Chapter 4: Social PErception: How We Come to Understand Other People Flashcards
nonverbal communication
- communication without words
- intentional or unintentional
- facial expressions, tone, gesture, eye contact, use of space, etc
- help us express emotions and personality
social perception
-study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people
facial expressions
- primary nonverbal channel
- universal: all encoded/decoded same by everyone
encode
- to express nonverbal behavior
- smiling, patting
decode
- interpret meaning of nonverbal behavior
- Ex: deciding pat on back was of praise
- automatic
6 major emotional expressions
- ) anger
- ) happiness
- ) surprise
- ) fear
- ) disgust
- ) sadness
- interpreted the same across cultures
- first emotions to appear in development
why is decoding sometimes inaccurate
- ) affect blends
2. ) culture
affect blends
- one part of face registers one emotion, while another part of the face registers different emotion
- Ex: being disgusted and fearful at same time
decoding across cultures
- display rules are particular to each culture and dictate expressions people are supposed to show
- Ex: In US, men discouraged to show grief, but women allowed (opposite in Japan)
emblem
-gesture with clear defined meaning
-not always universal
Ex: flipping bird is “v” shape in Australia
implicit personality theory
- schema that consists of our ideas about what kinds of personality traits go together
- use few traits to determine other characteristics
- automatic
forming quick impressions
- use 2 general schemas
1. ) judgments of “warmth
2. ) implicit personality theory- determine competence
warm person
-perceived as generous, trustworthy, etc
competent person
- capable
- powerful
- dominant
attribution theory
-study of how we infer causes of other’s behavior
internal attribution
- inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person
- behavior fueled by the person’s attitude, character, or personality
external attribution
- inference that a person is behaving in a certain way b/c of something about the situation
- assume most people respond the same way if in similar situation
covariation model
- to form an attribution about what caused behavior, we note pattern between presence of absence of possible causal factors
- how a person’s behavior changes across time, place, different actors, and different targets
- reach judgment about what caused behavior
3 types info examined in covariation
- ) consensus
- ) distinctiveness
- ) consistency
- combine into distinct patterns that allow for clear attribution to be made
consensus information
- how other people behave toward the same stimulus
- Ex: does everyone yell at Tom
distinctiveness information
- how the person whose behavior is to be explained responds to other stimuli
- Ex: does boss yell at other people
consistency information
- frequency with which observed behavior between actor and stimulus occurs across time and circumstances
- Ex: does boss yell at Tom often, no matter who’s around
fundamental attribution error
- overestimate extent to which people’s behavior is due to internal dispositional factors
- underestimate role of situational factors
- occurs b/c info about situation is often unavailable
perceptual salience
- information that is focus of importance
- visual point of view
- we pay attention to people and not the situation, resulting in the fundamental attribution error
- blame people and forget influence of situation
2-step process to making attributions
- ) make internal attribution- assume behavior due to something about the person
- ) attempt to adjust attribution by considering situation
* step 1 quick and spontaneous
* step 2 often skipped b/c requires effort
western cultures and social perception
- stress individual autonomy
- people perceived as independent
- behavior reflects internal traits, motives, values
- analytic thinking
collectivist (eastern) cultures and social perception
- stress group autonomy
- people derive sense of self from social group
- holistic thinking
analytic thinking
- focus of properties of objects without considering surrounding context
- focus on individual’s face to judge feeling
- Western cultures
holistic thinking
- focus on overall context and the ways objects relate to one another
- focus on everyone’s faces to judge feeling
- Eastern cultures
social perceptions across cultures
- everyone starts making dispositional attributions
- collectivist cultures then look at situation and revise first impressions, taking situation into account
- westerners tend to avoid revision, meaning first impression dominates
self-serving attributions
- tendency to take credit for success by making internal attributions, but to blame others or the situation for failure by making external attributions
- common if fail and feel improving is unlikely
- common in US to explain failure
why make self-serving attributions
- ) maintain self esteem, even if distorting reality
2. ) want people to admire of us
defensive attributions
-explanations for behavior that defend us from feelings of vulnerability and morality
belief in just world
-defensive attribution where people assume bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people
bias blind spot
-think others more susceptible to attributional biases than we are
US attribution of failure
-external causes
collectivist culture attribution of failure
-internal causes
correspondence bias
