Summary Social Cognition: Understanding self and others

Summary of Social Cognition: Understanding self and others van Moskowitz, written in 2013 -donated to WorldSupporter

Introduction

Social Cognition is the research domain to understand human relationships and the mental processes involved in each individual. It all begins with our ability to reason and to process information about the causes of events. We scan our environment and try to find answers to the question “why” something has changed in it (Heider 1944). Most striking are the changes that involve people (social interactions) as they could cause danger or pleasure. Person perception and Interpersonal relations are the relating study fields in which attribution investigation plays a great role. Attributions are prone to be altered and distorted by the perceiver of a subject, they are biased. We humans face three basic needs; 1) Affiliation (belonging) Need, 2) Self-Esteem and 3) Epistemic Need which lead us to the urge of finding answers to the ‘why’.

Affiliation Need refers to the need to belong to a group. Not only for the reason of safety but also for the emotional need of feeling loved and wanted. We further need to belong to a group to form our identities. “I am a girl”. We seek to maintain its norms and consequently we can draw conclusions from other people’s behaviour of whether we like/accept them or not.

Self-Esteem is linked to the first Need as we define our successes by the standards of a group. If we perform well, other members will reward us for it. On the other hand it is not a necessity to belong to a group to be able to compare ourselves to them and thus to feel good or bad about our performances.

Epistemic Need is the need to identify the reasons for behaviours or objects in our world, the ‘causal drive’ (Heider 1944). For humans it is essential to attain knowledge about (a change in) the environment. Is it a danger or pleasure? So we categorize to draw inferences from it to further make predictions from it. In that way we can make appropriate responses to it. (It has the shape of a shoe so I can wear it, it will protect my feet and accordingly I can put it on.

These scans occur not only in extraordinary situations but instead they occur unconsciously all the time. Just like a force of habit.

How we attain knowledge about other people is not as simple as one would imagine. We cannot get absolute truth and so we use a practical way to obtain information. We strive for as much information as we need to feel comfortable enough to act. This is called

Pragmatism

When it comes to science we cannot rely on feelings but we need methodologies to measure. The first methodology, Introspection, was found by Wundt (1862). He tried to train people to become aware of their internal processes. This was critiqued by the Behaviourists’, which believed that only overt actions could be scientifically measured and thus called true. The Gestalt psychologists (Köhler 1930) questioned the belief that no mental activities could be measured and as a result we now have a study domain of social cognition.

Perception is a great field to be studied in Social Cognition. It is believed to be multiply determined. The observed behaviour has to be seen in the context of the situation and biases of the perceiver have to be taken into consideration. Lewin called this life space. A person has certain needs, which determine how and what is perceived in ones environment. Affordance is the term used to describe the relationship between the individuals’ desires, the situation and the behaviour that can be performed as a consequence of the other two.

There is also a distinction between Object and Person Perception. The first one is easier for us and mostly the same for all people. We categorize objects according to its shape and colour to find out the function. When it comes to Person Perception finding out the meaning is more difficult as the other person performs an action that needs to be interpreted.

Physical features as well as the non-verbal behaviours have to be analysed.

It is believed that we try to find out the stability of behaviour (trait inference) to make future predictions easier. Further we scan the behaviour for their internal state and for their motives

It is also important to know that this process is a dynamic process. We perceive the other person but we are also perceived.

Specific brain areas have been found that are responsible for Person Perception as opposed to Object Perception.

Naïve Realism

Naïve Realism is the belief of ourselves that we were able to perceive others as objective despite the fact that we draw conclusions about them in a very subjective manner. We are influenced by prior knowledge and so we construct impressions of others. There are general forces that shape our perception of our environment. The context in which a person or object stands, is one of it.

Perception as a construct

Gestalt Psychologists have investigated these forces and found four phenomena: Holism, Closure, Prägnanz and figure and ground.

Holism describes that we do not see separate parts but rather the sum of them so that they make sense to us and form a picture. The Müller Lyer optical illusion is one example. Two arrows, which are exactly the same, are perceived as different in length when an extra component is added.

Closure means that we construct components of a figure in such a way that they look smooth. In cases where we find irregularities in shape or pattern, we simply add parts to it so that we have a less ambiguous picture.

Prägnanz (precision) is the principle that we see a picture in its clearest, least ambiguous way. Further we can be quite intolerant to different aspects of an image once we have formed our opinion about it. One figure often used to emphasize that is an image that can either be perceived as a portrait of an elderly woman or a young lady. Switching in between those two is difficult once you have established one of them in your head.

Figure and ground stands for the fact that some parts of a scene catch our eye and make the rest of it fade into the background. Which parts form the figure/ ground depends on where we choose to focus our attention.

The Social Context left out

We further have the tendency to be naïve when it comes to assessing ourselves. We tend to forget the Social Context. The experiment conducted by Milgram (1963) showed that well. Most participants had said that they would never do harm to a person but when faced with the situation in which the task was to give electroshocks to another person, they were willing to do so. Another experiment supported this idea too: The bystander effect, here a diffusion of responsibility is found when people are grouped together. The Social Context has changed and so people do not feel responsible anymore even if the actual situation (a person in need) has not changed objectively.

Consequences of a change in context

Naïve Realism also applies to the meaning of data. It can be changed by the so-called framing effect. If a loss is displayed (if you lose 300€ out of 1000€) or a gain (save 700€ out of 1000€) has a strong effect on the outcome. People fear losses and try to avoid these. Applied to person perception we choose whether to focus on the negative or positive aspects of a person when we judge behaviour depending on how the question is asked (Lose custody focus on negative parts).

Useless information can also alter our perception. A former salient information piece fades away because of the extra information around it.

Questions also influence answers when they provide rating scales or by the presence of surrounding questions.

The perceiver

We rely on reference points when it comes to norms and values those are highly associated with cultural norms that we have internalized. Music can thus be experienced differently.

Even Object perception can alter as we adapt to people around us and anchors that have been made by them. Also expectancies can subjective perception.

The system of Naïve Realism

Changing the Judgment of an object

Goals, affects and mood of the perceiver further lead to a change in perception. Regarding an action as a foul in a game or not is highly dependent on whether you support one team or the other. We are influenced of how we judge the object by taking over positive or negative experiences that we have with the object. This is called spreading of affect. Consequently a statement read by an author is no longer perceived alone but how we appraise it depends on whether we like the person or not.

The halo effect is another spreading phenomenon where we spread the evaluation of one trait to many others without having observed them. A woman who succeeded in a difficult maths task is quickly seen as highly educated and intelligent.

Changing the Object of a Judgment

It is also possible that we change the object of judgment. Here we can perceive peripheral traits differently when we add central traits to it (Asch 1946). Consider somebody is said to be determined. Now add warm to the description of the person or cold. It will change the object of judgment rather than just the judgment of the object.

This change also happens when we face a couple of trait examples of a person. Our judgment of her/him will depend on which traits were given first. These traits have a greater effect on your judgement. It is called the primacy effect.

Costs of Naïve Realism

We believe everyone would think the same as we do. We assume we are objective in our perception thus it appears to us that everyone else is thinking the same. It is the false consensus effect.

One more consequence is that we take in all information that is bolstering our opinion easily while opposing evidence is perceived as lacking in methodology or fraud.

Even neutral others are perceived as biased against us. Our view on things is regarded as normal by even if –objectively-we support an extreme view so all other views can only be perceived as unfair and damaging. Regardless of the fact that most media tries to be neutral naïve realism makes it impossible for extreme groups to agree with it. It is the hostile media effect.

It is also the reason why the gap between two opposite groups is perceived as far wider than it actually is. The perceptual divide is the reason why stereotypes are hard to break too. All behaviour is attributed to a specific race or gender and so the gap between those is seen as wide. Between groups this is called the cultural divide.

We additionally see ourselves as above average the result of naïve realism is that even though we know about this fact, we would still think that we were not affected, the bias blind spot.

Different approaches to perception

There are two approaches that try to explain perception. The subjective approach, which integrates all the previous biases, and the ecological approach, which says perception, were and still is an adaptive process with the purpose to specify an opportunity to satisfy our survival needs. We focus on features that can tell us the meaning of an object or person and thus can lead to the appropriate way of acting.

All scanning occurs automatically and thus it is called the automatic affect activation. We scan behaviour and faces to get the immediate idea about their values and intentions.

Salience and how it catches your attention

The important question to investigate is what makes some features salient and what does not?

“Salience refers to something about the stimulus that does not occur until exposure to the stimulus is” (Higgins 1996). Some stimuli are more powerful and thus capture our attention more. As we try to see everything holistic, close and without ambiguity those feature that do not fit into these descriptions or quick changes in a scene grab our attention.

This process is then called selective attention and features that have been detected will undergo further meaning search. With attention comes causal weight. The action performed is believed to be a cause of the person’s personality.

When it comes to object perception it is fairly easy to determine salient features (intensity, repetition, complexity, novelty, suddenness, movement and unit formation). They are said to be natural prominent if they are salient independently of the context.

Experiments show that whenever a person is well illuminated, more attention is paid to him or her. Novel features in a person are also found to capture attention. Further more it was uncovered that the more a person’s behaviour departs from what the average person would do the more causal weight it has. Negative information as well as information that is inconsistent with prior beliefs seems to capture more attention.

Another feature is that of perceptual units, a person’s behaviour and the effect of it.

The gaze of another person is also striking. Here we can see the evolutionary importance. We needed to know why we had become the focus of attention and by looking at that person. It is found that it further facilitates processing the target in focus. Cells in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the amygdala may be responsible for the recognition of the direction of a gaze.

The right hemisphere of the brain seems to be more sensible to detect threatening stimuli.

Salience of a stimulus also depends on the surrounding stimuli. Comparative distinctiveness explains why salience of a stimulus can change when the situation changes. A laughing person at a party is not unusual and so she will not strike your attention straight away but a laughing person at a funeral will.

It was further found that once you are the focus of attention you are perceived as more influential. A statement of a woman in a male dominant room is given more attention and thus she is seen as being more influential.

It may be an explanation for the fact that stereotypes still exist. The outstanding feature (female) is perceived as the reason for her to speak or not to speak, to laugh not to laugh etc.

When such utilitarian features are present, the presence of other features as clothing or colours will fade.

Automaticity and control

In interactions with other people we infer motives, form impressions and detect or send communication signals. All of these processes happen without our awareness, they are implicit processes.

Studies show that participants were guided by their preferences. They focused more on items or features that they liked than on those they disregarded but when they were asked whether they noticed it, they seemed clueless

The concept of naïve realism is that we as the perceiver are influenced by our subjectivity when we are identifying another person but that we fail to control it. It is an implicit process. The process can further be called automatic when an action was 1) unintended 2) impossible to control 3) extremely efficient 4) able to proceed without our awareness.

Even though they are automatic, they can still be biased.

Phenomenal Immediacy

Much of our mental life happens in the preconscious. It is a consequence of habit, routine and evolution. Due to the fact that we fail to recognize the mental activity involved in forming impressions, we interpret them as true given, real qualities. Characteristics of persons have phenomenal immediacy.

Nonverbal cue as communication and perception tool

Body language such as eye contact or hand gestures helps us perceiving the meaning of other people’s behaviour or information. Most of the times, we are not aware of our bodily movements and so we cannot control them. Ekman (1992) suggested that some facial expressions for example joy are very hard to control and mostly occur spontaneously. Once we recognize our emotions and know about the fact that we display facial expressions, we can control them but in the first seconds after we have seen or heard something that triggers an emotion, it is almost impossible to suppress expressions. For that time we have micro expressions like rolling the eyes.

Unaware of nonverbal communication

Gestures and pauses are found to function as signs for communication. Participants were either listening to a tape or watching a silent videotape of someone who was either really talking to them or rehearsing a conversation. They detected the real conversation better than at chance level. The third condition, watching the tape with sound, gave them 80% accuracy of detecting the real one. Nonverbal clues do not serve to represent words (semantic meaning) in a conversation instead they may tell you that person’s evaluation of you. You gather nonsemantic information when focusing on nonverbal cues.

People are further influenced by the attractiveness of another person. The stereotype that is triggered by beauty is also associated with kindness, sociability and modesty. Nonverbal behaviour also preserves influence on the perception of another person. Headshaking, nodding, smiling, biting your lip or other gestures are proven to set off similar appraisal by the perceivers despite differences in time or context. These are thin slices of behaviour.

This further supports the idea that judging a person is not a subjective inference of the perceiver but features are taken in that are displayed by the target.

In line with the ecological approach, that we learned to pay attention to those features that have an adaptive value for us, evidence is found that we unintentionally detect and express information from the face. We discussed facial expressions but also the shape of a face can cause the other person to think or feel in a certain way about the target. Baby faces trigger maternal instincts and lead to impressions that the person may be weak and naive.

These expectancies may have an impact on those people (better academic skills, more awards in World War II).

Universal Expressions

Ekman established four universal emotions that are expressed and detected in the same way all over the world even if they did not intend to do so: joy, anger, disgust and sadness.

The undeniable force of emotional response

Deception is a component in our life. We all wish to conceal some emotions in certain situations. In some societies it is the norm to do so. We may be able to cover our emotions verbally but it is harder when it comes to nonverbal communication. Here the main leakage is said to be the face. Studies revealed that the more someone was motivated to lie, the less successful he or she was to control the deception. Thus the perceivers found it easier to detect the liars, as they were unable to control their nonverbal behaviours.

The essentials of automaticity

Practice, repetition and habit are the processes through which an action can become automatic. The explanation given by James (1890/1950) for a habitual action: “Mere sensation is a sufficient guide and the upper region of the brain is set comparatively free” is not sufficient to explain cognitive processes in psychology. Here the term automatic is not just the absence of conscious monitoring and attention but instead it has to include four elements: Lack of conscious intent, efficiency, Lack of awareness and Lack of control.

The Lack of conscious intent indicates that independently of what actions the perceiver had initially planned, when a stimulus was presented his/her thoughts and actions change.

Stroop (1935) conducted a study that presented our inability to control reading. He asked participants to name the colour of in which a word was written. Those words either matched the name of the colour or represented a different colour. Participants took longer to name the colour of the ink when the name of a different colour was represented by the word.

Efficient processing requires very little mental effort. Processing information about the self is efficient. We are skilled in doing it thus information is processed easily and without effort. Bargh and Thein (1985) confirmed that even traits that are relevant to us (if a person sees oneself as honest) can also be efficiently detected. This was tested by putting participants into a situation where they had high cognitive load or where they got simple tasks to perform. While they were doing that, a description of a person was given. When asked to fill in an impression form of that person, those traits that were also valued by the participants were remembered while traits that participants did not share could not be recalled.

Lack of awareness is also part of the reason why phenomenal immediacy is taking place. Nisbet and Wilson (1947) discovered that even if participants became aware of a halo effect (attributing further characteristics to a person after being exposed to only one) they could not tell in which direction the influence would go. Further more studies that used subliminally presented pictures revealed that people are influenced by it without knowing about the influential force.

Lack of control is another aspect that needs to be covered when we talk about automaticity. The mere presence of a stimulus triggers the response. “Do not think about a white elephant” would trigger a thought of a white elephant even though you do not want that to happen. The dichotic listening task also shows that phenomena. Two voices are presented one to each ear. They are told only to listen to one of them. Gollowitzer (1996) found out that whenever information that was relevant to the participants’ current goal was presented, he or she could not stop listening to it. There was an uncontrollable attraction of attention to that ear.

Multiplicity of Automaticity

Not all automatic processing contain all elements. If it does contain all forms it is said to be preconscious automaticity. If a response requires some sort of consciousness the process is called postconscious. Most of the time, the response is triggered because a conscious process has occurred prior to it. Being exposed to the words ocean-moon would trigger the response “tide” when asked about a detergent far more likely than without. A third form is the goal-dependent automaticity, which happens without conscious awareness and with great efficiency, but a goal has to be in place. Driving a car would be an example for that.

