Chapter 2 - Person Perception PDF

26.10.2021 Kelley’s Covariation Theory • As an effort to explain another’s behavior, Harold Kelley’s covariation model refers to the fact that people try to see if a particular effect and a particular cause go together across situations. • For something to be the cause of behavior, it must be prese...

26.10.2021 Kelley’s Covariation Theory • As an effort to explain another’s behavior, Harold Kelley’s covariation model refers to the fact that people try to see if a particular effect and a particular cause go together across situations. • For something to be the cause of behavior, it must be present when the behavior occurs and absent when it does not. • According to Kelley, people use three types of information to validate their tentative (not certain) causal attributions: consistency, distinctivenes, and consensus. 81 81 • For example, suppose your friend Sema told you that she watched Cem Yılmaz last night and she said that he was the funniest comedian she saw for along time and you should not miss him. • Before going to see him, you may want to know if he is really funny or if there is something unusual about Sema or about the situation last night, such as the mood she was in, the people she was with, or the drinks. 82 82 41 26.10.2021 • According to Kelley we ask at least there questions in order to find out the cause of Sema’s behavior, namely laughing at Cem Yılmaz. 1. Is the behavior distinctive? That is, did Sema laughed at any comedian, or did she really laughed hard at this one? 2. Is there a consensus among those who saw Cem Yılmaz that night? Do they find him very funny too. 3. Is the behavior consistent? Did Sema laughed at him only the last night or does she find him funny in other situations as well. 83 83 • For an internal attribution, in that, to attribute Sema’s behavior to herself, there should be low distinctinctiveness, low consensus and high consistency: Sema laughs at all comedians, no one else laughs at this one, and she laughs in a lot of sitiuations. • Sema’s behavior can be attributed either to the person, namely, Sema herself, or to the stimulus object, that is the comedian, or to the context. 84 84 42 26.10.2021 • If we are to decide whether Sema’s laughing caused by the comedian, her behavior has to pass three tests: 1) high distinctivness, 2) high consensus and 3) hihg consistency. • Her reaction has to be distintive to Cem Yılmaz and not to others; other people who saw him have to find him comic too; and she has to react similarly to him in other situations as well. 85 85 Why Mary laughed at the comedian? Condi- Distinc- Consen- Consis- Most Com Tion tiveness sus tency mon attrib. 1. High High High Stim. obj. %61 2. Low Low High Person %86 3. High Low Low Context %72 McArthur (1972) 86 86 43 26.10.2021 • People generally simplify the attribution process, in that, they assess covariation along just one factor instead of several. • Sometimes there are several plausible causal explanations for behavior and we need guidelines to see which attribution is correct. • Kelley proposed a second major principle used for making causal attributions, called the discounting principle. 87 87 • According to the discounpting principle, people are less likely to attribute an effect to any particular cause if more than one potential cause is likely. • If, for example, a real estate agent is nice to your father and gives him a ride home your father may not want to arrive at a conclusion that the agent is intrinsically friendly. • He may, instead, suspect that the cause of his friendliness is his wanting to do business with him. 88 88 44 26.10.2021 Biases in The Attribution Process • So far, the attribution process is described as fairly rational and logical one. • We look at the person’s behavior and reasonably infer the causes of it from the systematic knowledge we have about that person and the circumstances in which the behavior occured. • But research suggests that the attribution process is not always rational or logical and there are several biases in the way we make causal attributions. 89 89 • Fundamental attribution error • As these two theories suggest, in general, we tend to attribute others’ behaviors to their general dispositions, in other words, to their personality traits or attitudes rather than to the sitution they are in. • This is to say that we usully make internal attributions as opposed to external ones concerning another person’s behavior. • This tendency is called the fundamental attriution error. 90 90 45 26.10.2021 • When we ask a municipal bus driver whether the bus passes from a certain place or street and if he seem unpersonal and indifferent we assume that he is a snob and unfriendly person ignoring the fact that his whole day passed by answering such questions. • Jones and Harris (1967) did two experiments that looked at the attributions about the attitudes of people who had written essays on a controversial topic. In this case, an assey about Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba at that time. Even when they said that the writers had been assigned to the essay position (pro or anti), the subjects overestimated the role of internal dispositions and underestimated the strength 91 of the external situation. 