Social Perception

IMPRESSION FORMATION

Impression formation consists of taking a limited amount of information and producing a global perception of another individual.

Research evidence

Asch (1946) gave participants descriptions of a person (e.g. energetic – assured – talkative – cold – ironical – inquisitive – persuasive). If key words were changed (e.g. ‘warm’ instead of ‘cold’) participants gave different descriptions of the target individual.

Kelley (1950) arranged real-life encounters where students were given a description of a substitute lecturer and, after the lecture, asked the students to assess the lecturer.

Biases in impression formation

• Central traits: Adjectives such as warm/cold or intelligent have greater weight than other words, such as polite and blunt.

• Primacy/recency: First impressions do count, though when there is a time interval the recency effect may come into play.

• Halo effect: A person who possesses one desirable characteristic, such as being physically attractive, will be assumed to possess other desirable traits.

• Contrast effect: When an object is contrasted with something even less appealing, in contrast it looks much better. Kenrick and Gutierres (1980) asked male students to rate a blind date. Those who did this after watching an episode of Charlie’s Angels (with attractive girls) gave lower ratings than those who did the rating beforehand.

STEREOTYPING AND SCHEMATIC THEORY

Both schema and stereotypes provide a means of organising information and generating future expectations which simplify our social perceptions. Stereotypes are more fixed and culturally determined.

Explaining stereotypes and schema

• Cognitive misers: Stereotypes/schema allow us to conserve cognitive energy because they summarise large amounts of information. Such simplified cognitive processing depends on heuristics and categorisation (identifying groups of individuals).

• ‘Grain of truth’ hypothesis: At least some stereotypes are derived from experience and contain some truth. Once formed they are resistant to change possibly because they tend to be self-fulfilling leading to self-fulfilling prophecies. See also confirmatory bias, below.

• Illusory correlations: When two things co-occur people often perceive relationships where none exists, especially when the two things are unusual such as presence of a minority ethnic group and a crime being committed. This can explain negative stereotyping of minority groups.

Biases in stereotyping

• False consensus effect: Individuals overestimate the degree to which others think the same. Sherman et al. (1984) found that smokers estimated a higher percentage of smokers than did non-smokers (51% to 38%).

• Confirmatory bias: We seek out information which confirms rather than challenges our beliefs. Cohen (1981) found that people tended to remember data consistent with stereotypes when shown a video about a waitress or a librarian.

Evaluation

• Stereotypes aid cognitive processing but they are at least partly inaccurate.

• The motivated tactician. People don’t always use heuristics, they can also act as a ‘fully engaged thinker’. Kruglanski and Freund (1983) asked participants to assess the quality of dissertations attributed to individuals of different ethnic origins.

When time was limited and there was no expectation of evaluation, participants were more affected by the ethnic origin of the writer. When given more time and told they would be assessed, participants thought more carefully and were less affected by stereotypes. 

• Complex situations. Most people are aware of the effects of stereotypes and try to control them but this may break down in complex situations. Darley and Gross (1983) showed videos of ‘Hannah’ playing in a high-class or run-down neighbourhood and asked participants to estimate her academic ability. If the information was minimal participants resisted the influence of stereotypes but when shown further videos (increasing the complexity of the task) their judgements were more affected by stereotypes. 

SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS

Cultural knowledge is constructed and transmitted via social representations. Moscovici (1981) first described social representations as shared beliefs that evolve within a social/cultural group and are used to explain social events. Social representations are more than schema because they include social dynamics. 

How are social representations formed?

Moscovici (1984) suggested that social representations are the product of: • Anchoring – unfamiliar objects and events are set in familiar contexts by using known classifications. For example, by labelling a behaviour as ‘child’s play’ one is creating a host of expectations and understandings.

• Objectification – unfamiliar abstract concepts are made more accessible through personification (linking a concept to a person, e.g. Freudian principles), figuration (use of metaphorical images, e.g. Freud’s concept of the id) and ontologising (making the abstract more material, e.g. discussing brain rather than mind processes).

Research evidence

Moscovici (1961) used the idea of social representations to explain how psychoanalysis moved from a scientific theory to a broader explanation of why society is like it is. The first, scientific phase, is when scientists use the theory. Second, the ideas become more widely known and finally, in the ideological phase, the concepts are applied to society in general.

Echabe and Rovira (1989) used the concept of social representations to explain distorted recall of AIDS-related information by individuals who had different beliefs about AIDS (conservative or liberal).

Evaluation

• The concepts of schema and social representations are complementary. Schema operate at a more individual level whereas social representations operate at more collective or macro level.

• Some critics feel that social representation theory doesn’t lend itself to scientific research, which may be true in terms of the experimental tradition, but discourse analysis is more appropriate.

• Social representation theory may be non-falsifiable because any data can be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the theory.

• Social representations may not be consensual, a basic element of the concept. Litton and Potter (1985) analysed the St Paul’s riots in Bristol and noted that the range of explanations offered by participants showed consensus but also individual variation – some people acknowledged but rejected the shared accounts.