W3 Social Perception

Social perception

The process through which we seek to know and understand other people.

Facial expression

Eye contact

Body language

Touching

Nonverbal communication channels

High interest

What does high eye contact indicate?

High emotional arousal such as nervousness or anxiety

What does body language like pacing suggest?

High extraversion and openness to experience

What does a firm handshake imply?

Friendliness, sexual interest, dominance, or aggression

How can touch be interpreted?

Seen as anger and hostility, or weird, rude, and clueless

How was staring portrayed?

Tend to perceive others as truthful → Desire to be polite makes us reluctant to discover/report deception

Why do people often fail to detect deception?

During a sad mood → Increase attention to message content → Decrease attention to cues irrelevant to message content

What increases the likelihood of detecting deception?

Microexpressions, interchannel discrepancies, Exaggerated facial expressions or level of interest, linguistic style

Signs of deception

Attribution

Process through which we seek such information and draw inferences to understand why the people behave the way they do

Theory of Correspondence inference (Jones & Davis, 1965)

Behaviors are indication of lasting traits

Behavior is freely chosen

Behavior yields distinctive effects and was caused by one factor

Behavior is low on social desirability

Signs that behaviors do reflect stable traits

Kelley’s covariation theory (Kelley, 1972)

Attribution depends on three types of information: consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness

Consensus

Extent to which others behave in same way towards the stimulus as the person we are considering

Consistency

Extent to which the person always behaves this way towards the stimulus

Distinctiveness

Extent to which a person responds in the same way towards different stimuli

Low consensus; Low distinctiveness; High consistency

People attribute the causes of others’ behaviors to internal causes when:

High consensus; High distinctiveness; Low consistency

People attribute the causes of others’ behaviors to external causes when:

Stability of causal factors; controllability of causal attribution

Other dimensions of causal attribution

Personality, temperament

Internal and stable cause

Chronic illness, disability

External and consistency cause