91 Attitude Atributed to Writer Condition Pro-Castro Anti-Castro Experiment I Choise 59.6* 17.4 No Choise 44.1 22.9 Experiment II Choise 55.7 22.9 No Choise 41.3 23.7 *A high score indicates a pro-castro position attributed to the writer. Source: Harris and Jones (1967, pp. 6, 10. 92 92 46 26.10.2021 • Research indicates that attributions of dispositional qualities to others on the basis of their behavior may be made spontaneously and without even awareness, perhaps even automatically when we observe or hear about these others’ behavior. • Using information about the situation to qualify dispositional inferences seems to be part of a second and more thoughtful stage that involves correcting the initial inference. • But, often we do not get to this second stage of correction unless the contextual informatinon is too compelling or salient. 93 93 • When people’s minds are busy with other things, they also fail to reach the correction phase. • When they are busy, they focus on the most salient aspects of the situation and pay less attention to the nonsalient contextual factors. • As a result, people are especially likely to make dispositional attributions for others’ behavior. When we are not bussy, correction is more likely. • But most of us cognitively busy, most of the time. 94 94 47 26.10.2021 • In some circumstances we are more likely to make situational atrributions: 1. For people we know very well. 2. For people we expect to have contact in the future. 3. When the situational information is especially salient and 4. When we do not know the person’s motive for his or her behavior. People in Western cultures make more dispositional attributions than East Asian cultures like Chinese, Japanese and Indian. 95 95 The Actor-Observer Effect (Bias). • An important characteristic of fundamental attribution error is that it applies when we explain the behaviors of other people but the reverse is true when we explain our own behavior. • That is, we are more likely, as an actor, to attribute an external or situanal cause to our own behavior. • This phenomenan is called actor-observer effect. 96 96 48 26.10.2021 • Nisbett, Caputo, legant, and Mareck (1972) asked male university students to write a paragraph on what they liked most about the women they dated and why they had chosen their major. Then asked to answer the same questions as if they were their own best friends. • An answer like «I need someone to relax with» would be an internal attribution, while an answer like «She is smart and fun.» or «Chemistry is a high paying field» would be an external one. • The results showed that the participants gave more situational reasons for their own behavior and more dispositional reasons for a friend’s behavior. 97 97 • Why do actors and observers give different explanations for the same events? • One reason is that the actors and observers have access to different information and may arrive at different conclusions. • Actors know more historical information about their own behavior in different situations than the observers. • They know that their behavior has varied from situaton to situation, whereas the observer has just one situation to go on. 98 98 49 26.10.2021 Actors pay more attention to events that others can not observe, while observers draw on events that can be directly observed and that consequently seem to be the result of personal intention. Another reason is that the difference may be due to different perspectives. The visual field of the observer is filled by the actor, and the special salience of the actor may lead the observer over attribute the actor’s behavior to dispositions. The actor, on the other hand, is looking not at his or her own behavior, but at the situation and whatever in it. 99 99 • The actor’s own behavior is not as salient as it is to an observer ; instead the situation is more salient and therfore more causally potent. • In certain circumstances the actor-observer effect is weakend. • For example, when we feel empathy for a person whose behavior we are observing, we are inclined to explain the behavior as the other person do. • And we are more likely to attribute positive outcomes to dispositional factors and negative outcomes to situational factors, regardless of whether they are committed by actors or observers. 