Person Perception and Attribution

323 Pages·1989·7.71 MB·English

by  Hans-Werner Bierhoff (auth.)

SSSP
Springer
Series in
Social
Psychology
SSSP
Hans-Werner Bierhoff
Person Perception
and Attribution
With Contributions by R. Klein
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York
London Paris Tokyo Hong Kong
Hans-Werner Bierhoff
Department of Psychology
University of Marburg
Gutenbergstr. 18
3550 Marburg/Lahn, FRG
With 33 Figures
ISBN-13: 978-3-642-74132-6 e-ISBN-13: 978-3-642-74130-2
001: 10.1007/978-3-642-74130-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data. Bierhoff, Hans Werner, 1948- Person
perception and attribution/H.-W. Bierhoff. p. cm. - (Springer series in social psychology)
Bibliography: p. Includes indexes. ISBN-13: 978-3-642-74132-6 1. Social perception.
2. Attribution (Social psychology) 3. Impression formation (psychology) 4. Stereotype (psychol-
ogy) I. Title. 11. Series. HM132.B54 1989 302'.12-dc20 89-11389
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Preface
Person perception is of great importance in everyday life and human science.
Judgment of other people's characteristics and intentions is important for suc-
cessfully planning actions within a social environment. Questions about the
formation of impressions and causal attributions are central to social
psychology and the study of diagnostic judgment formation. The field of per-
son perception deals with questions of how impression formation proceeds,
what characteristics and intentions are attributed to other people, and how
preformed schemata and stereotypes influence people's first impressions.
Research on person perception developed rapidly after the Second World
War. In the 1950s the precision and accuracy of person perception received
special interest, but the problems concerning whether an individual's assessment
of another personality is exact or not could not be solved. Another approach,
which began in the 1940s and was derived from the Gestalt psychological tradi-
tion, dealt with impression formation based on selected social cues. This ap-
proach, which proved to be very useful, had considerable influence on both the
research methods and the theoretical orientation of the research work. On the
one hand, by using a combination of individual cues (like physical characteris-
tics) researchers tried to ascertain how an impression of a person was formed.
On the other hand, the Gestalt psychological orientation led to an interest in the
process of person perception, which in the last 10 years has concentrated on
questions concerning information reception and processing.
In the 1960s a new field, attribution research, began to apply itself to the
perceived causality of behavior. The distinction between internal and external
causes led to a series of informative studies based on an average person's
"naive" theory about social situations and people who act in these situations.
Later analyses led to more refined multidimensional models of attributions.
This preface was written during a transatlantic flight. Waiting for the jet
to land, I had the opportunity to devote some time to the perception of people.
For example, I made comparisons related to possible sex differences. The man
who was sitting in front of me read a physics journal while the woman on my
vi Preface
left read a fashion magazine. These types of observations feed gender-related
stereotypes, which are widespread in many societies. Is there a kernel of truth
in gender stereotypes? If so, how can it be accounted for? These are some of
the questions which are addressed in Chapters 3 and 5.
In this book four issues are given special emphasis: first impression forma-
tion, expectancy confirmation versus individuating processes, stereotypes, and
attributions. The work on impression formation by Asch (1946) is taken as a
starting point for a discussion of social cognition research. In this opening
chapter - as in the whole text - a balance is sought between recent research
and theory and basic studies and approaches which have contributed to the
continuity of research on the perception of people over several decades.
Person perception as an inference process is discussed in Chapter 2. Issues
pertaining to "going beyond the information given" were already emphasized
by Bruner (1957 a, b). We discuss selection of relevant data, strategies for sam-
pling and classifying the data gathered, and SUbjective estimates of relation-
ships between two variables. In addition, two inference models of social
perception, one based on the diagnostic ratio derived from the Bayes theorem
and the other on the anchor heuristic, are described in some detail.
Stereotypes are understood as cognitive schemata or prototypes. Gender
stereotypes, ethnic stereotypes, and stereotypes which refer to physical ap-
pearance are discussed. The importance of the social structure as a determi-
nant of the content of stereotypes is mentioned. Furthermore, motivational in-
fluences on derogation of the outgroup are discussed with reference to Sherif's
realistic conflict theory and Thjfel's social identity theory.
Attributional phenomena are considered from a broad perspective. The
pioneering ideas of Heider, Bern, Jones and Davis, and Kelley are discussed in
some detail. The clarification of the covariation principle by the logical model
of Jaspars and Hewstone and the analysis of commonsense attributions by
Hansen are presented as examples of how knowledge and research in this area
have advanced. Finally, the issue of attributions of responsibility is discussed
in some detail. Responsibility attributions occupy an intermediate position be-
tween causal attributions and blaming. Although an understanding of respon-
sibility attributions is crucial to an understanding of mechanisms of social
sanctioning, it is unfortunately often not the case that researchers working on
the latter have a genuine understanding of the former - especially when com-
plex causal chains are involved.
