Understanding Social Perception

• Social perception involves impression formation and drawing inferences about others

Social Perception

• It focuses on understanding the social world
• It includes forming impressions and drawing inferences about people

Impression Formation

• An important aspect of social perception
• A science fiction series, Black Mirror, depicts a world where social interactions are rated on a 5-point scale
• Every outcome depends on these average ratings
• Characters navigate this rating-obsessed world, highlighting a contemporary emphasis on social media "likes."
• People also use external characteristics, such as clothing and possessions, to quickly evaluate others
• It is about explaining why others behave as they do
• Watching shows like Teen Mom, Real Housewives, and The Bachelor illustrates the desire to understand people
• People are fascinated by explaining other people's behavior
• Thinking about others helps in understanding and predicting the social universe

Challenges in Social Perception

• The reasons behind people's behavior are often hidden
• People rely on observable behavior, facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice
• Subtle cues and quick impressions are used to form conclusions

Nonverbal Communication

• Nonverbal cues provide information without using words
• Facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body positions, touch, and eye gaze are channels of communication
• Nonverbal cues express emotions, attitudes, and personality
• Emojis help fill gaps created by the lack of nonverbal cues in digital communications
• Focus is given to individual channels of nonverbal communication, such as eye gaze or gestures
• Nonverbal cues happen simultaneously in everyday life

Facial Expressions of Emotion

• Facial expressions are a crucial aspect of nonverbal communication
• The human face effectively communicates emotions
• Primary emotions conveyed by the face are considered universal
• All humans express and interpret emotions similarly
• Darwin believed that nonverbal communication was species-specific.
• Facial expressions were vestiges of once-useful physiological reactions
• "Fear face" enhances perception, while "disgust face" decreases it
• Muscle movements for fear and disgust are opposite
• Six major emotional expressions are anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, and sadness

Cultural Influence on Emotions

• Individuals from Western cultures maintain rigid boundaries between emotions
• Asian respondents show overlap in their use of emotional categories
• Cross-cultural differences are shown when people freely sort faces into groupings
• It's easier to decode facial expressions from one's own ethnic groups
• Beyond the six basic emotions, studies include contempt, anxiety, shame, and determination
• The emotion of pride is expressed through facial expression, body posture, and gesture cues
• Nonverbal expressions of pride are accurately decoded across cultures
• Pride is associated with winning; shame, is expressed with slumped shoulders, is associated with losing

Decoding Difficulties

• People display affect blends, where one part of the face registers one emotion, and another part registers a different emotion.
• The same facial expression can have different implications based on context and cues
• Decoding facial displays varies depending on eye gaze
• Anger is quickest to decoded when a face stares right at you
• Fear is decoded easier averted gaze
• Cultural differences exist in how emotions are expressed and interpreted

Cultural Influence on Nonverbal Communication

• "Display rules" dictate the emotional expressions people should show
• Japanese norms encourage covering negative expressions with smiles
• American norms discourage emotional displays in men
• Eye contact and gaze vary across cultures

Personal Space

• How people use personal space varies by culture
• Americans prefer an open space bubble around them
• Other cultures find it normal to stand close, even touching

Gestures

• Gestures are a means of communication
• Emblems are culture-specific; they are not universal

Initial Impressions

• Initial impressions form quickly
• Impressions of others are formed based on minimal cues
• Sam Gosling's research indicates possessions as clues to personality
• Online self-portraits can indicate personality.
• People seeking to maintain existing relationships tend to be more accurate in their self-depictions online
• Different social media platforms can influence profile accuracy due to relationship goals
• Facebook can predict personality traits, extraversion
• Initial impressions of others form in less than 100 milliseconds,
• People with "baby faces" are perceived as having childlike traits
• Initial ratings of political candidates' faces correlated with election results

First Impressions

• Initial impressions influence a person's abilities or personalities
• "Thin-slicing" suggests we make meaningful social perception based on brief snippets of behavior
• Ratings from brief, silent video clips correlate with end-of-semester teaching evaluations
• Clinicians draw informative first impressions based on brief interactions
• The work of Ambady and colleagues is featured in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink
• First impressions remain and last
• Schemas help fill in gaps when people are unsure about the social world
• Observations of a person, combined with schemas, create a fuller understanding
• Initial impressions create a filter through which subsequent information is interpreted

Primacy Effect

• The first traits perceived influence how later information is viewed
• Asch's study highlights that the order of descriptors affects impressions
• Positive traits create a filter, while negative traits brings them in line with the initial expectations
• Schemas regarding which traits tend to appear together in clusters exist
• Powerful and dominant traits will be seen, whereas an incompetent person will be the opposite
• Belief perseverance involves maintaining initial conclusions, even with contradictory information
• Inconsistent thoughts are unpleasant, making first impressions hard to shake

Impression Management

• Controlling how people see you, both consciously and unconsciously
• People make impression management efforts to be seen in the best light

Taking Advantage

• Handshake quality is related to job recommendations in the workplace
• Body language changes how you think, feel, and act
• Trying to make a good impression online

Attribution Theory

• It explains why people behave in certain ways
• Addresses ambiguity through inferences about a person's behavior's meanings
• Focuses on understanding the causes of other people's behavior

Nature of The Attribution Process

• Fritz Heider is the father of attribution theory
• Heider calls called “naive,” or “commonsense,” psychology
• People try to understand others' behavior by piecing together information for an explanation
• Heider mentions a simple division: when deciding why people behave as they do, Internal vs External attribution
• Internal attribution suggests the behavior was something about them, their personality/attitude
• External attribution suggests their behavior was caused by situation itself not personality
• Impressions of the person will alter depend on the type of attribution made

Impacts

• Internal/external dichotomy matters, especially for intimate relationships
• Satisfied spouses make internal attributions on partner’s behalf (positive behavior)
• Spouses in troubled marriages will do the opposite

The Covariation Model

• The first step in social perception process is determining internal/external attribution
• Harold Kelly says that more than one piece of information is noticed when making this decision
• Examine multiple behaviors from different times to answer the question
• Data gathers are about how behavior chances, also focuses on the target of what the behavior is directed towards

How Covariations Lead to Different Attributions

• Key types of covariation information are the consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency
• Kelley identified consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency as 3 key types
• Consensus focus on Hannah, if people are the same perhaps there is something to blame
• Distinctiveness, the target is no one else to blame so then its to blame
• Consistency is it frequent outcome
• Internal attribution of what specific patterns of consensus and distinctiveness

Consistencies

• People like to have low consensus/distinctiveness+ high consistency to make an internal attribution
• People tend to resort to special kind of external circumstances
• High consistency happens for circumstances/reasons

Problems

• People tend to show confirmation bias, like stereotypes often and the Halo effect; they are biases people will hold
• Social perception is not fool proof, as it is used and interpreted differently
• Most peoples theory and behaviour stems and stems from their behavior

Attribution Theory

• People do as they tend to because they are not of how they have been raised/conditioned
• Tendency of one’s behaviour is their beliefs than as they are influenced by personal feelings