7.1 Making Sense of the World

• The role of person perception, attributions, attitudes and stereotypes in interpreting, analysing, remembering, and using information about the social world, including decision-making and interpersonal interactions.
• Social cognition: relates to the way that we behave in social settings, and how we interpret the behaviours of others
• Social cognition involves:

  1.the detection of facial expressions and emotional responses (social perception)

  2.understanding other people’s cognitive or emotional states (social understanding)

  3.carrying out behaviours that take into consideration the goals and needs of ourselves and others (social decision-making).
• Person perception: the processes by which people think about, appraise and evaluate other people. Person perception leads us to make judgements about people based on limited information therefore it is not always accurate. Physical cues, saliency detection and social categorisation contribute to person perception
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• Attribution: the process of attaching meaning to behaviour by looking for a cause or causes to explain the behaviour. When observing people, we tend to make inferences about their actions.

  •Internal attributions (also known as dispositional attributions): refer to factors within the person that shape their behaviour. These include personality characteristics, motivation, ability and effort.

  •External attributions (also known as situational attributions): refer to environmental factors that are external to the individual, such as their location or the people around them.
• Fundamental attribution error: when we attempt to interpret the behaviour of others, we tend to overestimate the role of internal factors and underestimate the role of external factors.
• The fundamental attribution error occurs because observers:

  •are not aware of external factors and events that have occurred in the past that may influence another’s behaviour

  rely heavily on internal factors
• Attribution Theory:

  Fritz Heider  suggested that we have a tendency to give causal explanations for someone’s behavior, often by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition (traits)
• •Dispositional attributions – hold an individual responsible for his or her behavior
• •Situational attributions – look at factors in the environment to explain why someone acted the way that he/she does
• •A teacher may wonder whether a child’s hostility reflects an aggressive personality (dispositional attribution) or is a reaction to stress or abuse (a situational attribution)

  •Dispositions are enduring personality traits
• •How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we react to it.

  
• •Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency to overestimate the impact of personal disposition and underestimate the impact of the situations in analyzing the behaviors of others

  •This explains the blame attached to people for situations outside their control like rape and kidnapping.
• •Self serving bias – we attribute our achievements and successes to personal causes and our failures to situational factors

  •Actor-Observer bias – we attribute our own behaviours to external/situational factors but those of others to dispositional (internal factors). A student thinks she did not pass a test because the teacher did not teach well enough; however, some other student did not pass because she did not study enough.
• Attitude: A belief and feeling that predisposes a person to respond in a particular way to objects, other people, and events
• •Attitudes we hold impact our thoughts and feelings on a variety of topics.

  •These can be positive, negative or neutral.

  •They can be strong or weak.

  •Our attitudes are learnt as we grow – we do not have any attitudes when we are born.
• Attitudes: learned evaluations we hold about ourselves, others, objects and experiences.
• •Attitudes are not innate. They are learned through exposure to the environment and can cause a person to respond in a positive or negative way - behaviour.
• •If someone has never thought much about an object or experience, they may have an indifferent or neutral attitude.
• •Factors that contribute to learning of attitudes include experience, personal influence and exposure to the media
• •Attitudes can come from direct contact (personal experience) with the object of the attitude.

  •Attitudes are also learned indirectly through interaction with others.
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• •Implicit attitudes are unconscious attitudes that people are usually unaware that they hold or have formed.
• •Explicit attitudes, conversely, are those attitudes that are consciously learnt and can be self-reported.

   
• How do we develop our attitudes?

   - Experience

   - Social norms of the society around us.

   - Media

   - Responses of those around us

   - The attitudes of those we admire
• What does the tri-component model of attitudes propose?

  It proposes that there are three elements that contribute to attitude formation.
• What are the three components of the tri-component model of attitudes known as?

  The ABC of attitudes.
• What are the three components of the ABC of attitudes?

  • Affective component: feelings or emotions towards the object or person
  • Behavioral component: actions towards various people, objects, or institutions
  • Cognitive component: belief about an object or person
• What does the affective component of attitudes refer to?

  It refers to feelings or emotions towards the object or person.
• What does the behavioral component of attitudes involve?

  It involves the actions towards various people, objects, or institutions.
• What is the cognitive component of attitudes?

  It is the belief about an object or person.
• Provide an example of the affective, behavioral, and cognitive components of an attitude towards exercising at the gym.

  • Affective: Louis enjoys exercising at the gym.
  • Behavioral: Louis goes to the gym three times a week.
  • Cognitive: Louis thinks going to the gym is a healthy way to reduce stress.
• Limitations of the tri-component model of attitudes include:

  •does not indicate the strength of an attitude, and understanding the strength of an attitude is useful. Strong attitudes are generally seen to be firmly held and resistant to change, therefore they impact behaviour.

  •inconsistencies often exist between what a person thinks and feels and their behaviour (cognitive dissonance).