Automaticity is not to be confused with Irrationality or mindlessness, is it? It serves to make us process life events more quickly and efficient. Automatic responses take place when we are familiar with a situation or behaviour. We can then follow a script that we have formed in our head earlier. Mindless behaviour can also occur following that path as Langer and colleagues found out (1978). Bargh (1984) argues that stimuli trigger a script automatically which then direct the conscious process of scanning the script for further verifying cues of its adequacy. Altogether it can be said that once an act is performed automatically it is likely that one fails to detect relevant information from the environment and thus we are acting irrationally.

Supervised processing of information

Wegner and Bargh argue that there are two features of control. Control action (the influence) and control criterion (the direction). Control is the ability to select, implement and regulate a goal. Consequently it may at first seem unreasonable that an automatic process can involve control but there is some evidence suggesting the opposite.

The essentials of control:

Needs (drive state –physically-), Motives (drive to balance a psychological discrepancy), Incentives (things that will reduce the need) and Goals (end state that people seek)

Needs are essential cause they alter the behaviour of the person to pursue a goal. Motives also change the nature of the goal (am I doing it for my father or to get a better grade). Goals in the service of autonomy and social integration lead to greater creativity and better performance.

Selecting goals needs deliberating over the feasibility and desirability of ones wishes and desires. Is it possible to realize my goals, how? And how important is a goal to me.

Implementing goals can be easy when the actions needed to succeed are well practiced and known. It can be more difficult and require more consciousness when we first need to figure out how and when and with whom something can be achieved.

Regulation of the pursuit of goals contains persistence and flexibility. Engaging in an action even if finding a solution is hard is typical for us. One way is to try out another pathway approach the problem from a different ankle.

One example that integrates all these elements of control (selection, implementation and regulation) is that of waiters who do not write down the orders but keep them in mind till the customer has paid the bill. It was observed that almost no errors occurred when they were asked to recall the order before the payment. If the waiters were asked after the bill was paid, the order seemed to be erased from memory. Setting the goal (I will remember the order) is the control criterion, it is the end state. The plan of how to remember the order is the process of implementation and serves as control action. Further on we need to monitor to find out whether the goal is pursued. The output of the control action is compared to the control criterion (Comparator). If the goal is met, the action can be ended.

If not, a negative feedback loop is constituted and the control action is continued as long as there the discrepancy is present. This can fall into our unconsciousness. We keep searching for a solution even though we are no longer aware of it.

That is the reason why we will most certainly come up with the word that had been on the tip of our tongue even if we have already started doing something else.

Control and Interaction Goals

Interaction goals are those, which shape the manner in which we perceive information about others and ourselves in social interaction. There are three different kinds.

Causal- Genetic Goals are those that we chase to find out the meaning of a person’s behaviour and to assess their motives, values and personalities. Facts are gathered.

Social sanction goals on the other hand are goals that we adopt to evaluate the person’s behaviour and to compare it to standard norms.

Value Maintenance goals are the ones we pursue in order to accomplish something that we personally find fulfilling. Covering up an error that was made by a colleague of yours is an example for such a goal when it serves as protection from extra work for you.

Here we have four subtypes of value maintenance goals.

Accomplishing an Outcome external to the Interaction

We are trying to get other people to help us achieving our goal. This can either be a scenario where two colleagues are working on one project or in a more subtle way where we are nice to a target person to make him/her give us what we want or in the case where the target has an authoritative position.

Maximizing positive reactions from others

One reason for that is explained by the human need of belongingness; we want others to like us so that we feel good about ourselves. Another factor that plays a role is impression management; we want others to like us so that we can control them. A good boss tries to treat staff in a good manner so that they are more willing to do their work

Gaining Cognitive Clarity about the environment

We turn to others to get more clarity about an ambiguous situation. In cases of emergencies, we try to find out what to do by asking others.

Securing motivational and value support

To publish an article or to become president, we need others to support our ideas and values this is our intention for some interactions.

What happened to our free will?

So far one could assume that if there is proof for automatic processes then it must be impossible for humans to have a free will. This is not true. Control is not the opposite of determinism.

One experiment conducted by Libet (1985) measured electrical potentials in the participants’ brain to find out whether the logical conclusion or the brain activity occurs first after being exposed to a stimulus. Analysis showed that brain activity occurred half a second before the finger movement but the conscious control occurred later. Thus it might only be illusionary that we have control when in fact it is only a reaction to a stimulus that triggers our actions.

On the other we should not forget that we set the behaviour pattern consciously before otherwise we would not have reacted in that way. So selecting our goals may be the conscious process.

Preconscious control is said to take place in two forms:

Compensator Cognition helps us to attain unresolved goals that we have consciously given up on. You may know the situation where you come up with a solution such as remembering a name after you have given up looking for it. Goal regulation can happen despite our conscious awareness of selecting it, knowing stimuli are present or that we are still acting in ways to come up with a solution.

Goal priming “A goal is a mental representation in our memory and capable of being activated” (Bargh 1990). Goals can thus be triggered by stimuli. As time passes associations between goals and its relevant stimuli get stronger and conscious deliberation is no longer needed to activate that goal if stimuli are present. An experiment confirmed the thesis that even relevant others can serve as stimulus to trigger ones goals. Thinking about your mother can lead to heightened commitment towards your goal.

Categories and Category Structure

Categories are mental representations of classes or groups, which share similar features. We have categories for groups of people (cowboys) and for groups of objects. Throughout life we develop hundreds of them because they make it easier for us to store and remember knowledge. In that way we can also make sense of a new situation or person. By drawing inferences from categories, we are prone to biases. The underlying structure of memory and storage of knowledge is important to study in order to find out why goals and prior beliefs form our perception falsely. Structuralism (Piaget) is the term used to describe how we rely on mental representations and schema to make sense of our environment.

The Steps of categorization

Several steps are to be taken before one can categorize. The first is called primitive categorization. The event or person has attracted our attention and features are analysed.

The next step is cue search we compare the target features to already existing categories. The third stage starts when we have found enough features to believe it is part of an existing category. We are drawing inferences to identify. This is called Category activation

A category can also be activated if a former stimulus has “warmed up” that category. Imagine you are in contact with a person who acts aggressive. Afterwards you meet someone equally aggressive but now your threshold to activate the category “hostile” is warmed up and so you perceive that person as way more aggressive.

The advantages of Categorization

A fuzzy set

Not all features of a category are equally defining. Some are more central and thus the membership to that category can faster be perceived. When tested in an experiment, participants needed longer if features were peripheral.

Overlap of categories is also possible, especially when features are more ‘fuzzy’.

Socially shared

Worfian hypothesis (1956): “language influences peoples thought” is an example of how culture has an influence on our cognition.

Culturally derived theories might also influence cognitive structure and thus categories.

In individualistic cultures behaviour is believed to be a cause of dispositions. This belief is a mind-set based on the theory about behaviour linked to ones culture. In collectivistic cultures behaviour is rather seen as a product of social pressure and obligations. Thus the theory about behaviour is way different to the one in Western culture. Experiments show that prominent theories alter the way in which a situation is categorized.

An act of inferences

In order to categorize we need to go beyond the information given. We infer that the target is another representative for an existing category.

Automaticity

Usually the brain activity necessary for categorization is low, especially if the cue-category linkage is high (features of an object and a category are clear). If an object is not familiar to us, we undergo conscious cue search.

Categorization can be incorrect

Sometimes the inferences that we draw are wrong. We might categorize an aggressive behaviour between two little boys as a game even though it is hostile.

Categories do not need to be accurate

Stereotypes even if rejected can be reported, everyone knows its features. Most categories are not 100% accurate in its features.

No outer reality

Furthermore categories do not need to represent reality. We have categories for elves, super heroes or religion.

The functions of categories

Austin (1956) “The organism reduces the complexity of the environment”. Fitting a person or object in a category will also give us more information about what to further expect from it. We can also make prediction about future behaviour. When the same list of behaviours were presented to participants, who was said to either describe a skinhead or a priest, participant’s misremembered unfriendly behaviour as having been performed by the skinhead and friendly behaviour as having been performed by the priest.

As categories vary in the degree of accuracy so does the predictions from it.

Categorizations and Control

When we are able to predict behaviour and a feeling of familiarity in a situation we have the illusion of control over our environment.

Categorization and Communication

Talking to a person is more than making sense of the words. We need to check the speech for quality. To facilitate communication we rely on rules, maxims that are thought to be kept by social exchange. First we believe that only those things are said, that is well proven and believed by another person (maxim of quality). Secondly it’s the maxim of relation, that a person would only say things that are relevant to a communication goal. Thirdly we assume that no extra information is given or that one would stray too far from the point (maxim of quantity) and at fourth we consider that speakers are clear and unambiguous (maxim of manner).

Person memory

An impression is: “A perceivers organized cognitive representation of another person” (Hamiltion et.al.1980).

Looking at how people remember information is assumed to give reason for how it is stored in memory.

In that way researcher developed a sub discipline of memory called person memory which is believed to store person perception and thus impressions.

The different memories and how activation of categories works

Long-term memory is for storing large amounts of information such as autobiographical knowledge, language etc. It is unlimited and permanently.

There are two subtypes: episodic and semantic memory. Episodic memory consists of events, people (traits, behaviours) and experiences while the semantic memory stores facts and definitions.

As familiarity with people grow and thus independent of episodes, information is more and more stored in the semantic memory.

To display our categories and consciously process information, the working memory is necessary. It is also called short-term memory, as it is only possible to process limited information over a short time period. No more than necessary information is provided but this retrieval can also lead to new risks of failure.

Recollection versus Familiarity

Rehearsing, noting, refreshing and other operations are required to store information in the long-term memory. How well things can be retrieved depends on how well they were encoded in the first place. A poorly encoded memory trace can end in source of confusion, claiming something is based on true facts when in fact it was a friend who told you that. Feelings of familiarity can also lead to confusion of truth. We retrieve this information more automatic. Recollection is the second type of retrieval, which is more based on controlled use of memory and thus trustworthier.

Spreading Information and linking networks

Knowledge structures are bound in a network of different associations. Each knowledge piece is called a node and these can be triggered by either an outside stimulus or other associated nodes. This process is called spreading information. Categorization of one stimulus can lead to an activation of associated information or categories.

Connectionism

Rather than separate nodes, we have a set of nodes that are simultaneously triggered by a stimulus. Triggering a set of nodes parallel activates the category.

Memory as source of information for category structure

The structure of a category can have an impact of what we come to think and recall about a person. Concepts that are associated with one another (helpful-moral) are thought to be close together so that perceiving one will easily lead to imagine that person to be both.

Reaction times can confirm this thesis. Reaction times were measured when participants were asked to appraise different statements about a person (doctor and college). The lexical decision task was also used to show that pairing semantically similar words led to quicker responses than if no association could be found. Thus there must be a closer or better association for similar concepts in the network structure of memory.

Clustering in retrieval

Free recalling was used to see how people store knowledge. Participants were presented with information about a person and later asked what they can recall without any hints given. Different ways to chunk information were found. Sometimes we store it around a person and then according to our schemas (shy, outgoing) but other times we may store information around time (Monday he was shy). Another way is to cluster information around descriptors such as hobbies or work of different people. It was found that those features that were s that is

If there is a pre-existing category about a person, clustering seems to be promoted. When we think of Marilyn Monroe we immediately come up with different attributes. When it comes to strangers the person itself is not necessarily seen as the integral unit. It is more probable that we use a higher but familiar category such as gender or race.

Dealing with goals

We have the tendency to use traits as features when we are asked to form an impression about a person. Forming impressions also help to remember information. Ironically when participants were asked to remember information about a person they were less able to recall traits or behaviours than in the case where they were asked to make an impression of him/her.

Cued Recall

Cued recall involves giving a person a hint, a node to start with when trying to recall another person. Traits are believed to be directly connected to behaviour in memory and thus one must be easily recalled after the other has been given. This was supported by the experiment conducted by Carlson (1980).

Heuristics

When perceivers try to categorize people they rely on rules to make inferences. Any judgment about another persons or objects belonging to a certain category goes along with some level of uncertainty so guidelines seem to be a good solution to be only rational.

The problem with these heuristics is that we do not strive to gather hundreds of behaviours to make a decision; we use the strategy of satisficing. It is still moderately diagnostic which means that rates are better than chance for detecting truth. These are not irrational choices but strategies that often work.

When people rely on heuristics in cases where they could do some more accurate analysis, then heuristics are source of bias.

The representative heuristic

Categorization is based on overt appearance. The problem here is that people ignore the base rate. If a person is provided with some facts such as “in a community are 80% farmers” and she/he has to say whether “Bob” is a farmer or not, she/he would ignore that fact and judge Bob on his appearance.

This also happens when a compound event (a subset of another event) is displayed. When people were ask to rate the probability that a US troops will be exposed to weapons next year, the average number was 20%. When a compound was added: “how likely is it that US troops will be exposed to weapons in Iraq next year”, the mean rate increased.

The representative heuristic may also be the cause why people are bad in estimations of chance events. Prior instances are taken into considerations when judging the likelihood of current ones despite the fact that it has no impact.

It further explains why we think our judgments are more valid than they really are and why we ignore the phenomenon of regression towards the mean. In cases where a player has scored 3 times in the last 3 games, he is likely believed to score another time even if his odds of scoring are only 3 out of 4.

The Simulation heuristic

We often engage in a simulation model to choose the appropriate way of behaviour; “What happens if….” We do that not only before we act but also after actions have occurred. In those scenarios we try to understand a consequence or how we could have avoided something. Kahneman (1982) found out that simulations lead to amplification of emotional reactions. They further alter the way in which an event is experienced. This can be well observed in athletes who won the silver or bronze medals. The event that led to silver could have led to gold if only… had not happened. It upsets people whereas winning the bronze medal has the opposite effect. One could ask if I had done this, it could have been the case that I was only 4^th. These simulations are only possible with mutable events.

Availability heuristic

Associations bonds are strengthened by frequent exposure. The extent to which something is accessible to us is not always a reflection of the reality of the world but a biased estimate. Familiarity feelings would indicate the same. We access information about a familiar topic far more easily.

We also tend to recall absolute number instead of relative ones. When we try to answer a question of, who is more likely to become a doctor, a psychology students or an English student? We would most likely recall all the doctors we know but fail to adjust for the fact that we know far more psychology students. The ease of retrieval is what guides the availability heuristic.

On Schemas and Cognitive Misers

The use of categories is a shortcut of thinking. We keep mental representations (schemas) of a group in our minds based on traits, behaviours and other features. Once we encounter a person that shows these features, we try to integrate him into the schema. To simplify it we compare him to an exemplar of the group, to someone who owns all the central features.

Existing schemas can lead to alteration of the original situation as they serve as a help to encode and retrieve information.

Schemas do not only contain a simple set of situations but instead they also consist of abstract forms and specific cases. When it comes to encode new information a schema can hinder a true perspective as it interferes with our objectivity. We see what is consistent with the schema. This is called schema consistent processing.

There is evidence that categories are stored hierarchical. It assumes that when we think of a doctor who is a higher category we automatically receive information about the lower categories such as “human”.

On the contrary we can also see that categories have great overlap. The reason why we also get the information that he is human might be due to the fact that they overlap and that the association is very strong.

Self-Schemas

We have an extensive knowledge about ourselves, a concept that contains traits as well as behaviours. By experiencing numerous events, we attain a good sense of what we are like. We attach meaning to it and store it as information about ourselves. The function of it may be that we can gather self-relevant information even quicker and thus are able to enrich our concept even further. Experiments show that we do not take feedback for real when it is counter schematic to us. So if you would describe yourself as shy, you would not believe anyone who told you that you acted very outgoing.

