Chapter 4 - Social Perception

Question 1

What is social perception?

Answer 1

The study of how we form impressions of other people and make inferences about them

Question 2

Define: nonverbal communication

Answer 2

The way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words

Question 3

Mirror neurons respond when we perform an action AND ___________.

Answer 3

when we see someone else perform the same action

Question 4

Wicker et al. (2003) showed that smelling obnoxious odors and watching a film of an actor wrinkling his face with a disgusted look activated the same region of a participant’s brain. (T/F)

Answer 4

True

Question 5

Define: encode

Answer 5

To express or emit nonverbal behaviour

Question 6

Define: decode

Answer 6

To interpret the meaning of the nonverbal behaviour other people express

Question 7

Becker, Kenrick, Neuberg, Blackwell & Smith (2007) did a study that showed people were more likely to be able to decode ______ expressions on male faces and ______ expressions on female faces.

Answer 7

angry; happy

Question 8

According to Ekman and colleagues, the six major (universally recognized) emotions are:

Answer 8

anger, fear, disgust, sadness, surprise, happiness

Question 9

Ekman and Friesen (1975) showed photographs of their six basic emotions to participants in the US, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Japan, and New Guinea. What were their main findings?

Answer 9

• 82% of all participants correctly labelled the ‘happiness’ expression
• only 54% of participants in Argentina and New Guinea labelled the ‘fear’ expression correctly
• 44% of New Guinea participants recognized the ‘disgust’ expression

Question 10

Russell, Suzuki, and Ishida (1993) showed there is even less agreement when participants are asked to name the emotion shown in a face, rather than to select emotion terms from a list in which the number of emotion terms matches the number of faces (a common procedure in Ekman and Friesen’s studies). (T/F)

Answer 10

True

Question 11

Masuda et al. (2008) presented research participants in the US and Japan with cartoon drawings of people in groups. One person in each cartoon was the central figure, shown in the foreground. The participants’ task was to judge the central person’s emotion. What did the results show?

Answer 11

The facial expressions on the group members’ faces had little effect on the Americans’ ratings of the central figure. The facial expressions of the group members had a significant effect on the Japanese participants’ ratings of the central figure.

Question 12

Define: affect blend

Answer 12

A facial expression in which one part of the face registers one emotion while another part of the face registers a different emotion

Question 13

Define: display rules

Answer 13

Culturally determined rules about which emotional expressions are appropriate to show

Question 14

The more collectivist a culture is, the more likely it is for the expression of emotions to be encouraged. (T/F)

Answer 14

False; individualist cultures are more likely to encourage the expression of emotions, collectivist cultures prefer to keep emotions more hidden

Question 15

What are emblems?

Answer 15

Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture; they usually have direct verbal translations, such as the “okay” sign

Question 16

** Kruger et al. (2005) gave college students a number of topics to communicate that were matched to one of four emotions: sarcasm, sadness, anger, or seriousness. They had to communicate these messages either by email, voice only, or face-to-face. Finally, participants communicated their messages to either a stranger or a close friend. What did the results show?

Answer 16

Although message senders were highly confident they could communicate the emotions in all of the three types of messages, they were in fact most likely to fail to communicate the emotions accurately over email. This occurred whether the email recipients were their friends or strangers.

Question 17

Define: implicit personality theory

Answer 17

A type of schema people use to group various kinds of personality traits together; for example, many people believe that if someone is kind, they are also generous

Question 18

** Hoffman, Lau, and Johnson (1986) wrote stores in English and Chinese, describing a person behaving artistic or shi gú. They gave the stories written in English to unilingual English speakers and Chinese-English bilingual participants. They gave the stories written in Chinese to another group of Chinese-English bilingual participants.They then had to write down their impressions of the characters in the stories. What did the results show?

Answer 18

English and Chinese-English bilingual speakers who read the stories in English were more likely to form impressions of the artistic type (consistent with a Western implicit personality theory) while Chinese-English bilingual speakers who read the stories in Chinese were more likely to form impressions of the shi gú type (consistent with a Chinese implicit personality theory).

