Psychology Homework 2 PSYCH345
MIMI206
Unit3-SocialPerception.pptx
Learning Objectives
Explain how people use nonverbal cues to understand others
Analyze how first impressions form quickly and persist
Explain how we determine why other people do what they do
Describe how culture influences our processes of social perception and attribution
Social Perception
Social Perception - the study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people
2
Nonverbal Communication
How people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words
Facial expressions
Tone of voice
Gestures
Body position
Movement
Use of touch
Gaze
3
Nonverbal Communication
Encode
Express or emit nonverbal behavior
Examples: smiling, patting someone on the back
Decode
Interpret the meaning of nonverbal behavior
Example: deciding pat on the back was an expression of condescension, not kindness
Facial Expressions
Crown jewel of nonverbal communication: the facial expressions channel
Why?
Communicativeness of human face
Evolution and Facial Expressions
Nonverbal forms of communication is species, not culture, specific (Darwin)
Example: Susskind and colleagues (2008)
Studied facial expressions of fear and disgust
Found that muscle movements opposite each other
Fear: enhanced perception—facial and eye movements increase sensory input
Disgust: decreased perception—facial and eye movements decrease sensory input
6
These photographs depict facial expressions of the six major emotions. Can you guess the emotion expressed on each face?
7
Facial Expressions of Emotion
Are facial expressions of emotion universal?
Yes, for the six major emotional expressions
Anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, and sadness
8
Vocal Signals of Emotion
Sauter and colleagues (2010) examined if emotional sounds were recognized across cultures similar to facial expression
Same set of emotions was recognized in vocalizations
9
Body as a Whole
The way people walk
Body movement during social interaction
10
The Picture of Pride
The nonverbal expression of pride, involving facial expression, posture, and gesture, is encoded and decoded cross-culturally
11
12
Rounded, Diagonal, and Angular Body Display
Aronoff and colleagues (1992) analyzed body and arm displays of classical ballet dancers
Angry and threatening characters had more diagonal and angular displays
Warm and welcoming characters were more rounded
13
Culture and the Channels of Nonverbal Communication
Display rules
Dictate what kinds of emotional expressions people are supposed to show
Are culture-specific
14
Examples of Display Rule Differences
Display of emotion
U.S.: men discouraged from emotional displays like crying, but women allowed
Japan: women discouraged from displaying uninhibited smile
Eye contact/gaze
U.S.: suspicious when people do not “look them in the eye”
Nigeria and Thailand: direct eye contact considered disrespectful
15
Examples of Display Rule Differences
Personal space
U.S.: like bubble of personal space
Middle East, South America, Southern Europe: stand close to each other and touch frequently
17
Emblems
Emblems
Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture
Usually have direct verbal translations, like the “OK” sign
Emblems are not universal!
18
Fig Sign
Offensive gesture that is most commonly used to deny a request
19
How Quickly Do First Impressions Form?
Form initial impressions based on facial appearance in less than 100 milliseconds!
Infer character from faces as young as 3 years old
How Quickly Do First Impressions Form?
Baby faces
Features that are reminiscent of those of small children
Tend to be perceived as having childlike traits—naive, warm, and submissive
22
Thin-Slicing
Thin-slicing - Drawing meaningful conclusions about another person’s personality or skills based on an extremely brief sample of behavior
23
Example of Thin Slicing
Participants rated 3 random 10-second video clips from 12 instructors’ lectures
Removed audio track (silent video)
Compared ratings of clips to end of the semester teaching evaluations from real students
Results: Accurately predicted highest-rated teachers
24
The Lingering Influence of Initial Impressions
Primacy Effect
the tendency for facts, impressions, or items that are presented first to be better learned or remembered than the material presented later in the sequence
Primacy effect
Solomon Asch (1946)
One half of the participants saw this list of traits:
Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious
The other half of the participants saw this list:
Envious, stubborn, critical,
impulsive, industrious, intelligent
26
The Lingering Influence of Initial Impressions
Belief Perseverance
The tendency to stick with an initial judgment even in the face of new information that should prompt us to reconsider
The Nature of the Attribution Process
Attribution theory (Heider, 1958)
The way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people’s behavior
When deciding about causes of behavior, we can make one of two attributions
Internal, dispositional attribution
External, situational attribution
28
Types of Attribution
Internal attributions
Infer a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person (e.g., attitude, character, personality)
External attributions
Infer a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation
Assume most people would respond the same way in that situation
29
Attributions in a Happy Marriage
Partner’s positive behaviors
Internal attributions
“She helped me because she’s such a generous person.”
