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Making Mountains out of Molehills: An Informational Goals Analysis of Self- and Social Perception

University of Waterloo

Michael Ross

University of Waterloo

Social perceivers exhibit a diagnosticity bias, whereby they overestimate the extent to which behaviors and events convey the information that they most want to obtain. The authors propose that this bias reflects individuals' eageress to satisfy their prevailing informational goals. They suggest a typology of informational goals and offer an analysis of the antecedents and consequences of these goals. The informational goals framework is then used to analyze attribution biases that social psychologists have previously considered to be distinct phenomena. Finally, implications of the informational goals perspective for inter group relations are discussed.

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