social perception

social perception

an active cognitive process (or set of processes) through which we know, understand, and judge others

process of social perception

situational stimulus → perceiver’s subjective impression of stimulus → perceiver’s judgement/behavior response

effect of stimulus is…

…mediated by impression of stimulus

perceiver assesses target person’s ____ ____ ( ____ )

affective state (nonverbal behavior)

what are some nonverbal behaviors?

• facial expression (5 basic emotions)

• eye contact

• body language (posture, gesture, emblems)

• detecting deception (micro-expressions, interchannel discrepancies, exaggerated facial display)

nonverbal behavior - cognitive tuning model

• neutral/serious faces elicit systematic processing

• positive/happy faces elicit heuristic processing

attribution

perceiver assesses cause of target person’s behavior

Kelley’s ANOVA model - 3 components

to make attribution, perceiver compared observed behavior event to:

• other actors (consensus)

• other situations (consistency)

• other stimuli (distinctiveness)

what is a flaw with the ANOVA model?

assumes that we have unlimited cognitive resources, allowing us to engage in systematic analysis

Gilbert 3-stage model

stage 1: categorize behavior

stage 2: trait/dispositional inference

stage 3: correct for situation, if person has the capacity to think more critically about situation/cause of behavior

theory of correspondent inference

a person’s behavior reflects their stable traits when their behavior (1) is freely chosen; (2) yields distinctive, uncommon effects; (3) is low in social desirability

fundamental attribution error

the tendency to assume that a target person’s behavior is caused by their dispositional characteristics

actor-observer bias

when the perceiver is observing the actor, they make dispositional attributions for their behavior…when you observe your own behavior, you attribute it to situational factors

self-serving/egocentric bias

when something positive happens, we attribute it to our dispositions…when something negative happens, we attribute it to our situational factors

just-world hypothesis

we want to believe that the world is just/fair…if we do good, we will get positive outcomes in life; if we do bad, we will get negative outcomes in life

• if something negative happens, we attribute the behavior to the person being “bad”

why do we want to believe the just-world hypothesis?

because we do not want to believe that negative outcomes can happen to us

impression formation

perceiver combines information to form a summary judgement/impression

impression management

the desire to make a favorable first impression

• self-enhancement: increase appeal to others

• other-enhancement: make target person feel good

Solomon Asch - primacy effect

when we’re combining multiple pieces of information, first impressions count more heavily

what was Asch’s experiment?

those who read the positive traits found the person more favorable compared to those who read the negative traits first

Anderson’s weighted average model

• when forming an impression, it is an average of all the information you have about a person

• some pieces of information are weighed more heavily than others

Asch - gestalt model

image of the whole is more positive than image of each part/average

memory-based impression formation

retrieve information from LTM when forming an impression

on-line impression formation

updating impression as you learn information, retrieve pre-made impression