Role and Relational Schema

There are more schemas that guide our behaviour such as a role schema, “the cognitive structure that organizes ones knowledge about those appropriate norms and behaviours.” (Taylor 1984). In different situations, people need to take over different roles in order to act according to the rules. The same is true for relationships that people enter into. You would not behave in the same manner with your friend as you do with your father. It is schemas that enclose action patterns but also motivations and thoughts.

Studies illustrate how relationships or the trigger of a relationship schema affect our perception. Participants were primed with the picture of their mothers before they were introduced to a new person. The behaviour and thoughts were similar to the relationship schema with their mother. It is also confirmed that relationship schemas can have an effect on our self-evaluation. Primed with a mad face of the pope, a catholic woman rated herself lower than when no priming occurred.

Event Schemas

Schemas cannot just be related to a person but also to the environment. This is then called a script. It will guide your behaviour without much mental energy in a certain surrounding. It might be connected to the procedural memory. Those schemas are further distributed in frames and slots. Frames contain specific settings and it’s meaning such as going to work every morning while slots have the function to trigger the specific behaviour in those settings. Once a situation changes, the frame can adapt. It is flexible.

Prototypes or Exemplar

The prototype describes a person of a certain category that endorses all the main features of it. In serves as a source of comparison which is used to define other people.

Furthermore it is used as a source for missing information. By thinking about a prototype one can assume what to expect from another person who fits that category.

This is also the reason for biases. An exemplar on the other hand is a representation of any person who fits a category. The individual may only show a few key features. As the prototype it is also used to identify new people to the category. An exemplar is a lower construct than a prototype and it might only be the base before there are enough features recognized to form a prototype, (1.Is she more like my mother or like the Queen? 2. She behaves exactly like the mother prototype.)

Theory-Based mental representations

An alternative to feature based recognition is the theory based representation. Theory of mind or implicit theories can be used to realize categories. When newborns enter the world, they seem to be able to distinguish humans from objects without former knowledge of features. We further develop reasoning for why things that we want to happen actually happen (desire theory). Causal schemas are constructed to explain behaviours and these serve as theoretical background.

Theories in mind

We have theories about almost anything in the world. Among those are implicit personality theories that explain personality types (traits that evolve together and form a cluster which determines your personality). This in addition will guard your behaviour.

How you see significant others

We also have theories about significant other as we know a lot about them, feelings, traits and thus internal states. We infer reasons to events based on our theories (she only did it because she has trouble finding the right words). A mediator is used to explain behaviours.

Theories about significant others can also be triggered by strangers if they display similar features. This is then called transference.

Action Categorization

One action can be identified in different categories but only one is made at a time. Difficult tasks are processes at a low level, as we need to figure out every little step to imitate or understand it. When an action is simple, we identify it on a higher level. By examining the actions, we make sense of the goals.

Cognitive efficiency or cognitive miserliness

The world is full of stimuli and events; we need to simplify the process of giving meaning to them to live in it. We only have a limited capacity so that we can only process one task at a time, we are then cognitive loaded. Schemas can help us to process events or people quicker and thus makes it possible for us to think about a different event simultaneously. By using schemas we may encounter biases such as that we only see things consistent with that schema, seeing is believing.

The principle of least effort

People adopted the schema analysis as it provided satisfying solutions and quick processing so that survival was assured.

Cognitive misers are people who rely on schemas even if they could easily analyse the situation in a deeper manner.

Relying on rules of thumb

We rely on theories, or rules that mostly apply, that are tied to a schema. Some examples are the rule that attractive people are trustworthier or that we rely on those people we like.

A bias for seeing expectancy congruent information

Once we came up with a schema, we scan our environment for information that confirms our schema. This is the reason why we sometimes stick to our theory despite the fact that it has already been disconfirmed.

Biased Impression Formation

We not only use schemas for simple judgments of people but also to describe behaviour of others. Inconsistent information is more likely to be described in discrete forms and consistent information in relative ways to make it more resilient. (He is reckless or he was driving at least 20km/h over the limit).

Biased Hypothesis testing and information gathering

We engage in behaviours that support our hypothesis rather than trying to falsify it. In addition we may even avoid seeking disconfirming evidence.

Seeing what is not there

In cases where two rare events happen at the same time, we are prone to believe that there is a connection between the two, an illusory correlation. This bias often occurs with ethnic minority groups. A woman in an engineering factory is believed to always be in trouble just because male colleagues pay more attention to her gender and connect it to all her behaviour. The same applies for stereotypes. If one of the two correlating items is perceived, the other is activated and looked for.

Cognitive effectiveness

Schemas have benefits for the users. Saved mental energy can be used for something else. Especially in situations with cognitive overload, schemas are of good use.

People may pay more attention to schema congruent information but nevertheless do not ignore other information.

Making sense of inconsistency

Information that is in line with a schema is easier processed and thus it can be recalled even under cognitive load. Inconsistent information needs more mental energy and can only be done when no distracting task is present. If that is the case participants were better able to recall that type of information.

Is there always better recall for incongruent information?

Which information is actually remembered depends on different facts, first on how well a schema is learned, second is the inconsistency due to a situational force so that it is not actual inconsistent with the person and third it depends on what recall task is used.

The cut off between judgment and recall

When participants knew about the task to judge a person according to his suitability for a job before they were introduced to him or her (online impression formation) their judgment was different to what they recalled later about the person. While when participants only heard after meeting the person that they had to form an impression (memory based impression formation), the recall and judgment were consistent.

Efficiency and accuracy

Using categories when it comes to judgment showed better accuracy for remembering information inconsistent with the schema.

Deeper processing (efficiency) helps for better accuracy. Schemas allow for quicker processing of congruent information thus we have more mental energy for other information thus. It is a flexible distribution of resources which further allows us to revise our schemas when new information is provided that leads to better understanding of a situation or person, a schema is plastic.

Dual Process Models

The assumption that people are able to break out of their former categorical thinking is the premises for the dual process model. M.L.King tried to make people see that African American were not more violent than anyone else by peaceful protesting. By that time people’s thinking was driven by a theory about African Americans that they had in their head. This type of processing is called theory- driven or top-down processing. When we form impression based on data and effortful investigations, we call it button-up processing. Elaboration, personalization systematic or attribute-oriented processing are more terms for this type of processing. Tension as the motivation or cause for the shift in processing is also an important feature of the model. Instead of calling people “misers”, Taylor (1996) suggested the term “flexible tacticians”.

Brewers Dual Process Model of Impression Formation

The role of motivation is here said to be crucial in determining the type of processing that we strive for in a situation.

Identification is the first automatic response to a stimulus. We pay attention to it and try to identify it according to very broad features (sex, race). Which category is activated is mainly dependent on the perceiver and context.

Determining relevance is the next step that occurs which can no longer be called automatic as it involves goals. The goal, needing to know more about a person has a connection to us. The person is further analyzed if it is of relevance to us.

The third step is also tied to motivation as we decide how to process this person. Categorization is the least effortful method to do this. We rely on heuristics and try to match core features to existing categories. There is a first category in which the person fits in but this does not have to be the last as we scan more subtypes. We end with the best-fit category, which gives us most information (old man-> business man ->highly authoritative-> boss of a factory).

Individuation and personalization unlike the categorization process, we also pay attention to features that are incongruent with a specific category and use this information to form our impression. It is no longer an image of prototype but of an individual. That process implies affectivity, the person has to have a similarity to us or it gives information about our goals.

The heuristic-systematic model

There are two processing modes, heuristic and systematic processing. If people doubt the reliability of their heuristic reasoning, they are likely to engage in more systematic thinking.

The Least effort principle

This principle is a good explanation for why people rely on heuristics; it is less effortful. We cannot search for the best solution all the time so we look for those that satisfy us (sufficiency principle). When it comes to love interest, we are not easily satisfied and thus our investigations about the other person are very thorough. More effort is needed to feel confident about a judgment. As soon as we experience a lack of confidence (confidence gap), we feel pressure or tension and continue working.

This shift can either happen due to doubts about our reasoning or by a rise of the sufficient threshold for confidence.

Undermining one’s confidence in a judgment

We might be pleased with our reasoning in the first minute but after a while it happens that we experience doubt. Another possibility is that new information comes up which makes us question our first impression. Thus inconsistent information makes us process more systematically.

Raising the sufficiency threshold

It must also be possible for us to perceive a person (minority) right without the need fro them to come up with some evidence against our impression. By adopting goals we can prevent us from quick judging. The confidence gap is driven upwards by us and thus we can achieve systematic processing. These leading motives for that are: personal involvement, accountability or outcome dependency.

Personal involvement means that we are somehow connected to the target. When we as psychologist interview a client, we do not want to appear stigmatized instead we listen carefully and form our impression on systematic reasoning.

Accountability is the term used in cases where it is important for us not to be seen as foolish or stupid. When you know you are being asked about a topic in front of the entire class, you are likely to inform yourself about it carefully.

When you are working in a group where your end result is evaluated, you are said to be outcome dependent. In that scenario you scan your partners vigilantly.

Lay epistemics

When we think about an event or a person, we could find hundreds of explanations why this or that may have happened. We cannot doo this for every event, so we need to stop at some point and come up with a hypothesis. The factors that lead us to stop are either related to cognitive capability, saying that we simply know too little or very much about a situation already or that momentary factors make it more salient and thus inevitable to overlook. Another factor, which makes us go on or stop, investigating, is motivation, goals. One goal is the need for structure/closure, the other the need for validity.

The need for structure/closure

Seizing and freezing are the distinctions to be made for this need. Seizing is the desire for unspecific closure (any decision will do). We strive for a quick ad simple answer. Freezing on the other hand is the desire to form a specific closure, to come to a decision that is in line with existing concepts or structures.

The need for validity

The fear of invalidity makes us run some more alternatives through our head before we close a thinking process.

Improvement or Dissociation Models

As soon as people find out that their judgment may be biased or that that the judgment process might have been influenced, people try to correct their decisions. Debiasing is integrated into several models (set-reset, stereotyping etc) which all agree that one needs to be aware of the bias, motivated to remove it, have a theory of what the influential event is and cognitive capacity for the correcting process

Awareness

Naïve realism is the phenomenon that makes us believe we are right about our judgments. Even if we hear something that affects the majority, we still think it is not us. This hinders us to become aware of biases.

Motivation to correct

Once one notices that a bias might be present, it is not said that we want to change it. Goals need to be tied to the person or event so that we become motivated.

Naïve Theories about bias

Theory guided corrections often work in a “do-the opposite” strategy. Naïve realism is again the active force that convinces us that we know about the influence and in which direction it will manipulate us.

Participants had to rate the behaviour of Gandhi on a violent versus non-violent scale. Later on they were ask to rate Arnold Schwarzenegger. The other group was asked the same but after assessing the behaviour of Hitler.

It was assumed that they would detect the bias and try to correct it. In fact in the end, they rated Arnold Schwarzenegger as less violent in the first group ad extremely violent in the second.

Cognitive Capacity

The process of correcting is assumed to be too demanding in the normal life setting as we experience too many stimuli that we also need to make sense of. A closer look (Brunner 1957) is thus often not possible.

Time-set of goal

Reprocessing information is harder if not enough information is stored, so in order to have an unbiased or impression of somebody it is important to carefully encode information in that moment when you are in contact with a person. This might be due to time alone or to different types of processing. However it is found that even if the goal to be accountable was introduced after a situation had already been over, participants were still able to reconstruct the situation to correct or debias it through systematic processing only not as satisfying.

Biased systematic processing

Systematic processing can be biased in two ways. First we may be motivated to come to a specific conclusion (motivated reasoning); second we might have insufficient knowledge or false theories (misdirection decontamination).

Misdirection decontamination

Greater and deeper thinking about a person or situation does not necessarily lead to better judgment when bad data are given. We may adjust our decision but only to come to a differently biased conclusion

Motivated reasoning

There are different motives that lead to systematic processing. If we strive for accuracy, the chance to be biased is low but when we attempt impression motivation (self-presentational goal) biases are likely to occur. Here we try to maintain beliefs or attitudes. It is possible that we show behaviour that we want other people to see (acting very smart when you are with your professor) or we can display these attitudes so that the other person reacts to them. A third type is defence motivation, which makes us scan information just for self-esteem maintaining evidence, validation of our knowledge or falsification of a threatening message. We only process schema consistent information.

Consistency information and Self-verification

Prior to the dual process model, there were different models to explain correction processes. The best known is the Theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1957), which implies that humans cannot live with an inconsistent cognitive state. So whenever doubt comes up about a situation, people extend their mental energy to try to solve the inconsistency. We try to maintain our existing beliefs and thus it is also a form of self-verification or as Gross named it the perceptual confirmation effect.

Self-esteem Defence Enhancement

We evaluate information about ourselves in a positively biased way but it is not just a positive self that can booster our self-esteem. As we have learned we also identify ourselves with groups and by perceiving them positively we also increase our own self worth. This is the essence of the social identity theory (Tajifel 1986).

Another linked model is the Self-evaluation maintenance model, which describes that we search for people who are similar to us in order to find out about our performances. There are upwards as well as downward comparisons. The latter serves more to booster self-esteem while upwards comparison can motivate us to do better. Other peoples’ success can also serve to booster our self-esteem if we have some sort of bond to the person. This is then called reflection, as sunrays that also shine on you.

Attribution

How we attribute behaviour depends on intentions and motives. In order to find out about causes, we also rely on schemas (Kelly 1967). Heider further proposed that by analyzing language and “surface matters” we could gather information about how people think about others, an approach that is named common-sense psychology.

Common-sense psychology

Heider first examined what potential causes may exist; those derived from a person and from a situation. He referred the first category, personal causality, to be intentionally and the second, impersonal causality, as to be unintentionally. The effective forces of the person this can be traits as well as temporal states are the most convenient and thus common attributions made to describe the cause of an action. Heider said that it is more salient than the context and it gives a clear and stable explanation for occurrence, which is a need humans strive for.

The effective force of the environment, this can be social or situational pressure is the other cause people think of when we are trying to understand the reason for an event.

Language used to help categorizing

The two words mostly used when people explain the cause of an action, are try and can. Effort and ability are related to intentions and this is “trying”.

When we talk about can, we consider the situation and whether a certain act was possible to do or do avoid despite the environmental factors. May is associated to can in a way that a person might have the desire and ability but may not as there might be sanctions.

In sum the locus of control may either be inside or outside the person.

Another factor that is important to describe a cause is the stability of the locus. If a situation is unstable an event can be seen as pure luck. A stable factor would be the difficulty of a task. One example is if you imagine you scored poorly on a math test it can either be attributed to the loud noise outside (bad luck) or the extreme difficulty of the test.

Random behaviour attributed to the person

People can also be the cause for an action without being intentionally. So if you accidently broke somebody’s leg because you were trying to stop the ball in a soccer game, you are the cause but it was not your goal to break the person’s leg. Reason explanation are use to clarify intended actions (the reason was his aggression) while causal explanations are used for unintended actions (he did not see him coming).

Theory of correspondent inference

The model to explain why people attribute behaviour to dispositions is the called theory of correspondent inferences as we infer the cause of an action to be due to a corresponding trait.

Multiple effects

An action can have multiple consequences or effects, did the actor mean to produce the observed effect? We use effects to make sense of the motive of a person to find out whether there is a causal weight behind his or her actions or if it was merely unintended?

Methods for Inferences

Three things need to be known beside the effects of an action to draw conclusion from behaviour and its intentions. . Firstly, is the actor aware of the consequences, secondly, is it his or her desire to elicit the effect and thirdly, is the actor capable of pursuing this action? If an effect is desired, it is highly likely that you intended the action.