100 100 50 26.10.2021 False Consensus • People tend to assume that everyone else responds the way as they do. This tendency to overestimate how common our own behavior is, called false consensus. We are inclined to think that our own behavior is typical. • In one study (Ross et. all., 1977) university students were asked if they would walk around their campus for 30 minutes wearing a large sandwich board with the message «Eat at joes.» Some aggreed and some refused. • Both groups estimated that two thirds of other students on the campus would make the same choise as they did. Both groups could not be right, could they? 101 101 • How can we explain this false consensus effect? • One reason behind it might be that people usually tend to be together with others similar to them and who behave as they do. • As a result, estimates of the beliefs and behaviors of others may simply reflect the biased sample of people one has available for social inference. • A second possibility is that people’s own opinions are especially salient so our beliefs about consensus are increased because our own position is the only one we are thinking of. 102 102 51 26.10.2021 • A third possibility of explanation could be that in trying to predict how we might behave or think in a certain situation we resolve ambigious details in our mind that favors a preferred course of action. • For example, the person who thinks that others would laugh at him if he wears the sandwich board will refuse to do it, and think others would do the same. 103 103 • A forth explanation might be that people need to see their own beliefs and behaviors as good, appropriate, and typical, and so they attribute them to others to maintain their own self-esteem. • Concerning certain personal attributes, people show a false uniqueness effect. • For example, when people are asked to list their best abilities and estimate how others stand on these abilities, they usully underestimate their peers’ standing. Because people need to feel distinctive. 104 104 52 26.10.2021 The Self-Serving Attributional Bias • If we are successful in someting, we have a tendency to attribute it to some characteristic of us such as intelligence, ability, good looks, personality and so on. • If, on the other hand, we fail in something we are inclined to attribute it to something external to us such as bad luck, powerful others, conditions etc. • The tendency to take credit for success and deny responsibility for failure is called self-serving attributional bias. 105 105 • In general, there is more evidence that people take credit for success then they deny responsibility for failure. • Sometimes we are willing to accept responsibility for failure, especially if we can attribute it to a factor over which we have control, such as effort. By doing so, we can preserve the belief that we will not fail in the future. 106 106 53 26.10.2021 • The self-serving bias may be quite adaptive, in that, attributing success to one’s enduring charcteristics, and failure to external factors may make people more likely to attempt related tasks in the future. • For example, in one study, unemployed workers who attributed their firings to external factors made greater efforts to become reemployed and were actually more likely to find jobs than those who attributed their firings to their personal characteristics (Schaufeli, 1988). 107 107 Biases: Where Do They Come From? Why are people biased in the attribution process? These biases come from a combination of cognitive and motivational needs. Some biases represent cognitive shortcuts or heuristics, ways of cutting through masses of information quickly to reach a good explanation. To attend to salient stimuli and attribute other’s behavior to internal dispositions may simply make the process of causal attribution more rapid and efficient. Other attributional biases come from people’s efforts to satisfy their own needs and motives. The self-serving and false consensus biases enhance self-esteem and the perception that we control our own lives. 108 108 54 26.10.2021 ACCURACY OF JUDGEMENTS (PERCEPTİONS) • What can we say about the accurasy of people’s perceptions of others? • On the one hand, people must be reasonably accurate in their judgements of others inorder for society to function as smoothly as it does. • On the other hand, having discussed various evaluative and cognitive biases, to which impression formation is subject, the research suggests that in many circumstances our impressions may be quite inaccurate. • We perceive external, visible attributes fairly accurately but inferring internal states, such as traits, feelings, emotions or personalities is more difficult.109 109 Judging Personality • Research shows that accuracy of perceptions of personality traits, such as dominance or sociability compromised by several factors: • 1. Our perceptions of others are sometimes determined more by our idiosycratic preferences for particular personality dimensions than by attributes of the person being evaluated. For some people, knowing how intelligent a person is important, whereas for another person, being trustworthy or not, might be more important. 