Week 4 Social Perception Flashcards
What is social perception?
study of how we form impressions and make inferences about other people through observable behaviour, ie. expressions, talking, non-verbal behaviours, hand movements
What 3 things does non-verbal communication convey?
- Emotional states
- Personality traits (extroversion linked to broad gestures and frequence changes in voice pitch)
- Ironic/sarcastic information that contradicts verbal information
What are the 6 universal emotions found? - as young as 6 months/blind children (AHSFDS)
- Anger
- happiness
- surprise
- fear
- disgust
- sadness
What are some cultural examples of emotional expression?
- American norms: grief and crying are discouraged in men, but accepted in women
- American women are encouraged to smile widely, Japanese women hide their smile behind their hands
- Personal space
What are emblems?
Nonverbal gestures that have a well-understood meaning within a given culture and usually have direct verbal translations
Why are women better at encoding social cues but easier to deceive?
Probably because women have been socialised to be more polite, and become more susceptible to deceiving behaviour
What are the reasons Eagly thinks the division of labour by gender has produced differences in non-verbal behaviour?
Men and women are shoved into gender-role expectations, ie. women should be nurturing and sensitive, while men are strong, unexpressive, analytical.
- Therefore, men and women develop different skills based of experiences and treatment of being within a gendered role in society
- Thus, women are more likely to be more accommodating and polite compared to men, because they are less likely to occupy roles that are associated with masculine traits of power/influence
What is causal attribution?
a theory that we try to determine people’s behaviour in order to uncover the feelings/traits that are behind their actions
What are the 2 ways that we attribute people’s behaviour to? (Attribution Process, Heider)
- Internal dispositional attribution = the disposition, attitude, character, innate personality traits, unique to individual.
- External situational attribution = elements on the environment caused the behaviour, inference that most people would behave the same way in the same situation
What do people in healthy relationships do in the attribution process?
- Make internal attributions of their partner’s positive qualities, “they helped me because they are a good generous person”
- Make external attributions of their partners negative qualities, “they ignored my texts because they’re stressed from university”
Which way do we often attribute the behaviour of other people to?
Humans seem to have a bias to hold an internal attribution due to the complicated nature of the external environment
What’s an example of correspondence bias / fundamental attribution error ?
Correspondence bias is our tendency to make internal attributions about someone’s negative qualities, but make external attributions about our own negative qualities
Example - When someone gets angry, it’s because they are an angry person, but when you get angry, it’s because your life is stressful, etc.
What is the Actor / Observer Difference?
An amplification of the correspondence bias, where we attribute causes to behaviour
The tendency to see other people’s behaviour as dispositionally caused, and own own behaviour as situationally caused
How does the Covariation Model (Kelley) extend attribution theory?
In forming an attribution, we think about what caused this person’s behaviour, we note a pattern between the presence or absence of possible causal factors and if the behaviour occurs because of them
What 3 factors do we use in covariation model to attribute someone’s behaviour?
(C-D-C)
- Consensus - how many people act the same way?
- Distinctiveness - Do they do this in different situations?
- Consistency - Is it the same across time and circumstances, ie “Have they done this before?
What is Correspondence Bias / Fundamental attribution error ?
“People do what they do because of the kind of people they are and not because of the situation they’re in” - lecturer
What are self-serving attributions?
- We explain our successes that credit our internal, disposition factors
- We explain our failures on external, situational factors out of our control
Why do we think other people’s behaviour as dispositionally caused, and own own behaviour as situationally caused
- We have more information about oneself over time compared to other people
- We have more information about the consistency and distinctiveness about our own behaviour compared to other’s behaviour
- If we made internal attributions about ourselves it would lead to negative self-esteem for our self-concept
Why do we make self-serving attributions? (3)
- maintain self-esteem
- excuse our failures when we can’t seem to improve
- we don’t want to challenge or improve our own behaviour and choices
What 3 ways do we reduce cognitive dissonance?
- We change our behaviour to align it with the dissonant cognition
- We justify our behaviour through modifying one of the dissonant thoughts
- We justify our behaviour by adding new cognitions
- We engage in selective thinking (inhibiting areas of dissonant information, and lighting up when consonance is presented)
Why do we constantly need to justify our actions?
To maintain a positive self-image, particularly when we encounter evidence that contradicts our self-image / avoid cognitive dissonance
How does decision making cause self-doubt and dissonance?
in force choices - the chosen option is never always positive, while the disregarded option was never going to be completely negative
Made worse by the permanency, finality and importance of the decision
How do we reduce self-doubt and dissonance in decision making?
we downplay negative aspects of the chosen option, and downplay the positive aspects of the option we rejected
What is the justification of effort?
the tendency to individual to increase their liking for something they worked hard to attain
they will find ways to change their attitudes towards the goal they achieved and view it positively
What is counterattitudinal advocacy and why do we do it?
Stating an option/attitude overtly in social citation that runs counter to your own private belief/attitude
We do this because there is enough external justification, ie. a reason for dissonant personal behaviour outside of the individual, ie. being polite/avoiding conflict/getting social rewards
What is internal justification in cognitive dissonance?
Internal justification occurs when we change one of our dissonant beliefs/attitudes when we act in insincere ways without good external justification
What is external justification in cognitive dissonance?
A reason for dissonant personal behaviour outside of the individual, ie. being polite/avoiding conflict
What happens when we have a lack of external justification for our efforts?
With insufficient external justification (being paid $1 for a dissonant task, we develop internal justification (started to believe and change their dissonant attitudes)
What happens when we have adequate external justification for our efforts?
We can maintain our internal beliefs and engage in counterattitudinal advocacy
What is the insufficient punishment effect + example?
The dissonance aroused when individuals lack sufficient external justification for having resisted a desired activity/object, usually resulting in individuals devaluing the forbidden activity/object (engaging in internal justification)
Large rewards or severe punishments leads to …
external justifications (I am doing this because I have to) - temporary change
Small rewards or mild punishments leads to …
internal justifications (I am doing this because I have convinced myself that this is right) - lasting changes
Based on the finding that East Asian cultures are more likely to engage in holistic (rather than analytic) processing, compared to Eastern cultures, what do Western cultures focus on?
Westerners will be more attuned to feature information such as hair colour, compared to East Asians
In general, when people first encounter a novel situation, they tend to —
size up the situation quickly and effortlessly, and for the most part correctly
What are display rules?
are culture-specific norms that dictate what kinds of emotional expression are allowed.
