Impression Formation 6j1h48

Impression formation • You're at a party. You see a guy walking into the room. You scan him from top to bottom. You take in his appearance―tattooed arms, pierced eyebrow, colored hair. He comes and stands next to you―you think he smells of smoke. http://www.scsu.edu/files/Counselor_ %20Education/CourseSyllabus.pdf You immediately tag him as being someone who enjoys partying, smokes up a lot, has no regard for authority, and is really careless at his job. 1

• You formed an opinion, an impression about the man, simply by taking in his appearance. • human mind has tendency to form impressions about others based on our expectations from them, on certain events from the past and our learned behavior. That is why, so much stress has been laid on the power of the first impression.

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• Every time we come across a new person, we tend to form an impression about him/her. • It happens without us even realizing it. • However, these impressions are likely to change as one begins to interact with the person. 3

Why do we form impressions? • There are so many stimuli that we are faced with on a daily basis that it would be overwhelming to have to study each one of them separately. • That is why, given our past experiences, our interactions with people, and the things we read and are told, we form certain impressions in our mind so that we can categorize people and bracket them. 4

The following is how we tag people.

•Purpose of the Perceiver •Social Context •Memories •cognitive shortcuts for judging others 5

Factors Influencing Impression Formation These are the following factors that influence our impression formation. •Appearance •Personality traits •Looks •Profession •Company that you keep •Skin color •Community •Age •Gender •Class •Preference for color 6

Impression Formation. • We form impressions of people rapidly so we need to make short cuts. According to Solomon Asch impression formation is influenced by two major types of traits. • Central Traits- Honesty, friendliness, meanness, happiness, introverted, extrovertedtraits that are stable across time. • Peripheral Traits- Personality traits which are affected by central traits. 7

Solomon Asch (1946) • Generally, it has been shown that some information we acquire about people is considered more important than other information. • Asch refered to this important information as "central traits", whilst the less important information is referred to as "peripheral traits". 8

• In his studies, Asch took two groups of participants. • Each was given a list of traits (intelligent, skilful, industrious, determined, practical, cautious) and one other. • The last trait was "warm", for one group, and for the other, "cold". 9

• These groups were then given a list of other traits (reliable, good-natured, etc) and asked to choose which ones the person would have. • The results showed a very strong correlation between being given the word "warm", and attributing this fictional person with more favourable characteristics. 10

• The same study was repeated, with different variable words. • In this study, the words Warm/Cold were replaced with "Polite" or "Blunt". • This study found very little difference between the responses generated in each group. 11

Series A ("warm") • A person who believes certain things to be right, wants others to see his point, would be sincere in an argument' and would like to see his point won. • A scientist performing experiments and persevering after many setbacks. He is driven by the desire to accomplish something that would be of benefit. 12

Series B ("cold") • A very ambitious and talented person who would not let anyone or anything stand in the way of achieving his goal. Wants his own way, he is determined not to give in, no matter what happens. • A rather snobbish person who feels that his success and intelligence set him apart from the run-of-the-mill individual. Calculating and unsympathetic. 13

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• Asch's conclusion from these results that certain traits are central to the impression we have of people, because they influence our perception of other, peripheral, traits. (i.e. the words in the first study were deemed as central traits, hence why they made a difference, whilst those used in the second study were peripheral traits, hence making much less of a difference.) 15

PERSON PERCEPTION • Person perception or social perception is judging a person in social setting. Issues • Shortcuts in judging others • Stereotyping • Halo error • Projection • Contrast effect • Selective perception • attribution 16

SOCIAL PERCEPTION a. Halo Effect: Drawing a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic. b. Stereotyping: Judging someone on the basis of one’s perception of the group to which that person belongs. c. Selective Perception: People selectively interpret what they see on the basis of their interests, background, experience and attitudes. OR Selective perception is our tendency to choose information that s our viewpoints while ignoring information that threatens our viewpoints. d. Contrast Effect: Contrast Effect is enhancement of perceived differences between stimuli resulting from putting them side by side. e. Projection: This tendency to attribute one's own characteristics to other people is called projection. 17

