role-inconsistent 
• There is a lexical root to define both the actor and the act (language influences expectation e.g. help -> helpful,
   but ayudar -> servicial: Same word, lexical root, faster inference

• Social Perception: Process of collecting & interpreting information about person’s individual characteristic
• Implicit personality theory: An Integrated set of ideas held by a social perceiver about how
   different traits tend to be organized within a person
• Configural Model: Holistic approach to impression formation, implying that social perceivers actively construct deeper meanings out of the bits of information that they receive about other people

1. We intuitively and primarily perceive shapes, patterns and structures 
2. Parts become meaningful only in relation to the whole 
3. Relationships are far more significant than elements in accounting for perception

Facing contradiction: Contradictory information triggers a search for a new axis that may solve inconsistency.

Mechanisms of contradictions resolutions

• Common Source: Good-Natured & Short-Spoken -> Shy
• Interpolation: Intelligent -> Unrewarded -> Unambitious
• Cause-Effect: Dependent -> Hostile

Impression-formation is sequential, each new trait acquires a meaning in the context of a global impression.

Primary Effect: Tendency for earlier information to be more influential in social perception & interpretation 

Impressions are structured patterns, where traits have different weight (some central, some peripheral)

- Central trait: A trait that is important for the organization of personality

- Peripheral Trait: A trait that not significantly change the overall interpretation of a person’s personality

• Stimulus Traits: Representing information we obtain about a person, either through
  observation or through third parties -> What we know
• Response Traits: Representing inferences we make about people, using the information
  we have and going beyond -> What we assume

The common sense takes frequent shortcuts and jumps to conclusions with insufficient evidence. 

Human reasoning is limited in resources, aiming to save as much cognitive effort as possible.

• Causal Schema: May be either abstract representations of general causal principles (e.g. MNC/ MSC) or domain-specific ideas about cause and effect
  We all have causal schemata (e.g. pre-conceptions about how factors combine to produce certain effects).
  We apply them when we lack systematic information or when accounting for single events.
• Discounting principle: The presence of a causal factor working towards an observed effect implies that other potential factors are less influential. The converse of the augmenting principle
• Augmenting Principle: The Assumption that causal factors need to be stronger if an inhibitory influence on an observed effect is present. The converse of the discounting principle.

Two important causal schemata

• Single Cause Schema: Only one factor that may have triggered that event (Pregnancy: Fertilization)
• Multiple sufficient cause: Several Factors can produce the effect, but the presence of any of them is enough
  MSC is usually applied to expected events (passing a really easy exam)
• Multiple necessary cause: Several factors can produce effect, but all of them must be present for it to occur
  MNC is usually applied to unexpected events (failing a really easy exam)

Deppressive attributions

• Depressive mood is linked to internal, global & stable attributions for negative events.
• Depressed and non-depressed people interpret negative events in different ways
• Depressive realism: The idea that depressed people’s interpretation of reality are more accurate, but just when objectives are negatively biased and because of self-fulfilling prophecies 

Learned Helplessness

Feeling of lack of control over negative events  (attribution of negative events to external, uncontrollable factors)

External Rewards

External rewards (Belohnung) typically inhibit intrinsic motivation because they trigger external  attributions for behavior.

Double naive psychologists

Heider calls us “naive psychologists” because we try to make sense of other people’s behavior all the time. But also, because we favor dispositional explanations over situational ones.  We are naïve psychologists rather than naïve sociologists.

1. Attribution biases
2. Egocentric distortions
3. Explanations of attributional biases