110 110 55 26.10.2021 2. It is difficult to measure personality traits and therefore, it is difficult to establish the proper criteria for accuracy. • 3. Another proplem is related to how consistent people’s personality traits are, especially for predicting their behavior. • Often personality traits predict behavior only in a limited set of circumstances. • If you cheat in poker and are very honest with your friends and lecturers, are you an honest or dishonest person? • 111 111 • Because of the difficulty in establishing criteria for accuracy, research has focused on when people aggree about traits of others. • For example people show a lot of aggrement in their ratings of whether a person is extroverted or intelligent but less aggreement on whether the person is honest or conscientous. • This is so because the behavioral manifestations of some traits are especialy observable, but the behavioral indications of some traits are not. 112 112 56 26.10.2021 • Accuracy has also been measured by whether a rater’s perceptions of another person match that person’s own self-perception. • For example, if you were asked to rate your roommate Fatma’s friendliness, your rating would be compared with Fatma’s own self-rating to show how much you agree. • In general, aggreement between peer ratings and target ratings depends on how good two people are acquainted. 113 113 • Accuracy in the perception of the attributes of another person can be improved if we have information about the situation in which the trait occurs. • For example, if people learn that an individual has a particular goal in a situation, they are more likely to make a trait (internal) attribution from observation of behavior. 114 114 57 26.10.2021 • People use more idiosyncratic trait definitions when they are making judgements about ambigious traits than when they are making judgements about traits that have lots of observable referents. • Forcing people to use the same trait definition for ambigious traits increases their aggreement. 115 115 • Even strangers are able to rate others in a manner consistent with those others’ self perceptions after a relatively brief exposure to their behaviors. • But stranger-self aggreements are likely to be seen primarily for behaviors that have many observable referents such as extroversion, intelligence and warmth. • Sharing a cultural background usually leads to more accurate inferences than if the perceiver and the perceived come from different cultures. 116 116 58 26.10.2021 • By inducing empathy in perceivers accuracy of person perception can be improved because when people feel empathy for others, they seem to get inside their heads, see the world as the they see it, and infer the contend of their thoughts and feelings more accurately. • The most consensus about a target’s attributes is found when perceivers share information about targets who behave consistently accross situations or when perceivers are judging behavior in the same situation. • The lowest consensus is seen when perceivers do not communicate with each other and have different kinds of information about targets who behave differently in different situations. 117 117 • People are more likely to agree on another person’s characteristics if that person’s behavior is not overly variable. • The same is true when peoples’ outcomes are dependent on their inferences. • However, and unfortunately, when we attempt to predict future behavior we do rather badly. • In general, people are overconfident about predicting the behaviors of both other people and themselves. 118 118 59 26.10.2021 • Inaccuracy of the predictions of future behavior appear to stem from two factors. • First, when people express high confidence, it is rarely appropriate or warranted. As confidence increases, the gap between accuracy and confidence widens. • For example, in one study California college students were asked to indicate how likely it was that their roommate will take his or her first job in California. Many of them expressed high confidence that this will happen. Many of them were wrong. 119 119 • They were wrong because finding and accepting a first job depends on many factors in addition to the geographic locale in which one wants to live. • Second, the accuracy of predictions concerning future behavior was low because predictions that are statistically unlikely are rarely accurate. • For example, when asked how likely it was that most of their close university friends would be from outside their dorm, those who said «highly likely» were usually wrong. Because people usually form friendships on the basis of proximity.. 120 120 60 26.10.2021 • Research suggest that people are not particularly accurate in perceiving other people, but it seems they are accurate enough. • Evidence show that people achive pragmatic accuracy, that is, accuracy that enables them to achieve relationship goals. • For example, romantic partners are quite accurate about each other on personal characteristics that are relavent to the relationship but may be less so on attributes that are less relevant to the relationship. 121 121 Recognition of Emotions • How accurately do we perceive the emotions of other people? Whether they are happy or afraid, horrified or disgusted? • In a typical study concerning the accuracy of perceptions of emotions, a person is presented with a set of photographs of people portraying different emotions and asked to judge what those emotions are. • More recent studies used videotaped clips of emotional reactions. • The evidence shows that there is almost a universal recognition of several facial expressios of emotion in 122 both literate and preliterate cultures. 