Desirability

Desirability can even give reason to infer correspondence to traits. In cases where everyone likes the outcome, the perceiver has little knowledge about the actor but when an effect is highly disliked by most people accept him/her than one can attribute the behaviour to a certain disposition of that person.

Noncommon effects

When we have multiple effects, some of the consequences will overlap; they are then called common effects. The opposite, noncommon effect are thus unique. A scenario where we have many common effects would not tell us much about the intention of the actor but noncommon effects can. If there was clear evidence that only one particular effect could have been caused by an action, it gives reason to assume that the actor intended to act in that way.

Normative versus unique behaviour

The more deviant behaviour is from the norm, the easier it is for the perceiver to attribute it to the person’s traits. However violations against expectancies lead to the opposite effect; that we attribute it to the situation. That is why stereotypes are hard to break down.

Hedonic relevance of the action

Hedonic relevance is the extent to which your personal goal is met by the action of the other person. If this is the case your interpretation of possible consequences may be completely different to another person (for whom the goals are not relevant) because you are familiar with the effects and imagine them to occur more or less co occurring. Consequently it is possible to reduce the number of noncommon effects.

The Kelly Model

Kelly’s model stated that there are external as well as internal causes that lead to attributions. External causes are mostly situational forces but they can also be other people. That is why Kelly referred situational causes to “entity”.

Causal Schemas

We have schemas for certain situation but also for causal relationships. Thus schemas are triggered which provide us with explanations for observed behaviours. Furthermore we have rules for making attributions for specific causes. These are called discounting and augmenting rule.

The discounting principle

We engage in the discounting principle when we consider various different alternative consequences and their likelihood to produce the same effect. Jones and Davis described this phenomenon as the noncommon effects. If the number of the sufficient causes changes so that we have a new reason for the action, the attribution can change too. Consider a person gives you a gift for your birthday, first you may believe the reason for that is that he or she likes you and you feel happy about it. When you find out that the person got the present from somebody else and did not like hence he gave it to you, you will most likely find him or her thoughtless and you would not feel good about it. The latter explanation discounts the first one; it is now the facilitative cause.

The facilitative cause is a present cause that gives us sufficient reason to draw inferences from the action to that specific cause (discounting the others).

The other rule is triggered when the behaviour occurs despite the presence of an inhibitory cause

The augmenting principle

If an action occurs despite some social rules, which are said to be inhibitory causes (for example being loud in the library or acting rude when you are with your boss), it is attributed to the person who performed the action even stronger.

Multiple necessary causes

Here it is meant that it is necessary for an effect to occur that all the multiple causes are present. If a person wins a game, he must have a talent for it and he must have practiced hard.

Causal schemas supported

Out-of-role behaviour leads to the assumption that the behaviour is tied to traits of a person. When people are interviewed for a job, they are expected to state traits that are linked to ones needed most in the job. In cases where interviewees claimed to have disconnected traits such as being a good listener when applying for a sales job, those traits are stronger attributed to traits as they were told despite an inhibitory cause.

An attributional analysis of persuasion

Expectancy can serve as a facilitative cause. If expectancy is disconfirmed in case when a speech includes arguments that the audience might not agree upon, it would be said to be an inhibitory cause. In that case the arguments would be accounted to be the true opinion of the speaker. Sometimes we also want to be sure that this is the case when a person tells us exactly what we want to hear and so we engage in systematic processing despite the facilitative cause. If a message is perceived as accurate and no suspicion of bias is raised than it is pervasive. If we attribute the social pressure to be the leading cause for the person to say it, the message is no longer pervasive.

ANOVA on causality

Kelley further assumed that systematic processing could be compared with statistical analysis. There are dependent variables such as the action or outcome and independent variables; potential causes. Those independent factors can be high or low in their dimension and thus a pattern of causes can be determined. The causal calculus does not always apply but sometimes the model seems to work.

Covariation

When it comes to co-occurrence of two factors, we are likely to see them as linked even if they are not (covariation principle). In cases of covariation we examine the possible causes according to its consensus, distinctiveness and consistency.

Consensus

This dimension tells us something about the force of the action. Was it determined by the situation or disposition? We evaluate the likelihood that everyone else would have also engaged that specific behaviour. If that is the case than we have high consensus and the situation is perceived as the reason for the action. If this is not the case we attribute it to the person.

Distinctiveness

This dimension gives us information about the entity and thus reason to attribute the action to one specific entity. High distinctiveness is observed when a person only shows an action in connection to an entity so that it cannot be generalized. Low distinctiveness on the other hand does not give information about the relationship between a person and the entity as the same reaction is triggered by many entities.

The combination of low consensus and high distinctiveness is therefore the best indicator to attribute an action to a disposition of a person.

Consistency

Consistency is the third dimension that we rely on when examining behaviour. It can tell us how stable an action is. Does a person always react that way or was it only once. Highly consistent is when an action indicates a stable attribution.

A caveat: Still we cannot say anything about the reason of an action.

Evaluating the ANOVA model

Experiments gave reason to support the assumption of systematic analysis when people are trying to find the meaning of actions.

A probabilistic model

There was evidence that people undermine the information of consensus when analysing behaviours. Furthermore those people who do not well or gave never been using statistics did not engage in such a systematic processing. We also still overemphasize the importance of dispositions and sometimes rely on heuristics, for example when we compare the action to other people. We are limited in that sense that we do not know how people react or only know a certain type of people so we make probability estimates.

The abnormal-condition

A different suggestion than the ANOVA model to draw inferences from action is the use of counterfactuals. We may engage in considering alternative realities when we think about an action: “What would have happened if he had done… or if he had not done…”. Examining the normal condition and the abnormal one, one can find out what might have cause that action. The atypical behaviours can thus give reason for an outcome. High consensus behaviour is seen as the normal behaviour and thus compared to the one that lead to an action. Is it abnormal, low in consensus or distinct, one transfer’s causal weight to it?

Goals and covariation

Heiders’ emphasis on the word ‘try’, leads to the assumption that people are seen to be motivated and goal directed in their actions. We have seen that people are prone to attribute behaviour to dispositions of a target rather than to the situation and we can observe the same tendency for motives and goals. We think the action is motivated rather than taking the enabling causes, resources etc into account. The reason for this might be that situations can be similar over time but what makes an action occur once and not always is easily attributed to a change in motivation of a person. It is the abnormal condition now. When it comes to covariation, consider a rich person is buying a house, we attribute it to the enabling factor; he has enough money to do it. When consensus is low; no one would want that house, his will and motivation would be seen as the leading cause. Differences in pattern lead us to different conclusions about the cause.

Correspondence bias and spontaneous trait inferences

Attributing behaviours to dispositions instead of situational forces is a major bias in impression formation. That is the reason why it is called the fundamental attribution error another name is correspondence bias.

Correspondence bias confirmed

There are three forces that are taken into account when we perceive others; the situation, the self (motives) and the behaviour. One expects to attribute behaviour to the situation, trait or motives depending on the power of it. Thus a situation where a person does not have a choice, the situation should be attributed to the behaviour. This is in fact not the case.

The Jones and Harris attitude attribution paradigm

Jones and Harris examined the effect of situational constraint as well as consensus. To do this they came up with experiment where participants were assigned to either write a pro-Castro or anti-Castro essay in a time when anti-Castro attitudes where common. Later on participants were asked about the writers’ attitude. They were either told writers were forced to take over the preference or to have freely chosen it. It was expected that the situational constraint was salient enough to still judge the person as favouring an anti-Castro attitude when he was told to do so.

The importance of freedom of choice

In cases where people thought writers’ freely chose to be pro-Castro, it was more attributed to dispositions just in line with the expectations.

The importance of the direction of the essay regardless of choice

Surprisingly, when people knew writers’ were forced to take over a favouring Castro attitude, they still judged them as being pro. Thus they failed to see the situation and made correspondence inference about dispositions even under situational constraint.

The Ross, Amabile and Steinmetz Quiz show paradigm

There was a lot of debate going on after the results of the essay experiment cam out so a new experiment was conducted.

Participants were asked to take part in a quiz show. Some were given relatively easy questions and others were given questions that almost none of us would know the answers to. The audience was later asked how they perceived the participants. The correspondence bias would predict that the situation was not seen as influential and thus the participant rated as either bright or a bit stupid. This was exactly what was found.

The Snyder and Frankel sex tape paradigm

Here two situations were described to take place in an interview setting. The situation was said to either include a person talking to a stranger about her/his sex preferences, which would make everyone nervous or a neutral one. Then the reactions of participants who watched the tape were rated. The person interviewed in the first condition was constantly perceived as nervous while in the other condition she was not. Participants made correspondent inferences to behaviours that were not even present to attribute those to dispositions (anxiety). So a situation can bias our perception.

Actor observer differences

What if you were in that situation, would you describe yourself as being anxious? Most likely not, we attribute dispositions to other people when in fact the situation is the forcing cause but when it comes to us, this bias disappears.

It might be due to that fact that we have self-knowledge and insight so that we can compare our behaviour to other situations. Thus consistency and distinctiveness can be assessed for us but not for others.

One should not believe that we are not biased at all when we rate ourselves though. Another difference that exists between actor and observer is that different aspects of the environment are salient. When you act, you see the situation but as an observer you are mainly focused on the person. There are divergent perspectives as an actor and observer.

Perspective taking

Shifting perspectives is possible and crucial for social interactions but people do not engage in it automatically.

When participants were recorded and later on watched their own behaviours a shift occurred in perspectives. The former actor who was focused mainly on the situational forces was now watching him/herself and thus focusing on the person and in fact more dispositional attributions were made. The attributional error occurred despite the insight and the self-knowledge.

Reasons for the correspondence bias

1. Situation lack salience

Features that are most salient capture perceivers’ attention. These are consequently the things we assume to be the cause of an action. Once a perceiver has noticed behaviour that behaviour is salient and thus the situation will remain unnoticed. Furthermore Heider argued that the action and the actor (origin) form a unit, which make them appear as belonging together, and thus the change (action) must belong to the actor.

2. Underestimating the impact of the situation

There are two ways in which we underestimate the situation:

Lacking awareness of situational constraint means that we fail to see the situational force a person is under in a certain situation. It covaries with the behaviours but we only see the actual behaviour.

Unrealistic expectancies for behaviour or underestimated constraints on the other hand state that we ascribe unreasonable power to behaviour when in fact the situational force is much greater. We fail to perceive the actual influence and thus underestimate the constraints.

3. Differential Memory decay for pallid versus salient events

When focusing on behaviour we, as earlier described, focus on the most salient features such as the person. Thus we do not encode much information about the situation itself. When we later recall it, we cannot remember the influencing forces of a situation and attribute the behaviour to a disposition.

4. The situation is the person

Another aspect that may lead to cutting out the situation is that it sometimes seems to work out to assume one determines the other. By seeing the person’s environment such as his/her flat, we get an insight of whom that person is. It is an extension of him/her and thus we do not need to focus on the situation per se as it is build by the person.

5. Naive realism and the false- consensus effect

One principle of naïve realism is to presume that others share the same opinions. In the case of correspondence bias this would explain why we do not engage in attributing our behaviours to dispositions. We assume that everyone would act in the same way and thus it must be the situation that enforces it.

6. Anchoring and insufficient adjustment

Furthermore it is believed that the bias could have derived from the anchoring phenomenon (Jones 1979). Applying it to person perception it means that we cannot adjust appropriately for a situational force after dispositional inferences have been made. Our fist judgment has anchored our perception. We learned that inferences from behaviour to dispositions are the easiest and thus the first choice available so we attribute behaviour to traits.

7. Cognitive ‘busyness’ yields incomplete corrections of dispositional inference

A correction process requires mental energy and capacity that we often do not have. Consequently when we are trying to reassess a situation or behaviour, we fail to do it or correct in a bias way as we lack proper information. We then rely on augmentation or discounting strategies.

8. Prior information and context lead to inflated categorization of behaviour

Seeing the situation does not mean, we engage in appropriate categorization. Instead it can lead to an extended causal attribution to behaviour. We try to make up for the influential situational force that we now see but with the effect that we use the correspondence bias again. Trope (1989) came up with a model to explain that phenomenon. There are three types of influences on categorization (identification): the behaviour, the situation and prior knowledge.

Using the situation as a source of knowledge untangles ambiguous moments. It helps categorizing the behaviour as normal (crying at a funeral) or abnormal (laughing at a funeral). Prior knowledge is used at the start of the identification, it helps integrating the person to the right category and again later on when the final category is found, it is used to augment the initial finding.

One might think this would lead to disappearance of the bias but it does not. Even if we know something about a situation (a player was insulted by another player of the opposite team) our initial reaction is to attribute a bad foul of that person as very aggressive. Throughout the stages we may adjust for the situation but as the anchoring principle portrayed, we do not fully erase our initial judgments.

Spontaneous trait inferences (STI)

We infer a person’s behaviour to traits without awareness and without an explicit intention. It does not need much mental effort this was shown in different experiments.

Methods to show STI

Encoding specificity paradigm

When we perceive behaviour and traits at the same time, it should be stored together. If that is so being cued with only one of them should lead to think of the other one too. Winter (1984) gave participants a number of behaviour descriptions and asked them later what they remembered. By doing that he gave them the trait that was associated to the behaviours earlier described to see if it would help remembering. In fact the cues helped them significantly to come up with the right behaviour.

The relearning paradigm

Carlston (1994) tried to falsify the theory of STI but instead he confirmed it. Participants saw pictures of people, which were combined with an action. (Emily took little John to the zoo) later on the same pictures were paired with traits. Some of them fitted the description (kind) some of them did not. It was found that it was easier for participants to recall already existing pairing then learning new traits to the picture.

The false-recognition paradigm

Participants were given a number of pictures of faces paired with behaviour. Later they were asked if a certain trait was in that sentence. It was assumed that it took longer to say no in cases were the trait was the one described in the behaviour despite the fact that it was not there. That is exactly what was found.

The necessity of STI’s

It is assumed that STI’s are used to explain person’s behaviour that it is ones disposition and that this is the cause of the behaviour

“She acts kindly cause he is kind and that is the reason why she does this or that”.

Reasons for forming STI’s

We always strive to find meaning, understanding or certainty in belief, these are our distal goals. Especially those people high in structure form STI’s frequently. We further want to be able to control a situation thus we need to know the reason for somebody’s action to make future predictions for it. In that way we gain our sense of control back and we know how to handle the person (effectance motive).

A rising question then is why we do not use the situation as the explanatory force. All levels of perceptions are shaped by culture. We see through its lenses, make attributions and react in the culturally appropriate way.

In our western world individualism is predominant. It indicates a person- centred view of the world and thus all actions observed are said to be due to ones own will and express stable traits.

Restrictions to the correspondence bias

There are some factors that interrupt the correspondence bias. We cannot infer behaviour to a trait if we are highly distracted by another task (cognitive load) or when we have the goal to process a person accurately. Another one is the one mentioned, culture.

Culture

It was found that there are great differences in inferences to traits. Eastern cultures take the situation more into account and would instead of attributing a trait to the behaviour use the situation as the explanation or an interaction with another person. Their focus of attention is somewhere else. This is called collectivism.

Their implicit theories differ from ours in the sense that the person is more seen in the context of situations and social roles. The same phenomenon can be seen when people describe themselves. Rather than saying “I am tall and smart” they use “I am a son and I am a student”

Goals

Accountability is one goal that leads to more systematic processing and thus biased inferences can be prevented. People try to be as accurate as possible and so they also scan the environment for extra cues.

Outcome dependency is another goal that interferes with trait inferences. Once you are in a situation where you are dependent on another person, you check thoroughly who that person is.

Suspicion of ulterior motives can be a disruptive factor for biased processing as we become suspicious when we know the target person has an underlying motive to act as she/ he does.

The goal to shift ones focus of attention can be achieved when we are told to focus our attention to something specific. This might be something that makes the situation more salient and consequently we perceive the situational constraint.

