Fundamental Attribution Error

            Have you ever been in a situation where you think someone's intentions are malicious, but in fact they were accidental? Then maybe you too have been a part of a prominent phenomena in psychology called the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error is a tendency of an individual to think about concepts, ideas, or schemas incorrectly. The idea is that there are two basic causes to our behavior: internal and external causes. Internal causes can be explained by how our personality leads us to perform certain consistent behaviors: we do things because “that’s the way we’ve always done them.” On the other hand, external causes are typically focused on how our environment shapes our behavior and lead us to act the way we do. It is the interaction between these two causes that sum up our behaviour. The fundamental attribution error refers to the tendency of overestimating these internal causes when trying to understand why other individuals act the way they do.

            One recent incident in my own life where the fundamental attribution error was present was at Walmart when I was trying to buy a new futon. As I was making my way the the checkout counter with this enormous futon, I saw the man at the service counter eyeing me and the huge couch he had to scan. Obviously I felt uncomfortable, and what made it worse was the fact that he was very grumpy and short with me. By the time he rung me up I had an idea in my head about this guy’s personality outside of his job given that he acted like he completely detested the idea of me being there. The FAE refers to the fact that I attributed his grumpiness to his personality, even though I have never met this person in my life. I did not think about this situation as being anything other than an internal cause, so I did not think to myself “wow, maybe he just had a bad day.” Social psych has helped me analyze the situation at hand, and instead of generalizing his current actions, I stopped, stood back from the situation, and thought to myself that maybe his external situation made him grumpy, and that most people would be grumpy if they were in the same position regardless of their personality. What I found especially interesting about this concept is that we tend to do this more for negative behaviors rather than positive behaviours. We are more likely to point someone out for their wrongdoings more often than we would for pointing someone out for something positive that they have done. 

            Ars Technica recently had an interesting article on how being drunk increases your chances of making the fundamental attribution error. This article presents an experiment where 92 male participants were led to believe that they were taste testing “juice”, of which half of the participants had juice that contained alcohol, and the other half did not. In order to incorporate a placebo, the experimenters sprayed the rims of the glasses of the participants that were expecting alcoholic beverages just before serving. After handing out the “juices”, participants were given 50 action statements such as “He deleted the email” and participants would have to rate whether or not they found that action to be deliberate or accidental. What they found after the subjects had the time to ingest and absorb the alcohol was that nearly all participants, no matter the condition, judged the unambiguous part correctly. However, when events were ambiguous (that is you can not tell whether they were performed intentionally or unintentionally) they found that “drunk” people were more likely to perceive other individual’s actions as deliberate. The independent variable in this experiment is the fixed amount of alcohol, and the dependent variable is the participant responses in whether or not an action was deliberate or not. The design of this experiment allowed researchers to separate the physical affects of alcohol from the expectancy effects. Therefore (especially when you are drunk) you are more likely to believe that something negative has happened to you through a deliberate act, even though it may have been a complete accident. This intentionality bias is a major factor when correlating alcohol consumption with individual reaction and aggression levels. So the next time you get angry at someone for “intentionally” doing something to you, try to perceive the situation through the eyes of the aggressor, perhaps you will find that it is not as deliberate as you thought, or perhaps it is due to their momentary situation rather than their personality.

Reference: 

Yoshida, K. S., (2010). If I’m drunk, you’re a jerk. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. DOI: 10.1177/0146167210383044

http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/10/if-im-drunk-youre-a-jerk/

Posted by: Blake DeVries

Seinfeld and Nonverbal Communication

Everyone knows the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. But how often do we actually form impressions about other people just by looking solely at their facial expressions and appearance? (I would be lying if I said I didn’t). We all make inferences about people as soon as meeting them. This is why nonverbal communication skills are important in our understanding of social perception.

