The inference process

Social knowledge, It often implies going beyond the available information and requires forming impressions, making judgments or formulating inferences. "Inference":" Process in which you go beyond the available information, intending to reach a conclusions about data that are not completely contained in the data themselves ".

The inference and information collection process

For Fiske and Taylor, "Inference is the central theme of social cognition. It is a process and a product":

• As a process: It implies deciding what information meets around a topic or issue, collecting such information and combining it in some way.
• As a product: It becomes the result of a reasoning process.

Some authors defend that when there was any inference there would be a "Model or normative theory" that would make proceed in 3 phases:

• Collection of the information.
• Sampling of the information.
• Use and integration of the information.

Information collection

According to the regulatory model, the social perceptor should scrutinize and weigh all the relevant information before reaching a conclusion. However, the evidence shows that the decision -making process about what the relevant information is strongly influenced, by previous expectations (by the knowledge that has been activated).

This can be appropriate in some circumstances (labor interview).

However, knowledge can be activated by various causes (accessibility, applicability and salience), which do not necessarily be appropriate for the situation in which we find ourselves.

Information sampling

Once the person has decided what information is relevant, the data must be submitted to sampling (not everything that is known to reveal it).

Fiske and Taylor: When people are supplied to an adequate sample, we usually use it quite correctly. However, when it is ourselves who have selected the sample, we make mistakes:

• Get carried away by extreme examples (Rothbart research: In observation, Group B is established, due to the presence of some other serious crime, a stronger association between group and crime).
• Do not pay enough attention to its size.
• Use biased samples (Although we are notified of the biased character of the sample, we continue to use it: Research from Hamill, Wilson and Nisbett, in which a prison guard was interviewed).

Use and integration of information

We use rules and mechanisms to combine the information we have in order to carry out 2 fundamental types of operations:

Establishment of relationships between events: consists of make a covariation diagnosis. According to Fiske and Taylor, this diagnosis should take into account the relevant data. In addition, there is an influence of the previous beliefs of social perceptors: illusory correlation.

Estimation of probabilities

Research around how we carry out these probabilities calculations, have demonstrated the occurrence of several phenomena:

• Bias in the calculation due to the use of the representative heuristic: the representativeness heuristic is used, when a person establishes the probability of an event by virtue of the degree to which:

  It looks like its essential properties to the population to which it belongs.

  Reflects the prominent characteristics of the process through which it has been generated.

  The representative heuristic supplies a quick solution.

  On many occasions, probability and representativeness are correlated, however, the properties of an event are affected with many factors that have no impact on representativeness (deducting a high probability from a high representativeness, it can be wrong).

• Ignorance of previous probabilities (base rate).
• Failures in the calculation of joint probabilities: Sometimes, we need to calculate the joint probabilities (probability that 2 events occur together). To calculate it, the probabilities of occurrence of each fact are multiplied separately, which explains, that the joint probability is always less than the probability of the most probable fact. However, under certain circumstances, people predict greater probability of occurrence of joint facts than each fact separately. Conjunction fallacy.
• Difficulties in the management of diagnostic and non -diagnostic information: diagnostic information: that which keeps a relationship with the task to be carried out. It does not seem logical that information without diagnostic value influences inference. However, a disappointment or diluted effect has been found: if certain diagnostic information is added to non -diagnostic information elements, inferences become less extreme.

The corresponding inferences: Jones and Davis

One of the main objectives of inferences is to perform predictions (internal or personal powers serve to predict behavior). Jones and Davis, focus on the study of the "corresponding inferences": directly infer the subject's disposition or characteristic of the subject from the observed behavior. For a corresponding inference to occur, a previous condition must be given: the intention.

Assigning specific characteristics to the person, depends on a series of variables: the non -common effects of the action: any behavior produces different effects (eg abandon training). The effects are common when the two types of activities remain (abandoning or not abandoning training).

The Non -common effects They are the ones that do change: number of differentiating characteristics between 2 behaviors that can be chosen by the actor. The lower the number of effects not common to the two types of activities, the more probability of a corresponding inference. Expectations about the actor: When the actor is observed by making antinormative or uninable behaviors, the probability of a corresponding inference increases. Expectations can be:

1. Individuals: according to the previous knowledge of the person.
2. Categorical: they come from the knowledge about the category or social group to which it belongs. The distrust of expectations leads to seek explanations of a personal or internal nature.

Hedonic relevance: If the non -common effects are abundant and/or expectations are confirmed, the probability of corresponding inferences will be scarce or nil. However, there are exceptions for emotional reasons: there is "Hedonic relevance" When the actor's behavior has consequences that positively or negatively affect people who make the attribution (observers). Example: insult or aggressive action. Hedonic relevance, To strongly influence emotional aspects, it reduces the number of non -common effects perceived by the observer (it increases the corresponding inference probability).

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to The inference process, We recommend that you enter our category of social psychology and organizations.