Information processing goal led participants to pay more attention to other information and so the obvious trait inferences were not made. The information to which participants were asked to pay attention gave them no time to think of other trait inferences.

Suppression

Trying to suppress a thought does not actual prevent you from thinking about it. When we are try not to let trait inferences happen, it does occur in even more extreme forms.

Shortcomings and biases in person perception

Being positive about your self

In everyday life we engage in different strategies to booster our self-esteem. We calculate our chances for bad happenings as less than average while the chance to experience good things for far more likely than average. The more positive self-view helps us stay mentally healthy. Furthermore we pay more attention to positive information about ourselves and disregard the bad information. This positive viewing of oneself is called positivity bias, ego-protection or positive –illusion.

Self-serving bias

We try to avoid negative information but seek for positive. In cases where we did something wrong, we come up with a good explanation so that the behaviour does not seem that wrong anymore. We attribute bad outcomes to the situational constraint while the good outcomes to dispositions. We engage in the opposite manner when it comes to evaluating other people. It is a defensive attribution mechanism.

Shelter from the storm and motivated scepticism

We select our friends in a way that they agree with most of our views. In that way we do not face negative feedback. In cases where friends or colleagues give us feedback it is most likely sugar coated because our implicit theories are that we do not insult people. Ambiguous feedback is put in a way to see only the bright side and if we cannot disregard negative input, we try to downplay the importance or accuracy of the evaluator.

Ditto (1992) called the tendency to be critical with negative information about oneself but open to positive feedback: Motivated scepticism. We want to avoid negative outcomes so that we do not see ourselves failing.

Cognitive dissonance reduction

In cases where we experience inconsistencies such as hearing negative feedback about us, we try to solve it. We need to be balanced in our cognition and thus we are motivated to reduce the discrepancy. This can either happen by rationalization or trivialization. In times of rationalization, we search for information that will put our action in a positive light, second we can change our attitude about an action, it is not important or we do not need to be good at it, thirdly we can distract our thoughts about the negative feedback and think about the good information; self-affirmation.

If there is still a discrepancy one can engage in trivialization, so that the behaviour itself is no longer perceived as meaningful and thus not important at all.

Defensive- pessimism and self- handicapping

Some people expect the worst outcome for their actions just to see that they did not perform as badly. This is another way to booster your self-esteem. You cannot be disappointed with yourself is you have this defensive pessimism. Another even more extreme way of preventing negative information is to handicap oneself so that a bad outcome is very likely to occur. Imagine a student who is scared of getting a bad grade. In order to prevent him from failing despite studying hard, he will not study at all so that he has an excuse for his failure. He is handicapping himself.

Unrealistic optimism about the future

People report 4times more positive events when they are asked to think about the future than negative events. The opposite is true for rating the probability that others will experience negative events.

Biased theories about attributes and outcomes

We have the theory that we, our traits are responsible for positive outcomes, this goes together with a feeling of control over the future, as we can shape the events.

So it makes sense that we are optimistic about our future. When we compare us to successful others, we rate shared attributes as highly determining for the outcome (success).

Warding off links between negative outcomes and attributes

As earlier explained we have a differential evaluation of information. We assume that positive outcomes are due to our attributes but we do not make this link when it comes to negative events. Negative outcomes are attributed to an external force. This may in fact a danger to our health, as we do not see bad behaviour as health threatening.

Predictions of a bright future and affective forecasting

Usually we imagine one would be happy for quite a long time if he/she won a lottery or got the dream job, but our affective forecasting is not realistic. When lottery winners were interviewed after one year, they did not display to be any happier than normal people. It is called the durability bias. Furthermore we think that someone too whom something great has happened to experience happiness ever after. If you rate your future after passing a very hard exam you will also neglect the negative events and picture your future brighter than it is likely to be, this is due to the focusing bias.

Ironically we also imagine a negative event to last much longer than it really does. This is mainly due to the fact that we are not aware of our positive illusions; that we try to rationalize bad events. Gilbert (1998) called it the immune neglect; we do not notice that we are somehow immune against the negative information. If that was the case, positive illusions were not possible to happen.

Implicit self-esteem

Whenever you support your favourite team, you know it is not actually you who wins but you identify yourself with the group. It is an extension of yourself and thus a victory can enhance your self-esteem as well. Positive regard for the self is possible in many ways and widely spread. The strategies necessary for self-enhancement seem to operate constantly and they seem complex, still we are not actually aware of them.

Greewald (1995) examined the implicit influences on how we perceive ourselves. There seem to be two strategies for bolstering our self. In the first one, the self-esteem is explicit, we know, we want to regard ourselves as positive. The impact of it on the other side is implicit, so we are not aware that we disregard the negative information about us. The second is implicit self-esteem. It is a mechanism, which triggers positive self-evaluation of our good attributes whenever we encounter people, or even just objects that reflect a part of us. As a result we attribute that person or object as much more positive than if it did not share similar features to us. For example if you find out someone has the same last name as you do, you will find him more appealing than before. This mechanism is automatic.

Fewer positive experiences will therefore lead to lower self-esteem. This was tested with people whose birthday was close to Christmas day. In those cases people around the person would rather look forward to Christmas than to that birthday and thus no positive self-evaluation would be triggered. This was exactly what was found in the studies around Hetts (2001).

Control and over attribution

Those people who score high on the need of control and structure are prone to using traits to explain behaviours. As a result they are more practiced and need less time for it.

Exaggerated perception of personal control

Those things that could happen to us are often attributed to our own will. If you want something, it will happen. This only applies for the positive events. When bad events occur, it is due to the situation. There is an exaggerated belief of responsibility for good outcomes (illusion of control).

Self-verification

We do not engage in forming information about ourselves in the best possible way, instead we look for those pieces that confirm the view that we have of us, self-verification principle

In cases where we hear or see something opposing, we have trouble integrating it into our categories thus we prefer getting positive feedback in the domains that we already know, we are good at. This is the reason why we do not pay that much attention to negative feedback in domains, that we know we would perform badly. People with low self-esteem also seek for confirming rather than bolstering feedback, a factor that makes depression hard to cure.

How to handle different motives

So far we have discussed self-assessment, self-enhancement and self-verification. It is possible that all of them are at work in different times and interactions as parallel principles. However in some situations there is a conflict among the motives; these may lead to some sort of compromise of assessment. A person with low self-esteem would allow her/himself to be seen as attractive but only by her/his partner because it is important for their relationship. They would seek self-confirming views in another domain or by another person.

The just world theory

We have a great urge to control that is why we try inferring behaviour to personality so that we can predict the future. We also believe that things that happen happen because we wanted them to happen. This reasoning has the result that we blame victims for what happened to them. We believe in a just world. The function of this is that we can engage in long-term goals. There is procedural justice (focusing on how fair the procedure was that led to an outcome) and distributional justice (how fairly the distribution of the outcome was). For predictability and the wish to control believing we get what we deserve is necessary to stick to a goal. When participant’s reaction to a victim was measured, they showed even higher debasement when they had to think about their own goals beforehand.

Transparency illusion

People assume their inner states (motives, goals and desires) are easier to detect by others than it actually is, their transparency is overestimated. It is proposed that metacognition is the reason for that bias. We think that we know what other people think about us. Egocentrism and control play a great role in it. Egocentrism involves that we assume others see and know what we think and do despite the fact that we might not provide any information about it. Furthermore we look at others to get feedback about ourselves. In that way we can assess our own abilities and thus predict performances. Other peoples’ reaction can tell us how we did a principle that Cooley (1902/1983) called ‘the looking glass self’.

Emotional states are also believed to be open to see for others and thus we assume others see when we lie and all other covert emotions, when in fact they cannot.

We assume others know who we are and expect them to react appropriately. Additionally we expect others to perceive those attributes more salient that we have a great awareness of. People who are highly aware of their selves think that others can see them to a similar extent.

Belongingness group bias and positive identity

Social affiliation can help us find meaning. James (1991) named this phenomenon pragmatism; the process by which we derive truth is tied to interactions with others. The significant symbol is another concept that supports the fact that we get meaning and control by observing others. In this case the symbol is a reflection of a gesture that we have used in an interaction, which has triggered the other person to do the same, just like mirroring.

Positive social identity

Other people serve more than just for comparisons. We can integrate others to our own self-concept. This extension builds up our social identity.

We then perceive feedback for a group or a close person (partner, daughter, and son) as if it was meant for us, collective self-esteem is formed.

By heightening our own self-esteem we can booster collective esteem but also the other way around. Imagine your football team won an important game; it is likely that your self-esteem increases too afterwards. ‘We bask in reflective glory’ (BIRG) (Moskowsky 2005).

Group enhancement

Heightening our own or a collective self-esteem is possible through enhancing one’s own group or deteriorate other groups. The fundamental error also applies here but on group level it is called ultimate attribution error. This bias happens via process that has become automatic because of repetition. Being in a low status group requires that you deteriorate other groups to protect self-esteem. Experiments showed that when those people from lower groups who had high self-esteem experienced a threat to their group they engaged in self-defensive pattern as well as those who had low self-esteem but were in a high status group. Only those participants who were both either low, low or high, high in esteem and status group did not engage in a defensive way.

Ingratiation

There are also cases were we praise other groups or people as great in order to become part of them. When we perceive a group as superior to others and want to get good self-esteem from being a member, we try to get them to like us so that we can enter the group. Appraising them is a strategy that we are not entirely aware of. We still know how to behave in order for others to like us. Studies found good consensus when participants were asked in which way they would behave to be liked in certain situations. We only need to make sure that the group will not get suspicious of our fake behaviour so that they do not want us. The more a group likes to be praised, the more likely it is to react to sweet talk.

Egocentric perception

We already have established the different perspectives we take on as an actor and observer. This is not the only interaction where misperception takes place. We also process information in a way that suits us, disregarding that other people might not have the same goal or way of processing.

The child’s perspective

In early childhood it is not possible to see or recognize what the other person wants or wishes. It is also impossible for children to notice that others have not the same perspective as they do. The theory of mind only develops after the age of 4.

Egocentric communication

We all sometimes encounter those situations where we hear someone talking about a person or topic that was not properly introduced so that we do not have a clue why they are talking about it now. The link was probably made in their heads but they failed to realize that the other one could not know it. We notice it at other people but certainly do it ourselves too. Egocentric communication is the inability to take others perspectives when we communicating a story.

Perspective taking and egocentrism

Usually when we switch perspectives, we notice the situational constraints or we realize that the other person does not share the same knowledge. This is not the case with narcissistic people. They show an even higher actor-observer bias when they were watching videotapes of themselves. Watching others does not extinguish egocentrism it rather extends so that we see others as part of ourselves. We imagine it was we in the situation and so we can understand why or how the other person may act.

Dealing with negative information

One mechanism of positive illusion is that we try to disregard or deteriorate negative information. In order to do that we need to have a mechanism that scans information so that we can distinguish negative from positive information.

Hansen (1988) described this with our preference to watch faces. Facial expressions can tell us whether a person is likely to give positive or negative feedback. Cacioppo (1994) came up with a ‘neurophysiological substrates to distinguish good and bad information’ explanation. Rather than perceiving a message on a continuum, they believe it can only be either positive or negative. This is supported by the fact that we can experience both affect simultaneously for a person.

Automatic affect and the detection of an attention to negative stimuli

Affect is automatically triggered via a stimulus. Entities can set off a reaction and emotion by its mere presence. The perceptual system is also build to protect the person so that it is logical to believe that negative stimuli are quicker to detect.

Negativity bias

Additionally it was found that we do not pay as much attention to positive information or features of a situation as to negative. Humans are risk-averse so that we try harder to avoid losses than to achieve gains. One negative component has as much more weight than one positive component. Two models to calculate peoples reactions were proposed by Anderson (1965); the averaging model which says that people take all traits of a target together to calculate the average of it and attribute the person as such. The other one is an additive model which rather than just taking the average of all, weighs the positive traits differently to the negative traits for the end evaluation.

Furthermore negative information is higher in diagnostic and thus has a greater impact on impression formation. Categories that fit can be better assessed that way. If you tell a person you like dogs does not have the same impact as if you tell that you do not like cats. The latter gives more possible alternatives and with that more attention.

Implicational schemas are formed by inferring traits to behaviours. Unipolar scales of traits can thus serve to categorize any person. Embedded in this theory are different schemas. The hierarchically restrictive schema describes distinctions between behaviours due to their traits. Those people who are perceived as clever are predicted to act smart but they can also act in a stupid manner occasionally. People who are assumed to be stupid are restricted in the ways to behave. Another example for restriction is that acting immorally once gives reason to believe that you will act immoral again but it does not exclude moral behaviour. However if you are perceived as being moral, the schema only predicts moral actions.

Accuracy found in our judgments

There is found to be a great consensus when people rated other people on the basis of behaviours. This consensus was not only with other observers but also consistent with self-reports of the person observed. Even zero acquaintance judgments were positively correlated. Accuracy was specifically high in cases where the context was described and thus the goals of an interaction perceived.

Pragmatic accuracy

Rather than a matter of knowing what the person will do, Gill (2004) assumed it is a pragmatic matter; that a situation gives reason for predictions of behaviours as well as relationships. When people were asked about the answers that their partners would give, the accuracy was pretty good. Best predictions were made when the question was related to traits that were important for the relationship. Thus those matters that affect us are best predicted. Empathic accuracy, the ability to know or feel our partner’s emotional state is also given when a couple talks in situations of conflict. In that way we can learn about the other person and therefore predict behaviour in the next situation.

On perceptual readiness

Knowledge availability versus accessibility

There are some situations when we are sure, we know the answer but we cannot think of it at that moment. It is not accessible even though it is stored in our long-term memory. Cues can help us make knowledge available again. When it comes to accessibility there is evidence that those categories that are used more often easier retrievable and thus it has the potential to influence everyday thoughts. It has perceptual readiness which means that it is easier and faster to retrieve by the presence of any stimulus. Those concepts that we use most have chronic accessibility.

Chronic accessibility

Everyday action, habits and specific social situation are mostly chronically accessible. However goals and motives are also believed to reach the level of potential influence, the more they are used.

Preconscious perception

Here we come back to free will; we scan the environment and without our awareness, we focus on some features of it. This is happening automatically but only because of learned concepts. The things we need most are highlighted and preselected by our automatic process without our conscious control. Our minds see things before it reports to us. One example is the “cocktail effect”; only when we hear our name, we shift our conscious attention to that conversation. This would not be possible if we did not have a preconscious perception. For all this scanning and processing, the short-term memory is used and thus it has a huge capacity. All visual information is processed in the iconic memory and all auditory information in the echoic memory. Chronic concepts help filtering the relevant information.

The “New Look”

Perceptual readiness is the power to which information is retrievable. Facilitative forces are the dominant concepts, goals and motives. We all have different concepts and thus even if we are looking at the same environment, we detect different features. Further on the more a person wants something; the easier it is for her/him to see it. Perception is subjective.

Auto-Motives and perception

The chronic state of goals and motives make them influence a person’s perception and when a situation is detected where that goal is appropriate. It is triggered and we will act accordingly without being aware of it.

Our attention shifts but also the perception of what is around us thus it will disrupt normal processing. Egalitarian participants were shown a picture of either a black and white man and later asked what words they see on a screen. Those who saw the black man were faster in detecting goal relevant words (fair, humanity etc).

Auto-Motives and judgment

Values

There are instrumental values and terminal values. “Values are cognitive the representation and transformation of needs” (Rokeach 1973). Values are ordered hierarchically, those most important are highest. The highest values are further easiest to retrieve. As earlier mentioned, our perception is shaped by chronic states thus we interpret the world and form impressions with the influence of our values. People valuing money refer interpret the day according to how much money they made, people with high moral values would describe a day as good when they acted according to their values.

The Authoritarian Personality

Chronic motives of power and cruelty are believed to have their origins in a harsh childhood where parents punished. The need to control society is also with the value of protection. They know this harsh way and try to protect society but also themselves from harsh punishment. They still have a feeling of guilt for having their own instincts and wishes so they want to control themselves and others. Those who look different or act differently are punished and controlled. Most of these people also score high on the need for control and structure, on ethnocentrism (the term referring to the need to evaluate one’s own ethnic group as better than others) and on intolerance of ambiguity. They are also likely to be prejudiced and rely on stereotypes when making judgments. Spontaneous inferences were extremely different between participants of authoritarian personality and others (slut versus friendly).

Need for structure and control

All humans have a need for structure and clarity but there are differences in the strength of that need. Some experience it stronger consequently they try to categorize their environment more definite and quicker. Decisiveness and confidence are associated with the need of structure but so are narrow analyses of a person. People are prone to use fewer traits to assess a person and likely to use stereotypes. They are especially prone to the primacy effect.

Social dominance orientation

This is the extent to which one desires that the in-group is superior to the out-group. The hierarchy-legitimizing myths help people believe in their superiority. This dominance perception influences social structures when we look at penalties or opportunities but also people’s attitudes. They are racist and think in very stereotypical manners.

Interpretation versus comparison goals

Interpretations are used to understand behaviour or a situation. Comparisons happen when people try to make judgments about a person. In which way we engage is determined by the goal triggered. When a comparison goal is triggered, we contrast behaviour and thus judge it. The opposite occurs when interpretation goals are triggered, we use the categories presented in the environment as a standard to form an opinion of the person.

Auto-Motives and behaviour in interpersonal settings

Most of our relationships and close friends are connected to goals. This can be as a goal to make your father proud or to be helpful to friends. When we together with that person, we act in a way that fits the goal (try to make him proud). Any cues that remind us of a person can trigger the goal that is linked to him/ her even if the person is absent.

The chameleon effect

Unconsciously we sometimes take over an accent or the same mimicry of the person in front of us. Children who watch violent movies are very likely to imitate that behaviour. Mimicry and imitation are adaptive functioning and make social interactions easier. It is related to empathy and a signal of perspective taking.

Intimacy goals versus identity goals

Intimacy goals are the ones used in close relationships, to attain interdependence. Identity goals on the other hand have the purpose to establish a self-concept through social relationships. People with intimacy goals do not engage in unprotected sex and do not have as many partners as those seeking for identity (Cantor 1991).

Learning versus performance goals

People react differently to negative feedback. It is assumed that this is pertly determined by their chronic motives.

Performance goals are tied to the ability one has in a certain domain. Ability, efficacy and traits are believed to be fixed and thus stable (entity theory). The opposite motives are learning goals.

Here the assumption is that ability is learnable and improvement is possible. Negative feedback hurts more if you believe your ability is stable and thus your work is never sufficient. In the other case it can be used to adapt and become better in a field.

Defence mechanisms

There must be something to ward off threatening stimuli so that we are protected from situations that could unbalance us. In fact this perceptual defence system was measured by McGinnies (1949). He found out that it takes longer to recognize threatening words but with the use of galvanic skin responses he detected a state of arousal when the words were presented but not yet consciously recognized.

The homunculus paradox

Even though it seems as if the will was not included in the defence mechanism, as it happens automatically; the will still controls it.

The threshold metaphor

Goals are triggered by stimuli in the environment so which goal is accessible depends on the situation and time in which a person is.

Interferences and Inhibition

In situations where two or more concepts can be triggered, there is a mechanism that inhibits the effect of the other. One can say it is a preconscious competition that takes place. In case of the Stroop experiment the well-practiced mechanism to read a word had to be inhibited so that the participant was able to read only the colour of the ink in which the word was presented. There can further be an interfering process going on for example when the urge to read every word is present but we are trying to avoid taboo words, the latter is competing and interfering the “normal” process.

Inhibiting thoughts

When a person is trying neither to judge according to stereotypes nor to be unfair because of prejudices, we actively try to not be influenced by them and so our goal is to be fair. This can through practice lead to an automatism, which disregards stereotypical behaviour so that we are more open to see other factors. This is exactly what was found by Fox (1995) he called it the spreading inhibition effect that occurs after we have focused our attention to other features than stereotypical ones frequently. It also leads to ignoring some stimuli that is why tipper labelled it as negative priming. Inhibition does not only occur via goals but also when we are faced with two competing concepts (female vs. black). The stronger one wins the race to accessibility. Our inability to remember some things at times may also be due to the inhibition effect or interference from another competing representation. Retrieving one memory will suppress another. Kunda (1996) came up with a parallel-constraint-satisfaction model, which explains the phenomenon of inhibition. We do not retrieve all stereotypical traits associated with a group once we meet a member of it but rather what we see will be shaped by our goals and expectancies.

Chronically accessible knowledge and judgment

Stable and frequent excitation of chronic motives influence impression formation to such a degree that it can last for a long time. When your parents were also concerned about your intelligence and pushed you hard to achieve academic success, you will most likely see people with regard to their intelligence and judge and interpret them accordingly.

Chronically accessible knowledge and attention

People who value certain traits are called schematic for them. One’s attention is more focused on and thus ready to process features that are relevant to accessible knowledge. We are faster in detecting schematic relevant stimuli because of our prior knowledge. A dichotic listening task confirmed these assumptions.

If participants were told to ignore information on one ear, they could not do this if relevant information was given but a-schematic words could be ignored.

The depressive self-schema

One cognitive model presented by Beck (1967) to explain depression involves the development of depressive schema. It would take over all perception and thus psychological functioning is declined.

Explanatory style

Humans develop explanatory styles to see the world. There are two main styles; the optimistic and pessimistic style. The optimistic style is one that ascribes all positive events as due to traits and as stable. The pessimistic one has the oppositional function; people attribute all bad events as stable and dispositional. Attributional styles are assessing via personalization and locus of control (the event is due to internal states). The second dimension is stability or permanence (stable versus temporary). People way to describe events such as it happens to me “always” or “sometimes” is an indicator for this dimension. The third is pervasiveness; it explains to what degree someone views an event as global or specific (I do poorly on all exams or this exam was too hard).

Treatment for depression would therefore include: identifying bad thoughts, find contrary evidence, teaching new styles, train strategies to discover automatic pessimistic processes and develop new automatic associations.

Another study was conducted to find out about explanatory styles and mortality. Those people who saw a tumour as fightable and who wanted to live had better chances to survive from the cancer than people who did not see a possible way to defeat it. This sense of personal control makes a huge difference in people who are sick. Attributing life events to external causes or unstable develop a learned helplessness which has the effect of feeling depressed and death. In hospitals where patients had or had not control over the daily plan mortality rates were 30% versus 15%.

Automatic Processing and the depressive schema

Depressed people are assumed to have a heightened accessibility for negative events. By the recognition of one negative event, others are triggered in memory and the network is “awake”. Retrieving all the negative events and concepts now leads to overgeneralization and to the assumption that it is global. The circle of depression is reinforced.

Temporary Accessibility/ Priming Effects

“The interpretation that is chosen can be determined simply by whatever applicable concept happens to be accessible ate the moment” Moskowitz (2005)

When we see behaviour we try to fit it into any already existing category to make sense of it (we assimilate). A second way is contrasting behaviour, pushing it away from category that we already have.

A concept can be triggered even by the absence of awareness. This is then called priming effect. The power of a stimulus is greatest after direct or frequent exposure. It can be compared to a battery that needs to be charged in order to make the concept working. Light charging may not have the effect of retrieval but if a second light charging occurs, it adds up and the concept may be triggered. The response threshold is now reached.

Stimuli exposure leads to temporary accessibility

Exiting the supermarket singing but not knowing why is not an unusual phenomenon, instead it is likely because the music played in markets is not loud but it has the purpose to stimulate. You hear the music without being aware of it, which has an effect on your behaviour/ response.

Spreading activation

The moment a concept is charged, it triggers other linked concepts and an entire network is working. This means that when one concept is triggered, you get access to those that are closely related to it.

Priming in everyday life

Seeing or just being primed by advertisements, reading words or concepts all showed to have an impact on impression formation. In everyday life we do not have to read concepts and neither are we exposed to subliminal pictures but instead we are primed by our automatic inferences. If you interact with a very stubborn person you will have a heightened accessibility to the concept of stubbornness and thus the next person is easier judged as stubborn too. Trying not o think about something (though suppression) is another way to trigger that exact concept. Dieting can be very hard because we make us not think about food, which leads to the exact opposite so that we are constantly thinking about a meal.

Retrieval and accessibility

Exposure to a concept either as a mental representation or real, leads to memory retrieval of that and linked concepts. What response becomes available is determined by the strength of the concept and the associations made with it. This depends on the situation and person. If a concept is quickest available that has been triggered shortly before, it is said to have temporary accessibility.

Forms of temporary accessibility

Attitudes

Stimuli can also trigger evaluative responses. When you see a spider you may evaluate it in a negative way. Most people know spiders are not dangerous or anything but the response is automatic and without much logic.

Emotions

If participants were out in a happy mood, they were faster to recognize objects and words related to happiness.

Goals

Once a goal is triggered, it will be in your mind until it is solved. Even if you have consciously given up, your unconscious is still looking for the answer. Different goals can be activated and thus lead to different processing.

When you are asked to form an impression, you will process your environment differently than when you are asked to memorize. Depending on which goal used when processing of the environment occurred, memories are stored differently. There are strategies to achieve goals, one is promotion focus (when you are approaching a desired state) the other is prevention focus (trying to avoid unpleasant states). You might have the same goal but the framing is different; approach –be fair- versus avoidance –do not judge on behalf of stereotypes-. Experiments used arm movements to measure the strategies. Pressing a button harder when arm flexion was needed led to the assumption a person used the approach goal while having more power when arm extension was used led to the opposite, people were more prevention focused.

Mindsets

A mindset is a cognitive representation for a procedure that you need to do when solving or doing a task. One such mindset (interrelational construct) was tested by showing participants words joint with “and” versus “or” before letting them solve a task. In order to be able to solve that task, participants had to combine two items. Participants in the condition of “and” did better on the task than those who were primed with “or”. It is assumed that the mindset of combination instead of separation was carried on into the second task.

Deliberative mindsets are those where you select your goal thoroughly among alternative goals. Implemented mindsets are those that make you evaluate how to pursue the goal you have chosen.

How long is a concept triggered?

Another question is how long such an influence of a charged construct will last. Higgins (1985) came up with an excitation transmission model, which suggests that accessibility can be heightened to different degrees. This depends on the duration of exposure, the strength of a stimulus as well as on the frequency of exposure.

Recency of concept activation

The time, which has passed from being exposed to stimuli until you are making a judgment, is influential. Wyer (1979) primed participants with the concept “kindness” and found out that he effect was almost vanished when the judgment was made after one hour.

Frequency of concept activation

How often you experience the charging of concepts will also determine how likely you will rate someone as similar to that concept. Participants who were primed to a concept in 80% of the words given were more likely to judge a target person according to it than were those who only experienced 20% priming. When recency and frequency were tested, it was shown that frequent exposure had a longer lasting effect (days) on judgments.

When we are watching a very cruel movie now but were listening to happy music all day long, the recency effect will have a stronger effect if the judgment about any person is made after 15sec but if it is asked after 2 min, that effect has already faded and the happy judgement is easier accessible again.

A caveat to the “frequency of exposure increases accessibility” rule

Liberman (2000) proposed that with the use of a concept, its accessibility would decline. This is tied to the concept itself. Goals are present in memory as long as they are unsolved and time can only intensify this process. While when it comes to semantic information, time leads to a decrease of accessibility. Here we have an experiment, which discriminates between semantic information and goals. One group was asked to describe a painting without restrictions others were given the goal not to think about colour related words.

In the second task restrictions for some of them were taken away and people were asked again to describe the picture. Findings show that instead of an increase of colour- related words, participants without restrictions used less. The goal not to think of these words was attained and thus accessibility of that concept went back to normal.

Those who still had the goal not to think of the concept kept the high accessibility even in a third task which was to describe their homes.

Accessibility effects

Access to a concept due to the exposure of a stimulus is not limited to only that stimulus. The heightened accessibility will influence your impression formation for another stimulus too. Imagine you are talking to a highly angry person and after she has left you meet another person the likelihood that you will judge that second person angrier is very high.

Assimilation

We lean on prior knowledge when we interpret the world around us. Constructs that are already there are easier to use and thus we are trying to fit every stimulus into one of those existing categories. Accessible constructs are automatically triggered and make interpretations biased but they are also misleading once they are triggered by somebody else’s traits and now used to interpret another person due to the accessibility. Most assimilative cases are therefore misattributions

The experimental structure

The typical priming experiment is divided into two parts; a priming and a judgment task. In the first one, participants see or hear stimuli that describe and thus charge a specific concept. The second task involves making a judgment about a person that shows ambiguous behaviour. You will be influenced on your judgments as a result of charged concepts. This not always the case though, thinking about food will not lead to describing a person as ‘cheesy’.

The four A’s of assimilation: Applicability, Ambiguity, Assertibility and Awareness

Applicability refers to the relevancy of a thought to a target behaviour or person. If the concept charged one that does not fit at all to the observed behaviour, it will not have an impact on your judgment. We do not see what we have in mind when we are facing a situation but only when it can be assimilated to that accessible concept, it will have an influence. On the other hand; the stronger the current thought, the wider its impact.

Ambiguity of behaviour is when it is open for interpretation. The behaviour is not as clear as to be judged in only one way. Only when this is given, we may misattribute.

Assertibility is used when the behaviour observed or information given is uninformative. Our nature is that we need to make judgments about behaviour but in cases where there is too little known about a person, we will assert attributions. For that we use those concepts that are already accessible. People who care about what others think about them or who do not want to make mistakes in judgment are likely to be protected from the impact of accessible concepts. Those people who feel comfortable enough and see themselves as fair are more prone to be influenced by stereotypes etc. Social pressure is another factor that inhibits impulsive judgment. It limits the use of accessible constructs.

Accountability is a force that makes people process more thorough when engaging in impression formation because they have to justify their judgments publicly.

Awareness of the influence of accessible concepts might be present in some situation but he correction processes do not necessarily lead to debiasing. Assimilation in general is a process of naïve realism so people are mainly not aware of biases. Subliminal priming occurs all the time (seeing advertisements while driving or hearing quiet music) and even if noticed, it has an influence nevertheless.

When people become aware of some force that may have an influence on their impression formation, they try to correct but mostly fail to do it adequately.

Models of Contrasts

The heightened accessibility of a construct is used as an interpretive frame. New information is seen via this frame and assimilated so that it fits into it. However this is not always the case. We do not always engage in assimilating but also in contrasting information. We push a stimulus further away of a concept, we dissimilate. Imagine a person who is mostly quiet and shy, one day he is screaming at another person. This behaviour is now interpreted against his usual behaviour and thus it seems very aggressive. There are two models to explain the contrast effect: The standard comparison model and the correction model of contrast

The standard comparison model of contrast

The basic idea of this model is that priming one concept will lead to a ground for the next stimuli to contrast it against. Thinking of “Stalin” will lead to a softer judgment of another person’s aggressive behaviour. The “Gestalt psychologists” first proposed it.

Latitude of acceptance and rejection

We have an inner scale on which we judge the acceptance or on the other end rejection of behaviour. If a stimulus triggers an existing attitude, and the one is unlike our (on the scale of rejection), we polarize the stimulus. A pro-weapon statement is then seen as an extreme pro-weapon opinion.