 In one of the most popular television sitcoms of the 90’s, Seinfeld, we meet Elaine’s new boyfriend, Aaron, in the episode entitled Raincoats. In this episode, Elaine and Aaron go to meet Jerry and his parents. Jerry warns his parents about Aaron and refers to him as “The Close Talker”. His mom asks Jerry why Aaron is referred to as this name, and Jerry explains that she’ll see as soon as the couple arrives. Whenever Elaine and Aaron arrive, immediately Aaron starts talking extremely close to Mrs. Seinfeld’s face, and by judging her body language she appears uncomfortable. It is clear that Aaron’s nickname as “The Close Talker” proves to be accurate. The Seinfeld’s deduce that Aaron has no sense of other people’s personal and intimate space. The characters clearly are intuitive and understand what nonverbal communication cues say about a person’s personality.

In an experiment titled “Can nonverbal communication skills be taught” the researchers wanted to develop a program for teaching NVC, nonverbal communication skills, to medical students, and to determine whether it would improve student’s awareness and performance of NVC. In the study, a total of 106 medical students were randomly assigned to 14 groups for a communication skills training session before an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). The OSCE teaches patient-doctor communication skills to the students. There were five faculty members who served as session facilitators. Following the training, students wrote their goals for the OSCE medical interview, which were analyzed after. The student’s performance of the NVC was evaluated based on the video recording of the OSCE. The results proved that students in the NVC group were more likely to write goals related to NVC, but there were no significant differences found in the NVC evaluations at the OSCE. Although the training increased the student’s awareness of the NVC, it did not change their performance. Additional training is needed to determine whether more training would actually improve their NVC performance. Although there were no differences in the NVC evaluations at the OSCE, Nonverbal communication skills are crucial to a physician’s ability to form relationships and communicate their emotions to patients. Not only are NVC skills important to physicians, but they are important to everyone in helping form impressions about people. 
Submitted by Gina DeFloria
Reference:

 Ishikawa, H., Hashimoto, H., Kinoshita, M., & Yano, E. (n.d.). Can nonverbal communication skills be taught? Med Teach Medical Teacher, 860-863. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/01421591003728211 

Giving Depth Behind the Phrase "Why the Face?"

Before I started taking American Sign Language (ASL) classes, I didn’t realize how integral nonverbal cues, facial expressions, and gestures are when there is a lack in verbal communication. I use them sometimes without even realizing it. When I’m at a party with friends and one of us is engaged in a conversation we don’t want to impede on, we try to make eye contact without alerting the others. Once eye contact is maintained, we throw a "thumps up" with an eyebrow raise to signal if they're OK or we point to the door to tell them we want to go. Sometimes at Kimball, I beg a friend to grab me a cookie because I’m too lazy to walk across the dining hall. If my friend forgets how many I asked for, they wave until they get my attention then signal with their fingers if I wanted one, two, three, etc. If someone mentions that they love the Red Sox, I shoot them a disgusted look that gets the point across without any words. If someone mentions getting Chipotle, I smile really big and clap my hands, the universal signal for YES! LET’S GET A BURRITO BOWL. The list goes on. 

ASL interpretation of Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA"

Now, as a potential Deaf Studies minor, I know that American Sign Language is nothing without all the facial emotions and common gestures that make up even the simplest of sentences. The difference between “Do you want to get coffee?” and “You want coffee.” lies solely in an eye raise. The amount of time spent doing the sign can differentiate between a noun and a verb. It is so interesting to think about how these unnoticeable things become so important in every day communication. It led me to think, Do Deaf people and hearing people share, or even recognize, common nonverbal cues? 

