Social Perception PDF

Social Perception PERCEIVING AND UNDERSTANDING OTHERS Social Perception - Topics Non-verbal Communication Attribution Impression Formation Impression Management What is Social Perception?  What is social perception?  Go on a coffee date  While on the date, yo...

Social Perception PERCEIVING AND UNDERSTANDING OTHERS Social Perception - Topics Non-verbal Communication Attribution Impression Formation Impression Management What is Social Perception?  What is social perception?  Go on a coffee date  While on the date, your brain is processing a great deal of information – such as?  This processing is known as social perception Nonverbal Communication  weoften can’t just ask someone how they are feeling – why not?  So we use non-verbal communication communication between individuals that relies on an unspoken language of facial expressions, eye contact, and body language Channels of Non-Verbal Communication Basic channels: Facial expressions reveal current moods/feelings Eye contact indicates positive feelings (except staring) Body language (gestures, posture, movements) reveals emotional states, cultural emblems Touching suggests affection, sexual interest, dominance, caring, aggression 1) Facial Expressions and 2) Eye Contact  Six basic emotions?  Do humans only show these emotions?  Are emotions an accurate guide?  Culture and recognition of emotional expressions?  Emoticons  Canada and the U.S.: :) and :( Japan and China: ^_^ and ;_;  We often learn much about others’ feelings from their eyes  High level of eye contact?  3) Body language  Large numbers of bodily movements = emotional arousal  Movements involving whole body can also be informative (e.g., threatening posture)  More specific information about others’ feelings provided by gestures Example of gesture  emblems 4) Touching  If another person touches you during a conversation, how would you react?  It depends on several factors  Who does the touching?  Nature of the contact  Context in which the touching takes place  Do handshakes reveal much about others? Recognizing Deception: The Role of Non-Verbal Cues  Why do people lie?  Lying is an all-too-common part of social life.  This raises two important questions:  (1) How good are we at recognizing deception by others?  (2) how can we do a better job at this task?  Answer to first Q – somewhat discouraging – we only do a little better than chance  Recognizing Deception II  Amy Leach – UOIT– 350 undergraduates detecting deception in both children and adults – accuracy only around ____________________  What about those whose professions depend on lie detection?  Why do we have such trouble?  So how do we do a better job?  Vrij – pay attention to both verbal AND nonverbal cues   Nonverbal cues to deception Improvin fall into 2 categories  visual cues and vocal cues g lie  Are eye contact and fidgeting good indicators of lie-telling? detection  Research shows there are very few nonverbal behaviours that are good indicators  One cue that is a good indicator – how much person moves  Various vocal cues good too – example?  http://www.apa.org/monitor/20 Can people be trained to be effective lie detectors?  Stephen Porter and Mike Woodworth of Dalhousie University and Angela Birt of UBC  yes, lie-detection training CAN be effective  Canadian parole officers’ ability to detect lies improved with training http://nationalpost.com/news/experts- share-eight-things-to-know-about-how -to-spot-a-liar-were-giving-an-edge-to- the-lie-catchers   Women are better at Gender ____________________ differences  Men are better at ______________________  Arewomen better at nonverbal communication because of stereotypes?  Attribution  What is Attribution?  How often do you analyze someone’s actions?  When was the last time you analyzed a hug that your partner/family member gave you? A snippy remark?  Heider (1958)  We either make internal (personal/dispositional) attributions or external (situational) attributions  Attribution Theories  Many different attribution theories  What is attribution theory?  Heider (1958)  “father” of attribution theory  Concluded that people tend to attribute someone’s behaviour to internal causes or external causes  Distinction between internal and external causes often blurs – why?  Oftenattribute behaviour to one OR other – not both  Inferring Traits  Jones and Davis (1965)  CORRESPONDENT INFERENCE THEORY  what is this?  Each of us tries to understand others by observing and analyzing behaviour  Make inferences based on three factors: 1) degree of choice 2) expectedness of behaviour 3) intended effects or consequences of someone’s behaviour  At first glance, this might seem simple…  Common Sense  Attributions Attributions are often rational  Harold Kelley  COVARIATION THEORY – we use information about consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness to explain behaviour consensus:extent others behave in same way toward the stimulus consistency: extent person always behaves this way toward the stimulus distinctiveness: extent person responds in the same way toward different stimuli Kelley’s (1972) Covariation Theory  People attribute the causes of others’ behavior to internal factors when consensus and distinctiveness are LOW, but consistency is HIGH  People attribute the causes of others’ behavior to external factors when consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness are all HIGH  People attribute the causes of others’ behavior to a combination of internal and external factors when consensus is LOW, but consistency and distinctiveness are HIGH Kelley’s Theory of Causal Attributions We attribute another’s behaviour to Internal causes: External causes: Consensus – low Consensus – high Consistency – high