In Chapters 3 and 5 expectancies which generalize over situations or people
are contrasted with individuating processes and processes of self-verification.
Issues of vividness of impressions, accuracy of social perception, and
diagnostic information from single cases are related to this contrast between
global schemata and individual evidence. Depending on their personal
preferences, researchers have emphasized one or other end pole. More integra-
tion of theory and research in this respect would be desirable, although the
work of Snyder and Swann and of Thylor and Fiske is promising. In this con-
nection, different values are attached to individual cases. While from the
Preface vii
perspective of the representativeness heuristic (lVersky and Kahneman, 1974)
single cases are regarded as possible sources of distortion of the relevance of
base-rate information used in forming rational judgments, from the perspective
of stereotypes attention paid to single cases serves as a protection against
overgeneralization and irrational distortions in person perception.
In this book I have emphasized the positive. In other words, I have tried to
focus on promising lines of research without criticizing other approaches exten-
sively. Another factor which contributed to my selectiveness is related to my per-
sonal biases and preferences. A second book, which might be titled Critical
Issues in Person Perception Research, would certainly supplement this one very
well. I am painfully aware of many methodological problems in the research
reports. In fact, after reading the relevant literature I have become to some extent
more skeptical on this point than I was before. I will mention here only
replicability of results (especially of significant statistical interactions), the ques-
tionable reliability of many popular dependent measures, which neglect the pro-
cesses which are supposed to be being studied, and demand characteristics caus-
ed by leading questions and a tendency to emphasize confirmation more than
disconfirmation. Another problem relates to the small samples of subjects
studied, which are also frequently not representative of people in general. I have
tried to take these problems into account implicitly, but I am aware that I was
only partially successful in this respect. Space limitations and the goal of pro-
viding a general overview of theories and research on person perception did not
allow me to discuss this critical aspect more extensively in the text.
It is a truism that every study has its strengths and weaknesses. For example,
naturalistic studies which promise a high ecological validity usually do not allow
strict control of independent variables. In contrast, laboratory studies lack
ecological validity. Therefore, different approaches complement each other, each
one compensating for deficiencies which are inherent in another. Unfortunately,
a tendency to concentrate on judgmental studies which allow easy and quick
procedures for collecting data can be seen. Be this as it may, considerable efforts
are being made to bring the study of person perception into the course of social
interactions (see Chapter 5).
I want to thank a number of people who helped me during the preparation
and writing of this book. These include JOrg Albers, Christiane Block, Michael
Hemer, Peter Kramp, Helmut Lamm, Angela Ludwig, Bemd Schafer, Franziska
Schneider, and Wolfgang Stroebe. My special thanks go to two people. Nicola
Preese helped me with the translation into English and improved my English in
parts which were originally written in English. Renate Klein, who is my co-
author in the second chapter on inference processes in impression formation,
read the whole manuscript and improved it in many ways.
In order to improve the readability of the text I have placed the more detailed
reports on particular investigations and the details of some theoretical models
in boxes (numbered 11-126 for investigations and T1-T13 for theoretical
models).
Hans-Wemer Bierhoff
Contents
1. The First Impression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Central Characteristics and Gestalt Perception. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Implicit Personality Theories Complete the First Impression ... 9
Daring: Courage or Recklessness? Implicational Variety of 'Itait
Adjectives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Cognitive Representation of Persons ........................ 22
Halo Effects: When Single Items of Information Are
Dominated by the Overall Impression... ... . ....... . ... ... . . 35
Order of Presentation of Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
The First Impression: Practical Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
2. Reasoning in Impression Formation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Uncovering Relationships. . ... . . . . . . ... . ... . . . . .. . . .. . . ... . 78
Subjective Probability Models of Stereotypes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3. Stereotypes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Definitions and History of Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Areas of Stereotype Research .............................. 112
Theories About Stereotypes. ... . . . . . .... . .. . . . . ... . .. . . ... . 123
Stereotype Research - Practical Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
4. Attribution: Theories ..................................... 147
Causal Relations ......................................... 154
The Naive Analysis of Behavior . . . . .... . ... . . . . .. . . .. . . ... . 155
Causal Schemata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Discounting and Augmentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
The Covariation Principle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
The Theory of Correspondent Inference.. .... . .. .... .... .... 195
x References
Self-Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Differing Perception of Causes by Actors and Observers. . . . . . . 202
Motivational Influences on the Attribution Process . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Attribution of Responsibility and Blame. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
5. Attribution: Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Social Motives and Attribution: Achievement Behavior and
Helping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Self-fulfilling Prophecies and Processes of Expectation
Confirmation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Vocal Communication: Nonverbal Cues and Social Perception. 248
Person Perception in Social Interaction: Practical Areas of
Application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Subject Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Chapter 1
The First Impression
The basic issues of person perception are forming a first impression about
another person and drawing conclusions from this impression. These two
topics are therefore treated in Chaps. 1 and 2. The first chapter emphasizes the
processes involved in impression formation, whereas in Chap. 2 stress is laid
upon the conclusions that are drawn from the first impression.