In an experimental study Moving Faces: Categorization of Dynamic Facial Expressions in American Sign Language by Deaf and Hearing Participants conducted by Grossman and Kegl, the two psychologists took Deaf signers and hearing non-signers and tested them on a series of communicative facial expressions used commonly in ASL grammar rules. The difference between this study and its predecessors is that instead of using static images of facial expressions, the experimenters used dynamic videos of facial expressions in motion, as if it was taken right out of a real world conversation. The groups were divided up by hearing subjects with little to no experience or knowledge of ASL and Deaf subjects who use ASL as their main way of communicating. They were asked to watch a sample of ASL sentences with the signs cut out, showing only the facial movements. They were then asked to label the expression out of six categories: neutral, angry, surprise, quizzical, y/n question, and wh-question. After they chose the category, they rated their confidence in their selection with an adjacent 5-point confidence scale on the response sheet. 

A Saturday Night Live skit satirizing NYC Mayor Bloomberg's ASL translator

The results were very surprising. Once the data was compiled and analyzed, “the most striking accuracy result is that the deaf group exhibited lower accuracy score than the hearing cohort” (Grossman and Kegl, 2006). While the hearing group did accurately guess more facial dynamics, they're confidence levels were significantly lower than the Deaf group’s confidence scores. One reason for low confidence scores is a lack of habituation with the communicative facial cues in English dialogue. Stated basically, we don't even know that facial and physical behavior plays a large role in our verbal communication. 

You might be wondering, What does this have to do with what we learned in Social Psychology? This whole study is looking at a small sliver of what makes up the large and complicated “cake” that is social perception, or how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people. I hope this experiment opens the eyes of verbal communicators and highlights the importance in nonverbal communication. What we hear is just a fraction of what the other person is trying to convey. Growing up, we learn to decode other’s nonverbal behaviors and in return we use our experiences to begin to encode and emit our nonverbal behavior. While we may not have a complex language of signs and gestures, hearing people use culturally relevant emblems to get our point across in the most concise ways possible. 

So next time your mom tells you to look at her when she's talking to you, do it. There is only so much we can understand from just listening. Remember, there's always more than meets the ear. 

Submitted by Bridgette Dagher

Reference

Grossman, R. B., & Kegl, J. (2007). Moving faces: Categorization of dynamic facial expressions in american sign language by deaf and hearing participants. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 31(1), 23-38. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10919-006-0022-2

Schema and Product Packaging

Recently it came to light that stores are using gender stereotypes to sell products to certain targeted groups of consumers. In light of this, people have been paying a lot of attention lately to how products are packaged. They are very sensitive to people using gender stereotypes to market certain products, even pressuring stores to reorganize their products. This has been found to be especially true of children’s toys and hygiene products such as razors. But have you ever paid close attention to the way food products are marketed to us?

              I love food, and as a consequence of this I love grocery shopping, I love finding delicious new things to play around with in the kitchen. I also love to eat as healthy as possible and therefore I love looking for new health foods and trends. However, sometimes certain packages catch my eye for the wrong reasons. Did you know that the same company makes Luna Bars and Clif Bars? It makes sense, they are both energy bars, both know for their great flavors and their relatively healthy ingredients. However, one is marketed for women and one is marketed for men. The Luna Bar website claims its bar “is where nutritious meets delicious” while the Clif website claims its bar will help you “eat like an athlete.” The Luna Bar’s packaging is mainly blue and brightly colored while the Clif Bar is mainly brown with other colors that would be more associated with a masculine idea. They are both energy bars, made by the same company with similar ingredients, so why are they packaged differently? 

GNC is a supplement company that sells a lot of Whey Protein. Whey Protein is a supplement often used by athletes and body-builders. They have a different type of protein, called Her Whey, which comes in a pink container (differing from the usual red) and flavors called chocolate éclair and vanilla cupcake (as opposed to just regular chocolate and vanilla). 

           Products such as these that are marketed differently for men than they are for women make me wonder if people really buy (and keep buying) the product because of its substance or because of its packaging. A study by Zhu, Brescoll, Newman, and Uhlmann looks at how the packaging of a product can influence who buys and enjoys it. In a series of studies, they changed the packaging of the a certain food to masculine, feminine or neutral packaging and asked their participants to rate which they preferred, how the food (which in the individual studies would have all been the same) tasted and how much they would pay for the food. They found that overall, their male participants were more likely to buy, enjoy and pay more for food that was subtly marketed toward them while women were more likely to buy, enjoy and pay more for the same food when it was subtly marketed for them. Their research shows that because people associate certain images or colors found on packaging with their own gender, they are more likely to choose and enjoy that food than the same food with packaging that they have not previously associated with themselves. 

