chapter 4 emotions & attributions

Question 1

what is social perception?

Answer 1

study of how we form impressions of other people and how we draw inferences about them + about explaining why others behave as they do

Question 2

what is non-verbal communication?

Answer 2

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)

Question 3

what are the 6 major emotional expressions?

Answer 3

Anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust and sadness

Question 4

universality of emotions

Answer 4

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

Question 5

decoding ability case study in New Guinea

Answer 5

ability to interpret the 6 major emotions is cross-cultural

Question 6

complexity of emotional expressions

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Why is decoding sometimes difficult?

Answer 7

1. affect blends
2. same facial expression can have different implications based on context and other cues
3. culture

Question 8

what is Parasympathetic Nervous System responsible for?

Answer 8

rest & digest

Question 9

what is Sympathetic Nervous System responsible for?

Answer 9

fight or flight

Question 10

Amygdala

Answer 10

fear

Question 11

Ventral Striatum

Answer 11

reward

Question 12

Insula

Answer 12

disgust

Question 13

I-cingulate

Answer 13

pain

Question 14

caveat

Answer 14

Not one-to-one mapping

Question 15

what is the James-Lange Theory?

Answer 15

Perception→Bodily sensations (e.g Heart pounding/trembling/sweating/running away)→feel fear because our heart pounds, trembles, sweats etc

Question 16

what is the Central Theory? (cannon-bard)?

Answer 16

Perception→We perceive the fear; our bodily sensations are not driving the fear

Question 17

what is the Schachter-Singer Theory (Two-Factor Theory)?

Answer 17

Bodily Sensations + Cognitive Appraisal (Our interpretation of the situation) = emotion

Question 18

case study of appraisal (judgement/assessment)

Answer 18

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

Question 19

emotional misattribution

Answer 19

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

Question 20

case study of men on scary bridge

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

attribution theory

Answer 21

study of how weinfer the causesof otherpeople’s behavior

Question 22

internal attribution

Answer 22

disposition, personality, attitudes that caused his behavior

Question 23

external attribution

Answer 23

due to situation

Question 24

goal attribution

Answer 24

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

Question 25

covariation model

Answer 25

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

Question 26

what are 2 issues with the covariation model?

Answer 26

1. Assumes many observations of the behavior across a variety of situations
2. Normative (what people should be doing), not descriptive (what people are doing)

Question 27

fundamental attribution error

Answer 27

tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people’s behavior results from internal, dispositional factors, and to underestimate the role of situational factors

Question 28

actor-observer bias

Answer 28

Tendency to engage in fundamental attribution error more when we interpret other people’s behavior, and less when interpreting our own behavior

Question 29

self-serving attribution

Answer 29

Tendency to take credit for our success (internal attributions) but to blame the situation (external attribution) for our failures

Question 30

explain 2 case studies about fundamental attribution error

Answer 30

1. college students to read an essay written by a fellow student on a controversial political topic
2. participants watched silent videos of a women who squirms and fidgets while talking

Question 31

why do people fall to the fundamental attribution error?

Answer 31

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.