SOCIAL PERCEPTION : ATTRIBUTION & IMPRESSION MANAGEMENTFriday, September 4, 2015 @ 4:46 AM
ACTION IDENTIFICATION AND ATTRIBUTION PROCESS
Action identification process basically denotes the occurrence of one event but it has different interpretations. This process, I must say, is a very common phenomenon in our daily lives whether it is with or without our awareness. For example, we observe an event of a girl putting her money into her piggy bank. The first thing that will probably pop into our mind is she puts the money because she does not want to lose it. This interpretation is basically a low level interpretation which attributes to the action itself. The second thing that will pops into our mind will probably be that she saves the money because she wants to further her education abroad or she wants to perform Umrah. This interpretation is a high level interpretation which attributes to the person’s long term goals, motives or intentions.
One momentous experience that I have had during my high school years is I used to be an extremely diligent student who studied so hard 24/7. Some of my friends who did not know me so well or were not so close to me that time, attributed me as a nerd boy who loved to study but as time went on, I believe, they had developed different interpretation or attribution towards me which I studied because I wanted to be the best. They knew I did fancy being among average kids who studied just to score their exams outstandingly but I studied because I really wanted to be outstanding and exceedingly brighter than others. They knew I had a crush on a senior who are now studying in United States so they attributed me to be a conscientious person only wanted to accomplish my goal of furthering my studies abroad too. Frankly said, I was in MRSM which was actually one of the top high schools in Malaysia and some of my friends actually took it for granted that they believed that they were already in a good school so they perceived that they would sooner or later get excellent results. But fortunately, I realized that being in a superior school surely did not guarantee me a good result without perseverance and enthusiasm to succeed so I managed to embrace the top-ranked title of my school as a challenge for me to endure all the pains of struggling with fortitude to go to the highest level I could ever achieve.
I have always attributed those people who are involved in Multi Level Marketing (MLM) as people who like to falsify or exaggerate small matters. They carry out the MLM just to make people believe in them and that is probably why they apply the theory of deception to convince people to join their business. This is however a low-level interpretation which attribute it to the action itself rather than the high-level interpretation that gives an emphasis on their long-term goals or real motives of the people who join this business which are to buy fancy houses, cars, eat scrumptious food everyday and lead a fancy life.
In conclusion, action identification and attribution is something that is really common in our life. It is somehow completely unavoidable because it is in the nature of humans that we tend to judge every single thing in this world even the smallest one.
In cultural context, the action identification and attribution process bears some obvious differences between collectivistic and individualistic culture. Collectivistic culture in countries such as Malaysia and Japan focuses on action identification process on group basis at which people attribute an action of a particular person to the group the person belong to. For example, there is a particular stereotype of Indians in Malaysia that they are always involved in more extreme crime cases rather than Malays and Chinese. So in Malaysia, people tend to attribute Indian criminals who have involved in extremely dangerous crimes to all Indians as a whole as people with high brutality when it is actually not necessarily right.
In individualistic countries such as United States, Canada and Australia, people tend to attribute an action to the person doing that action him/herself. That is why there’s a term like hipsters which means people who are different from others in terms of their clothing style or hairstyle or grooming style. In individualistic culture also, most people rarely attribute the action of a person to the group she/he belongs to like religious, racial or ethnic groups.
(Shazrul Hafiz)
“you fell; I was pushed”
Actor-observer error is when we have the tendency to attribute others’ behaviour mainly to dispositional (internal) cause while for our own behaviour mainly to situational (external) cause. This scenario always happens every day in our daily life. The most common thing that happened based on actor-observer error is when our friend fall on street, we tend to blame herself by saying, she was careless and etc. But when we fall, we tend to blame the street as it is slippery. Other than that, when one of my friend lost her purse or smartphone, I have high tendency to blame herself or the internal cause of her for being careless as the thing that she lost is something valuable. I will help her to find her missing purse or smartphone but at the same time, I will scold her because she careless. If I lost my purse or smartphone, I will blame other things, for the example I will blame other people that steal my belongings without blaming myself for not taking a good care of it. All of us have the actor-observer error in ourselves when we tend to blame others because of the internal causes that have inside of them rather than blaming the external causes.
