Chapter 3 Understanding Perceptions and Attributions

1. Chapter 3Understanding Perceptions and Attributions • The Perceptual Process* (esp. Figure 3.1, p. 68) • Perceptual Selection* • Person Perception* • Perceptual Errors* • Attributions: Perceived Causes of Behavior* • Exercise: Truth or Consequences?

2. Perception • Definition: The process by which people select, organize, interpret, and respond to information from the world around them. • Perception (consciously and unconsciously) involves searching for, obtaining, and processing information in the mind in an attempt to make sense of the world • Selection and organization often account for differences in interpretation/perception between individuals observing the same stimuli

3. Basic Elements in the Perceptual Process*(See Figure 3.1, page 68) Observation * Taste * Smell * Hearing * Sight * Touch Environmental Stimuli Perceptual Selection * External factors * Internal factors Perceptual Organization * Perceptual grouping Interpretation * Perceptual errors * Attributions Response * Covert * Overt

4. Concepts Manifest in the Princeton Case • Selective Screening: the process by which people filter out most information so they can deal with the most important matters • Perceptual Set: an expectation of a perception based on past experience with the same or similar objects • Pollyanna Principle: the notion that pleasant stimuli are processed more efficiently and accurately than unpleasant stimuli; an effect of motivation on perception • Perceptual Grouping: tendency to form individual stimuli into a meaningful pattern by continuity, closure, proximity, or similarity

5. Person Perception • Definition: the process by which individuals attribute characteristics or traits to other people; closely related to attribution • Implicit personality theories: personal beliefs about the relationships among other’s physical characteristics, personality traits, and specific behaviors • Impression Management: the attempt people make to manipulate or control the impressions others form about them

6. Common Perceptual Errors • Perceptual defense: the tendency for people to protect themselves against ideas, objects, or situations that are threatening • Stereotyping: the tendency to assign attributes to someone solely on the basis of the category of people, of which that person is a member • Halo effect: the process by which the perceiver evaluates another person solely on the basis of one attribute, either favorable or unfavorable • Projection: the tendency for people to see their own traits in others • Expectancy effects: extent to which expectations bias how events, objects, and people are actually perceived • Self-fulfilling prophecy: expecting certain things to happen will shape the behavior of the perceiver in such a way that the expected is more likely to happen

7. Nature of the Attribution Process* • Definition: The ways in which people come to understand the causes of their own and others’ behaviors • Most often an unconscious process (i.e., people are not normally aware of making attributions) • People are constantly attributing the behavior of themselves and others to either internal (i.e., personal) or external (i.e., situational) causes.

8. The Attribution Process Antecedents-- factors internal to the perceiver • Information • Beliefs • Motivation • Perceived external • or internal causes • of behavior Attributions made by the perceiver • Behavior • Feelings • Expectations Consequences for the perceiver

9. Theory of Causal Attributions Consistency Does person usually behave this way in this situation? Yes Yes Distinctiveness Does person behave differently in different situations? Internal Attribution (to person’s disposition) External Attribution (to person’s situation) No Yes Consensus Do others behave similarly in this situation? Yes No

10. Frequent Attribution Errors* • Fundamental Attribution Error = overestimating the personal causes for other’s behavior while underestimating the situational causes • Self-Serving Bias = attributing personal success to internal factors and personal failure to external factors