-tendency to infer that people’s behavior corresponds to or matches their disposition/personality
Robin Akert and Dane Archer (1991, 1998) have found that participants who view and decode interactions in the Social Interpretations Task (SIT) perform significantly better than chance when answering such questions as “Which woman is the mother of the baby?” According to these researchers, people do relatively well becaus
multi-channel nonverbal info is diffused throughout each scene
Recall that even when participants in an experiment conducted by E. E. Jones and Victor Harris (1967) were told that people were assigned to write an essay sympathetic to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, they still were willing to assume that the essay reflected the writer’s true “pro-Castro” attitudes. These findings illustrate
correspondance bias
Ed and Violet just saw their professor slip and fall. Ed thinks, “What a clutz!”, but Violet thinks, “I bet there was water on the floor and she slipped on it.” In this case, Ed made an __________ and Violet made an __________
internal attribution
external attribution
Ming is from China; Tyrone is from Canada. Both participate in an experiment in which they take a test, are given feedback and told that they do very well, and then asked to make attributions for their performance. Based on cross-cultural research on the self-serving bias, you would expect that
Tyrone, but not Ming will say he succeeded due to his high ability
Cross-cultural research by Hoffman and his colleagues (1986) on the use of implicit personality theories indicates that
the language we use influences implicit personality theories, thus the impressions we form
According to Daniel Gilbert, we typically use two steps in making attributions. The first step involves automatically ______, and the second step involves _____ through controlled thinking
forming and internal attribution
adjusting for the situation
Rafael has always hated mathematics courses. However, he likes most other courses at the university. Most other students tend to avoid math courses whenever possible, too. Given this information about consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus, most people would make a(n) _____ attribution for Rafael’s attitude towards math courses
external
An implicit personality theory is
schema about which traits tend to co-occur
Gestures that have a clear meaning within a culture, but which may not be universally understood, are called
emblems
Recall that a number of researchers have found that participants from _____ cultures are less likely than participants from _____ cultures to make the correspondence bias
Asian
Western
“Blaming the victim” of rape, abuse, or other misfortunes is most closely related to
belief in just world
________ refers to a facial expression in which one part of the face registers one emotion and another part of the face registers a different emotion
affect blend
Explanations for our behavior that help us avoid feelings of vulnerability or mortality are called
defensive attributions
All of the following are among the six universally recognized facial expressions reported by Ekman EXCEPT
guilt
All of the following are nonverbal behaviors EXCEPT
spoken words
Larry sees a group of people weeping, with frowns on their faces and their eyes turned down. Larry ________ their expressions to understand that they are feeling sadness
decodes
Recall that Shelley Taylor and Susan Fiske (1975) conducted a clever experiment in which a group of participants observed a scripted conversation between two male confederates. Some could see both of the men; others could see the face of only one or the other man. When asked questions about the two confederates (e.g., who had taken the lead in the conversation), participants who had a clear view of both men thought they were equally influential, whereas those who faced one or the other thought that the man whose face they saw was more influential. These results demonstrated that
the salience of perceptual stimuli can explain how the fundamental attribution error can occur
_____ theory provides a description of how people explain the causes of their own and others’ behaviors.
attribution
All of the following are examples of correspondence bias EXCEPT
boyfriend brings you flowers and you are suspicious
The actor/observer difference is the tendency to see the causes of other people’s behavior as _____, while believing that the cause of our own behavior is _____
dispositional
situational
The actor/observer pattern of attributions does not manifest itself when actors explain their own successes. Why?
actors are more motivated to enhance their self-esteem
Students in the United States seldom applaud after a lecture, whereas students in Europe often applaud or wrap their knuckles on their desks. This cultural difference reflects the power of______ to influence nonverbal communication
display rules
Anna usually doesn’t like movies with violent scenes. Still, she saw Pulp Fiction—a violent movie—five times, and loved it. Everyone else—including critics—really liked Pulp Fiction, too. According to Kelley’s covariation model, distinctiveness is _____ and consensus is _____
high
high
The correspondence bias is also known as the
fundamental attribution error
Professor Axelrod is interested in the effects of physical attractiveness on how others interpret the behaviors of attractive versus unattractive people. Professor Axelrod’s area of research is known as
social perception
