Social Perception Flashcards
Social Perception
The study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people
Nonverbal Communication
The way in which people communicate intentionally or unintentionally without words (facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body movement, etc)
Facial expressions
There are six major emotional expressions: anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, and sadness
Affect Blends
occur when one part of the face registers one emotion and another part, a different emotion
Display rules
particular to each culture and dictate what kinds of emotional expressions people are supposed to show
Emblems
non-verbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within given culture, the usually have direct verbal translations like the “OK” sign.
Implicit Personality Theory
A type of schema people use to group various kids of personality traits together; for example, many people believe that someone who is kind is generous as well.
Internal Attribution
The inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character, or personality.
External Attribution
The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of somethin about the situation he or she is in.
The assumption is that most people would respond the same way in that situation
Correspondence Bias (Fundamental Attribution Error)
the tendency to believe that people’s behavior matches (corresponds to) their dispositions
Covariation Model
Focuses on observations of behavior across time, place, actors, and targets and whether the person perceiving it chooses either internal or external attributions.
A theory that states that to form an attribution about what caused a person’s behavior, we systematically note the pattern between the presence or absence of possible causal factors and whether or not the behavior occurs.
Consensus Information
How someone behaves in the same way other people around them do
Information about the extent to which other people behave the same way towards the same stimulus as the actor does
Distinctiveness Information
How someone behaves in the same way in multiple situations
Information about the extent to which one particular actor behaves in the same way to different stimuli.
Consistency Information
How someone behaves in the same context consistently
Information about the extent to which the behavior between one actor and one stimulus is the same across time and circumstances
Perceptual Salience
The seeming importance of information that is the focus of people’s attention
Two step process of the Fundamental Attribution Error
- First we make an internal attribution; we assume that the person’s behavior was due to something about that person
- Then we attempt to adjust this attribution by considering the situation the person was in. But we often don’t make enough of an adjustment in the 2nd step.
Actor/Observer Difference
We tend to see other people’s behavior as representing who they are, while we are more likely to see our own behavior as situationally caused.
Occurs because of perceptual salience
Self-Serving Attributions
Explanations for one’s successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors.
People tend to give themselves more credit when they succeed and less credit when they fail.
Defensive Attributions
Explanations for behavior that avoid feelings of vulnerability and mortality
Self-serving Bias:
The tendency to perceive ourselves favorably
Demonstrated in 4 ways:
-Self serving attributions
-being better than average
-unrealistic optimism
-false consensus
Attributions
Explanations for events
False Consensus
We tend to overestimate the number of people who agree with us on a given issue
