chapter 4 emotions & attributions Flashcards
what is social perception?
study of how we form impressions of other people and how we draw inferences about them + about explaining why others behave as they do
what is non-verbal communication?
refers to how people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words (eye gaze, facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body positions and movement, the use of touch)
what are the 6 major emotional expressions?
Anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust and sadness
universality of emotions
humans encode, or express these emotions in the same way and that all humans decode, or interpret them, with comparable accuracy
nonverbal forms of communication were species specific and not culture specific
research: disgust vs fear face
decoding ability case study in New Guinea
ability to interpret the 6 major emotions is cross-cultural
complexity of emotional expressions
Western cultures maintain more rigid boundaries VS Asians overlap
individuals are better at decoding facial expressions from own ethnic grp
across culture, can match facial expressions but cross-cultural differences when allowing people to freely sort faces into their own grouping system
Why is decoding sometimes difficult?
- affect blends
- same facial expression can have different implications based on context and other cues
- culture
what is Parasympathetic Nervous System responsible for?
rest & digest
what is Sympathetic Nervous System responsible for?
fight or flight
Amygdala
fear
Ventral Striatum
reward
Insula
disgust
I-cingulate
pain
caveat
Not one-to-one mapping
what is the James-Lange Theory?
Perception→Bodily sensations (e.g Heart pounding/trembling/sweating/running away)→feel fear because our heart pounds, trembles, sweats etc
what is the Central Theory? (cannon-bard)?
Perception→We perceive the fear; our bodily sensations are not driving the fear
what is the Schachter-Singer Theory (Two-Factor Theory)?
Bodily Sensations + Cognitive Appraisal (Our interpretation of the situation) = emotion
case study of appraisal (judgement/assessment)
We are aroused, we have sought out a reason for our arousal in the situation and so we become furious. This is indeed what happened: The participants who had been given epinephrine reacted much more angrily than did participants who had been given the placebo
emotional misattribution
event in which people make mistaken inferences about what is causing them to feel the way they do due to difficulty in pinpointing the precise causes of our arousal
case study of men on scary bridge
Schacter’s two factor theory of emotion would predict that in comparison to those sitting on the bench, the men on the bridge would beconsiderably more aroused, mistakenly thinking thatsome of their arousal from crossing the bridgewas the result of attraction to thebeautiful woman.
attribution theory
study of how weinfer the causesof otherpeople’s behavior
internal attribution
disposition, personality, attitudes that caused his behavior
external attribution
due to situation
goal attribution
refers to the process of determining or assigning a specific goal or intention to an individual’s actions or behaviours
case study of babies watching video of ball move from one spot to another when there is barrier vs no barrier
covariation model
consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency
difficult to make either a straightforward internal or external attribution when consistency is low (need to assume smth peculiar happened in that situation)
consistency is high, specific patterns of consensus and distinctiveness information can permit a clear internal attribution
more likely to make an internal attribution when the consensus and distinctiveness of the act are low
what are 2 issues with the covariation model?
- Assumes many observations of the behavior across a variety of situations
- Normative (what people should be doing), not descriptive (what people are doing)
fundamental attribution error
tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people’s behavior results from internal, dispositional factors, and to underestimate the role of situational factors
actor-observer bias
Tendency to engage in fundamental attribution error more when we interpret other people’s behavior, and less when interpreting our own behavior
self-serving attribution
Tendency to take credit for our success (internal attributions) but to blame the situation (external attribution) for our failures
explain 2 case studies about fundamental attribution error
- college students to read an essay written by a fellow student on a controversial political topic
- participants watched silent videos of a women who squirms and fidgets while talking
why do people fall to the fundamental attribution error?
people, not the situation, have perpetual salience for us; we pay attention to them, think about them, and tend to assume that they themselves cause their behavior.