(Nurul Afiqah)
ATTRIBUTION & DEPRESSION
I know everyone is familiar with the term “self-serving bias” so today, I’m going to talk about the opposite of self serving bias which is “self defeating”. Basically, self defeating happened when people relate positive result to other people (except themselves) while negative results are caused by them. Personally, I think that the major cause for people to behave in self defeating is low self esteem. A very low self esteem is very harmful for people as it causes your trust level in yourselves to deteriorate drastically. Once you are in self defeating condition, you would appreciate and value yourself less and this will result to more serious effect which are depression, anxiety, emotional distress and even physical harm. One example of self defeating could be seen in a movie title “A Brilliant Life” starring Song Hye Kyo and Kang Dong Won. In the movie, the mother (Song Hye Kyo) blames herself thinking she is the reason why her son suffered “Progeria”, a disease that makes a person to age 10 times faster than normal people physically ( including skin, sight, bones and organs). One night she said to her husband (Kang Dong Won) that their son is sick because she jogs too much when she was pregnant and also maybe because she was once prayed that she doesn’t want the baby to be born. The husband tried his best to convince her that she was doing great but she doesn’t want to believe in his words. I think that in some situation, having a very small percentage of self defeating is more favorable as it shows that you are being humble and doesn’t show off. However, in individualistic culture, it is better to prevent even a small percentage of self defeating because they afraid it may lead to a greater self defeating. Well, looks like western culture strongly believe that “prevention is better than cure” right.
( Hana Diyana)
IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
Last Tuesday’s lecture, we had two group presentations on impression management including myself and my partner, Afrina. Afrina talked about “Is accuracy always best in social perception?” in a relationship we must perceive our partner more than he/she really is to maintain the tie last longer. I can relate this subtopic with my situation. I have never been in partner/love relationship so I have no idea about how I would feel about my partner. However, I do have a best friend that I valued the most and try my best to keep her by my side. I have the positive illusion as Afrina’s mentioned towards my best friend. I perceive her more than she really is thus I label her as perfect. She is so perfect in everything. She is consistently performed in her study shows she is very intelligent, she always take a risk to do the difficult task- a risk taker, she is so sweet in her own ways treating others, she loves to get know about political issues which not everyone’s interested to, she is a money-wiser and she always take a good care about herself and her friends. I likes to give her compliments most of her good deeds because I think I supposed to but she always remember herself for being humble and not to feel over confident in her action. I believe that positive illusion helps to strengthen a relationship and keep the relationship long-lasting.
Second, self-enhancement was applied by me without my consciousness. On the day of Hari Raya, me and my members of family will dress-up nicely in baju kurung and baju melayu to visit our relatives. It was applied not only for our family but I bet all of muslims who celebrate Hari Raya. Since we were in the beautiful and bright clothes, everyone sees us attractive and we are comfortable and happy to have a conversation after a couple of months did not meet each other. Besides, having a good self-appearance will boost our self-esteem and increase our mood on that day. Increasing of mood allow me to increase my effort to collect duit raya hence the more duit raya I got, the happier I am. Obviously, it is begun with appearance because appearance affects the mood. On the other hand, wearing nice-looking shawl on the hari raya makes us appear as high skilled because we could match the colour of our baju kurung with the shawl and also we are able to wearing shawl which not every women or girl know how to wear it.
Other-enhancement tactics is always been used by everyone in order to make a group of people like us. For example, I used to praise Sabrina on the way she looks to the class today and she accept the accomplishment with big smile. Then, I asked how she wore make up on his face it looks suit on hers. After that she began to story that she always watch the video of makeover on the internet, she also talked about where did she usually bought her clothes and her accessories, and she even storied about her favourite brand of makeup which is Maybelline and she is loyal customer of Zalora’s boutique. She talked a lot showing her interest and comfortable talking with me and I keep my eyes on her to show my fully attention towards her symbolising how I express my interest nonverbally. I used the tactics occasionally because if it being overused everyone tend to judges me as the picky in choosing friends and also materialistic. This is not the right way to make and choose friend in our life because we used the person for our own benefit.
