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Role of Construals
Construal: Interpretation and inference about the stimuli or
situation we confront (page16).
• How do we interpret the world around us?
• What factors influence our interpretation?
• What biases do we have when interpreting the world
around us?
Our interpretation of the world around us is automatic and
unconscious. This makes it hard to control, hard to
change and difficult to understanding the underlying
process of thinking.
What we perceive in the world around us may not be
occurring. We only see a small slice of reality.
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Role of Construals
Schemas: Generalized knowledge about the physical and
social world and how to behave in particular situations and
with different kinds of people (page 19).
• How do you behave in church?
• What is associated with used cars?
• How do you order in McDonalds vs a “high class
restaurant”
Schemas capture the regularity of life and lead us to have
certain expectations we can rely on so that we don’t have
to invent the world anew all the time (page 19).
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Role of Construals
Your beliefs about the world around you affect how you
organize and interpret the world around you.
If you know what you are looking for in the image, you can
spot it and interpret it immediately. Beliefs and schemas
act in this way.
However, once you interpret the image, it is difficult to
arrive at alternative interpretations. This occurs
automatically and unconsciously.
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Role of Construals
Your beliefs about the world around you affect how you
organize and interpret the world around you.
If you know what you are looking for in a person, you can
spot it and interpret it immediately. Beliefs and schemas
act in this way.
However, once you interpret the person’s behavior, it is
difficult to arrive at alternative interpretations. This occurs
automatically and unconsciously.
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Role of Construals
Generally, beliefs about the world around you affect your
thinking unconsciously and automatically.
It is easier to notice these apparent differences are side by
side will we notice them. Very rarely will these differences
occur side by side and close together in time.
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Role of Construals
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Role of Construals: Schemas and Stereotypes
In the following demonstration people looked at this
picture and later asked to recall what went on in the
picture.
What do you see in this picture?
What do you remember about this picture?
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Role of Construals: Schemas and Stereotypes
Like schemas, your beliefs can make you forget things
that inconsistent with your beliefs and remember things
that are consistent with that belief—regardless of the
reality.
This experiment was done when stereotypes of black
people were quite negative (e.g. people had a stereotype
that black people are more likely to rob a person). With
this stereotype, people remembered the following that
were not true:
• The black man was more aggressive.
• The white person was more passive.
• The passengers were afraid.
• The razor was in the black man’s hand.
Schemas and stereotypes can have an affect on memory,
and has the potential to affect our behavior, attitudes, or
decisions, by not giving blacks the benefit of doubt or
opportunities. If you have a negative stereotype of
minorities, members of groups you consider “outcast” or
deviant, you are more likely to interpret behavior as being
criminal and notice more “criminal behavior” in minorities
and ignore “criminal behavior” in non-minorities .
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Role of Construals: Schemas and Stereotypes
White Skin Black Skin
Holding a
gun
Holding a
Camera
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Role of Construals: Schemas and Stereotypes
While schemas, stereotypes and prior beliefs help us
organize information and allows us to make reasonable
inferences, the same processes can make prejudicial
attitudes more likely, interpret reality in a way that is
consistent with our prior beliefs.
Prior beliefs are difficult to change once they are
established—even if the foundation of the original belief is
later discredited (this is called belief perseverance).
Again, these processes are automatic and unconscious
which makes it difficult to change and say that they are
influencing us.
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Automatic Versus Controlled Processes
The following are examples where our interpretation of the
world around us is automatic and we understand that
context is influencing us.
Image source (Nevid)
However, with some of the examples I just illustrated, it is
more difficult to see how it influences us. With regards to
social perception and social influence, there are a lot of
automatic processes that occur without our knowledge
and are not as obvious.
Automatic processes are faster and can operate in parallel
with conscious processes and allow us to function
“normally” in the real world.
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Automatic Versus Controlled Processes
The mind processes information in two different ways
when you encounter a social situation
(1) it is automatic and unconscious, often based on
emotional factors,
(2) the other is conscious and systematic and more
likely to be controlled by careful thought (page
21).
Often our emotional reactions to people occur before
conscious thought takes over. Thus your fearful reaction to
the person with the backpack might automatically kick in
without any special thought on your part. But when you
start thinking systematically, you might realize that he
might have just come in from the summer heat and that he
might be agitated because he is late for his plane (page
21).
Because of a lot of judgments and factors that influence
people automatically and without their awareness,
psychologist need indirect ways of taping into the
unconscious processes. This is why some of the
experiments are designed as they are.
Understanding automatic processes is important so that
we can understand the nature of the problem in front of us
(why people are aggressive, make bad decisions, have
prejudicial attitudes), make the changes in our lives and
control them (instead of letting them happen or have
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someone else control them). However, taking this
responsibility means accepting responsibility for your life.
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Evolution and Human Behavior: How we are the same
The evolutionary perspective of psychology asserts that
certain traits have developed, maintained or dropped
because of their adaptive value. This also suggests that
there are certain universal principles that occur across
cultures.
Cooperation tends to be something that facilitates survival
in humans. That trait was passed on. Those who
cooperated are more likely to survive and have larger
families. Those that did not cooperate had smaller
families and less likely to survive.
Although there are certain tendencies, it is considered an
error in thinking (the naturalistic fallacy) that the way
things ARE is the way things SHOULD be.
For example, if men are more physically aggressive, we
should just accept that it is okay for men to be more
aggressive.
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Evolution and Human Behavior: How we are the same
There will be a lot of discussion about how culture affects
thinking and behavior. The major culture difference
psychologists look at is independence versus
interdependent (individualistic versus collectivist cultures)
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Evolution and Human Behavior: How we are the same
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