SOCIAL PERCEPTION • Attribution: Attribution refers simply to how people explain the cause of another’s or their own behaviour. • Attribution theory: When individuals observe behaviour, they attempt to determine whether it is internally or externally caused. • INTERNALLY caused behaviors are those that are believed to be under the personal control of the individual. • EXTERNALLY caused behavior is seen as resulting from outside causes; that is, the person is seen as having been forced into the behavior by the situation 18

• Distinctiveness is the degree to which the person behaves the same way in other situations. • Consensus is the extent to which peers in the same situation behave the same way • Consistency refers to the frequency of a particular behavior over time 19

KELLY’S ATTRIBUTION THEORY

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ATTRIBUTION THEORY Fundamental attribution error (the correspondence bias): The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors while making judgments about the behaviour of others. When we focus on others’ behaviour, we tend to begin by assuming that their actions reflect their underlying characteristics. Then we attempt to correct for any possible effects of the external world-the current situation-by taking these into . This correction, however, is often insufficient. We don’t make enough allowance for the impact of external factors- we don’t give enough weight to possibility of a traffic jam or a slippery floor when reaching our conclusions. Cultural difference is perceived regarding universality of this error. 21

Self Serving bias: The tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes to internal factors while putting the blame for failures on external factors. •One theory suggests we attribute positive outcomes to internal causes but negative ones to external causes because we expect to succeed and have a tendency to attribute to exptected outcomes to internal causes more than to external causes. •Another theory suggests that motivation to enhance our self esteem and desire to look good to others leads to self serving bias. •This bias is more common in individualistic culture than collectivistic culture.

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SOCIAL BEHAVIOR Social behavior is the behavior directed toward society or taking place between of the society. Social behavior includes interaction among people and their thinking toward others. Issues: • Attitude • Persuasion • Prejudice 23

ATTITUDES According to R. A. Baron (2009) Attitudes are lasting evaluations or judgments concerning objects, people or events that are stored in memory. I. The characteristics of attitudes are: • They tend to persist unless something is done to change them. • They can be favorable or unfavorable. • They are directed towards objects, people or events about which a person has feelings. • Attitudes consists of cognitive, affective and behavioural component. 24

Attitudes II. Components of Attitudes Attitudes consist of three components: • Cognitive Component • Affective Component • Behavioral Component

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Attitudes III. Attitude Formation Attitudes make up the personality. An attitude is a persistent tendency to feel and behave in a particular way toward objects people or events. Attitude formation is influenced by various factors such as: • Operant conditioning, observational learning, classical conditioning, genetic factors 26

Inconsistent attitudes: Cognitive Dissonance Cognitive dissonance refers to any incompatibility that an individual might perceive between two or more altitudes, or between behavior and attitudes. Festinger proposed that the desire to reduce dissonance would be determined by: • the importance of the elements creating the dissonance, • the degree of influence the individual believes he or she has over the elements, and • the rewards that may be involved in dissonance 27

PERSUASION This process through which one or more persons attempt to alter the attitudes of one or more others is called persuasion. Regarding efficacy of efforts to change attitudes or persuasion psychologists have learned some interesting facts: 1. Experts are more persuasive than non experts 2. Messages that do not appear to be designed to change our attitudes are often more successful in this respect than ones that seem intended to reach this goal. 3. People are sometimes more susceptible to persuasion when they are distracted by some extraneous event than when they are paying full attention to what is being said. 4. When an audience holds attitudes contrary to those of a would be persuader, it is often more effective for the communicator to adopt a two-sided approach. 5. People who speak rapidly are often more persuasive than persons who speak more slowly.

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PREJUDICE Prejudice is powerful negative attitudes toward the of specific social groups based solely on their hip in that group. THE ORIGINS OF PREJUDICE: CONTRASTING PERSPECTIVES • Many different explanations for the origins of prejudice have been proposed. Some of the influential ones are: a. Direct Intergroup Conflict: Competition and conflict theory as a Source of Bias. b. Social Categorization: leading to ultimate attribution error. c. The Role of Social Learning. d. Cognitive Sources of Prejudice: The Role of Stereotypes 29

TECHNIQUES OF REDUCING PREJUDICE a. Breaking the Cycle of Prejudice: Learning Not to Hate. b. Direct intergroup and Personal as a Means of Reducing Prejudice Hypothesis suggest that increased between of different groups will reduce prejudice between them, and there are several good reasons for predicting that such a strategy might prove effective c. Recategorization: Resetting the Boundary Between "Us" and "Them." 30

