31027623 Social Perception

8/6/2019 31027623 Social Perception

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Chapter 4Chapter 4Chapter 4Chapter 4

Social Perception:Social Perception:

How We Come toHow We Come toUnderstand Other PeopleUnderstand Other People


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Social PerceptionSocial Perception

Social perception is defined as the

study of how we form impressions of

and make inferences about other

people.


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Chapter OutlineChapter Outline

I. Nonverbal Behavior


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Nonverbal BehaviorNonverbal Behavior

Nonverbal communication is defined

as the way in which people

communicate, intentionally or

unintentionally, without words.


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Nonverbal behavior is used to

express emotion, convey attitudes,

communicate personality traits, and

to facilitate or modify verbal

communication.


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Facial Expressions

Charles Darwin believed that human emotional

expressions are universal -- that all humans

encode and decode expressions in the same

way


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Facial Expressions

Modern research suggests that Darwin was

right for the six major emotional expressions:

anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, and

sadness.


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Facial Expressions

Current research examines whether other

emotions have distinct and universal facial

expressions associated with them.


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Facial Expressions

Culture also influences emotional expression;

display rules that are unique to each culture

dictate when different nonverbal behaviors are

appropriate to display.


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Facial Expressions

Facial expressions may sometimes be hard to

interpret accurately because people may

display blends of multiple affects

simultaneously.


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Other Channels of Nonverbal

Communication

Eye contact and gaze are also powerful nonverbal cues.

The use of personal space is a nonverbal behavior with

wide cultural variation.

Emblems are nonverbal gestures that have well

understood definitions within a given culture.


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Multichannel Nonverbal

Communication

In everyday life, we usually receive information

from multiple channels simultaneously.


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Gender Differences in Nonverbal

Communication

Women are better than men at both decoding and

encoding nonverbal behavior if people are telling the

truth. Men, however, are better at detecting lies.

This finding can be explained by social-role theory,

which claims that sex differences in social behavior are

due to societys division of labor between the sexes.


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II. Implicit Personality Theories:

Filling in the Blanks


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Implicit Personality TheoriesImplicit Personality Theories

An implicit personality theory is a

type of schema people use to group

various kinds of personality traitstogether. Using these theories helps

us form well-developed impressions

of other people quickly.


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Implicit Personality TheoriesImplicit Personality Theories

The Role of Culture in Implicit

Personality Theories

Hoffman and colleagues (1986) found that

cultural implicit personality theories affect

how people form impressions of others.


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III. Causal Attribution: Answering

the Why Question


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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution

Although nonverbal behavior may be

relatively easy to decode, there is

still substantial ambiguity about whypeople act the way they do.


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Attribution theoryis a description of

the way in which people explain the

causes of their own and otherpeoples behavior.


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The Nature of the Attribution Process

Fritz Heider is considered the father of

attribution theory. He believed that people

are like amateur scientists, trying to

understand other peoples behavior bypiecing together information until they arrive

at a reasonable cause.


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The Nature of the Attribution Process

He proposed a simple dichotomy for peoples

explanations: internal attributions and

external attributions.


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The Covariation Model: Internal

Versus External Attributions

The covariation modelstates that in order to form an

attribution about what caused a persons behavior,

we systematically note the pattern between the

presence (or absence) of possible causal factors andfocus on the consensus information, distinctiveness

information, and consistency information we gather

from the situation.


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According to the covariation model, consensus

information is the information regarding how other

people besides the actor treat the target,

distinctiveness information is the information abouthow the actor treats other people besides the target,

and consistency information is the information about

how the actor treats the target across time and

different situations.


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People are most likely to make an internal attribution

(attribute the behavior to the actor) when consensus

and distinctiveness are low but consistency is high;they are most likely to make an external attribution

(attribute the behavior to the target and/or situation)

when consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency

are all high.


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The covariation model assumes that people

make causal attributions in a rational, logical

fashion.


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The Fundamental Attribution Error:

People as Personality Psychologists

The fundamental attribution erroris the

tendency to overestimate the extent to which

a persons behavior is due to internal,

dispositional factors and to underestimate therole of situational factors.


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One reason people make the fundamental

attribution error is that observers focus their

attention on actors, while the situational

causes of the actors behavior are less salientand may be unknown.


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Thus,perceptual salience, or the information

that is the focus of peoples attention, helps

explain why the fundamental attribution error

is prevalent.


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The Two-Step Process ofAttribution occurs when

people analyze another persons behavior -- they

typically make an internal attribution automatically;

they then may consciously choose to engage in theeffortful, second step in the process, whereby they

think about possible situational reasons for the

behavior; after engaging in the second step, they may

adjust their original internal attribution to take into

account situational factors.


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The spotlight effectoccurs when people

overestimate the extent to which their

behaviors and appearance are noticed by

others. This indicates that people are awareof others tendencies to commit the

fundamental attribution error.