This study shows us that when we’re in the grocery store and are drawn to pick up certain products from the shelves, it may not be our conscious thought that is making the decision, but the stereotypes and schemas working in our brains, making us think that a product is perfect for us. Some products may actually have benefits for one gender over another but these shows us that we need to look beyond what is presented to us on the shelves of the grocery store.

Carlon Campbell

Reference

Zhu, L., Brescoll, V., Newman, G., & Uhlmann, E. (2015). Macho Nachos: Implicit Effects of Gendered Food Packaging on Preferences for Healthy and Unhealthy Foods. Social Psychology, 46(4), 182-196. http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000226

#AskHerMore

Throughout elementary school, I wore thick glasses, bulky sneakers, and sweatpants. When halloween came around in the fifth grade, I wanted nothing more than to be a "movie-star". In preparing my costume, I was positive that I would have to ditch the glasses and the sneakers, and acquire some tighter, flashier, more revealing clothing. I was on the hunt for anything that would make me sexy and ready for the big-time hollywood screens - anything that fit my schema of a movie star. I definitely did not ever want to be an actress, as I have no on-stage or on-camera talents. The movie-star idea only appealed to me because I wanted to be praised and envied like the stereotypical actress dripping in jewels and makeup. 

I was reminded of my elementary aspirations when I stumbled upon the #AskHerMore hashtag on twitter. After digging into the campaign a little further, I realized the depth of this sexualized stereotype of female (and male) celebrities. At this year's Golden Globe Awards, co-host Amy Poehler expressed her sentiments on her twitter page for "Smart Girls". The tweet sparked a multitude of replies including the hashtag "#AskHerMore" with questions from twitter fans that have deeper interests than the designer dress and handsome date. Questions included topics from favorite books and inspirations, to how a character changed or influenced the actresses. 

The stereotype of a sexualized hollywood image has often been overlooked because of the glamour and formality of the red carpet. By challenging reporters and fans to ask more of the nominees and guests than their physical appearances, Amy Poehler aims to combat this stereotype and recognize actresses and artists for heir achievements leading up to the red carpet experience, and for just being themselves. 

A recent study connected my childhood views and aspirations to this sexualized female stereotype (Stone, Brown, & Jewell, 2015). In this study, 208 elementary school children in Kentucky were shown four images of female dolls, two of which were "sexualized" and two of which were "nonsexualized" according to their clothing and appearance. The children were individually asked a series of questions about the doll's traits including athleticism, intelligence, popularity, etc. The children then rated each doll on a scale from "not very much" (1) to "very much" (4). Results portrayed that sexualized girls were perceived as significantly more popular, less athletic, and less smart than the nonsexualized girls. 

After rating the dolls on these traits, the children gave explanations of why they rated the girls accordingly. Regarding popularity, explanations discussed the "fanciness" and "expensiveness" of the clothing on the sexualized girls that made them appear popular. In rating athleticism, some children referred to the type of clothing on the sexualized girls as being unsuitable for athletics, thus the girls appeared to be uninterested in sports. Lastly, regarding intelligence, some explanations attributed a lack of focus to the fancy or revealing clothing. The perception of a greater focus on appearance resulted in the sexualized dolls seeming significantly less smart than the non sexualized girls(Stone, Brown, & Jewell, 2015). 

In hindsight, my elementary school self watching the red carpet events was envying the most attractive and sought-after celebrities in the most extravagant dresses and with the cutest dates. Curiosity about Shakira's favorite book or role models probably never even crossed my mind as her gown sparkled and twirled into my soul. The sexualized stereotype of women was confirmed in my mind over and over as the stars smiled for the cameras and bragged about their garb. 