122 61 26.10.2021 • In 1871 Charles Darwin proposed, on the basis of his evolutionary theory, that facial expressions convey the same emotional states in all cultures. • He argued that universal expressions have evolved because they have great survival value: They allow people to communicate emotions and so control the behavior of others. • Virtually all species of Old World monkeys and apes have been found to use facial gestures to signal dominance or submission. 123 123 • Differing eyebrow positions are crucial: Usually brows lowered on dominant or threathening individuals and raised on submissive or receptive animals. Craig and Patrick (1985) induced pain by immersing participants’ hands in icy water at freezing temprature. They found consistent responses across cultures such as raising cheeks and tightening the eyelids, raising the upper eyelids, parting the lips, and closing the eyes or blingking. 124 124 62 26.10.2021 • The evolutionary explanation is that there may be a link between the facial expressions used by subhuman primates to communicate with and control other species’ members and used by humans for the same purpose. • If this is true, presumably the same link between emotion and facial expression would exist among humans acroos all (or most) cultures. 125 125 • But not all emotions can be discriminated well. • People typically disdinguish the major groups of emotions using facial cues. • According to Woodworth (938) emotions can be arranged on a continium; the relationship between any two emotions is distinguished by the distance between them along this continium. 126 126 63 26.10.2021 • Woodwort’s continium of emotions: 1. Happiness, Joy 2. Surprize, amazement 3. Fear 4. Sadness 5. Anger 6. Dusgust, contempt 7. Interest, attentiveness We seem to be quite good at distinguishing emotions taht are 3,4 or 5 points apart. But it is almost impossible to discriminate emotions in the same category or only one group away. 127 127 • But it is very difficult to discriminate emotions in the same category or one category away such as happiness and surprize. • Two main dimensions of emotional expression are pleasantness and arousal and people are reasonable judges of emotional states that these dimensions form. For example, positive emotions such as exitement and happiness are easily distinguished from negative ones such as fear, anger and disgust. 1 2 8 128 64 26.10.2021 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION • Much of our communication is verbal, but we communicate nonverbally as well. • We use nonverbal behavior to communicate dominance, sympathy, or liking. • Often we are completely unaware of what we are communicating to others and, in turn, learning about them through these nonverbal cues. • But, in reality, much communication occurs nonverbally and the effects of nonverbal communication on impressions of others can be extreemely potent. 129 129 • Although there seems to be an almost a universal recognition of certain emotions, there are also important differences among cultures. Not every emotion is communicated the same way in every culture. • In addition, research shows people are generally more accurate at judging emotions when those emotions are expressed by members of their own culture then when they are expressed by members of a different culture. 130 130 65 26.10.2021 • In general, people communicate information about themselves through three main channels: 1. Verbal communication: the verbal content of what a person says. 2. Visible nonverbal channel which includes such features as facial expression gesture, posture and appearence. 3. Paralinguistic nonverbal channel, that is, the remainder of speech signal when the content has been removed, such as the pitch, amplitude, rate, voice quality an contour of speech. 131 131 The Visible Nonverbal Channel • Some of the main nonverbal cues of the visible channel are expressed through distance, gesture, and eye contact. This is called body language. • Distance • As the friendship and intimacy between two persons increases they stand nearer to each other. • Friends stand closer than strangers, those who are sexually attracted to each other stand closer than those who are not attracted to each other sexually. • Standing close is usually a sign of friendship and interest. • It may be one of the most important and easiest ways of telling someone you have just met that you like him. 132 132 66 26.10.2021 • In general, the more friendly and intimate a person feels toward another, the closer he or she will stand. • Friends will stand closer than strangers, and people who want to seem friendly choose smaller distances, and people who are sexually attracted to each other stand closer. • Standing close is usually a sign of friendship or interest. If yo don’t want it, you go away. 133 133 • Gestures • Gestures and posture convey information to others. • Many bodily movements carry specific information or directions. For example, the gestures for «stop» and «come»; gestures for «sit down,» «yes,» «no,» «go away» and «goodby.» • Various obscene gestures have well known meanings. All these gestures are a sign language. 134 134 67 26.10.2021 • Gestures have meaning mainly when observers and participants understand the context and especially when they understand the culture. • An open palm is not always an invitation. • The meaning of gestures depends on context, on the person doing the action, on the culture, and on the recipient of the communication. 135 135 • Eye Contact • An important and interesting way of nonverbal communication is through eye contact and it’s meaning differs greatly, depending on the context. • Eye contact indicates interest or lack of it. • In movies couples stare into each other’s eye to portray love, affection, or great concern. 136 136 68 26.10.2021 • In other cases, a stare may be a challenge or a threat. • Therefore eye contact can have appearently contradictory meanings, friendship or threat. • In both cases, it indicates greater involvement and higher emotional content. Whether the emotion is positive or negative depends on the context. • Except when conveying bad news, avoiding or breaking eye contact is usually a sign that the person is not interested. 137 137 • Facial Expressions • Facial expressions can also be forms of communication conveying warmt, sympaty, confusion or anger, for example. • A smile, depending on the context, may mean support, encouragement and looking down on somebody. • A particularly interesting aspect of facial communication is mimicry. According to Darwin people mimic distress when others are feeling it. 138 138 69 26.10.2021 • Mimicry may be an expression of sympathy for the wictim: an indication of sharing the pain. • It may also be an unconscious strategy that people spontaneously engage in to get along with the people with whom they interact. • Bavelas and his associates (1986) tested this idea. They had undergraduate women view a person who dropped a heavy TV monitor on an already injured finger. In some cases, the wictim who was a confederate, then looked directly at the observer; in other cases, no eye contact was made. Most of the observers in turn displayed an expression of pain, but it quickly faded in the absence of eye contact. Moreover, the observers were considerably more likely to smile when eye contact was made, which may be an effort of reassuring. • People are especially likely to mimic others if they are especially attentive to the people around them and the context in which their behavior occurs. 139 139 • Paralanguage • Paralanguage can be defined as the variations in speech other than the verbal content. • Paralanguage can cary a great deal of meaning, especially emotional meaning. Voice pitch, loudness, rhythm, inflection, and hesitations convey information. • A simple statement as, «You want to be a doctor? can mean entirely different things depending on emphasis and inflection. Say it with different inflections. 140 140 70 26.10.2021 • Multiple Channels • We talked about verbal, visible or paralinguistic channels of communication. Typically, and as might be expected, we tend to form more accurate impressions of others when we have access to all channels of communication • But, in general, the verbal chanel seems to be much more influential for inferences about people. • However, the question of which chanel communicates most powerfully becomes important when the observer is receiving conflicting cues from different channels. We will discuss this issue next. 141 141 THE PROBLEM OF DECEPTİON • An especially important area of conflict between verbal and non verbal cues is judging when people are lying or otherwise trying to deceive observers. • Police, judges and jurors are constantly trying to learn the truth from people who try to deceive them. • One study (DePoulo et. all.,1996) shows that college students tell about two lies a day, during the course of normal social interactions. 142 142 71 26.10.2021 • Nonverbal Leakage • Even when they are successful in lying verbally, people sometimes betray the fact that they are lying or otherwise trying to deceive observers. • People attend more to what they are doing with their bodies, which may lead to nonverbal leakage. 143 143 • In other words, true emotions can «leak out» even when a person tries to conceal them. • For example, one of you may say that she is not nerveous about taking an exam but may bite her lower lip and blink more than usual. These are the cues that usually indicate nerveousness. • Liars betray themselves often through paralinguistic expressions of anxiety, tension and nerveousness. 144 144 72 26.10.2021 • In general, the voice is higher when someone is lying than when he or she is telling the truth. The difference is so small that an individual can not tell simply by listening; however electronic vocal analysis reveals lying with considerable accuracy. • Shorter answers, longer delays, more speech errors, more nerveous less serios answers and weird nonverbal behavior such as arm raising or head tilting are all characteristics of people who are perceived as liars or who are instructed to tell lies. 145 145 • Some nonverbal channells leak more than others because they are less controllable. • Several studies have found that body is more likely than face to reveal deception. • Paralinguistic cues can also leak because, like the body, tone of voice is less controllable than is facial expression. • The tendency to engage in nonverbal leakage seems to be fairly consistent across situations because people who are perceived to be truthful by others tend to be seen this way across multiple situations. 