1. Social Psychology by David G. Myers 9th Edition
Social Beliefs and Judgments
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

2. How Do We Form Social Beliefs?
Our social beliefs are the thoughts we have formed through different experiences in our social environments.
Our social beliefs are influenced by our families, friends, authority figures, cultural values and customs, neighborhood, and intimate relationships.
Our social beliefs help us to explain our worlds.
Ex. Teens form beliefs about what is “cool” or “not cool” through their experiences with peers.
Ex. We form beliefs about what “marriage” or “parenting” means through how we see our parents behaving.
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

3. How Do We Form Social Beliefs?
Social beliefs are affected by:
1. How we perceive, or interpret, different events with others
2. How we judge, or evaluate, different events
3. How we explain the causes of different events
4. What we expect to result from different events
What you believe may or may not represent what actually occurred.
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

4. Perceiving Our Social Worlds
Priming: unattended stimuli can subtly dispose how we will interpret and recall events.
Example: If you are wearing earphones while reading the following sentence “we stood by the bank” and river or money is whispered in your ear so that you don’t consciously hear it, the word primes what you think of next.
Holland (2005) noted that students exposed to a cleaning scent were quicker identify cleaning related words.
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

5. Perceiving Our Social World
Priming in everyday life:
Watching a scary movie alone at home can prime you to think that a noise is a possible intruder
Depressed moods prime negative associations. Everything seems sadder when you are depressed.
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

6. Perceiving Our Social World
Perceiving and Interpreting Events
The better we know people the more accurately we can read their minds and emotions
Sports fans perceive referees as partial to the other side
When presented with ambiguous information, we use it to support our side of the argument.
In an experiment conducted by Rothbart (1977) students were provided with a picture of a man and asked to interpret the man’s facial expression. Students who were told that he was a Gestapo leader interpreted his facial expression as cruel. Students told he was he was the leader of an anti-Nazi underground movement interpreted his expression as warm and kind (look at those caring eyes).
So, is it all about interpretation? How do we know what’s real?
We view our social world through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values. Our beliefs shape our interpretation of everything else.
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

7. Perceiving Our Social World
Belief Perseverance:
Belief perseverance is the persistence of a belief, in spite of evidence which contradicts or challenges this belief.
Belief perseverance occurs in religious beliefs, political beliefs, and many beliefs about what is considered to be “right” or “wrong.”
We focus on things that support our beliefs and ignore those that don’t.
When is belief perseverance good? When is it bad?
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

8. Perceiving Our Social World
Constructing Memories of Ourselves and Our Worlds
Our memories are not exact copies of our experiences that remain on deposit in a memory bank, but instead we construct memories at the time of withdrawal.
When asked to imagine an event 1/4th of people later recall it as something that actually happened.
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

9. Perceiving Our Social World
Misinformation effect: after witnessing an event and receiving misleading information about it you incorporate misinformation into one’s memory event
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

10. Perceiving Our Social World
Reconstructing our past attitudes:
Five years ago how did you feel about:
Nuclear power?
Your parents?
Abortion?
Have your attitudes changed?
People whose attitudes have changed often insist that they have always felt much as they feel now.
We often recall events more favorably than what they were.
For example, after a break up we often forget the bad and only remember how great the person was.
“A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday”
We also reconstruct our past behavior
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

11. Judging Our Social World
Intuitive Judgments
Powers of intuition:
“The heart has its reasons which reason does not know”
We know more than we know we know
Our thinking is partly controlled (conscious) and partly autonomic (without our awareness).
Limits of intuition:
We commonly have perceptual misinterpretations, fantasies, and constructed beliefs
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

12. How We Judge Our Social World
Overconfidence Phenomenon: the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs
Ex. stockbrokers and politicians
Even when we are wrong, we see it as being “almost right”
Confirmation Bias: the tendency to search for information which confirms or supports our beliefs
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

13. How We Judge Our Social World
Representativeness Heuristic: the tendency to judge someone too quickly, by assuming that someone behaves or thinks a certain way based solely on the group which that person represents (such as an ethnic or professional group)
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

14. Judging Our Social World
Counterfactual thinking: thinking about what could have happened, but didn’t.
The student who misses a A- by one point feels worse than the student who got a solid B+.
If we barely miss a plane, we imagine that we would have made it if we only would have left at our usual time, taken our usual route, etc
If we miss our plane by 30 minutes, then we feel less frustrated.
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

15. Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Judging Others
Illusory thinking
Illusory control: we think uncontrollable events are more in our control than they really are
Example: gambling
Moods and judgment:
Our moods infuse our judgements
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

16. Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Moods and Judgment
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

17. Explaining Our Social World
Attributing Causality: To the Person or the Situation
Misattribution: mistakenly attributing someone’s behavior to the wrong source.
Ex: thinking someone likes you, when they are just being nice
Attribution Theory: how we explain other’s behaviors
Dispositional: attributing behavior to the person’s disposition and traits
Situational attributions: attributing someone’s behavior to the environment
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

18. The Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences
Why do we make this error?
Perspective and self- awareness
Cultural differences
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

19. Attributions and Reactions
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

20. Expectations of Our Social World
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Teacher Expectations and Student Performance
Getting from Others What We Expect
Behavioral confirmation
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

21. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

22. Self-Fulfilling Beliefs
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.