Chapter 4 Textbook Flashcards
Social perception
the study of how we form impressions of other people and make inferences about them.
5 functions of nonverbal behavior
1) communicate emotion: anger –> straight mouth, slit eyes
2) communicate attitude: “I like you” –> smiling
3) communicates personality: extroverted
4) elicits empathy:
- we mimic other people’s facial expressions
5) substitute for a verbal message
empathy is linked to the presence of ___ ___, which respond when we perform and watch someone perform an action
MIRROR NEURONS
explain Darwin’s beliefs about emotion being biological
believed that:
- emotions conveyed evolutionary significance
- believed that all humans can encode and decode primary emotions with equal accuracy
- believed that the ability to perceive emotion allowed for increased survival (ex/ watching someone make a disgusted face when eating —> poison)
Encoding
to express or emit nonverbal behavior
Decoding
to interpret the meaning of nonverbal behavior other people express
___ discovered the 6 major emotions. list them
Paul Ekman
- anger
- sad
- happy
- fear
- surprise
- disgust
Examples of socially-tied emotions that are nearly universal
- contempt
- pride
- embarrassment
- pain
- anxiety
- shame
- guilt
- wonder?
T/F: Cultural differences are most pronounced for social emotions and least pronounced for reflex based emotions.
TRUE
Explain how CONTEXT in which a face is percieved may affect its identification
a given facial expression depended on what other faces were presented. Ex// exposed to a happy face and a neutral face–> neutral face is perceived as sad. But: expose a neutral face and a sad face –> neutral face is perceived as happy.
Explain how SITUATION may change emotional perception
if told that a person just came out of a frustrating interaction, many people think someone is showing an angry face even though they are expressing a FEAR face.
3 “problems” that affect the universality of emotion
1) culture
2) context
3) situation
Explain how cultural differences affect the PERCEPTION of facial expressions. Proof?
Asian –> HOLISTIC THINKERS: they tend to consider the CONTEXT in which the object is situated
Americans –> ANALYTIC THINKERS: considers the PRIMARY focal object alone.
Masuda: americans tended to rank the face as happy regardless of what the background faces were. Asians however ranked the face less happy when the faces in the background appeared sad. They also spend more eye movements and fixation time on the background (looking for CONTEXT) than americans.
both canadians and japanese people are faster at identifying facial expressions when the expression and the background:
match
ex/ both pleasant
Why is decoding sometimes inaccurate? (2 things)
1) affect blend
2) display rules
what is affect blends
one part of their face registers one emotion, while the other part registers a different emotion
what are display rules
culturally determined rules about which emotional expressions are appropriate to show.
T/F: DISPLAY RULES ARE UNIVERSAL
FALSE
Outline the gender differences to display rules
genders display emotions in public differently. Ex/ more acceptable for woman to cry in public than a man
themes of emotional showing (4)
1) intensification: EXAGGERATING the emotion to appear as if you are experiencing it more intensely than you are
2) deintensification: what we show on our face is MILDER than what we are feeling
3) neutralizing: sometimes we don’t show any emotion
4) masking: showing the opposite emotion to what we actually feel
T/F: personal space differs cross culturally
true
4 factors affecting personal space
1) situation
2) disabilities (people with autism don’t have social boundaries)
3) gender differences (male personal space is larger than female)
4) emotional state (anxiety)
interpersonal spacing conveys ___ ___ and ___
STATUS DIFFERENCE AND INTIMACY
Emblem
nonverbal gesture that we have well understood definitions within a given culture (ex/ thumbs up)
T/F: Emblems are universal
false. they are culture specific. some gestures may mean completely different things in different cultures.
when people are unsure about the world, they use ___ to fill the gaps
schemas
implicit personality theory
type of SCHEMA used to group various kinds of personality traits together.
How are implicit personality theories dependent on culture?
western cultures often believe that beautiful= kind= successful, but collective cultures associate beauty with other traits to a lesser degree.
different cultures also have different personality types.
Attribution theory
studyof how people explain the causes of their own and other peoples behaviors.
2 primary types of attribution
internal and external attribution.
Relationship enhancing attributions
satisfied spouses tend to make internal attributions for their partners positive behaviors and external attributions for their partner’s negative behaviors.
distress maintaining attributions
troubled spouses tend to make external attributions for their partners positive behaviors and internal attributions for their partner’s negative behaviors.
Explain Kelly’s mode of covariation
when forming an accurate attribution, we systematically note the pattern between the presence /absence of possible causal factors. We examine the consensus info, distinctiveness of the behavior, and consistency of the behavior.
according to the model of covariation, what are the 3 pieces of info that are examined?
consensus info: info about the extent to which other people behave the same way.
distinctiveness info: how the person behaves to other stimuli
consistency info: frequency to which the behavior occurs at other times.
people are most likely to make an internal attribution when ___ and ___ of the act are low
CONSENSUS AND DISTINCTIVENESS OF THE ACT ARE LOW.
ex/ most people don’t yell at sarah like that, and sam yells at all other employees too. same most likely has an angry personality trait
people are most likely to make an EXTERNAL attribution when ___ and ___ and ___- are ____
external when consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency are high.
ex/people are also yelling at sarah right now, and sam isn’t yelling at other people, but sam yells when sarah screws up other times.
therefore, its probably situational. Sarah probably messed up.
a clear attribution cannot be made if:
consistency of the behavior is LOW.
Fundamental attribution error
the tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior is due to personality traits and to underestimate the role of situational factors.
the ___ __ error may be the root of victim blaming
fundamental attribution error.
why does fundamental attribution error occur in western cultures?
people the person we are analyzing has PERCEPTUAL SALIENCE: info that is the focus of out attention. We pay attention to people alone, and htink they solely are the cause of their behavior, but we pay little attention to the context as a culture (unlike the asian holistic thinkers)
2 step process for making attributions. What is typically missed in our culture?
1) we make an internal attribution
2) we modify the attribution after considering the situation.
- second step is often missed in western cultures because it requires concious efford. collectivist cultures are more likely to analyze situational causes.
actor observer bias
tendency to make INTERNAL attributions towadrs others but make SITUATIONAL attributions to our own actions.
T/F Collective cultures are less likely to succumb to the fundamental attribution error
true; they modify the original internal attribution towards others.
self serving bias
explaining successes using dispositional and internal attributions, and explaning one’s failures using situational and external attributions.
how do athletes differ in self serving bias?
experienced athletes are less likely to use self serving biases to explain losses than unexperienced athleyes
which cultures show more self serving bias?
western countries
asian cultures actually tend to have REVERSE self serving bias: they attribute failures to internal causes but attribute teamwork to their successes. It strengthens interdependence and harmony.
what are defensive attributions? why are they dangerous
explanations for behavior that avoid feelings of vulnerability and to push “randomness’ of life under the table.
dangerous because:
1) facilitates victim blaming: “they deserved it”
2) facilitates irrational thinking just to maintain just world beliefs and to downplay randomness:
- tying 2 random factors together to explain their phenomena
example of defensive attribution
belief in a just world: where people assume that bad things happen to bad people, and good things happen to good people
- when looking at an innocent person’s misfortunes, we try and convince outselves that good things will happen to “even out the score”
T/F: people are more likely to engage in victim blaming when rape victims are described as thin rather than overweight
true