The Extremity Hypothesis

It is impossible to retrieve all memories and information that we have when we need to judge a person. Instead we rely on accessible knowledge. Accessible knowledge can be triggered by examples and those are then used as standards of comparisons. The more extreme a prime is perceived, the greater the contrast effect. In cases of similarities (scale of acceptance is active); we assimilate it to the concept. Thinking about Stalin or Ghandi will thus have a greater influence than thinking about your mother or friend.

The four A’s

Contrasting occurs regardless of the ambiguity of a target. The only difference is in the greater effect of extreme primes on ambiguous behaviours. . Applicability must also be present to contrast a target against a concept. Animals such as tigers did not show an effect on interpretation of people.

Assertibility has not been tested but is believed to be the same as for opinion making. Not being allowed to contrast something against a prime will lead to vanishing of the contrasting effect.

Awareness of a prime still leads to using it as an anchor. It might even be have an exaggerating effect.

The correction model of contrast

If one notices some force that might have led him to a certain judgment, one tries to reset the judgment in order to be correct. We now react to the priming stimulus instead of the target to form our impression. This may lead to overcorrection/ over adjust and neglecting of the targets features. Contrasting the impression to the influential prime does not give more insight to the target.

Comparison of the two models

There seem to be two different triggers for the two contrasting processes. One construct is triggered by exemplars, the other by the presence of traits.

The first is automatic, as a matter of perception while the other only occurs once a person has become aware of a prime. Predictions of extremity impact also differs, the standard comparison model assumes that extreme primes lead to extreme contrasts while the correction model proposes the more extreme the prime, the less extreme the evaluation. These differences make clear that there are two distinct mechanisms at work.

The correction model involves cognitive capacity as one has to adjust a judgment after having noticed an environmental press (biasing influence). This knowledge was used to test the two processes.

Traits versus exemplars

The more definite a concept is, the more likely it is that contrasting occurs. Exemplars show specific and clear features thus contrasting is easier. The abstractness of traits pilots the evaluation towards assimilation. As soon as participants were provided with a picture and not only a description of some traits of a target, contrasting was used instead of assimilation.

Extremity primes

When an extreme concept was triggered but with traits, people were less likely to use contrasts than when moderate primes were used. The opposite was true when extreme exemplars were shown as primes; people engaged more in contrasting than when moderate exemplars were primed.

Once we notice an influential prime, we adjust the judgment. We still weigh the effect that it could have had on our initial judgment. In extreme cases we believe that we are not influenced by it because it is too obvious, so no correction is necessary.

Cognitive load

Perceptual contrast is used without conscious awareness, which means we do not need effortful cognition to do it. Consequently it was assumed that we could still use contrasts when we are under cognitive load but only if we were primed with exemplars. This was exactly what was found in the experiment by Stapel (1996). Traits as primes did not lead to contrasting.

Metacognition

Higgins (1998) conducted research to find evidence that supported his idea of an aboutness principle; that people do not simply think an event occurs just like that but that it is about something. We think about why we are thinking or why we came to a certain conclusion. This is called metacognition, the questioning the fluency of thoughts. Priming in this sense is also a type of metacognition. It is the application of our implicit theory that everything is about something; observed behaviour is the cause why we retrieve a concept fluently. All of it happens unconsciously.

One example of it is the availability heuristic. We believe to be right about estimates when they came easily into consciousness. The sensation of smoothness of retrieval leads to the assumption to be right.

Another example is the feeling of familiarity; once we sense information as fluent, we guess we must have seen it before. We have implicit theories about sensations such as fluency.

False-fame effect occurs when one cannot memorize why something feels familiar despite the fact that they cannot think of seeing or meeting him/ her before. The result of this is to attribute the person as famous. Here experimenters found a gender difference. Stereotypes for women include that they are not as famous as men. Perceiving female names as familiar therefore did not lead to false fame attribution to the extent to which male names did.

The feeling of familiarity can have another consequence, namely it can lead to the assumption that he information is true (truth illusion). Recalling information that was not encoded properly so that details (true or false) are missing but which still feels familiar is assumed to be true.

Mood is another factor that shapes our judgments. People in a happy mood would judge events as more positive than those in a sad mood. A feeling of happiness guides our judgment about their general satisfaction of life. We think we can rely on our feelings, sensations when in fact they do not tell us the truth.

Experienced cognition is not actual content of cognition and thus leads to biased judgments.

Stereotypes and Expectancies

Stereotypes are mostly denied and if we hear about the prevalence, we are certain that we are the exception of the majority who is said to use them. This is clearly not true. We all have expectancies of individuals, groups and situations. These are formed by prior interactions or information given by somebody else who has had contact with a target before. Stereotypes are expectancies, which are used by all of us to predict behaviour. In this sense they are similar to a schema, which also tells us what to expect. They are functional because in that way we do not need to scan every feature of a target again to infer meaning.

Stereotyping serves a function

It does not matter whether you believe the content of a stereotype or not, the mere knowledge about it influences your reactions. It is triggered by a person and thus the concept is highly accessible (perceptually ready) which indicates that all knowledge that is associated to the stereotype is now easily retrievable. As a consequence we shape our behaviour for example if we expect someone to be friendly; we smile at him/ her.

Implicit stereotyping

Most of the time and especially because we do not want to believe it, we are not aware of being influenced by stereotypes.

Measuring implicit stereotypes

The problem with measuring stereotypes is that people will act differently if they know they are being assessed. Conformity pressure is too high so that people suppress their real thoughts. Participants would try not to show they are led by stereotypes. Another reason is that people try to even conceal it from themselves or are not conscious about it. Researcher still found a way to assess implicit stereotypes via nonreactive ways. Priming can help to make concepts accessible and thus the response time needed to react to a prime will give reason to assume stereotypical thoughts were present or not. Asking participants to form an impression of an ambiguous behaviour also leads to biased judgments and thus it is another form to measure the use of stereotypes.

Measuring the implicit activation of affect

While stereotypes stand for the knowledge about a group and thus for predictions of behaviours, prejudices are the affect that is triggered by a group. They do not go hand in hand but instead we can reject a stereotype but have a negative feeling towards them. Just as stereotypes, prejudices can also occur without awareness. Presentations of a prime followed by an affect adjective can tell us nevertheless if a member of a group elicited an affect. Response times were again measured; the faster a response after being primed, the greater the prejudice. Pictures of a Black versus a White person elicited faster reactions towards negative stereotypical attributes.

The implicit association task

To assess implicit reactions, participants need to do two tasks by using the same way of measuring. Pressing the “I” button when a Black face occurs on the screen and the “k” button when seeing a White face could be one task and the second may be recognizing negative versus positive attributions by pressing the same buttons. If the button for the negative affect is “I”, the response is said to be compatible because it is expected to be that way. When it is the “k” button it would be incompatible. Measuring the response times when pressing the buttons indicates the underlying biases.

Implicit association between affect and group

There is a lot of criticism and questioning about the IAT, response times may only rate the familiarity of a certain group. It needs further experiments to capture the concept of implicit theories.

Implicit types of bias

Those people who do not want to be prejudiced or led by stereotypes but still have an unconscious negative feeling about other groups are called aversive racists. These implicit views leak out when the norms of appropriate behaviour are not clear or when the relation to race is not overt.

Issues mask bias

If people take over rationale or socially acceptable reasons to explain the different judgment of someone from a different race as a shield to conceal they are biased, they can be called aversive racists. Are you constantly referring to Blacks when talking about failure but when accused to be prejudiced you will protest and come up with an example that shows the opposite? One positive example does not mean you are not prejudiced against a group.

Norms unclear

When liberals’ and conservatives’ behaviours towards a Black person in need were measured, conservatives were less likely to listen to him or help. When this scenario was not on a street but instead via telephone (race was possible to notice due to the accent), liberals were more likely to hang up before the Black person could explain his dilemma than conservatives.

The activation of stereotypes

The priming effect of stereotypes open the “boxes” for all information about that group even if we do not want to engage in stereotypical thoughts (spreading activation). The heightened accessibility makes it almost inevitable not to be biased. Which stereotype is activated when more than one is perceivable depends on the context and expectancies about a person. A Black fireman can trigger the stereotype of race or of profession. It is likely that when he is seen in a fire, the stereotype “fireman” will be triggered but in conjunction with a fight, his race might be more salient. The parallel-constraint-satisfaction model proposes this.

Perceiving a person means detecting salient features and scanning those against existing categories. Only after this has been accomplished the activation of stereotypes occurs. This process is confirmed to be automatic. The question that raises now is whether the use of stereotypes is also automatic and thus inevitable.

Evidence for automatic stereotype activation

The activation of stereotypes was assessed via subliminal priming of stereotype-related words and its effect on a related task. By exposing high and low prejudiced people to stereotype-related words, the entire construct was charged and all information associated with it was assumed to be more accessible. Therefore the likelihood to rate a person’s behaviour in the second task as acting according to the stereotype that has been triggered would be higher. This was precisely what was found.

The similarity between stereotypes as hypothesis

The reason for us to use stereotypes is that we want the least effort when searching for meaning and because we are limited in cognitive capacity. Still we have the ambition to judge people correctly. Consequently we try to test a stereotype before we use it, which is only possible when we are aware of the influential effect that it might have. But even then it is not said, that we are bias-free because of our tendency to search for confirming rather than disconfirming evidence (confirmatory bias).

Category differences and how we perceive them

The activation of the stereotype makes it easier for us to see congruent information. This is true even by the absence of that information. Evidence for the differential perception of groups was found by Tajfel (1963). Participants were told that lines (different in length) were either of a category A or B. Both categories had the same amount of lines with the same length differences but group A was labelled as short and B as long.

When they had to describe the lines, they exaggerated the differences. The shortest line of group A was now much shorter than the shortest line of group B. Another test was later conducted with humans in the two categories. Those criteria that differed between them were not at all meaningful but enough to label them as belonging to group A or B. When members of the group were asked to divide rewards between the groups, they distributed them in such a manner that the biggest difference was provided. This happened despite the fact that the group would only earn 7€ instead of 20€ when it resulted in a greater deviance from the second group (7€ versus 4€).

Outgroup homogeneity

People pay more attention to what members of outgroups say or do than ingroup members. As a result differences are highlighted and errors easier detected. Furthermore ratings of the other groups are more extreme than those of ones own. Concepts of others are more simplistic and less distinct while the ones of ourselves or ingroup members are precise and thus less likely to be rated as extreme. The simplistic “all look and act alike” view is what is called the outgroup homogeneity bias.

Influences of stereotypes on spontaneous trait inferences

Behaviour can have several meanings thus we need something to disentangle them. Expectancies function as a guide of why and how this behaviour occurs. In an experiment participants were either told that an observed person was very frightened or they did not get any information about her/him. After watching her in different situations participants had to describe the target. She was more likely to be rated as frightened when a stereotype was presented. Expectancies led to see people things that were not even present.

Shifting standards of comparison

Definitions can differ in meaning when we describe members of different categories. A small man has not the same length in cm as a small woman but we still describe both as being small. The standards change when we shift categories. Thus our verbal descriptions do not necessarily reflect our true beliefs. “She is a smart woman” does not mean she is seen as equally smart as a guy when he is labelled “smart”. Even if we have seemingly evaluated two groups as identical (smart), the real beliefs about the member’s cleverness are not equal.

Biased attributions

As with the fundamental attribution error, people are more likely to attribute bad outcomes to the outroups dispositions and good outcomes to situational forces. The opposite is the case when judging ingroup performances. The threshold to detect a stereotype congruent behaviour is much lower in perceivers than to detect or rather label any other behaviour.

This can be dangerous or unjust when it comes to crime scenes or court. Police officers are more likely to suspect a violent act when they see Black people than when they see Whites. Jurors also attribute a violent act as depicting personal disposition when they judge Black men. Third, managers driven by stereotypes rate their employees differently despite showing the same work results. One experiment (Wyer 1985) examined the data analysis of jurors when stereotype consistent and inconsistent information was given. The results were shocking; when people perceived a crime as matching a stereotype (Muslim shot his wife), they were only superficially scanning the information for supporting evidence, neglecting inconsistent information. Systematic processing leads to better encoding of details and facts thus better retrieval is possible after hearing all information this was only done when an inconsistent stereotype crime was perceived.

Gender also has a great biasing influence when it comes to judgments. Participants of Banaji (1993) had to rate the extent to which a person (male versus female) showed dependent behaviour after reading a story about them. In the condition where it was a man, people rated clear features of dependent behaviour as not dependent while when they read about a woman acting in an ambiguous manner, dependence was rated as high. However this was only the case when stereotypes were primed before they were reading the stories.

This indicates that 1) behaviour shown must be ambiguous 2) perceivers do not have to be motivated to avoid stereotypes 3) the stereotype must be salient in order to make biased judgements. Unfortunately these criteria are likely to be met in a workplace.

A second way in which stereotypes hinder objective judgment is that people can prescribe behaviour. A woman is then seen as overaggressive or “bitchy” even if she does not act more aggressive than a male partner but it does not fit the stereotype.

Perceptual confirmation brings biased hypothesis testing

Stereotype judgments do not occur automatically if no cues are present. Seeing a child play in a rich or poor area did not lead participants to judge her academic skills as lower or higher (Darley 1983) but as soon as some information to academic ability (she is in 4^th grade) was given, the stereotype was accessible and judgements were biased. Thus people need to feel that they have some evidence for their judgments, unfortunately this feeling is triggered easily and no real evidence needed.

Subtyping

Hypotheses are tested in a way that confirms people’s ideas. They see the supporting evidence everywhere. In cases where it is hard to find such evidence, the question is stated differently; people form subgroups that make them maintain their stereotypes (Do I find evidence to support that this person is unrepresentative for that group?). This subtyping of a person is now activated and all ambiguous manners or deviant aspects from the group are scanned and labelled as evidence for him/ her to be different. This is only possible if it is observable in one person or a small group rather than in the entire group. Creating subtypes happens as soon as any extra information about a deviant person is given so that the stereotype can survive.

Members of stereotyped groups also a source of biases

Those people who belong to a stereotype are prone to attribute failure to anti-group attitudes if the person involved knew about his membership. This was further tested with participants who were told to have a medical condition and that the person with whom they are interacting knows about it. They recalled more discriminating behaviour even if the person did not know (Kleck 1980). People in stereotype groups face attributional ambiguity; they do not know how to attribute receiving feedback or behaviour. It could either be coloured by their membership or bias-free (Crocker 1993). The opposite effect; never attributing feedback to ones group is a phenomenon described as person-group discrimination discrepancy (Taylor 1994). People would interpret ambiguous behaviour as less prejudiced and attribute it to personal responsibility. Fiske (2001) reasoned that the degree to which this happens due to the strength of belongingness to the group. The less important it is for a member to be seen as such, the less prejudices are perceived and oneself takes on greater responsibility.

Memory bias

Biases can occur by the process of encoding but also when we are retrieving memories.

Illusory correlation

People tend to see two things as belonging together when in fact they do not. Experiences with co-occurring compounds are perceived as correlating. Stereotypes contain such relationships of traits and membership. If one is observed, the other is likely to be activated as well even if it has nothing to do with it.

Depth of processing

Elaborating information thoroughly will lead to better memory storage. Processing stereotypes happens effortless and almost automatically while information inconsistent with it needs more mental energy and thus it is better stored. This would indicate that recall of inconsistent behaviour would be easier to recall but this is not the case. In an experiment participants were asked to recall behaviours that were either (un-) friendly, (un-) intelligent.

Half the group was told that the behaviours describe a friendly group the other half got the information that it was an intelligent group. The information was partially given before the list was read out and afterwards. The confirmatory bias was clearly observed in those participants that were given the group belonging information before the list. They recalled far more intelligent or friendly behaviours depending on the label of the group.

