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
What is the easiest thing to deceive and what is the hardest?
Easy-Face
Hard- Nervous movements
What are some indicators of deception?
Increase in pitch, increase in blinks, say less, touch self more, muscle tension increases
What makes it easier to detect lies?
Focusing on something other than the face
What is attribution?
Describes how people explain the causes of behaviour
What are the 2 categories of attribution?
Situational and personal
What are personal attributions?
Internal characteristics such as personality or mood
What are situational attributions?
Factors external to the actor such as task.
What is Jones Theory on attributions?
People try to infer whether the act itself corresponds to an enduring personal characteristic of the actor.
What are the criteria for making inferences according to Jones Theory?
1) Person’s degree of choice
2) Expectedness of behaviour (is it societally accepted)
3) Intended effects/consequences of behaviour
What is Kelly’s Theory on attribution?
People make attributions using the Covariation Principle-the cause of behaviour must be present when it does occur and absent when it doesn’t.
What are the 3 kinds of Covariation Principle?
1) Consensus: How are others reacting to the same stimulus
2) Distinctiveness: Is persons behaviour consistent overtime?
3) Consistency: does person react the same or differently to different stimuli
What are cognitive heuristics?
Information processing rules of thumb that can lead to errors
What is the availability heuristic?
Tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances come to mind. Subject to false consensus and base rate fallacy
What is the false consensus effect?
When we overestimate the number of people who share our opinions and beliefs.
What is base rate fallacy?
People are insensitive to consensus info presented in the form of numerical base rates (Ex: plane crash fears-unlikely, but people still freak out due to the big incidences)
What is counter-factual thinking?
Tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred-more likely to use this line of thinking after negative outcomes.
What is the fundamental attribution error?
When we explain other peoples behaviours we tend to overestimate the role of personal factors and overlook the impact of situations-snap judgements about others start with personal charactertistics.
What is the 2 step process (Gilbert and Malone) often done with the fundamental attribution error?
1) Make personal attribution, then correct for situational
2) We are more likely to make these errors when cognitively tasked/distracted (ex: Drinking)
What kinds of cultural differences are shown with the fundamental attribution error?
Kids in India versus USA: Ages 8-11 most use situational explanations. Sudden split in teen years where american teens go to personal and indian kids go to situational
What are motivational biases?
Wishful seeing; people have a tendency to see what they want to see
What did Balcetis and Dunning demonstrate with wishful seeing?
Taste-testing experiment. Assigned to OJ or stinky green juice. Were told that seeing a letter would yield orange juice: 72% saw a B. Told that a number would yield orange juice 61% saw 13 for the same figure
What is the belief in a just world bias and what kind of attribute do they assign (personal or situational)
Assumption is that people get what they deserve-people who have high beliefs in a just world assign personal attributes
Why do people tend to assign personal attributes when they believe in a just world?
Self-protective: people want to believe the world is fair and just and that if they are good the world will treat them good
What is the idea behind perceiver characteristics?
Impression formation is in the eye of the beholder-our mood influences the impressions we form.
What are priming effects?
Tendency for recently used words to come to mind more easily and influence the interpretation of new information
How did Chartrand demonstrate the priming effect?
Had word search puzzles with acheivement words. 57% of the sample continued task after the stop signal (22% in the control).
What are target characteristics?
Create impressions based on traits
What is the negativity bias?
Negative information holds a greater weight-we naturally infer information about others based on the traits we believe they possess.
What is the primacy effect?
Information presented early in a sequence has more impact on impressions than later information
Why does the primacy effect occur?
1) Once we think we have formed an accurate impression, we pay less attention to later information to reduce ambiguity (prefer immediate impression)
2) Change of meaning hypothesis- One we identify a trait, if something is inconsistent, e modify our impression of those traits. (Ex: calm=peaceful or manipulative and calculating)
Who does the primacy effect occur less in?
Those who have a lower need for closure
What is a confirmation bias?
Once we make up our mind about something, we are not likely to change it even when confronted with new evidence. We create, seek, and interpret information that verifies existing bias
What is belief perseverance?
Tendency to maintain beliefs even after this has been discredited.
How do we reduce biases?
Ask someone to consider why alternative explanations may be true (motivational interviewing)
What is the self-fulfilling prophecy?
Process by which one’s expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations
