PSYC2008 Individual and Social Cognition Lecture 3 Perception of Other People PDF

PSYC20008 Individual and Social Cognition Justin Park Lecture 3 Perception of Other People William James (1890) ‘Not one man in a billion, when taking his dinner, ever thinks of utility. He eats because the food tastes good and makes him want more.’ People are motivated to engage in specific...

PSYC20008 Individual and Social Cognition Justin Park Lecture 3 Perception of Other People William James (1890) ‘Not one man in a billion, when taking his dinner, ever thinks of utility. He eats because the food tastes good and makes him want more.’ People are motivated to engage in specific behaviours, but the motivation is at a proximate level (eat tasty foods, avoid disgusting things, make friends, gain status, accumulate resources, form relationships with attractive people) People are not necessarily aware of the ultimate reasons for these motives Proximate (mechanism, cognition, emotion, Ultimate (function, evolutionary reason for the motivation) proximate mechanism) Feelings of pain when rejected by others Maintenance of social connections Disgust response toward physical disfigurement Avoidance of contagious disease Prosocial feelings toward facially similar person Kin-directed altruism Sexual aversion toward early life co-residents Inbreeding avoidance Perceiving the social world In addition to mechanisms for perceiving kin, there may be specialised mechanisms for perceiving people outside the family Social perception & social cognition – perceiving traits, social categories, inferring mental states, predicting behaviours, etc. In many ways, human cognition seems to be specialised for social content Basic social perception processes at the intuitive level: 1. Perceiving individuals along continuous trait dimensions (e.g. introverted) 2. Perceiving individuals as members of social categories (e.g. female) (These two processes are separable but not mutually exclusive – e.g. we can perceive someone as being higher or lower in introversion; we can also perceive them as a member of the category ‘introverts’ or ‘extraverts’) Why we possess these capacities Cognition is about sense-making and prediction – What is happening in this situation? What can I expect? How will I need to respond? In social interactions, quick judgements of others’ traits and category membership enable predictions regarding their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours relevant to our wellbeing As previously discussed, these perceptions are not 100% accurate, but they may be generally useful Perception of strangers: What can you see in half a second? Perceiving traits When we encounter a stranger, we quickly form impressions regarding their traits ▪ confident – timid ▪ interesting – boring ▪ trustworthy – untrustworthy We do this spontaneously and rely on these perceptions to make further judgements and decisions Some questions that have been addressed by researchers: How quickly do these trait perceptions happen? How do we form these perceptions? How accurate are the perceptions? The area of research addressing these questions has become known as thin slicing University lecturers were video recorded while teaching 30-second clips (with no sound) were shown to unacquainted observers – these observers rated the lecturers along various trait dimensions These ratings were correlated with teaching evaluations given by the students at the end of the term The observers rated the lecturers along these traits; the numbers indicate the correlations with the teaching evaluations Not only did the observers have no difficulty making these ratings, they generally agreed with each other, and their ratings were correlated with the evaluations given by the actual students Some of the correlations were very high – i.e. those trait ratings were strongly predictive of the evaluations These findings were replicated with shorter video clips (6 seconds) and also with a sample of secondary school teachers The effects were not based on appearance alone – physical attractiveness was only weakly correlated with teaching evaluations Observers were presumably relying on nonverbal behaviour to make their ratings Do those findings show that ‘thin sliced’ perceptions are accurate, that ‘you can judge a book by its over’? i.e. Strangers are able to judge actual teaching ability based on brief exposures Or do they show that first impressions, whether or not they are accurate, have a lasting or pervasive effect? i.e. Students form an initial impression based on teacher’s nonverbal behaviour (similar to impressions that strangers would have formed), and those impressions spill over into other judgements, including teaching evaluations Unlike teacher evaluations (which are subjective), more objective outcomes have been found to be predicted by thin sliced perceptions But these findings leave unanswered whether actual competence can be inferred or whether certain people are treated differently based on how they are perceived, contributing to success Similar to the study involving university lecturers, but the outcome being predicted was not evaluations made by other people but the teachers’ own ratings regarding their satisfaction with life and job How these judgements are made: The importance of nonverbal behaviour In perceptions based on thin slices, what we attend to is people’s nonverbal behaviour – facial expressions, posture, mannerisms, etc. This has been examined in doctor–patient interactions  Patients’ nonverbal behaviour ▪ Positive expressions predict health and longevity ▪ Couples’ negative expressions predict relationship dissolution Doctors’ nonverbal behaviour ▪ Doctors’ distancing behaviour (judged via 20-second silent videos) was associated with worse patient outcomes ▪ Surgeons rated higher in dominance and lower in concern (judged via vocal tone) were more likely to be sued for malpractice (Slepian et al., 2014) People vote for candidates who look more competent (Todorov et al., 2005) During the 2015 election campaign many negative comments were made about Ed Miliband’s physical appearance Did that contribute to his loss? Are taller presidential candidates more likely to win elections? Taller US presidential candidates have tended to receive more support (popular vote), but they have not won significantly more elections Taller presidents are rated higher in ‘greatness’ (Stulp et al., 2013) Perceptions based on bedrooms (Gosling et al., 2002) Ratings of Big Five traits based on bedroom were significantly correlated with actual traits (as rated by bedroom owners and their friends) Extraversion.22 Agreeableness.20 Conscientiousness.33 Emotional stability.36 For these two traits, bedroom ratings may be Openness.65 more accurate than acquaintance ratings Perceiving traits on social media These days, a lot of social encounters occur online, especially on social media Can we judge others’ personality traits based on their social media activity? This depends partly on why people use social media (a) as an extension of their offline personality (e.g. an extravert using social media to gain even more connections) – ‘rich get richer’ hypothesis (b) to compensate for their offline personality (e.g. social media enables an introvert to act more ‘extraverted’ online) – social compensation hypothesis What kinds of online activity are correlated with personality traits? Gosling et al. (2011) examined Facebook use and the Big Five personality traits Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism Extraversion was associated with more Facebook friends and more activity (e.g. number of photos, number of groups) Unacquainted observers were able to use that activity to accurately judge level of extraversion (the remaining traits were not easily judged via Facebook)  When are trait perceptions accurate? When traits are directly linked to observable behaviour and thus easier to judge E.g. Extraversion shows itself more readily than honesty Other traits are more complex and not straightforwardly linked to observable behaviour or outcomes (e.g. political competence) Some individuals are better at judging the traits of others – in part, these are people who are good at drawing out other people’s personality traits (Funder, 2012) Perceiving traits Padlet link Perceiving categories Categorisation – a basic cognitive ability Humans (and nonhuman animals) understand their world in terms of kinds of things – common nouns refer to categories Dog, cat, rabbit, fish, table, chair, car, shoe, smartphone… Categories are cognitively useful because they enable inference of additional attributes based on our existing schemas (dog → barks; smartphone → has a camera) Social categories We do the same with people, and these are known as social categories Female, Asian, child, vegan, student, teacher, athlete, doctor, musician… Social categories are generally less reliably linked to specific attributes, but we treat them as though they allow us to reliably infer attributes → We assume that members of a category are similar First, let’s try to understand categorisation and how it has been studied There are many different ways in which people can be categorised What social categories do people routinely and spontaneously perceive, and how can we know? We could just ask, but people may be unaware or be motivated to appear unbiased Psychologists have had to invent creative methods to assess categorisation Ideally, we would catch people in the act of categorising others spontaneously There is one method, based on what happens naturally in social settings When we first meet people, we sometimes confuse different individuals These mix-ups are not random, and the pattern of mix-ups may reveal mental categories Which two individuals are most likely to be confused with each other?  white male It may seem intuitively obvious why the two older men are similar to each other, but ‘obviousness’ is a product of our minds It’s only obvious because we happen to perceive these categories elderly Taylor et al. (1978) developed an experimental task that measures the degree of categorisation by assessing memory confusions → known as the memory confusion paradigm (or the ‘who said what’ task) Any potential categorisation (by race, gender, age, attractiveness, hair colour, clothing, etc.) can be investigated Participants are not aware that their category perceptions are being assessed In the task, participants are presented with individuals making statements, and later they are given a surprise memory test (match individual with statement) Participants’ memory confusions regarding who said what can reveal categories that were perceived, as there will be more confusion among individuals categorised together → a robust measure because it depends on spontaneous category perception and memory, not on self-reports about categories (and it’s difficult to deliberately avoid categorising others) Taylor et al. (1978) found spontaneous categorisation for race and gender Arcuri (1982) found categorisation for age (18-24 years old vs. ~40 years old) ▪ Although age is continuous, we seem to perceive distinct categories (child, teenager, young adult, middle age, elderly) These findings have been replicated by many others Race, gender, age seem to be prioritised → fundamental social category dimensions Why those three? Those categories tend to be emphasised in our culture, and we may have been conditioned to perceive them Also, it may be evolutionarily functional to perceive those categories ▪ A person’s sex and approximate age are informative when trying to identify potential mates, potential competitors, potentially dangerous people, etc. That may explain why humans spontaneously perceive gender and age Initially, social psychologists assumed that race categorisation must also be ‘fundamental’, as it may be relevant to ingroup-outgroup contexts However, races are social constructions – there is no genetic basis for common racial categories (e.g. White, Black, East Asian), and the categories vary across cultures and periods Given that race perception is pervasive, is there an ultimate explanation for it? Kurzban et al. (2001) argued that race perception (unlike sex and age perception) is not fundamental, that it is a by-product of the evolved capacity to perceive coalitional alliances ▪ Humans evolved in the context of small tribal groups that often came into conflict ▪ Identification of coalitional alliances (i.e. one of us or one of them?) was important ▪ But these tribal groups were not ‘races’ (ancestral humans would rarely have encountered people of different races), so no specialised race perception mechanisms would have evolved ▪ Humans evolved the ability to use locally available cues to infer coalitional alliances ▪ In some modern contexts, races may be perceived as though they are coalitional alliances Kurzban et al. further suggested that if people are provided with cues that are more obviously relevant to coalitional alliance, they may use those instead of race In other words, if presented with both race and coalition cues that are orthogonal (uncorrelated), people may be more likely to categorise by coalition Kurzban et al. used the memory confusion paradigm to test this Are people more likely to confuse individuals of the same race or same coalition? Sports teams are an example of a coalitional alliance They are modern versions of ‘tribes’ competing over limited resources Sports use many metaphors of tribal warfare – attacking, striking, shooting, defending, tackling, battling, fighting Kurzban et al. used the memory confusion paradigm to compare categorisation by race and categorisation by sports team Whereas race categorisation tends to happen in the absence of other cues, in the presence of conflicting team membership cues, perceivers confuse members of the same team more than members of the same race If race categorisation itself is fundamental, it should not be easily influenced by other factors, but these results show that race perception is less rigid than assumed This hypothesis was derived by considering humans’ ancestral environments, what psychological mechanisms likely evolved, and how they might operate in modern contexts An alternative explanation? Might this be because people can only categorise along one dimension at a time? Kurzban et al. conducted a follow-up study in which people were given an opportunity to categorise by sex and team membership – categorisation by sex remained high (categorisation by team membership was equally high) This is consistent with their hypothesis that sex and coalition are among the fundamentals (whereas race is not) Results from a replication with a more rigorous design In the presence of strong alliance cues, race categorisation disappears, but sex categorisation remains (Pietraszewski, 2021) Language and accent Language and accent would have been reliable coalition cues throughout history In fact, accent has historically been used to distinguish ingroup / outgroup members ▪ Words used for this purpose are known as shibboleths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth) ▪ e.g. The Dutch used the name of the district Scheveningen to identify Germans People affiliate selectively based on accent (and modify their accent to conform to groups) Effects of race, language & accent: Studies with children (Kinzler et al., 2009) 5-year-old White American children showed a preference for English speaker (78%) vs French speaker (22%) American accent (80%) vs French accent (20%) White (77%) vs Black (23%) (pictures only) What happens when race and accent are in conflict? They showed a preference for Black children with an American accent (71%) over White children with a French accent (29%) Accent preference trumps race preference Implications of Kurzban and Kinzler’s findings More relevant coalition cues seem to override race perception and preference There may be a predisposition to categorise others in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’, but it produces different outcomes under different circumstances In societies where race is salient, this predisposition may result in stronger race perception But these studies show that it is possible to reduce race perception, by making contradictory coalition cues more salient Race and accent: More than just coalition cues The perspective of coalitional psychology assumes that groups compete for resources on level playing fields However, this perspective does not account for ongoing power differences between real groups In addition to races being proxies for coalitions, some racial groups enjoy structural privileges, and prejudice/discrimination tend to flow in one direction Some accents are judged more positively than others due to links with social status (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz9qy4ipfVg) Accent categorisation using the memory confusion paradigm Studies of adult participants using the memory confusion paradigm have found that perceivers categorise others by accent (Pietraszewski & Schwartz, 2014a) Moreover, when accent and visual coalition cues are both presented, both are categorised, suggesting that accent provides information beyond coalition (Pietraszewski & Schwartz, 2014b) Essentialism In philosophy, essentialism refers to the idea that certain categories are defined by an underlying (usually invisible) essence For those who endorse this view, ‘male’ and ‘female’ may be defined by an underlying ‘male essence’ and ‘female essence’ An associated belief is that it is difficult or impossible to change from one category to another Scientific basis for essentialism? There are certain categories that do seem to be defined by some underlying ‘essence’ identified by science, e.g. biological species can be identified from their DNA In fact, people hold strong essentialist views regarding species, which impeded acceptance of evolutionary theory (gradual change over time) Children display strong essentialist views regarding species but not objects Psychological essentialism Psychologists are less interested in whether categories actually have underlying essences We are interested in the extent to which people believe that certain categories are defined by essences, and the consequences of such beliefs Research has shown that race and gender (and age to a lesser extent) are highly essentialised categories (Prentice & Miller, 2007) Individual differences in essentialist beliefs about race Williams & Eberhardt (2008) created the race conception scale (RCS), comprising items such as ▪ The same racial categories have pretty much always existed ▪ No one can change his or her race—you are who you are ▪ How a person is defined racially depends on the social context (reverse scored) ▪ It’s possible to be a full members of more than one race (reverse scored) Scores on the RCS were associated with racial prejudice and diversity of social networks Individual differences in essentialist beliefs about gender Skewes et al. (2018) created the gender essentialism scale (GES), comprising items such as ▪ Genes are at the root of differences between the sexes ▪ Fathers have to learn what mothers are able to do naturally ▪ Male and female brains probably work in very different ways ▪ People generally over-estimate how much sex differences in behaviour are biologically based (reverse scored) Scores on the GES were associated with sexist attitudes, discrimination and negativity toward those who violate gender norms Categorisation, essentialism, etc. Padlet link