Nov 4, 2025

PSY 101    Class 31: Social Behavior I: Person Perception & Attribution Processes

Social Psychology: How an individual's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others.

Person Perception: Forming Impressions of Others

What factors go into the way we perceive or judge people? At least four major factors appear to affect how we judge other people

A. Effects of Attractive Physical Appearance

• Thought to possess desirable personality characteristics, e.g., warm, friendly, well-adjusted, socially competent
  

• Competence & intelligence
• More physically attractive people tend to be thought more competent and intelligent than less attractive people
• In actuality, this is not true, but because of the influence of the media, physically attractive people receive a lot of positive attention.
• More physically attractive people tend to secure better jobs and earn more money (e.g., lawyers showed 10-20% increase in earnings due to looks; similarly more attractive real estate agents secured higher prices for homes).
  
• Unattractive individuals face higher levels of hostility and abusive behavior in the workplace.
  
• Worldwide research has studied electoral victors for the presidency in other countries: the ratings of candidates who were judged more competent based simply on head shots were highly correlated with actual electoral outcomes.

• Facial appearance is particularly influential in judgments
  
• Inferences about individuals are drawn in about 1/10 of a second

B. Stereotypes

= widely-held beliefs (within a specific culture) that people of a certain group have certain characteristics

• Gender, race, ethnicity, occupations, physical appearance, sexual orientation, religious belief
  
• Stereotyping is a common cognitive process which is automatic and tends to conserve time/effort in dealing with others.
• Note that stereotyping is technically different from bias or discrimination (= actually treating others differently because of their social characteristics [gender, race, ethnicity, etc.]) It is possible that someone may have a stereotype but choose not to act upon it.
  
• Open to significant errors of judgment in terms of individual assessment
  

C. Subjectivity in Person Perception

• Interpreting persons by means of stereotypes and biases

• Confirmation bias: people tend to see what they want to see & filter out what they don't want to see
• Can have direct effect on memory, e.g., shown a video of a woman engaged in many activities (listening to classical music, watching TV, drinking beer, etc.), experimental subjects tended to remember facts associated with what they were told the woman did for a living (librarian vs. waitress; Cohen, 1981).

• Over the summer of 2020 in the wake of the demonstrations after the killing of George Floyd, videos of the same scenes were evaluated by left- vs. right-leaning viewers in dramatically different ways.
  

• Similarly, in the ongoing struggle about masks and vaccination against COVID-19, there are strikingly different ways people respond to the request both to wear masks and to get a vaccination.
  

• Illusory Correlations: People (erroneously) estimate that they have had more confirmatory experience or examples of a belief than they actually have.
• For example, someone might make a prejudiced comment about a specific ethnic group. When asked, they would claim the comment arose from many different encounters with members of that group. However, if they had to actually describe some of these encounters, they might only be able to give one or two examples.

D. Evolutionary Perspective

• These forms of person perceptions may relate to identification of "In Group" versus "Out Group" members. We tend not to expend empathy or emotional investment in "Out Group" members. Indeed, we may be actively hostile to individuals who belong to an "out group"

• "In-Group" members tend to be thought of much more favorably than "Out-group" members.

• Evolutionary social psychologists would point to rhetoric across the West (including the United States) in recent years against refugees and other immigrants as examples of In Group vs. Out Group sentiment.
  

Attribution: Explaining Behavior (to ourselves)

Attributions

= Inferences (conclusions or beliefs) people draw about the cause of events and their own and others' behaviors

• First described in 1958 by psychologist Fritz Heider (University of Kansas) in The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations.
  

   A. Internal vs. External Attributions

• Internal attributions: the causes of behavior come from personal traits, abilities, dispositions, etc.
• External attributions: the causes of behavior arise from situational demands and environmental constraints
  

   B. Success or Failure Attributions: Stable vs. Unstable Causes

Bernard  Weiner's 2-Dimension Theory		Dimension 2 (Stability)
		Unstable (Temporary)	Stable (Permanent)
Dimension 1 (Self or Not)	Internal	Mood, Feeling "I've been worried about some stuff at home and it interfered with my last job rating."	Ability, IQ "They realized that I don't have the skills necessary for the job"
	External	Luck, Chance "The company had to lay off employees because the economy is in a dip these days"	Changes in the World "The jobs have moved overseas and the company can't afford American workers any more."

The table above shows how each of the four types of attributes might be used by four different people in answer to the question "Why did you lose your job"?

   C. Biases in Attributions

1. Actor-Observer Bias

->>> Fundamental Attribution Error

• A form of bias in which we tend to explain others' behavior as a result of internal (personal) qualities or traits but our own behavior as the result of situational factors. 

For example: "s/he failed the test because s/he is stupid or lazy while I failed the test because I had to cope with an emergency in my family."

The traditional model of the fundamental attribution error simply involved the observer making an either/or choice between internal or situational explanations.

A more recent model argues that we are prone automatically to point to dispositions and traits (i.e., personal qualities). It takes more effort to weigh situational factors and we often only expend that level of cognitive effort when it applies to ourselves. 

A more general version of this bias says that people doing things (= actors) favor external (situational) attributions while those who watch others (= observers) favor internal attributions.

!!!!!!!!   This may be the most important theory in social psychology !!!!!

2. Self-Serving Bias = Attribute success to one's personal qualities and failures to situational factors

• for example: "I was smart enough to recognize that housing would be the next big investment opportunity and made my company a lot of money in the last five years. However, the company has begun to lose money recently because of the stock and credit market collapse that no one really could have predicted."

D. Culture & Attributions

Cultures defined by Harry Triandis (above, left) as Individualist Put personal goals ahead of group goals Find identity in personal achievement and not group membership The self-serving bias appears to be very widespread in individual cultures versus Japan's "self-effacing" bias (attribute success to the help of others & downplay one's own abilities) Collectivist Put group goals ahead of personal goals Find identity in group membership Less likely to make the fundamental attribution error (vs. those in individualist countries) Geert Hofstede (2011) on "Individualism vs. Collectivism" (see map above) "Individualism on the one side versus its opposite, Collectivism, as a societal, not an individual characteristic, is the degree to which people in a society are integrated into  groups. On the individualist side we find cultures in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after him/herself and his/her immediate family. On the collectivist side we find cultures in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, often extended families (with uncles, aunts and grandparents) that continue protecting them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty, and oppose other in-groups. Again, the issue addressed by this dimension is an extremely fundamental one, regarding all societies in the world." (p. 11) Hofstede's approach to different cultures involves six separate contrasts of which "Individualism vs. Collectivism" is only one.
Individualism Everyone is supposed to take care of him- or herself and his or her immediate family only "I" – consciousness Right of privacy Speaking one's mind is healthy Others classified as individuals Personal opinion expected: one person one vote Transgression of norms leads to guilt feelings Languages in which the word "I" is indispensable Purpose of education is learning how to learn Task prevails over relationship	Collectivism People are born into extended families or clans which protect them in exchange for loyalty "We" –consciousness Stress on belonging Harmony should always be maintained Others classified as in-group or out-group Opinions and votes predetermined by in-group Transgression of norms leads to shame feelings Languages in which the word "I" is avoided Purpose of education is learning how to do Relationship prevails over task

Reference

Hofstede, G. (2011). Dimensionalizing Cultures: The Hofstede Model in Context. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1).https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1014

This page was originally posted on 11/05/03