Psychology Chapter on Deception Detection

Social Perception

• Social perception involves processing vast amounts of information during social interactions, such as on a coffee date.
• Key aspects of social perception include nonverbal communication, attribution, impression formation, and impression management.

Social Perception - Topics

• Nonverbal communication: Communication that is unspoken, relying on facial expressions, eye contact and body language.
• Attribution: Analyzing someone's actions to determine if it was their personality or the situation.
• Impression formation: The process of forming impressions of other people.
• Impression management: How we try to control how others see us.

What is Social Perception?

• Social perception is the processing of information about others to form judgments.
• This includes information observed during interactions (dates, etc.), to form conclusions or perceptions of people.

Nonverbal Communication

• Nonverbal communication is essential because we can't always ask someone how they feel.
• It relies on unspoken cues like facial expressions, eye contact, and body language.

Channels of Nonverbal Communication

• Facial expressions reveal current mood/feelings.
• Eye contact generally indicates positive feelings (except staring, which can be negative.)
• Body language, including gestures, posture, and movements, indicates emotional states and cultural meanings.
• Touching conveys affection, sexual interest, dominance, caring, and aggression.

Facial Expressions and Eye Contact

• Six basic emotions are often recognized.
• Culture influences the recognition of emotional expressions, and interpretation of emoticons.
• Humans learn much about others' feelings via eye contact.
• Different cultures have different interpretations of levels of eye contact.

Body Language

• Large numbers of body movements indicate high emotional arousal.
• Movements that involve the entire body can be informative, for example, a threatening posture.
• Gestures convey specific information about others' feelings.

Touching

• Reactions to touch during conversation depend on several factors. This includes who the toucher is, the kind of touch, and the context.
• Handshakes can reveal aspects about others.

Recognizing Deception in Nonverbal Cues

• People lie frequently.
• Determining if someone is lying is frequently difficult.
• Recognizing dishonesty often comes down to understanding both verbal and nonverbal communication.

Recognizing Deception II

• Detecting lies in both children and adults is difficult, with an average accuracy rate that is not significantly better than chance.
• This is harder for professions that rely on detecting deception, for example, police, or paralegals.

Improving Lie Detection

• Nonverbal deception cues include visual and vocal cues.
• Research shows there are few nonverbal behaviors good at indicating dishonesty.
• One good cue is how much the person moves.
• Vocal cues can be good indicators too (for example, voice pitch or pauses.)

Can People be Trained to be Effective Lie Detectors?

• Lie-detection training can improve the ability of parole officers to detect lies.

Gender Differences

• Cultural stereotypes can affect perceptions of gender differences in nonverbal communication, but these differences are not necessarily accurate.

Attribution

• Attribution is the process of explaining the causes of behavior.
• People analyze other's actions and decide if the reason for their actions is related to their personality or to the situation.
• Heider (1958) researched the idea that people tend to attribute behavior to either internal or external factors.

Attribution Theories

• People often attempt to explain behaviors (their own, and those of others.)
• Heider (1958) identified the idea of internal and external attributions.
• Often, a distinction between internal and external factors isn't possible.
• Often, the attributions people make relate to one or the other cause, not both.

Inferring Traits

• Jones and Davis' correspondent inference theory explains how we infer traits from observing behavior.
• Three factors include degree of choice, expectedness of behavior, and intended effects.

Common Sense Attributions

• Attributions are often rational.
• Harold Kelley's theory of covariation accounts for how we use information (such as consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness) to explain behavior.
• Consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness are key factors that we consider to explain the cause of a behavior.

Kelley's (1972) Covariation Theory

• Internal factors explain behaviors when consensus and distinctiveness are low but consistency is high.
• External factors explain behaviors when consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness are all high.
• Mixed attributions describe behaviors when consensus is low, but consistency and distinctiveness are high.

Kelly's Theory of Causal Attributions

• Internal causes, such as personal attributes, can explain behavior when consensus and distinctiveness are low and consistency is high.
• External causes, such as situational factors, can explain behavior when consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness are high.
• Internal and External factors (both) explain behavior when consensus is low, but consistency and distinctiveness are high.

Kelley's Covariation Theory Example

• Illustrates how consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency influence attributions.

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

• Lee Ross (1977) investigated the fundamental attribution error.
• Jones and Harris (1967) studied how participants attributed pro/anti Castro essay stances .
• We tend to attribute other's behavior to dispositional factors much more than our own behavior.

FAE in Everyday Life

• Examples provide scenarios in which the fundamental attribution error is observed.
• Participants make attributions in different situations. For example, in one situation, participants attributed an action to the situation, whereas in another situation, a participant attributed the same action to personal disposition.

Why Do We Make the Fundamental Attribution Error?

• The fundamental attribution error is perceptual salience that affects how people explain the behavior of others.
• In studies, observers tend to overestimate the importance of perceptual factors. For example, an observer might attribute their own speech-writing to the speaker's personality rather than the prompt.

The Role of Perceptual Salience

• Taylor and Fiske's (1975) study suggests observers tend to overemphasize information salient (visible, noticeable) to them, rather than taking context/situation into account.

The Role of Culture in the FAE

• Western culture emphasizes individuality, while Eastern culture emphasizes interdependence. These differing cultural views might affect how we interpret behavior or the FAE.
• Research shows that attributions for behaviors vary between cultures.

Is the FAE Really an Error?

• Critics say the FAE may not always be an "error" but instead the individual's correct perception, and other factors may influence attributions.
• Many now refer to it as a "correspondence bias" rather than an error.

How Fundamental is the FAE?

• The fundamental attribution error (FAE), even when aware of situational forces, continues to impact attributions.
• The FAE can be adaptive in some situations.

The Actor/Observer Difference

• The actor-observer effect is similar to FAE, focusing on how we attribute our own actions to external factors more than external factors for others.
• This effect is due to differences in how we view ourselves vs. others. We notice salient situation information more about ourselves, while viewing others as having stable or enduring personal traits.

Self-serving Attributions

• People tend to attribute their successes to internal factors (personality) and their failures to external factors (the situation)
• People use this to protect their self-esteem.

Impression Formation

• Impression formation involves creating impressions of others based on the traits we observe and assign.
• Asch's work noted that certain traits (central traits) are more important in forming overall impressions than others (peripheral traits).

Implicit Personality Theories

• Implicit personality theories are schemas that connect certain personality traits.
• If a person is perceived as intelligent, we may likely assume they are also kind, or friendly.
• The validity of these theories varies across cultures.

Cognitive Perspective on Impression Formation

• Social psychologists use cognitive processes to explain impression formation.
• Do we add or average traits to produce impressions?
• The presence of more favorable traits can improve ratings of strangers.

Motivation and Impression Formation

• Usually, we make assumptions about people, placing them in social groups that we are aware of and familiar with.
• To be accurate, we need to focus on individuals' traits, and recognize individual differences.
• Motivation plays a significant role when we're trying to form accurate impressions.

Impression Management

• Impression management relates to the tactics individuals use to control how others perceive them.
• Self-enhancement and other-enhancement are common tactics.
• The Slime effect describes forming negative impressions of people who behave in ways that enhance their image with respect to others.

Test your knowledge on deception detection, attribution theories, and impression formation from key psychological studies. This quiz covers various aspects, including vocal cues and the impact of culture on perceiving behaviors. Dive into theoretical concepts and empirical outcomes related to identifying deception in individuals.