Implicit Personality Theories

Psychology B

Interpersonal Perception<= /p>

Implicit Personality Theories

Last week, we introd= uced this topic with a short experiment investigating judgements based on physic= al appearance, and the use of stereotypes. As we have seen, some psychologists argue that we rely on cognitive ‘short-cuts’ and stereotypes in order to make quick judgements about our social environment.

In the context of evolutionary psychology, why might this be useful? Can you think of any o= ther explanations as to why humans seem to use stereotypes in interpersonal perception?

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Bartlett (1932) developed the concept of a cognitive ‘schema’ – rather like a mental filing cabinet in which information can be stored, relating to a person (e.g. a mental file marked ‘David Beckham’), a role (‘tutor’) or an event (‘first date’).

Working on your own,= jot down the first five things that you think for:

David Beckham

Stow College tutors

A first date

Now compare your ans= wers with a colleague. Were they similar? Would you expect such schemas to be universal, or are they specific to certain groups – would your grandmother have similar ideas?

What are schemas based upon?

We can define a ster= eotype as being a judgement or assumption about an individual based on an unrelated characteristic, e.g. ethnicity or physical appearance, and we have identifi= ed shared schemas for people, roles and events which both help us to categorise and make sense of the world around us, and hinder us in our judgements of others.

What are such schema= s and judgements based upon? Psychologists have identified a number of factors – the ‘halo effect’, when one piece of positive informati= on (e.g. ‘Jimmy is a hard worker’) leads us to assume that the per= son has other positive characteristics. Think back to last week - which theory = of interpersonal perception does this relate to?

Harari and McDavid (= 1973) identified names as contributing to interpersonal perception - would you gi= ve the job to Chantelle or Tarquin? Others such as Allport (1954) and Dion et = al (1972) have highlighted physical characteristics and attractiveness as important factors.

Tajfel (1971) argued= that judgements and prejudices could be based upon any of these, or just about a= ny factor which could lead us to identify one group as ‘different’= to another. His Social Identity Theory argued that we can form an in-group and out-group based on almost any characteristic, and we will return to his stu= dy of prejudice next week.

Task

Your tutor will help= you to calculate the mean age of the class. All those who are above the mean age w= ill be in the ‘old farts’ team, and all those are below the mean age will be in the ‘kids’ team.

Your tutor will then= give each team a task to complete.

Making a judgement

We can probably all = think of occasions on which our judgements have been mistaken, or perhaps occasions = on which others have used stereotypes against us.

How good do you thin= k your judgement is? Try the test below, and then compare your answers with a colleague:

Q1 &= nbsp; How likely are you to develop a drug or alcohol problem in the next 10 years?

Very likely &= nbsp; Likely &= nbsp; Average = Unlikely &= nbsp; Very Unlikely

Q2 &= nbsp; How likely are you to contract a Sexually Transmitted Disease in the next 5 yea= rs?

Very likely &= nbsp; Likely &= nbsp; Average = Unlikely &= nbsp; Very Unlikely

Q3 &= nbsp; How likely are you to develop cancer at some point in your life?

Very likely &= nbsp; Likely &= nbsp; Average = Unlikely &= nbsp; Very Unlikely

Q4 &= nbsp; How likely are you to develop Parkinson’s disease at some point in your l= ife?

Very likely &= nbsp; Likely &= nbsp; Average = Unlikely &= nbsp; Very Unlikely

Q5 In the US, are you more likely to be murdered or commit suicide?

Q6 &= nbsp; You are flying to the States when the passenger in front of you clutches his ch= est and starts to breath heavily. You attract the steward’s attention and tell them that you think this passenger may be having a heart attack. A few minutes later, the pilot asks whether there is a doctor on the plane. A passenger a few rows in front of you identifies themselves as a GP and rush= es to help.

Is the doctor a man or a woman?

The first four quest= ions are based on research by Weinstein (1982) on optimistic bias – Weinstein argued that we typically underestimate our risk = of negative life events, with most individuals claiming to have a ‘below average’ chance of contracting illnesses or having an accident (this = is statistically impossible – why?).

Several different explanations have been put forward to explain this, including availability heuristics – i= f we can think of examples where this has happened, we are more likely to believ= e that this could happen to us. If you wrote ‘murder’ for Q5, why do y= ou think your judgement was wrong? Perhaps it was because the media tend to gi= ve more coverage to murders than suicides, with TV dramas and court cases also highlighting potential examples? How might this affect answers to the rest = of the questions?

As the unit progress= es, we will look at other examples of research into judgement and optimistic bias,= and how this information can be applied in society. Can you think of any exampl= es where this knowledge could be used?