Reconstructed memory

Selective recall can also shape memory. When participants heard a story about a woman that included many facts among those were some details about previous relationships that could be seen as cues for a lesbian. Later on they had to recall as many facts as possible. Some of them were given the information that she was married to a guy now, the others received the information that she was a lesbian now before the memory task. These information shaped the way people remembered facts about her drastically.

Control of stereotypes and expectancies

There are two processes involved when it comes to stereotypes. The first one is the activation of the construct; the second includes the use of it. While the first happens automatically, the second is more controllable.

A paradox

There is evidence that stereotype confirming information is better recalled than inconsistent information. However we have already mentioned that this is not always the case because inconsistent information needs more mental energy thus is better stored in memory.

Stereotype strength

Ruble (1989) argues that a weak stereotype does not have the same power to disregard inconsistent information than strong, well-established stereotypes. Stereotypes are expectancies and if these are strong, the perceiver only sees what is expected; it is called a “top-down process”.

Diagnostic behaviours crucial for categorization

As one imagine, interactions with different group members should lead to reductions of stereotypes and prejudices (contact hypothesis). However, this is not inevitably true. To achieve a decrease in stereotyping, interacting people have to have equal status and norms that provides this equality (same sanctions). Furthermore to help the process it is supportive if the group pursue a common goal. Only if these criteria are met and the behaviour of group members is consistently incongruent with the stereotype, new views can rise.

Observing traits that are not highly diagnostic of a stereotype are often underutilized. But if for example a salesman shows traits that contradict highly diagnostic features (introversion), it is not so easy to disregard them and thus the confirming- bias cannot be used.

Entitativity

Entitativity is the extent to which a group embraces the same values and behaviours. If a group shares many features and thus behaviour is similar, it is more likely to be seen as one entity rather than many individuals. As soon as perceivers’ predictions of a members’ behaviour fail, it will grab his/ her attention. Congruent and incongruent behaviour is exaggerated. Furthermore it was found that traits are attributed to entitative groups, which results in the fundamental attribution error.

Attributions

Stereotypes persist even in the presence of disconfirming evidence. In the case where people have to adept a new view of others, their entire concept has to be reconstructed which needs a lot of mental effort so people shield themselves from it. There are always incidences that we cannot twist in way to make them consistent with a stereotype but we still feel confident enough to continue using them.

When would we stop using them?

Nonstereotypic judgment possible via inconsistent behaviour

All the processes discussed before show how inconsistent information can be made more memorable but simultaneously used to prevent oneself from listening to it when forming a judgment. Where is this disjunction? Asch examined impression formation with providing inconsistent information to see that some people “segregated” people form the normal group (subtyping) while others made distinctions between inner and outer person’s behaviours (depth dimension). They claimed that the observed behaviour was not actually a reflection of that persons’ trait. A third technique observed by Asch was “mean-end” thinking. The inconsistent behaviours only occurred because of an underlying goal.

Another explanation is that people may engage in interpolation; adding new information to the situation so that the inconsistent behaviour can still fit in the stereotype.

Forming new, bias free judgments is hard to achieve. While contradictions about descriptive stereotypes can lead to objective judgments, prescriptive stereotype contradiction will still lead to biased judgments.

Minority Influence: Being consistently inconsistent

Disconfirming stereotypes each time one encounters a member of a group will eventually lead to new perception of the group. If a minority group can resist the pressure of a dominant group and maintain their views, the confidence of the majority’s view will fade with time. Moscovics (1985) called this the validation process that leads to influence. Another way to doubt ones confidence about a judgment is if we perceive a gap between observed behaviour and expectancies (as described in the dual process model). This will then lead to more systematic processing.

Ignoring base rates

Locksey (1980) came up with the assumption that stereotype use is only present when no other information is given. And in fact a tendency was detected that people would use individuation information when given rather than relying on stereotypic factors. He argues that stereotypes are similar to base rate information. It would be used to predict behaviour if no current behaviour could be observed. If the latter were the case, then one would neglect prior probabilities (base rate fallacy) and use the new information for predictions. Other studies confirm when there is individuating information given and too salient to be ignored, a person will be protected from stereotyping.

Stereotype activation versus use

One way to stop stereotype use is via consistent disconfirming performances of the members. Another way is to be motivated to stop doing it. Raising the sufficiency threshold of confidence leads to more systematic processing of information so that biases do not occur as easily. The dissociation model explains this as followed, a stereotype is triggered and heuristic judgments are made but then people become aware of the bias and this resolves in a discrepancy of their morals. If people try to be fair, knowing a biased perception has occurred makes them uncomfortable and we try to correct the judgment.

Stereotype-relevant inconsistencies lead to negative self-evaluations

In those domains in which people are trying to be good, negative feedback has a great impact. We will try even harder to be good at it. In the case of value systems or societal standards it is similar. When we notice inconsistency in behaviour and values, we try to adjust one of them. The self-discrepancy theory states that those inconsistencies lead to emotional responses such as guilt and compunction which then guide further processing.

Negative self-evaluation motivates conscious control

The self-regulating model of prejudices is similar to the self-discrepancy theory but it suggests that the feeling of guilt will result in the urge to control the feeling and thus the action of biased responses. It can be seen as a warning system that is activated by a stereotype cue, which then leads to inhibition of behaviour (behavioural inhibition system BIS). The actual behaviour has not yet been performed so it is no correction model.

Accuracy goals help promote systematic processing

We have encountered the same effect of outcome dependency and accountability on systematic processing in impression formation. It is the same with stereotypes, the greater ones desire to be accurate the deeper one will process the facts. Experiments in a job interview setting revealed that if the interviewer was biased, the questions were close (yes, no) and expectancy- confirming answers were more likely to be given (self-fulfilling prophecy).

Thought suppression: Hyperaccessibility of stereotypes

The ironic side effect of thought suppression is that it leads to heightened accessibility of that thought. There are assumed to be two processes involved when we try to control a thought. One is monitoring all thoughts to make sure it is not entering our mind; the other one is used to find thoughts that can be used to distract us. The first one is relatively effortless and thus can proceed under cognitive load. The second one on the other hand fails when attention is drawn to a new thought or item. This has the effect that we see or think of the suppressed thought (rebound effect). A second explanation is that we use distracters to suppress the stereotype but while doing this, new associations are tied (thought and distracter) so that this irrelevant distracter has now the power to trigger the stereotype too.

Perspective taking versus thought suppression

There is another strategy to control the use of stereotypes, the goal to take perspective. This goal does not make a suppressed thought more accessible instead it limits the expectancies. This way makes it possible to prevent stereotypes to influence behaviour. These are all reactive forms of control as they correct judgements after they have occurred.

There is some evidence that claims that there is also a proactive form of control.

In the light of control

Stereotypes are often triggered when we perceive a threat to our self-esteem. Repairing self-concepts is possible by derogating others, a form of automatic self-affirmation. Spencer (1998) claims that only a threat will lead to stereotyping and thus it is not an automatic state.

Cognitive load

When participants had to form impression under cognitive load (doing another task), they did not engage in as much stereotyping as in the condition without extra tasks. This suggests that stereotyping does need cognitive capacity and is not act of automaticity.

Feature detection

One has assumed that stereotypes are activated when we look at a black person but instead it could be the case that we only perceive physical features, which lead to responses. The face can give many cues of person’s intentions and mood states.

High versus low prejudice belief systems

Nonprejudiced belief systems can be built once one rejects the “normal” stereotypes. Instead of activating the old stereotypes, the new beliefs are triggered when people meet stereotype groups (Leopard 1997).

Expectancies shape your associations

An experiment revealed that expectancies could disrupt stereotype activation (Banaji 1996). Participants who expected a stereotypic pairing of traits and person (weak-woman) were faster in responding to that combination then those participants who were told that counterstereotypic pairing will be shown. If stereotypes were automatically activated it should have not made a difference what pairing was expected but it did. This evidence was used to come up with a training that can help preventing people to be led by stereotypes (counterstereotype association training). People were shown pictures that elicited stereotypes but these were paired with opposite traits (picture of violent looking guy- kind-yes).

Preconscious control

People with highly egalitarian goals are found to be protected from stereotypic thinking if their goals are activated. These goals inhibit the triggering of stereotypes in the preconscious so that we do not engage in stereotyping.

Preconscious compensation

Past situations in which people 1) failed or 2) succeeded to be fair had an impact on activation of stereotypes. The goal of being fair was activated in condition 2 and thus stereotypes controlled. Response tasks where participants had to detect words related to egalitarianism (fair, equality) further revealed evidence that these goals were activated when thinking about past fair behaviour.

From the Intra- to the Interpersonal

Social cognition is not only about how we attain knowledge but also about the application of it. One well-known experiment by Zimbardo (1971) “Zimabardo prison” showed how taking over roles lead to the adoption of role appropriate behaviour. Prisoners acted as real prisoners and guards as guards even though those two knew each other before. The cognition- behaviour link is not always under conscious control.

Influences on Interpersonal Interaction sequences

The interaction sequence is interpreted by the perceiver’s goals and expectancies but also shaped by expectancies of the other person. Biases of all sorts have an impact of the perceiver and the target.

The interaction sequence

Before we enter an interaction we have apart from our chronic goals formed goals that are triggered by the specific environment. Together with these we also have expectancies to achieve these goals. Entering the sequence means we see the other person, form a first impression and all beliefs and expectancies of his/her membership will be triggered. The third process is called predictive veridicality, which means that we outline appropriate behaviour from the impression of the target. Now we are not only driven by finding the best way to pursue our goals but we also act upon expectancies that we assume the other person has made. Further on in the sequence the other person will try to find out the meaning of the actions we have taken and respond in a certain manner. Next we as the perceiver do the same about the actions of the interactant. We try to infer the meaning of the other persons’ action in order to respond appropriately. The last step is the one that can bolster or alter old stereotypes.

The interaction can lead to behavioural confirmation meaning that the interactant reacts in a way that is expected from you. This is also called the self-fulfilling prophecy.

The self-fulfilling prophecy

“A false definition evoking a new behaviour which makes the originally false conception becomes true” (Merton 1948). This was nicely illustrated in the “Pygmalion in the classroom” studies of Rosenthal (1968). Teachers were told that some children in the class had an IQ above average. After one year those children did show an increase of IQ. Expectancies led to different behaviour, which in turn made the children work harder and thus they improved. Teachers were not aware of the fact that they were acting differently towards particular children. Experiments show that it not only the actual behaviour that differs but also nonverbal cues that are affected. Looking someone in the eyes or not, leaning forwards to him or backwards all those things have an impact on social cognition.

Stereotype threat

Being aware of stereotypes make members of the groups perform in a manner that is consistent with the expectancies. Stereotype threat describes the perception of fear people experience when facing tasks in which they are believed to be bad at (having poor math abilities as a girl).

Here two effects of such threat; the first is to actually perform in a way consistent with the

Stereotype. The second is called disidentification which says that a member of a stereotyped group will no longer engage in the domain that the group is believed to be bad at. Motivation is undermined by the fear of fulfilling the stereotype.

Several studies where participants were told that there is no longer a difference between races revealed the same results.

Interpreting the environment

Anxiety is one explanation of the poorer performance of stigmatized group but not the only one. An alternative explanation says that the stereotype itself might be the reason why situations are perceived differently. The behaviour is now rated as poorly even though it is not actually different.

Accessible stereotypes

A task can be perceived as chance to do well or to do poorly, depending on which you think will have an impact on your result. Fulfilling the stereotype might not be the reason for your fear but instead it is the thought about tests that threatens the person because stereotypes trigger beliefs about abilities.

Accessible Theories

Having theories in mind about meaning of behaviours will influence the way in which they interpret the appropriateness of an action. If one believes that violence will solve problems, he will judge a fight as less threatening than someone who disapproves violence.

Accessible Traits

Priming people with specific traits can alter the way they act if they have not made up their mind in which manner to react. Competitiveness as a prime was found to lead two people act more aggressively in an interaction if they did not know each other before.

Accessible Exemplars

As discussed in chapter 10, priming people with an exemplar should trigger contrast behaviour. This was found when Dijksterhuis (1998) primed participants with a picture of the Queen. The walked much faster when they were leaving the room.

Accessible Goals

Priming you with a Coke does not lead to make you buy a coke immediately. However, if you are thirsty and happen to like coke, your choice of which beverage to buy will be influenced. Thus actions can be affected by primes but only if the associated goal is already present (get a drink). Priming a goal however can affect the way you are interpreting your environment. Thinking about your father for example will trigger a goal (acting responsibly) and this will then shape the way you attribute a situation or behaviour (he will stop drinking in time). Goals are also believed to spread, this is called Goal contagion. Perceiving a goal pursuing action of another person can make you adopt this goal without actively thinking about it. This is more likely if we observe behaviours that we desire.

Attributions of the perceiver

The way we act towards others is determined by the assumptions we have about the causes of an outcome. Did he/ she intend to behave that way (deliver pizza early) or was the cause due to situational forces (good traffic conditions). The reactions towards the persons are dependent on which of the two we think is true.

Accessible Self-standards

Perceiving a discrepancy (Hypocrisy) between actual behaviour and standards that we have set for ourselves lead to feelings of shame, guilt and embarrassment. These in turn lead to altering behaviour or attitude.

Recall of past events is shaped by relying on peak experiences and end experiences

Before we engage in a certain action, we evaluate its pleasure or anticipated pain but recalling prior experiences are easily biased due to memory or evaluation. It can happen that we just forget about the bad incidences or hours of situations because of our tendency to focus on peak and end experiences. A shortcut of remembrance then leads to false recall.

A different ending of a situation can make us evaluate a situation as less bad despite the fact that the difference was not an actual improvement.

Social Change strategies

In line with social identity, social mobility or change occurs as a strategy to improve one’s group if negative information has arisen.

The automobile model

Acting without thinking is called automobile. This phenomenon is similar to the automotive differing only in the voluntary part. Automobile does not include any awareness of the behaviour until it has already occurred.

Ideomotor behaviour

Ideomotor actions are those that occur only by thinking about a movement. Seeing a bowl of crisps on the table may lead you to crab a handful before you had the chance to realize what you are doing. The same happened to participants primed with traits that elicited a stereotype of an elderly; they took over a much slower gait. Thinking of something will make us behave in a manner that resembles the thought to a certain degree. This is another explanation for the stereotype threat behaviour.

Unwanted actions

Unwanted action is believed to occur due to the same processes involved in suppressing thoughts. One cognitive process is busy monitoring the unwanted actions the other one is trying to do something that does not include this action. As soon as another thought or surprising action occurs the latter process will fail and the unwanted action is the one most accessible and thus most likely to occur.

The dynamic personality

Behaviour is often associated with dispositions, which further are linked to personality. Therefore it is assumed that behaviour must be stable and consistent throughput different situations. This is in fact not the case, which does not mean that personality cannot foresee behaviour but it is far more complex so that traits do not have to elicit the same response in every situation. Being outgoing and a “party animal” can be part of your personality but when you are on a party with your boss, you will not show this behaviour. Personality is dynamic Rhodewald (2001).

Behavioural Signatures

Traits can be predictors but only when certain if conditions are provided. Those if-then relations refer to conditions of 1) situations and 2) responses. It is still not a direct relationship but an indirect one, which is labelled as behavioural signature by Shoda (1995). In order to figure out personality consistent behaviour, one should look at the consistency between behaviour and goals that could have been triggered by cues in different environments.

Personality types as signatures

Paradoxical behaviour can suddenly make sense when if-then relations are explored. Narcissistic people need others to praise them but it can happen that they insult their close friends. This seems paradoxical at first but when we see that if they feel a self-threat they then act in an exaggerated manner to promote the self even at the expense of others. The same paradoxical behaviour is observed in people who fear rejection. Instead of acting in a way not to annoy others, they cling to their partners so that they can only reject them. The behaviour makes sense once we understand the if-then relations, which are also implied by the underlying personality.