Social Perception The ways in which people perceive on another.pptVIP

Social PerceptionThe ways in which people perceive on another Making Sense of Others:How you form your judgments Primacy Recency Effects Primacy Effect – Tendency to make an opinion on another person based on a first impression. If 1st impression positive we’ll be more likely to get to know them. We’ll interpret a person’s future behaviors more positively if their first impressions was a good one. Recency Effect – when people change their opinions of others based on recent interactions with them. Person Perception* Social Categorization* Mental process of classifying people into groups on the basis of their shared characteristics. Much of it is automatic and spontaneous, and it often occurs outside conscious awareness Categories are usually broad: gender, race, age, occupation. Using social categories helps us mentally organize and remember info about others but may lead to inaccurate conclusions. It ignores a person’s unique qualities and makes a conclusion on very limited information. Prior Information Effects* Mental representations of people (schemas) can effect our interpretation of them Kelley’s study students had a guest speaker before the speaker came, half got a written bio saying speaker was “very warm”, half got bio saying speaker was “rather cold” “very warm” group rated guest more positively than “rather cold” group Attribution: Explaining the Causes of Behavior Attribution Theory We often explain behavior of others differently than we would our own behavior People tend to give a causal explanation for someone’s behavior, often by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition or personality Situational Disposition Attributing someone’s actions to the various factors in the situation Dispositional Attribution Attributing someone’s actions to the person’s disposition, i.e. their thoughts, feelings, personality characteristics, etc. Attribution Can Lead to Errors Fundamental attribution error Actor-observer discrepancy Blaming th