Perceiving People Flashcards
What is social perception?
The study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people-in order to understand why we do what we do and to understand and predict our social world
What did Cogsdill et al study?
How well children can determine whether a face is trustworthy or not, found that they can do this well (age 3-4)
Are first impressions important?
YES
How do we prejudice people based on facial features?
We either read traits from faces or we read traits into faces-example is how babyfaced adults are treated differently than mature faced adults.
How do we treat baby-faced adults differently?
We are genetically programmed to respond gently to infantile features. Also associate these features with things like helplessness.
What are first impressions influenced by?
By different aspects of a persons appearance
What is the baby face over-generalization?
Instinct to protect things that look like babies-adaptive
What is the familiar-face overgeneralization?
We respond appropriately to people who look like friends versus foes-generalizes to strangers who look like friends
What is the unfit-face over generalization?
Adaptive value of recognizing genetic anomaliies-people who are unattractive resemble people of low fitness and health
What is the emotional face overgeneralization?
Adaptive value of recognizing emotions-generalize to people who “look” happy or angry
What are scripts?
Preset notions about certain types of situations
What can scripts enable us to do?
Anticipate goals, behaviours, and outcomes likely to occur in a particular setting-helps us understand people’s verbal and nonverbal behaviour
What did Pryor and Merluzzi find about the dating script?
Extensive daters were faster to arrange steps in order
What kinds of non-verbal behaviour exist?
Facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, interpersonal distance, body position, touch, eye contact
What percentage of our communication is non-verbal?
93%
Are words or tone more emotional?
Tone
What do we rely on when verbal and nonverbal cues conflict?
Nonverbal cues to interpret the meaning
What are the six major emotions?
Anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, sadness
What emotion is detected the most and the least easily?
Most: Happiness
Least: Disgust
What are display rules?
Governance of universal emotional expression-cultural rules on how emotion can be conveyed-makes it harder to pick up on the emotions that are supposed to be hidden
What are women better at when it comes to emotions?
Detection, easier to judge expressions, smile more often, gaze at and are gazed at more often.
What is deception?
The act of hiding emotions