Partner’s negative behaviors
External attributions
“She said something mean because she’s so stressed at work this week.”
30
Attributions in a Distressed Marriage
Partner’s positive behaviors
External attributions
“She helped me because she wanted to impress our friends.”
Partner’s negative behaviors
Internal attributions
“She said something mean because she’s a totally self-centered person.”
31
The Fundamental Attribution Error
Tend to make internal attributions for other people’s behavior and underestimate the role of situational factors
Why?
We are perceptually focused on people—they are who we notice
32
Self-Serving Attributions (Self-Serving Bias)
Explanations for one’s successes that credit internal, dispositional factors, and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors
33
Self-Serving Attributions
Why do we make self-serving attributions?
We want to maintain self-esteem.
We want other people to think well of us and to admire us.
We know more about the situational factors that affect our own behavior than we do about other people’s.
34
Belief in a Just World
Belief in a just world
The assumption that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get
Type of defensive attribution
35
Belief in a Just World
Advantage
Allows people to deal with feelings of vulnerability, mortality
Disadvantage
Blaming the victim
36
The “Bias Blind Spot” (Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002)
People realize biases in attribution can occur
Believe other people more susceptible to attributional biases compared to self
37
Culture and Social Perception
Analytic thinking style
focus on objects without considering surrounding context
associated with Western cultures
Holistic thinking style
focus on the overall context, relation between objects
associated with Eastern cultures
39
Culture and Social Perception
Eastern and Western cultures
equally capable of using both styles
environment in which people live “primes” one style over the other
40
Analytic vs. Holistic Thinking
41
Analytic vs. Holistic Thinking
42
The Effect of a Group’s Facial Expressions
What emotion do you think the central person (the one in the middle) is experiencing in each of these cartoons? Your answer might depend on whether you live in a Western or East Asian culture.
43
44
Chinese cultural prime
situational attributions
American cultural prime
dispositional attributions
(Ying-Yi Hong et al., 2003)
45
Culture and Other Attributional Biases
Self-serving bias
More prevalent in Western, individualistic cultures than Eastern collectivist cultures
46
Athletes’ Differing Attributions
Sports competitors often make very different attributions for their outcomes based on whether they win or lose as well as on cross-cultural variability in attributional tendencies
47
Athletes’ Differing Attributions
The following two quotes from gold medalists summarize the different ways in which culture influences how one explains one’s own behavior:
I think I just stayed focused. It was time to show the world what I could do. . . . I knew I could beat [her], deep down in my heart I believed it . . . the doubts kept creeping in . . . but I just said, “No, this is my night.” (Misty Hyman, American gold medalist in the women’s 200-m butterfly). (Markus et al., 2006, p. 103)
Here is the best coach in the world, the best manager in the world, and all of the people who support me—all these things were getting together and became a gold medal. So I think I didn’t get it alone, not only by myself (Naoko Takahashi, Japanese gold medalist in the women’s marathon). (Markus et al., 2006, p. 103)
image9.jpeg
image10.jpeg
image11.jpeg
image12.jpeg
image13.png
image14.png
image15.jpeg
image16.png
image17.png
image18.jpeg
image19.png
image20.png
image21.png
image22.png
image23.jpeg
image24.png
image25.jpeg
image26.jpeg
image27.png
image28.jpeg
image29.png
image30.jpeg
image31.png
image32.png
image33.png
image34.jpeg
image35.png
image36.jpeg
image37.png
image38.jpeg
image39.jpeg
image40.jpeg
image41.png
image42.svg
.MsftOfcThm_Accent1_Fill { fill:#4472C4; } .MsftOfcThm_Accent1_Stroke { stroke:#4472C4; }