(Rawanis Rahim)
COGNITIVE LOAD
Have you ever feel burden and your mind are miserable when thinking of something? Have you experiences the time where because you are under pressure sometimes you make silly mistakes and give bad impressions to other? This is what we call cognitive load: when someone is trying to possess a positive impression under a number of stress factors. We always want to make a favorable impression to other but unconsciously in a time we failed to make it. We also try our best to make positive impression so that other people can accept us and we will confirm with the group that we are in. However, to what extent we can control our self to perform favorably if we face cognitive load in our mind. Having cognitive load can give both negative and positive effects. It is depends on what kind of person you are and what situation you are being in.
Firstly, talking about positive effect of cognitive load, it will help you to boost your performance and give favorable impression to others. I used to experience it by myself when I want to give my first speech in Speech Communication class. I am not a best speaker especially when it comes to English speaking and I don’t really have confident to give a speech at that time. However, proudly speaking I could say that I delivered the speech fluently without any blunders although I make some mistakes in my pronunciation. When thinking back about this situation, I knew that cognitive load did help me to perform well. Actually at that time, I was thinking about my father as my speech is about my idol. I choose to talk about my father as my idol in that introduction speech. One of the things that make me forgot everything about the audiences perceptions or their feedback toward me, I was in nostalgic at that time where I remembered the incidents where my father got into an accident. It was the tragic moment in my life as the accident happened in front of my secondary school just after he sent me back to the hostel. As my mind was focused and kept recall the incident, I forgot about my nervousness even the thought that I could not speaking well in English. Finally, my speech got attention by all audiences and my lectures also compliment me for that impressive speech. I was not expected that I could perform better that anyone else during that time. Thanks to cognitive load!
On the other hands, cognitive load also give a negative effect towards your performances. I could not deny the fact that cognitive load do help me to perform better but sometimes it also give us negative consequences depends on our situation. Personally, I would say that cognitive load will give a greater impact towards ourself when we are in the comfort zone or upper level. What I mean with upper level here is where we always perform well in certain things and suddenly our performances declined or worst just because of the thought that we have at that time. This kind of situation happened to me when I having a cognitive load when I attended a first IELTS Speaking Test. For me, I believe that I could perform better during the test based on my previous achievement where I got full mark for my mock interview in my college. I used that achievement as my indicator to build up my confidence. Even before I entered the test room, I tried my best to believe that I can do this well in this speaking test. However, because I kept thinking about my English is not good enough and I cannot enhance my idea and the result was I make too much blunders during the speaking test. It was very frustrated as I know I can perform better than that. Then, the next day was the reading, writing and listening test. I always perform well during my practise time but because I kept thinking about my speaking test, I ruined everything. Even during the listening test, I still think about my speaking test result. How bad the result that I will get? I lost hope to do better in my next test though I can do better if I able to control my mind at that time. Just because I cannot separate my frustration for speaking test on that day, I did very bad for another test and the final result is I could not pass the requirement of my sponsorship for IELTS result that cause me to repeat it again. This is not just about the impression that you make to other but for me it also included on how you perform in your daily life and you see you own impression.
Whatever cognitive load that we face, we must have an ability to separate that thought from interfere our performances. If the thought is negative, obviously we should get rid it from our mind so that we can make favorable impression about ourself. But, for sure it will give benefits to us if we have a positive cognitive load that help us to ignore the fact that make us feel down and we finally can perform better than before. Last but not least, the power of cognitive load depends on how you handle it.
"Many times judgement can be replaced with understanding. And by truly seeking to understand others you will yourself be far better understood" - Anonymous
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