146 146 73 26.10.2021 Accuracy in Detecting Deception • People, as perceivers, consistently perceive deceptive messages as somewhat less truthful than truthful messages, but rarely by an impressive margin. • Lies are easiest to detect when they are apparently motivated by ingratiation such as communicating false aggreement with an attractive partner of the opposite sex. • Deception is harder to detect when the motive is unknown. Moreover, detecting deception is undermined by many of the person-perception biases ve discussed such as the positivitiy bias. 147 147 • Does it help to be warned explicitly that a target person may be lying? • Contrary to expectations, not much. • Torris an DePaulo, in a study involving simulated job interviews, told the «applicants» to be honest in some cases and dishonest in others, whereas, the «interviewers» were told to expect the applicant to try to convey fals impressions in some cases or given no warning. • Compared with interviewers who had not been warned to anticipate dishonest behavior, the warned interviewers perceived all applicants as more deceptive and they were no more accurate than the unwarned interviewers in singling out dishonest applicants from the honest ones. Moreover, they were less confident of their judgements than the unwarned ones. 148 148 74 26.10.2021 • Peopel may be somewhat better at discerning deception when they are less involved. Highly involved participants tend to process people’s messages carefully and they, therfore, attend more to verbal message, whereas, less involved ones are more likely to attend to peripheral cues and nonverbal behavior. • But, very often, we may not be especially motivated to notice whether a person is lying or not. • In most social situations, deceptive selfpresentations are likely to be taken at face value. 149 149 The Giveaways • When observers are able to discover deception what cues do they use? Is the body less controllable than the face, and do people catch deception mainly through nonverbal bodily cues? Or is the voice (pitch, loudnes, and speed) an even more leakier channel than the body? • Research shows that all of these help to expose a potentially deceptive communicator. • But, they are useful only when the observer has also access to the content of the person’s speech. 150 150 75 26.10.2021 • Liars blink more, hesitate more, and make more errors when they are speaking. • They tend to speak in higher pitched voices, and their pupils are more likely to be dilated. • Liars are more likely to feel guilty or anxious, and this may explain why liars fidget more, speak more hasitatingly and less fluidly, and make more negative and distancing statements than those telling the truth. 151 151 • In liars interchannel discrepancies are seen more. • Linguistic cues may also giveaway the fact of lying. Liars describe events in less cognitively complex terms and use fewer references to themselves and to other people. • Paradoxically, one of the best sources of information regarding deception may be the sender’s motivation to get away. Because when liars try to get away with their lies they actually become more obvious to observers. 152 152 76 26.10.2021 Nonverbal Behavior and SelfPresentation • Over a life time, we learn a great deal about the self-presentation of nonverbal behavior. • For example by the time we are in college, we may not have to think much about the fact that we should stop fidgeting, make extended eye contact, and look sympathetic when another person is telling us a problem. 153 153 • Cultural display rules govern not only which emotion should be conveyed in a particular situation but also how the emotions should be conveyed. • Nonverbal behavior can also be used to further social goals. When he is talking to the women he wishes to date, a man may smile a great deal, make extended eye contact, stand fairly close and put his hand against the wall behind his intended partner. 154 154 77 26.10.2021 Gender • In terms of using nonverbal behavior effectively there are differences among people. • Girls an women tend to be more expressive, more involved in their personal interactions and more open in the expression of emotion. • They tend to use more nonverbal behavior when interacting with others such as, touching, eye contact, expressive body movements, smiling and gazing. 155 155 • Women are also more accurate interpreters of nonverbal cues than are men. • There are, in addition, gender differences in the communication of diffent emotions. Women are better in communicating hapiness, whereas men are better in communicating anger. 156 156 78