Consistency – high Distinctiveness – Distinctiveness – low high Internal and External causes: Consensus – low Consistency – high Distinctiveness – high Kelley’s Covariation Theory Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)  LeeRoss (1977)  what is the Fundamental Attribution Error? Jones and Harris (1967)  student participants – pro/anti Castro essays/speeches  Ifwe attribute others’ behaviour to dispositional factors, what do we attribute our own to? we will talk about this in a few slides Fundamental Attribution Error FAE in everyday life  Examples  1)Napolitan and Goethals (1979)  students greeted by grad student – either friendly or not – ½ participants told that she was told to be that way; other half not told  Beingtold that she was instructed to act that way had NO effect – rated as the way she acted anyway  2)Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz (1977)- “Alex Trebek types”– is he overly intelligent?  next slide FAE and ‘Alex Trebek types’ Why do we make the FAE? The role of perceptual salience  Why do we commit the FAE?  Situational causes of another’s behaviour are virtually invisible to us  What is perceptual salience?  People tend to overestimate the causal role of perceptually salient information  Taylor and Fiske (1975) study: The Role  Six participants watched of two confederates have a Perceptual conversation Salience  Researchersmanipulated perceptual salience by either  Making one speaker visible, one not  Making both speakers visible Taylor and Fiske (1975) Taylor and Fiske (1975) found:  The person participants could see best was the one judged to have the most active role in the conversation  If participants could see both, they rated both as equally influential on the conversation The Role of Culture in the FAE Western culture Eastern cultures emphasizes the emphasize individual and socializes interdependence and us to prefer socializes people to ______________attribution prefer _____________ s attributions The Role of Culture in the FAE Morris and Peng (1994):  Study of articles in Chinese and English-language newspapers  Two similar mass murders  Chinese graduate student in Iowa  Caucasian postal worker in Michigan  What were the results?  Is the FAE really an error?  Idea that we are prone to the FAE has been criticized – is it always an error?  Also–overstatement to say that all observers in all cases underestimate situational causes  What has happened as a result? Turn to Jones and Davis’ correspondent inferences theory - many people refer to the FAE as the correspondence bias now How fundamental is the FAE?  Experiments reveal that bias occurs even when we are aware of situational forces  FAE is often adaptive  why?  Traits often pick our situations as well  Attribution error is FUNDAMENTAL because it colours our explanation in basic and important ways  The Actor/Observer Difference  Actor-Observer Effect (Jones & Nisbett, 1971)  So, it is similar to the FAE, but our use of the FAE applies more to behaviour of others than to our own behaviour  Why do people show this effect?  Perceptual salience  Information availability  Self-serving attributions  Sometimes biased processing has a motivational basis  As a result, we use attributions that protect our self- esteem and our belief in a just world (Lerner, 1980)  We take credit for successes (internal attribution); blame others/situations for failures (external attribution) Self-serving attributions lead people to:  Believe their actions are rational and defensible  Believe that the actions of others are unreasonable and unjustified  Remember their own contributions to group work better than contributions of others   What is impression Impressio formation?  Obviously attributions n take mental work – do 1st Formation impressions?  Asch’s work on central and peripheral traits  People used to believe that we just ‘add’ traits together to form an impression – Asch didn’t believe this  Imagine hearing these descriptions:  intelligent—skillful—industrious— warm—determined—practical— Asch –  cautious intelligent—skillful—industrious— Central cold—determined—practical— cautious and Periphera  Asch - “warm” and “cold” are central traits l Traits  Changed “warm” and “cold” to “polite” and “blunt”  peripheral traits   We all form implicit personality theories Implicit  Can be viewed as a specific Personalit type of schema y Theories  So if your friend describes someone you are about to meet as “helpful” and “kind”, will you assume that they are also “sincere”?  Research has also shown that implicit personality theories are strongly shaped by culture   Social psychologists have found it useful to examine cognitive processes when it comes to Cognitive impression formation Perspective  How do we form impressions? on  Do we add pieces of information together or do we average them? Impression  Strangers possessing two highly Formation favourable traits rated better than strangers possessing two highly favourable traits and two moderately favourable traits  Motivation and Impression Formation  Usually, we form impressions in the simplest way possible: 1) by placing people into large social categories with which we are already familiar 2) Then base our impressions, at least in part, on what we know about these social groups  If we are motivated to be more accurate, though, we may focus on people we meet more as individuals possessing a unique collection of traits  So motivation is important   What is Impression Management?  Tactics (potential pitfalls) Self-enhancement Other-enhancement Impression  Example - Slime effect: Management A tendency to form negative impressions of others who play up to their superiors but who treat subordinates with disdain  We are constantly self- monitoring