With a push from Amy Poehler and the Ask Her More movement, this stereotype can be diminished and we can shift the focus of the media to aspects other than mere sex appeal. 

Sophia Chaves

Reference

Stone, E. A., Brown, C. S., & Jewell, J. A. (2015). The sexualized girl: A within‐gender stereotype among elementary school children. Child Development, doi:10.1111/cdev.12405

House and the Effects of Priming

            Do you think that you have control over your thoughts? The truth of the matter is that our thoughts are more malleable and dynamic than one thinks. What we think and how we act are based upon the situations and events that have preceded our current situation. The way one person goes about thinking about a particular scenario can and most often will be drastically different from another. This is part of what makes us human and individualistic, however depending on one’s past experiences, the way in which they think and thus interpret present and future events can be jeopardized.

            For example, one of my latest Netflix obsessions is the medical drama House. House is set at the fictional Princeton Plainsboro teaching hospital, and focuses heavily on Dr. Gregory House and his diagnostic team. The show also features House’s best friend Wilson, the hospital's Head Oncologist as well as Dr. Cuddy who is the hospital’s Dean of Medicine as well as House’s moral compass.

            In one episode in particular House and Dr. Cuddy are flying back from Singapore after attending a conference on pandemics. As they are flying, Dr. Cuddy notices that one of the passengers on the plane begins to suffer from what she deduces is bacterial meningitis. Dr. Cuddy insists that the plane turn back, as she fears for a massive outbreak of the disease on the plane, and thus a mini pandemic of their own. House being the stubborn man he is denies the existence of this illness and just shrugs it off without a second thought, insisting the plane stay on course. The flight continues, but as Dr. Cuddy feared many of the individuals on the plane start exhibiting the same symptoms as patient zero, including her. House, being the only medical professional still in good health, tries to perform a risky lumbar puncture to test for meningitis on patient zero, but the test turns out negative.

            With one last option, House performs what seems like a ludicrous test. House makes up a symptom for the perceived “illness”, a tremor in the hands, and just as he suspected upon presentation, everyone on the plane immediately exhibited the tremor. This test confirmed House’s assumption that everyone on the plane was exhibiting a common symptom of a pandemic, mass hysteria. With the rest of the plane under control House could focus on diagnosing patient zero, which in end was only was a minor case of decompression sickness associated with scuba diving.

            Of course, despite House being a medical genius, what exactly drew him to this conclusion of mass hysteria as well Dr. Cuddy’s misdiagnosis of bacterial meningitis? As it turns out, psychological research on the effects of priming and schemas about illness can help shed some light on this question (Henderson, Orbell, & Hagger, 2007). In a dual experimental study, undergraduate students were asked to complete two modified Stroop tasks where they were either primed with a neutral condition (describe the last time you went shopping), or primed with situations depicting a particular illness (describe the last cold you had) or in the second experiment, read a narrative on cardiovascular illness. As the results suggested, when primed the respondents were much faster at detecting words related to the common cold or cardiovascular illness as opposed to neutral words in both Stroop tasks as the participants exhibited an attentional biases towards these words related to illness.

            These cognitive measurements go undetected in our everyday lives, but severely affect how we interpret the world around us. Viewed through a social psychological lens, by attending the pandemic conference, both Dr. Cuddy and Dr. House were primed on all the past research on pandemic illness and its presentation in society. For example, pandemics are known for spreading quickly and a disease like bacterial meningitis is incredibly contagious especially in a small confined space like a plane. Also, with pandemics come mass panic, which can lead to hysteria amongst a population. It is only natural after viewing the research done by Henderson et al., that Dr. Cuddy and Dr. House would interpret the situation the way they did as information on pandemic illness was most salient in their minds, causing both to have an attentional bias towards diseases that can spread quickly and cause mass panic in their diagnostic processes. 
             Unfortunately, due to priming Dr. Cuddy was misguided by patient zero's general and ambiguous symptoms altering her schema of illness in a negative way, while Dr. House was right in his diagnosis...again. Maybe had Dr. Cuddy attended a scuba diving class while in Singapore, this situation would have unfolded in a very different way? One in which half of the passengers do not jump out of their skin with fear. Do you still think you have complete control over your thoughts, or are you just currently succumbing to the effects of priming?

