Watch the following video all the way to the end (there's a really good bit at the end):
Possible bike thief caught in the act | What Would You Do? | WWYD(Links to an external site.)
When you have watched the video, answer the following questions:
1. Which concepts of interpretation (pp. 2-6 in this document) do you believe affected the way passersby perceived the people struggling with their bike locks?
2. Thinking of some individuals' reactions to potential bike theft, which influences on perception (pp. 16-12 in this document) to you, do think came into play? Explain your answers. You do not have to cover every single person who passed by - just one or two of the more memorable ones.
3. Which guidelines for improving perception/communication (pp. 13-18 in this document) do you think would be helpful here? They will not all apply.
Your response should be 500
2 Watch the following video all the way to the end (there's a really good bit at the end): Possible bike thief caught in the act | What Would You Do? | WWYD (Links to an external site.) When you have watched the video, answer the following questions: 1. Which concepts of interpretation (pp. 2-6 in this document) do you believe affected the way passersby perceived the people struggling with their bike locks? 2. Thinking of some individuals' reactions to potential bike theft, which influences on perception (pp. 16-12 in this document) to you, do think came into play? Explain your answers. You do not have to cover every single person who passed by - just one or two of the more memorable ones. 3. Which guidelines for improving perception/communication (pp. 13-18 in this document) do you think would be helpful here? They will not all apply. Your response should be 500 Interpretation Even after we have selectively perceived phenomena and used cognitive schemata to organize our perceptions, what they mean to us is not clear. There are no intrinsic meanings in phenomena. Instead, we assign meaning by interpreting what we have noticed and organized. Interpretation is the subjective process of explaining our perceptions in ways that make sense to us. To interpret the meaning of another’s actions, we construct explanations, or attributions, for them. Attributions An attributions an explanation of why something happened or why someone acts a certain way (Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967; Manusov & Spitzberg, 2008). Attributions have four dimensions. The first is locus, which attributes a person’s actions to internal factors (“He has no patience with people who are late”) or external factors (“ The traffic jam frustrated him”). The second dimension is stability, which explains actions as the result of stable factors that won’t change over time (“She’s a Type A personality”) or unstable factors that may or will be different at an-other time (“She acted that way because she has a headache right now”).Specificity is the third dimension, and it explains behavior in terms of whether the behavior has global implications that apply in most or all situations (“He’s a big spender”) or specific implications that apply only in certain situations or under certain conditions (“He spends a lot of money on clothes”). At first it may seem that stability and specificity are the same, but they are distinct dimensions. Stability concerns time (whether the reason is temporary or enduring), whereas specificity concerns the breadth of the explanation (all situations, events, and places, or particular or limited situations and places). Here are examples of how we might combine these two dimensions to explain why Angela yelled at Fred: · Stable and specific: She yelled at Fred (specific) because she is short-tempered (stable) · Stable and global: She yells at everyone (global) because she is short-tempered (stable). · Unstable and specific: She yelled at Fred (specific) because she was in a hurry that day (unstable). · Unstable and global: She yells at everyone (global) when she is in a hurry (unstable). The fourth dimension of attributions is responsibility. Do we hold a person responsible for a particular behavior? We’re more likely to hold people responsible for behavior that we think they can control. If we attribute Angela’s yelling to her lack of effort to control her temper, we’re more likely to judge her harshly than if we attribute her yelling to lack of sleep during exam week (unstable) or to a medication she’s taking (external) for a short time (unstable). How we account for others’ actions affects our perceptions of them and our relationships with them. We can feel more or less positive toward others depending on our interpretation of why they act as they do. Attributional Errors Researchers have identified two common errors people make in their attributions. The first is the self-serving bias. As the term implies, this is a bias toward ourselves and our interests. Research indicates that some people tend to construct attributions that serve our personal interests (Hamachek, 1992; Manusov & Spitzberg, 2008). For example, you might say that you did well on a test because you are a smart person (internal and stable) who is always responsible (global) and studies hard (personal control). We also attribute the victories of our athletic teams to internal, stable factors within the players’ control, and we attribute our teams’ losses to external, unstable factors, which the teams could not control (Wann & Schrader, 2000). “When I do badly on a test or paper, I usually say either the professor was unfair or I had too much to do that week and couldn’t study like I wanted to. But when my friends do badly on a test, I tend to think they’re not good in that subject or they aren’t disciplined or whatever.” The self-serving bias also works in a second way. We tend to avoid taking responsibility for negative actions and failures by attributing them to external, unstable, and specific factors that are beyond personal control (Schutz, 1999). To explain a failing grade on a test, you might say that you did poorly because the professor (external) put a lot of tricky questions on that test (unstable, specific factor), so all your studying didn’t help (outside of personal control). In other words, our misconduct results from outside forces that we can’t help, but all the good we do reflect our personal qualities and efforts. This self-serving bias can (cont’d on page 4)