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The Actor/Observer Difference

The actor/observerdifference is the tendency

to see other peoples behavior as

dispositionally caused, while focusing more

on the role of situational factors whenexplaining ones own behavior.


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One reason for the actor/observer difference

is perceptual salience: actors notice the

situations around them that influence them to

act, while observers notice the actors.


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The actor/observer difference also occurs

because actors have more information about

themselves than do observers.


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Self-Serving Attributions

Self-serving attributions are explanations for

ones successes that credit internal,

dispositional factors and explanations for

ones failures that blame external, situationalfactors.


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One reason people make self-serving attributions is

to maintain their self-esteem.

A second reason is self-presentational, to maintain

the perceptions others have of one.

A third reason is because people have informationabout their behavior in other situations, which may

lead to positive outcomes being expected and

negative outcomes being unexpected.


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Defensive attributions are explanations for behavior

or outcomes that avoid feelings of vulnerability andmortality. Unrealistic optimism is a form of defensive

attribution wherein people think that good things are

more likely to happen to them than to their peers and

that negative events are less likely to happen to them

than to their peers.


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One way we deal with tragic information about others

is to make it seem like it could never happen to us.We do it through the belief in a justworld, a form of

defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad

things happen to bad people, and that good things

happen to good people.


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IV. The Role of Culture in theAttribution Process


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The Role of CultureThe Role of Culture

Culture and the Fundamental

Attribution Error

Individualist cultures socialize people to prefer

dispositional attributions over situational ones. In

comparison, collectivist (often Eastern) cultures

emphasize group membership, interdependence, andconformity to group norms. Therefore, Westerners

are more likely than Easterners are to commit the

fundamental attribution error.


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Culture and the Correspondence

Bias

The correspondence bias is the inclination to

conclude that peoples behaviors match their

personalities. Although the correspondence bias is

prevalent across cultures, people from collectivistcultures are more likely than Westerners are to notice

situational information and to use it to form

situational attributions.


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Culture and Other Attribution Biases

Westerners are more prone to the self-serving bias

than Easterners are. Defensive attributions, like the

belief in a just world, are more prevalent in societies

where extremes in wealth and poverty exist. And, thespotlight effect is more common among people in

individualist cultures compared to those from

collectivist cultures.


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V. How Accurate Are Our

Attributions and Impressions?


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How Accurate Are Our Attributions andHow Accurate Are Our Attributions and

Impressions?Impressions?

Under many circumstances we are

not very accurate, especially

compared to how accurate we thinkwe are.


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Why Are Our Impressions of Others

Sometimes Wrong?

One reason is because of the mental

shortcuts, for example the fundamental

attribution error, we use in forming socialjudgments.


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How accurate Are Our Attributions andHow accurate Are Our Attributions and


Why Are Our Impressions of Others

Sometimes Wrong?

Another reason is because people may use

faulty implicit personality theories to guide

their inferences.


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Why Do Our Impressions Seem

Accurate?

One reason is that we often see people in

only a limited number of situations and never

have the opportunity to see that ourimpressions are wrong.


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Accurate?

A second reason is because people create

self-fulfilling prophecies about others and

treat them in ways that make their propheciescome true.


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Accurate?

A third reason we may not realize our

impressions are wrong is if a lot of people

agree on what a person is like -- even thoughthey may all be incorrect.


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Study QuestionsStudy Questions

What are the most often used anddiagnostic channels of

nonverbal communication? What

are other channels of nonverbal

communication? What functions

do nonverbal cues serve?


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What is the relationship betweenencoding and decoding? What

are the six major emotional

expressions that are universally

encoded and decoded?


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What are affect blends? What aredisplay rules? What are

examples of cross-cultural

differences in display rules?


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What are emblems? What areexamples of these?


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Who may be better at decodingnonverbal cues, extroverts or

introverts, men or women?


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How does the social-role theoryexplain gender differences in

encoding and decoding

nonverbal communication?


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What is an implicit personalitytheory? What are functions of

implicit personality theories?


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What is attribution theory? Whatdoes it try to describe and

explain? How do internal

attributions differ from external

ones?


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What is the premise of the covariation

model? What information do we

examine for covariation when weform attributions? When are people

most likely to make an internal

attribution and an external attributionaccording to the covariation model?


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What is the fundamental

attribution error? Why does it

occur? What is perceptual

salience? What is the two-step

process of attribution? What is

the spotlight effect?


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What is the actor/observer

difference? Why does it occur?


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When we form self-servingattributions to what do we

attribute our successes and our

failures?


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What are defensive attributions?What is unrealistic optimism?

What is the belief in a just world?

What functions do these

defensive attributions serve?


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What are cultural differences in

the rate of the fundamental

attribution error? What is the

correspondence bias? What

cultural differences exist

regarding other attributionbiases?


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What are some reasons why ourimpressions of others are

sometimes incorrect? Why dont

we know when our impressions

of others are wrong?

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31027623 Social Perception