Transcript 023_W2004_SocialPerception

Three Minute Review
THEORY OF MIND
• Why is the human brain so big (relative to body size)?
– social group size
• bigger groups require bigger brains to keep track of relationships
• optimal group size for humans: 150
– social (Machiavellian) intelligence
• example: reciprocal altruism
• Testing theory of mind
– Heider’s moving shapes
• people can’t help but attribute “minds” to animate objects
– False belief tests: Sally-Ann test, Smarties test
• does somebody else know the same things you know
– False picture tests
• camera instead of Sally
– lying
• can you mislead what somebody else knows to your advantage
THEORY OF MIND
• normal children
– develop theory of mind around age 4
– do better with false belief than false picture test
• autistic children
– absent/impaired theory of mind
– do okay with false picture than false belief
– not due solely to intellectual impairments
• Down’s syndrome children pass theory of mind tests
– Asperger’s syndrome: high-functioning autism
– extreme male brain theory
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things (systemizing) vs. people (empathizing)
men vs. women
autistics vs. ??? (Williams syndrome perhaps?)
correlated with length of ring finger vs. index finger?
is there a “geek syndrome”?
Test Yourself
In the container test, children are shown a familiar kind of
container such as an M&M bag and asked what the bag
contains. Most 3- and 4-year-old children respond
appropriately and are then asked to open the bag. Once
opened, the bag is found to contain an unpredicted item, such
as a pencil. The bag is then closed, and the children are
asked to guess what another person who has not looked inside
will think is in it. What typically happens?
A. Most 3- and 4-year-olds will answer “M&Ms.”
B. Most 3- and 4-year-olds will answer “pencil.”
C. Most 3-year-olds will answer with “pencil,” but most 4-yearolds will answer “M&Ms.”
D. Most 3-year-olds will answer with “M&Ms,” but most 4-yearolds will answer “pencil.”
E. Most 3-year-olds will give a specific prediction, but most 4year-olds will refuse to answer.
Recommended Homework
• Prior to Tuesday’s class, I would like you try at least
one experiment from the web site below. You can
pick between experiments on your perception of
age, race, gender, and American presidential
candidates.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/measureyourattitudes.html
• On Tuesday, we will discuss the rationale behind
these experiments and it will be easier for you to
understand if you’ve tried it yourself.
Social Perception
• How do we perceive ourselves?
• How do we perceive others?
Self Awareness: The Mirror Test
Who passes the test?
• human children > 15 mos.
• chimps > 6-8 years old
• dolphins
• one gorilla (Koko)
• some monkeys?
• while individual is asleep or anesthetized, put a red
spot on their face/body
• see how they behave when they see themselves in
the mirror
• do they realize it’s them?
Mirror Selves
• others prefer the real photograph
• you yourself prefer the mirror image
Is there one “self”?: Roles
Self Complexity
Reference Groups
• We see ourselves in
contrast to those
around us
• bronze medalists are
typically happier than
silver medalists
• how good are we at
judging the reference
group?
Better-than-average Effect
– 90% of adults consider
themselves “above average”
drivers
– 94% of college professors
rated themselves better than
average
– in one study, no college-bound
seniors rated themselves
below average and 25% rated
themselves in the top 1%
Incompetence
• Many people are incompetent at judging their own
incompetence across many domains (humor, grammar, logic)
Sense of Humor
Self Appraisal
• most people see themselves in a move positive light than others see them
• most people see their current selves as more positive than they see their past selves
• people with high self-esteem make downward comparisons; people with high selfesteem make upward comparisons
Self-fulfilling prophecy
The Pygmalion effect
• In the myth, Pygmalion created a statue
that he treated with such affection, it came
to life
• 1968 experiment in a lower class San
Francisco elementary school
Robert Rosenthal
– gave students an IQ test
– told teachers that the test had identified
students who were “late bloomers” and would
show a spurt in IQ growth
– the experimenters randomly selected 20% of
the pupils who were identified to the teachers
as late bloomers (in reality, these students were
no different in their IQs than the remaining 80%)
– after one year those students showed
significantly higher IQ scores (an increase of 12
points compared to 4 points in the other
students)
• works on rats too!
Why do self-fulfilling prophecies work?
• see video
Attribution
Attribution
• the process by which people infer the causes of other
people’s behavior
• Example: Why did your boss yell at your co-worker?
– co-worker was slacking off and deserved it?
– boss is always a hothead?
– boss is usually easygoing but is undergoing a divorce that has her
stressed out?
– boss really needed this particular job to be done right because her
job is on the line
External factors
• people, events, situation, environment
Internal Factors
• traits, needs, intentions
Consider an Example
Kelley’s 3 questions in making an attribution
• does this person regularly behave this way in this situation?
• do others regularly behave this way in this situation?
• does this person behave this way in many other situations?
Person Bias
fundamental attribution error
• most common error
• people give too much weight to personality and too
little weight to the situation
• more common in Westernized societies
Actor-Observer Discrepancy
• I did it because of the situation; You did it because
of your personality
• e.g., “I did poorly on the exam because I had a
heavy exam schedule and I’d been sick and I was
really stressed out and my goldfish died that
morning and…. He did poorly on the exam
because he’s stupid and lazy.”
• can be influenced by point of view
– see self on videotape   personality attribution
– see videotape from other’s POV   situation attribution
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
Attractiveness Bias
Attitudes
• “beliefs tinged with emotion”
• e.g., good vs. bad, moral vs. immoral
Cognitive Dissonance
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attitudes must be consistent with behavior
if they are not, people experience discomfort
must either change behavior or change attitude
usually it’s easier to change the attitude
Example
– Stephan is a neurologist and knows that smoking is a
serious health risk
– Stephan smokes
– Stephan must either:
1. stop smoking
2. change his attitudes
– “The risks are exaggerated.”
– “I’m going to die from something anyway.”
– “Smoking reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”
Hypocrisy and AIDS prevention
Experiment (Aronson et al., 1991, 1994)
• hypocrisy condition: students made video tapes to promote condom
usage among high school students while being made aware of their own
failure to use condoms
• hypocrisy groups later purchased and used condoms more frequently
than control groups
Insufficient Justification Effect
• If people cannot justify their behavior, they’re likely
to change their beliefs about it
• Experiment (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959)
– gave subjects a boring task
– asked subjects to lie to the next subject and say the
experiment was exciting
– paid ½ the subjects $1, other ½ $20
– then asked subjects to rate boringness of task
– $1 group rated the task as far more fun than the $20
group
– each group needed a justification for lying
• $20 group had an external justification of money
• since $1 isn’t very much money, $1 group said task was fun
Initiation Rites
Belief in a Just World
• belief that people get what they deserve
• blaming the victim
– “gays deserve AIDS”
– the rape victim was “asking for it”