Question 19

What is attribution theory?

Answer 19

A description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people’s behaviour

Question 20

Define: internal attribution

Answer 20

The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about him or her, such as his or her attitude, character, or personality

Question 21

Define: external attribution

Answer 21

The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he or she is in; the assumption is that most people would respond the same way in that situation

Question 22

What is the covariation model?

Answer 22

A theory stating that to form an attribution about what caused a person’s behaviour, we systematically note the pattern between the presence (or absence) of possible causal factors and whether or not the behaviour occurs

Question 23

Define: consensus information

Answer 23

Information about the extent to which other people behave the same way as the actor does toward the same stimulus

Question 24

Define: distinctiveness information

Answer 24

Information about the extent to which one particular actor behaves in the same way to different stimuli

Question 25

Define: consistency information

Answer 25

Information about the extent to which the behaviour between one actor and one stimulus is the same across time and circumstances

Question 26

** Jones and Harris (1967) asked university students to read a fellow student’s essay that either supported or opposed Fidel Castro’s rule in Cuba, and then to guess how the author of the essay really felt about Castro. In one condition, the researchers told the students that the author freely chose their stance, and in the other condition, the researchers told the students that the author had no choice on what position to take. What did the results show?

Answer 26

Even when people knew that the author’s choice of an essay topic was externally caused, they assumed that what he or she wrote reflected how he or she really felt about Castro. The same assumption was made when participants were told the author did have a choice on what position to write about.

Question 27

The study by Gagné, Khan, Lydon, and To (2008) showed that even when participants were told that the person sitting across from them was instructed to write positive things about them, they believed it was the confederate’s true opinion. (T/F)

Answer 27

True; good example of correspondence bias

Question 28

Define: perceptual salience

Answer 28

Information that is the focus of people’s attention; people tend to overestimate the causal role of perceptually salient (most noticeable) information

Question 29

** In Taylor and Fiske (1975), two actors engaged in conversation while six observing participants sat nearby in various positions so that they could either only see the face of actor A, actor B, or actor A and B in equal amounts. The observers were then asked which actor took the lead in the conversation. What did the results show?

Answer 29

People rated the actor they could see more clearly as having the largest role in the conversation. Participants who saw both actors equally rated them as equally influential.

Question 30

When video cameras are only focused on the suspect during a criminal interrogation, he or she seems more guilty than they may actually be because they are _____ ______.

Answer 30

perceptually salient

Question 31

Describe the two-step process of attribution

Answer 31

Analyzing another person’s behaviour first by making an automatic internal attribution and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behaviour, after which one may adjust the original internal attribution.

Question 32

** In a study by Morris and Peng (1994) targeted two mass murders, one committed by a Chinese graduate student in Iowa and one committed by a white postal worker in Michigan. The researchers coded all of the news articles about the crimes in the New York Times and World Journal (a Chinese language US newspaper). What did their findings suggest?

Answer 32

English language newspapers made significantly more dispositional attributions about both murderers than did journalists writing in Chinese, who were more likely to emphasize situational causes.

Question 33

When forming attributions, people in collectivistic cultures are more likely to take situational information into account than are people in individualistic cultures. (T/F)

Answer 33

True

Question 34

What is the actor/observer difference?

Answer 34

The tendency to see other people’s behaviour as dispositionally caused, while focusing more on the role of situational factors when explaining one’s own behaviour

Question 35

Define: self-serving attributions

Answer 35

Explanations for one’s successes that credit internal, dispositional factors, and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors (ie. when one’s self esteem is threatened)

Question 36

Amy Mezulis and colleagues (2004) found that self-serving bias is strongest in ______ countries and markedly low in _______ countries.

Answer 36

Western; Asian

Question 37

Define: defensive attributions

Answer 37

Explanations for behaviour that avoid feelings of vulnerability and mortality

Question 38

Describe the phenomenon called “belief in a just world”

Answer 38

A form of defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people