"The Way People Think", Social Psychology
This chapter is about social cognition, the way people think about other people and how others can shape or modify our attitudes and behaviors.
Social psychology is the scientific study of the ways in which the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of an individual are influenced by the behavior or real, imaginary or inferred characteristics of other people. Therefore, several concepts are studied:
Primacy effect is the theory that the first information we receive from someone influences more than the later information in the impression that we form of that person.
Self-realized prophecy is the process in which the expectation that a person has about another provokes in the second person a behavior that confirms the expectation.
Stereotype, is the set of characteristics that are supposed to be shared by all members of a social category.
A stereotype "is a special type of scheme that can be based on almost any distinguishable characteristic, but which is more often applied to sex, race, occupation, physical appearance, place of residence and membership of a group or organization" Hilton and Von Hipple 1996).
That explains why attractiveness implies a stereotype that includes sociability and social ability.
In other words, the Attribution Theory deals with the question of how we make judgments about the causes of behavior (the way in which people explain their own behavior and that of other people, focuses on when and why people interpret behavior as a reflection of personal traits or social situations).
Although usually, impression formation is an important body of research supports the common sense belief that the first impression is relevant. For the critical thinker the question is why? Schemes When we see someone for the first time, we notice a series of superficial characteristics: clothes, gestures, manner of speaking, tone of voice, appearance, et cetera. Then, we rely on those signals to assign the person to a category.
Likewise, the schemes fulfill a series of important functions that lead us to "remember" (Gilbert, 1998). First, they allow us to make inferences about other people. We assume, for example, that a friendly person is likely to be kind, to accept a social invitation or to do us a small favor. Second, schemas play a crucial role in the way we interpret and remember information.
For example, imagine you are at a party and see an acquaintance, Ted, who is going through the room carrying several plates of food and a drink. As he approaches his chair, Ted spills the liquid on top of the food. Perhaps you attribute the accident to a personal characteristic of Ted: it is clumsy. However, it is likely that Ted makes a very different attribution of the event. It is probable that he attributed the accident to an external factor: he carried too many things.
His explanation for this behavior reflects the fundamental attribution error: the tendency to attribute the behavior of others to internal causes (Aronson, Wilson and Akert, 1999, Gilbert and Malone, 1995, Ross and Nisbett, 1991).
Without forgetting, interpersonal attraction, or attraction and sympathy are closely linked to factors such as proximity, the similarity of interests and attitudes inclined to rewarding behavior.
Undoubtedly, attractive men and women tend to also have other positive traits, such as occupational success, acceptance among others, better health and self-confidence; they are even slightly smarter (Jackson, Hunter and Hodge, 1995).
Consistent with this, "physical attractiveness has a powerful influence on the conclusions we reach about the character of a person.
Attractive people tend to give them more credit than their beauty. We assume that they are more intelligent, interesting, happy, kind, sensitive, moral and successful than people we do not perceive as attractive. They are also believed to be better spouses and have greater sexual sensitivity "(Dion, 1972: Feingold, 1992, Zuckerman, Miyake and Elkin, 1995).
In other measures, the Exchange is the concept that relationships are based on the exchange of rewards among peers. For example, a person who likes to take care of and pamper others will be more compatible with a couple who enjoys receiving such rewards. Attention.
Therefore, Intimacy is defined as the quality of genuine closeness and trust that is achieved in communication with another person. When you meet someone for the first time, you are likely to communicate about "safe" and superficial issues such as weather, sports or shared activities. When both are better known over time, the conversation progresses to more personal issues: personal experiences, memories, hopes, fears, goals and failures. As self-disclosure is only possible when one trusts the listener, you seek (and usually receive) a reciprocal revelation to keep the conversation balanced.
Thus, Attitude is a relatively stable organization of beliefs, feelings and tendencies of behavior directed towards something or someone, the object of the attitude; and Self-supervision is the tendency of an individual to look for signs in the situation about how to react.
Finally, everything falls on the Communication and responsibility and this is the way in which communications are handled within an organization that also has an impact on organizational efficiency and the attitudes of its members as they raised (Parker, Axtell and Turner, 2001).
In conclusion, it can be said that a good exchange of ideas or thoughts will determine how our attitude will be towards others, making a difference when socializing, making ourselves known, and how we perceive others while discovering how people think. Which is very significant since "each head is a world" and has the task of investigating more and more within the social psychology, as it is presented today to facilitate our learning in terms of communication skills.
If you want to know more about the topic
consult the following book PDF Social Psychology