Consider the following example: in the 1970s "the godfathers of heavy
metal" (Rolling Stone, July 1985), Jimmy Page and Robert Plant - better
known as Led Zeppelin -, were famous for their characteristic stage shows.
One of the topics discussed in this chapter deals with the question of whether
there are certain central cues that influence the first impression of a person
more than other peripheral cues. The loudness of Led Zeppelin's music was
probably one such central cue that strongly determined how the band was
perceived. In addition, I shall discuss the influence of overall evaluations of
a stimulus person on ratings of specific aspects of that person. In terms of the
above example, when an observer holds a positive opinion about Jimmy Page
or Robert Plant, he or she will tend to attribute positively evaluated character-
istics to them (e.g., sincere, dynamic, exciting, attractive). Given a negative
overall evaluation, an observer will tend to attribute less favorable characteris-
tics (e.g., not sincere) to the stimulus person. Thus an implicit personality
theory about the "godfathers" emerges that is inferred from initial cues.
Central Characteristics and Gestalt Perception
Each of us meets a wide variety of people in everyday life. Even during short
encounters a first impression emerges and subsequently influences social
behavior (Kelley, 1950; Widmeyer & Lay, 1988).
Well-known public figures are good examples to illustrate how person
perception functions. They may be politicians or actors and also heroes from
fiction and comics. Consider Hagar the Horrible, by Dik Browne; Hagar is a
2 The First Impression
mighty man but often expresses childish inclinations. His strength and vitality
are manifested in his outer appearance, but the "born leader" often pursues
infantile goals. For instance, Hagar gets extremely upset when he finds a leak
in the wine cask, whereas he hardly takes any notice of a leak in the Viking
ship. Another time he is eager to secure the largest piece of cake for himself.
In spite of the seemingly contradictory characteristics attributed;10 Hagar,
his stories are very popular and fascinate many readers in a way.-only rarely
reported of students reading a psychology textbook. In fact, everyday sayings
provide schemata for categorizing Hagar's behavior. Hagar reminds one of the
German proverb which says that there is a child in every man, which means
that even sincere and maybe frightening men exhibit childlike wishes or
behavior. Using this notion, Hagar's contradictory characteristics are in-
tegrated into a familiar overall impression that transcends the single traits.
How Contradictions May Form a Unity
First impressions do not emerge slowly over a long period of time but are
formed almost immediately during the first encounter with the target person.
Once an impression has been formed it is maintained over a long time, even
if no further contact with the stimulus person takes place. From the very begin-
ning an impression represents a homogeneous unity that develops quickly and
usually lasts for a long time (Asch, 1946, p. 258; Hamilton, 1981).
Impression formation is best considered as a process by which an organized
overall impression emerges in which single traits receive specific meanings.
Every single trait can have a variety of meanings when seen in isolation. For
instance, daring may be interpreted as courageous on the one hand and as
reckless on the other hand. Connotative meanings of crafty may range from
clever to sly (see Hamilton & Zanna, 1974). It is only in context that the range
of meanings narrows and a trait receives a specific interpretation.
In the tradition of Gestalt psychology, Asch (1946) formulated the hypoth-
esis that the impression of a person is more than the sum of his/her single
characteristics. In "Forming Impressions of Personality" he contrasted three
models of impression formation (see Box T 1) which since then have influenced
research on person perception.
Box T 1. Models of impression formation
Several models describe the process by which different information may be
integrated to give an overall impression.
1. Summation model· The overall impression is the sum of the indepen-
dent impressions based on single items of information: overall impression
= a+b+c+d+e (single items of information are represented by a-e).
2. Generalized halo effect: Rating scale judgments as measures of
various traits and characteristics of a person tend to be strongly correlated.
To the extent that these correlations are spurious and do not correspond
to actual relationships between the rated traits, the overall impression is in