Social Beliefs and Judgments
CHAPTER 3
Social Psychology
by David G. Myers 9th Edition
Social Beliefs and Judgments
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Explaining Our Social World
Social Beliefs and Judgments
• Attributing Causality: To the Person or the
Situation
– Misattribution: construing unreal situation
– Attribution Theory: The theory of how people
explain each others’ behavior;
• Dispositional vs. situational attributions
– Inferring traits: sentences
– Commonsense attributions
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Attribution Theories
Social Beliefs and Judgments
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The Fundamental Attribution Error
Social Beliefs and Judgments
• Why do we make this
error?
– Perspective and self-
awareness
– Cultural differences
• Why we study
attribution errors
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The Fundamental Attribution Error
Social Beliefs and Judgments
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The Fundamental Attribution Error
Social Beliefs and Judgments
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Attributions and Reactions
Social Beliefs and Judgments
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Expectations of Our Social World
Social Beliefs and Judgments
• Self-Fulfilling
Prophecy
• Teacher Expectations
and Student
Performance
• Getting from Others
What We Expect
– Behavioral
confirmation
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Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Social Beliefs and Judgments
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Perceiving Our Social Worlds
Social Beliefs and Judgments
• Priming • Constructing
• Perceiving and Memories of
Interpreting Events Ourselves and Our
Worlds
• Belief Perseverance
– Misinformation effect
– Reconstructing our
past attitudes
– Reconstructing our
past behavior
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Perception of Media Bias
Social Beliefs and Judgments
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Judging Our Social World
Social Beliefs and Judgments
• Intuitive Judgments
– Powers of intuition
– Limits of intuition
• Overconfidence
– Overconfidence phenomenon
– Confirmation bias
– Remedies
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Judging Our Social World
Social Beliefs and Judgments
• Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts
– Representativeness heuristic
– The availability heuristic
– Counterfactual thinking
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Judging Our Social World
Social Beliefs and Judgments
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Judging Others
Social Beliefs and Judgments
• Illusory thinking
– Illusory correlation
– Illusion of control
• Moods and judgment
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Moods and Judgment
Social Beliefs and Judgments
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Moods and Judgment
Social Beliefs and Judgments
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Social Beliefs and Judgments
Supplemental Slides
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Attribution Theories
Social Beliefs and Judgments
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Attribution Theories
Social Beliefs and Judgments
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Self-Fulfilling Beliefs
Social Beliefs and Judgments
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Expectations and Attributions
Social Beliefs and Judgments
Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
