PERSON PERCEPTION September 25th, 2009 : Lecture 5

Transcription

1 PERSON PERCEPTION September 25th, 2009 : Lecture 5 PERSON PERCEPTION Social Information Attribution Self-serving Biases Prediction SOCIAL INFORMATION BEHAVIOURAL INPUT What Goes Into Person Perception? Behaviour Context Schemas! Verbal Behaviour Nonverbal Behaviour Emblems Power of Behavioural Input: Thin Slices

2 EMBLEMS THIN SLICES Gestures that have well-understood meaning within a culture Effectively: nonverbal language Approach within social psychology focused on the attributional power of brief exposure to others SES IN SOCIAL INTERACTIONS SES IN SOCIAL INTERACTIONS Kraus & Keltner (2009) Method: How quickly can you detect someone s socioeconomic status (SES)?

3 SES IN SOCIAL INTERACTIONS CONTEXT Kraus & Keltner (2009) Results: Naive observers accurately detected parents income, mothers education, and subjective SES Relative to high SES participants, low SES participants spent less time: Grooming, doodling, manipulating objects CONTEXT CONTEXT Context matters Provides additional input Can completely change attribution

4 SCHEMAS SCHEMAS Classic example from last Friday s lecture: What you expect is what you get SCHEMAS SCHEMAS Classic example from last Friday s lecture: Classic example from last Friday s lecture:

5 ATTRIBUTION ATTRIBUTION How Automatic is Attribution? Explanation for an observed behaviour of another social object Attribution Theory Internal/External Attributions Fundamental (?) Attribution Error Covariation Theory EASE OF ATTRIBUTION Heider & Simmel (1944) AUTOMATICITY OF ATTRIBUTIONS How Automatic is an Attribution? Very Attributions = Pattern Matching

6 ATTRIBUTION THEORY INTERNAL ATTRIBUTION Primary Question: Do we attribute behaviour to something about the person ( internal ) or something about the situation ( external )? Attributing a person s behaviour to something intrinsic to that person Personality, disposition, attitude, or character EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR AKA, FAE Attributing a person s behaviour to something about the situation in which the behaviour occurred Specifically not changing beliefs regarding person s character or personality When perceiving others: Tendency to overestimate the influence of internal causes for behaviour and underestimate external causes When perceiving self: Much more likely to attribute own behaviour to external causes