Reference:

Henderson, CJ., Hagger, MS., & Orbell, S. (2007). Does priming a specific illness schema result in an attentional information-processing bias for specific illnesses?. Health Psychology, 26, 165-173. doi:10.1037/0278-6133.26.2.165


Posted by: Michael Andre

Popularity vs. Appeal

Every artist has to start out small. Whether performing just for family or middle school talent shows, a singer gradually gains experience with dreams of making it big. It goes without saying that not everyone gets the chance to perform at sold-out arenas or have countless number one hits, however for the lucky few that get that opportunity, they must rise to the occasion and swoop their listens off their feet.

It seems nearly impossible to think of our music industry without showstoppers like Katy Perry. To pursue her dreams as an artist, Katy dropped obtained her GED and moved to Nashville in hopes of becoming a star. She recorded a commercially unsuccessful gospel album Katy Hudson, however as that didn’t pick up, she was dropped from the record label. After moving back to California, Katy was dropped and picked up from multiple record labels, proving just how hard it is to be successful in this incredibly competitive field.

Eventually, Capitol Records took a leap of faith with Katy and helped her find her niche in the industry. Producing “I Kissed a Girl” and “Hot N Cold,” Katy finally hit her big break, which would launch her into superstardom. Four albums selling 11 million copies and 81 million singles sold worldwide, Katy aggressively shocked the world with her pop anthems. Performing at the coveted Super Bowl Halftime Show and producing autobiographical documentary Katy Perry: Part of Me, Katy has made people of all age groups fall in love and support her unconditionally.

But what if Katy never made it big? What if “I Kissed a Girl” never peaked, never sold over four million copies in the United States alone? Katy may have continued to produce unpopular music and so very few people would have even known who she was. The idea alone is enough to question if her music wasn’t successful like it is now, would people even think it’s good?

We’ve fallen into a society that believes good music is the music that is the most popular. Despite how we truly feel about a song, we tend to be more likely to buy something, if it’s what everyone else is buying. This being said, it is also possible that while being coerced to buy the popular music, we also train ourselves to genuinely enjoy it.

In a recent study, researchers showed that people could become victims to the self-fulfilling prophecy in regard to the music they wanted to download (Salganik and Watts, 2008). The web-based experiment provided the participants the opportunity to listen to, rate, and then download a bunch of songs if they pleased. The experimenters had four groups: the first showing the songs and the real number of downloads, the second had the songs and the number of downloads inverted so that the highest amount of downloads was placed next to the least popular song, the third also showed inverted number such that the number of downloads was switched between the 47^th and 2^nd song, the 46^th with the 3^rd song and so on, and the fourth groups showed the songs and no number of downloads. The results showed that the songs that were displayed to have the highest number of downloads in the beginning actually produced the most amount of downloads by the participants. The self-fulfilling prophecy highlighted that the correlation of appeal to the music and its popularity seemed to diminish throughout the study.

Though Katy’s tremendous success has proven her music to entice millions of people, we are left wondering what if she never made it big? Different types of music appeal to different people, yet for the majority of people the reality is that we are directed to music that is popular and thus teach ourselves to enjoy it.

Jenny Baudhuin

 Reference

Salganik, M. J., & Watts, D. J. (2008). Leading the herd astray: An experimental study of self-fulfilling prophecies in an artificial cultural market. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71(4), 338-355. doi:10.1177/019027250807100404