Your perceptions will have either sustained or undermined the happiness of your relationship
Social cognition – the process of perception and judgement with which we make sense of our social worlds
Concern = way we think about our relationships
Our perceptions and interpretations of our partnership are of enormous emportance
What we think helps determine how we:
Feel and then how we acts
Shouldn’t be a problem if our judgements were correct
Usually variety of ways to interpret an event –can make mistakes even when we’re confident about the truth
First impressions
Judgements we make of other people in a brief meeting have an enormous staying power…initial perception continuing months after
Our first impressions are the only impressions we ever get
First impressions continue to be influential even when we do see more of a new acquaintance
Some may last because they are discerning and correct
Doesn’t take long to notice who’s nice and who’s not. If we are right we may never revise perception
We start judging people the first 25th of a second we meet them
To determine whether a strangers face looks angry, nice, etc.
After watching this person chat with someone of the opposite sex for 5 seconds we’ve already decided how extraverted, conscientious, intelligent he or she is
Our snap judgments = influenced by the fact that everyone we meet fits a category of people whom we already hold stereotyped first impressions
Gender role stereotypes leads us to expect different behaviour from men and women
We assume pretty people are likeable people
Stereotypes supply us with preconceptions about what people are like
The judgements that result are often incorrect
Hard to avoid though
Stereotypes influence us automatically (even when unaware)
If we do interact with someone, we continue jumping to conclusions as our interaction unfolds
Offering the same information in a different order can engender two different impressions
Primacy effect – our judgements of others are influenced by this.
A tendency for the first information we receive about others to carry special weight , along with our instant impressions and our stereotypes in shaping overall impressions of them
Our quick first judgement of others influence our interpretations of the later information we encounter
Once a judgement forms, it affects how we use the data that follow –often in subtle ways that are difficult to detect
People ordinarily display a confirmation bias: they seek information that will prove them right more than they look for examples that will prove them wrong
Ex. the experiment: knowledge of her social class contaminated their interpretations of her later actions
Ex. asking questions in a survey, you’d select questions that probe for evidence that your expectation is correct
Problem with confirmatory strategies is that they elicit one sided information about others that fit our preconceptions—result: we rarely confront unequivocal evidence that our first impressions are wrong
We may think we are right about others more often than we are
Most people are overconfident with their beliefs about others –making more mistakes than we realize
You’re not likely to be as well-informed as you think about:
How many past lovers your partner has had
If they have sexually transmitted disease
Because of bias –overconfident when a new relationship began
As relationship developed bias only got worse
First impressions because the first things we learn:
a. Direct our attention to certain types of new information
b. Influence our interpretations of those new facts
We are wrong more often than we realize
Of course we come to know our partners better with time and experience
Our first impression changes of course as we gain familiarity with each other
However: existing beliefs are influential at every stage of a relationship. Even flimsy first impressions typically change less easily than they logically should
It’s because the