7 Understanding the Intergroup Effects of Bonds Across Racial Boundaries This research will examine the mechanisms through which intimate bonds between people from different racial groups affect the way information about racial outgroups is represented and applied to novel outgroup members. We propose that previously observed intergroup benefits of cross-race bonds occur through a heightened complexity of associative representations of outgroups. Incorporating theory from social cognition, cognitive neuroscience, and psychophysiology, this research takes an integrative approach to address a long-standing question in intergroup relations research, and thus fits well with the goals of the Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative. Race is a readily processed visual cue to coalitional membership (Cosmides, Tooby, & Kurzban, 2003; Susskind, Maurer, Thakkar, Hamilton, & Sherman, 1999), and ingroup status affords certain benefits such as greater resource allocation and extensions of other self-serving biases (Billig & Tajfel, 1973; Tajfel, 1970). Thus, social interactions with racial outgroup members may be more threatening than interactions with racial ingroup members. Indeed, a series of psychophysiological studies observed cardiovascular and electrodermal responses consistent with physiological patterns of threat during interactions between White and Black participants (Blascovich, Mendes, Hunter, Lickel, & Kowai- Bell, 2001; Mendes, Blascovich, Lickel, & Hunter, 2002; Mendes, Major, McCoy, & Blascovich, 2008). However, Blascovich et al. (2001) noted that prior cross-race contact moderated physiological threat responses during cross-race social interactions. Similarly, using an established fear-conditioning paradigm, Olsson, Ebert, Phelps, & Banaji (2005) found that both White and Black participants took longer to extinguish fear responses to outgroup faces compared to ingroup faces. Moreover, the persistence of this fear response was not observed among participants who currently or in the past had a cross-race romantic relationship. Thus, it appears that close bonds between people from different races attenuates threat responses to novel members of other racial groups. Although the beneficial effects of cross-race intimacy on experiences with people from other social groups have been discussed at a theoretical level for over 50 years (Allport, 1954; Amir, 1976; Pettigrew, 1998; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006), advances in the field were stunted by a lack of experimental methods (Pettigrew, 1998). Only recently have intergroup researchers begun using methods that can test the causal effects of cross-group closeness, such as manipulations of interpersonal closeness between same-race and cross-race pairs. This work has shown that platonic cross-race closeness plays a causal role in reductions of aversive hormonal stress responses and self-reported anxiety in intergroup contexts (Page-Gould, Mendoza-Denton, & Tropp, under review; Wright, Aron, & Tropp, 2002) and stimulated interest in intergroup contact in daily life (Page-Gould et al., under review). Despite the promise of these findings, the cognitive processes through which these high-level effects occur have yet to be systematically elaborated. Emerging work suggests these benefits may be partially explained by contextual associations of an outgroup with the concept of oneself. Social cognitive approaches to close relationships conceptualize interpersonal closeness as an association of close others' characteristics with the concept of self (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992). For example, Aron, Aron, Tudor, and Nelson (1991) asked participants to quickly categorize personality traits as self-descriptive or non-self-descriptive using two buttons labeled me and not me, respectively. Participants hesitated significantly longer when classifying traits as non-descriptive if they had explicitly rated the trait as not descriptive of themselves but highly descriptive of their best friends than if the traits were not descriptive of either their best friends or themselves. This theory has added significance when closeness develops across the boundaries of social groups; if individual characteristics (i.e., personality traits) of close others become automatically associated with the self, then collective characteristics (i.e., group membership) might also be associated with the self (Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, Mashek, Lewandowski, Wright, & Aron, 2004). Indeed, when racial group labels (e.g., Asian, Native American ) are included in the aforementioned paradigm, closeness of natural cross-group friendships predicted greater hesitation and more errors (i.e., me responses) when classifying a cross-race friend's racial group with not me Understanding the Intergroup Effects of Bonds Across Racial Boundaries This research will examine the mechanisms through which intimate bonds between people from different racial groups affect the way information about racial outgroups is represented and applied to novel outgroup members. We propose that previously observed intergroup benefits of cross-race bonds occur through a heightened complexity of associative representations of outgroups. Incorporating theory from social cognition, cognitive neuroscience, and psychophysiology, this research takes an integrative approach to address a long-standing question in intergroup relations research, and thus fits well with the goals of the Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative. Race is a readily processed visual cue to coalitional membership (Cosmides, Tooby, & Kurzban, 2003; Susskind, Maurer, Thakkar, Hamilton, & Sherman, 1999), and ingroup status affords certain benefits such as greater resource allocation and extensions of other self-serving biases (Billig & Tajfel, 1973; Tajfel, 1970). Thus, social interactions with racial outgroup members may be more threatening than interactions with racial ingroup members. Indeed, a series of psychophysiological studies observed cardiovascular and electrodermal responses consistent with physiological patterns of threat during interactions between White and Black participants (Blascovich, Mendes, Hunter, Lickel, & Kowai- Bell, 2001; Mendes, Blascovich, Lickel, & Hunter, 2002; Mendes, Major, McCoy, & Blascovich, 2008). However, Blascovich et al. (2001) noted that prior cross-race contact moderated physiological threat responses during cross-race social interactions. Similarly, using an established fear-conditioning paradigm, Olsson, Ebert, Phelps, & Banaji (2005) found that both White and Black participants took longer to extinguish fear responses to outgroup faces compared to ingroup faces. Moreover, the persistence of this fear response was not observed among participants who currently or in the past had a cross-race romantic relationship. Thus, it appears that close bonds between people from different races attenuates threat responses to novel members of other racial groups. Although the beneficial effects of cross-race intimacy on experiences with people from other social groups have been discussed at a theoretical level for over 50 years (Allport, 1954; Amir, 1976; Pettigrew, 1998; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006), advances in the field were stunted by a lack of experimental methods (Pettigrew, 1998). Only recently have intergroup researchers begun using methods that can test the causal effects of cross-group closeness, such as manipulations of interpersonal closeness between same-race and cross-race pairs. This work has shown that platonic cross-race closeness plays a causal role in reductions of aversive hormonal stress responses and self-reported anxiety in intergroup contexts (Page-Gould, Mendoza-Denton, & Tropp, under review; Wright, Aron, & Tropp, 2002) and stimulated interest in intergroup contact in daily life (Page-Gould et al., under review). Despite the promise of these findings, the cognitive processes through which these high-level effects occur have yet to be systematically elaborated. Emerging work suggests these benefits may be partially explained by contextual associations of an outgroup with the concept of oneself. Social cognitive approaches to close relationships conceptualize interpersonal closeness as an association of close others' characteristics with the concept of self (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992). For example, Aron, Aron, Tudor, and Nelson (1991) asked participants to quickly categorize personality traits as self-descriptive or non-self-descriptive using two buttons labeled me and not me, respectively. Participants hesitated significantly longer when classifying traits as non-descriptive if they had explicitly rated the trait as not descriptive of themselves but highly descriptive of their best friends than if the traits were not descriptive of either their best friends or themselves. This theory has added significance when closeness develops across the boundaries of social groups; if individual characteristics (i.e., personality traits) of close others become automatically associated with the self, then collective characteristics (i.e., group membership) might also be associated with the self (Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, Mashek, Lewandowski, Wright, & Aron, 2004). Indeed, when racial group labels (e.g., Asian, Native American ) are included in the aforementioned paradigm, closeness of natural cross-group friendships predicted greater hesitation and more errors (i.e., me responses) when classifying a cross-race friend's racial group with not me FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR Jones & Harris (1967) Jones & Harris (1967) Method: AUTHOR: Results: 60 Choice Chose Essay's Position Assigned Essay's Position Writer s Attitude Anti-Castro Pro-Castro No Choice Essay Read PERCEPTUAL SALIENCE TWO-STEP PROCESS OF ATTRIBUTION Same process as Anchoring & Adjustment Heuristic Tendency to overestimate the causal role of information that grabs our attention 1. Make an internal attribution 2. Attempt to adjust away from internal attribution by considering situational constraints