SOCIAL INFLUENCE: CHANGING OTHERS' BEHAVIOR

Social influence is any process whereby a person’s attitudes, opinions, beliefs or behaviors are altered or controlled by some form of social communication. Social influence can also be defined as the effort by one or more individuals to change the attitudes, perception or behaviors of one or more others. It includes conformity, compliance, obedience, minority social influence etc. 31

SOCIAL INFLUENCE: CHANGING OTHERS' BEHAVIOR Issues in social influence • Conformity • Compliance • Obedience

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CONFORMITY • Conformity means adjusting one’s behaviour to align with the norms of the group. Social Norms are rules indicating how individuals ought to behave in specific situations. Social norms seem to take two basic forms: Descriptive and injunctive norms 33

SOCIAL INFLUENCE: CHANGING OTHERS' BEHAVIOR •

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Solomon Asch "became famous in the 1950s, following experiments which showed that social pressure can make a person say something that is obviously incorrect. The way he did this was through an experiment in which participants were shown a card with a line on it, followed by another card with 3 lines on it labeled a, b, and c. The participants were then asked to say which line matched the line on the first card. At first, the subject would feel very at ease in the experiment, as he and the other participants gave the obvious answer. Shortly after, the "participants" in front of the subject would start all giving the same wrong answer. Solomon Asch thought that the majority of people would not conform to something obviously wrong, but the results showed that an alarming number of participants gave the wrong answer. From the experiments Asch conducted it showed that the majority of candidates conformed. Some insisted that they didn't realize they were conforming. Though it shows that if one conform to group pressure, you don’t stand out and so just become one of them and you can easily fall into a trap of being wrong. 34

COMPLIANCE Compliance refers to the act of responding favourably to an explicit or implicit request offered by others. a. Tactics Based on Liking: Ingratiation. Ingratiation is a technique for gaining compliance by causing others to have positive feelings , or liking for us, before we attempt to influence them. b. Tactics Based on Commitment or Consistency: The Foot in the Door. Foot-in-the-Door Technique is a technique for gaining compliance in which a small request is followed by a much larger one. c. Tactics Based on Reciprocity: The Door in the Face. It is a technique for gaining compliance in which a large request is followed by a smaller one. d. Tactics Based on Scarcity: Playing Hard to Get Playing hard to get a tactic in which individuals try to create the impression that they are very popular or very much in demand. 35

COMPLIANCE d. The Pique Technique A technique that involves piquing (stimulating) target persons’ interest by unusual requests. As a result, they do not refuse requests. (Asking for more donation (of money) by showing how similar other people have donated). e. That’s not all Technique A technique that involves offering target persons additional benefits before they have decided whether to comply with or reject specific requests. f. Low ball Technique A technique in which an offer or deal is changed (made less attractive) after the target person has accepted it. g. The deadline Technique A technique in which target persons are told that they have only limited time to take advantage of some offer or to obtain some item. 36

OBEDIENCE: SOCIAL INFLUENCE BY DEMAND Obedience is a form of social influence in which one individual issues orders to another to behave in specific way and other one follows it. • Stanley Milgram’s experiment tested how far an ordinary person will go to obey authority. The design involved a “teacher” and a “learner.” The learner was strapped in a chair and an electrode was placed on his wrist. The learner was told he must respond correctly to a memory test involving word pairs. The teacher was set before a machine that deals shocks if the learner responds incorrectly. The teacher is a naïve subject, and the learner is an actor. Measured was how far a person will proceed to inflict pain on a victim. The shocks are istered in increasing volume; the victim experienced terrible pain, and the teacher suffered a dilemma: to continue obeying the experimenter and continue with the shocks or to break with authority.

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OBEDIENCE: SOCIAL INFLUENCE BY DEMAND Results from the experiment: Milgram's results showed that, contrary to expectations, a majority of civilian volunteers obeyed orders to apply electric shocks to another person. In general, more submission was elicited from "teachers" when (1) the authority figure was in close proximity; (2) teachers felt they could on responsibility to others; and (3) experiments took place under the auspices of a respected organization 38