Powerpoint Slides
Presentation of the Self to Others
Strategic vs. Authentic self-presentations
- depending on where you are is how you present yourself
Self-presentation failure: when you fail to give a good self-
presentation, use sympathy, or an excuse. The excuse must be plausible.
Plausible excuses can save people
Self-Handicapping: we don’t want to face reality, so we intentionally
sabotage ourselves.
- Ex. when you have a big paper due, you decide to clean your
room first. If your paper is not handed in on time, your excuse is that
you had to clean your room.
Strategic Self-Presentations
- how you present yourself to look better using:
- exemplification
- modesty: un-representing yourself
- intimidation: scaring people by convincing them you are
dangerous
- supplication: advertise your weakness in order to get sympathy
- ingratiation: flattering
Self-Monitoring
- use other people’s cues to control your self-presentation. More
likely to change your presentation if you’re a high self-monitored
person
- high self-monitored people are more in theater, psychology, and
public relations
- low self-monitored people act more on how they feel, more
guided by attitudes and beliefs. Less interested to present a nice
image of themselves.
Social Perception: your impression of what a person is like
- look at their physical appearance, similarity to you, and what
they say
Impression formation: process by which we integrate various sources of
information about another into overall judgment
Stereotype: a fixed way of thinking about people because it’s the most
sufficient thing to do when we don’t know anything else
- names are one way we stereotype
- women are judged more attractive by their names
Non-verbal behavioral cues: pay attention to what people do (ex. facial
expressions)
- facial expressions tend to be universal.
- Happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger
Eye contact is a sign of dominance.
- staring, avoidance, or gaze aversion
- it depends on the duration, too long can scare people
Ellsworth (1972)
- tested people by staring at them from a bench, car, and
motorcycle while at a red stop light
- subjects sped off faster when started at
Body Movements
- ready people’s behavior
- mimic people’s posture and you feel more connected to them
- in ballet, more angular positions tend to be more threatening
than more circular positions
- more relaxed people tend to spread out more.
- Guys tend to spread out more
- Women are more compact
Impression Formation
The process by which we integrate various sources of info about another into an overall
judgment
We are likely to use “averaging” when making impression of people
Implicit Personality Theory
The assumptions people make about which personality traits go together
False Consensus Bias
We think other people think like we do.
Positivity Bias
Tendency for people to rate individual human beings more positively than groups or
impersonal objects
Negativity Bias
Tendency for negative traits to be weighted more heavily in impression formation than
positive traits
Attributions
How we explain someone’s theory
External-emotion due to outside influence
Internal-emotions are gained from within
Fritz Heider’s Naïve psychology
People are motivated to form a coherent view of the world
People have a need to gain control over their environment
Internal vs. external
Stable vs. unstable
Correspondent Inference Theory
The action of an actor corresponds to or is indicative of a stable personality
characteristic
Rules:
Social desirability of the behavior
Actor’s degree of choice
Non-common effects
Kelley’s Covariation Model
Covariation principle:
Whenever there are several casual explanations for a particular event,
we tend to be less likely to attribute the effect to any particular cause
consensus
consistency
distinctiveness
Fundamental Attribution Error
When explaining the actions of others, we tend to locate the cause in terms of
dispositional characteristics rather than more appropriate situational factors
The Actor Observer effect
The tendency to attribute other’s behavior to external causes
Self-serving Bias
The tendency to assign an internal locus of causality for our positive outcomes
and an external locus for our negative outcomes
Heuristics: The Cliff Notes of Attributions
Reverse stereotypes
You see people have a certain characteristic therefore they belong to a certain group
Representativeness Heuristic
Availability Heuristic