8 HOW FUNDAMENTAL IS THE FAE? Gang Lu (!") Recent Physics Ph.D. from University of Iowa On 1991/11/01, he killed 4 faculty, 1 Ph.D. Student, and paralysed a student researcher HOW FUNDAMENTAL IS THE FAE? Morris & Peng (1994) Method: Analysed Chinese- and English-language newspaper articles written about Gang Lu Results: Internal Attributions English Chinese Newspaper Language CORRESPONDENCE BIAS COVARIATION THEORY Assumption: People are lay statisticians Tendency to infer that a person s behaviour corresponds to their disposition, personality, or attitude 3 Factors of Attribution: Consensus Distinctiveness Consistency

9 CONSENSUS DISTINCTIVENESS Do other people behave in this way? Behaviour unique to person Does this person behave like this with other stimuli? Behaviour unique to situation CONSISTENCY COVARIATION THEORY 3 Patterns Lead to 3 Attributions: Does the person behave like this over time? Behaviour unique to this moment in time Consensus Distinctiveness Consistency Attribution!! " Internal " " " External " or! " or!! Situational

10 SELF-SERVING BIASES SELF-SERVING ATTRIBUTIONS Self-Serving Attributions Defensive Attributions: Unrealistic Optimism Just World Hypothesis False Consensus Effect Ultimate Attribution Error You do really well on a test. Is this because: You are smart The test was easy You do really poorly on a test. Is this because: You are dumb The test was hard SELF-SERVING ATTRIBUTIONS UNREALISTIC OPTIMISM Positive outcome for Self: Explain it in terms of internal factors Negative outcome for Self: Explain it in terms of external factors Tendency to expect: Bad things are less likely to happen to you than to other people Good things are more likely to happen to you than other people

11 JUST WORLD HYPOTHESIS FALSE CONSENSUS ERROR Belief that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people Leads to rejection of victims Assumption that more people share your beliefs, attitudes, and preferences than actually do ULTIMATE ATTRIBUTION ERROR PREDICTION Tendency to make internal attributions about an entire social group s disposition based on the behaviour of one group member Only applies to social outgroups How Good Are We At Predicting? Implicit Personality Theories

12 HOW GOOD ARE WE AT PREDICTION? IMPLICIT PERSONALITY THEORIES Demo! Need 6 volunteers! Type of schema used to group certain personality traits together E.g., Jane is warm. Will Jane lend Jeric $10 for lunch? WE SEE PEOPLE AND THINGS NOT AS THEY ARE, BUT AS WE ARE. ALEXA S SURVEY Next lecture (9/30): Social Interactions Relevant Websites: How good at you at perceiving other people s personality? What your stuff says about you: