Lecture 3 - Social Perception

Wills & Todorov (2006)

Found that first impressions happen quickly, based on minimal information, within 100ms

Livingston & Pearce (2009)

Found that baby-faced individuals are perceived as childlike, naive, and submissive

Information Used in Impression Formation

Physical appearance (facial features, cleanliness, clothes), nonverbal communication (facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures), behaviours, and verbal communication

Impression Formation

The process of taking observable information and quickly, automatically making trait inferences (e.g. competence, interpersonal qualities) using categorisation, where observed cues are categorised with traits they typically indicate

Thin-Slicing

Drawing meaningful conclusions about another person's personality or skills based on a brief sample of behaviour; can lead to stereotyping

Continuum Model of Impression Formation (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990)

Dual-processing model suggesting impressions are formed via category-based processing (quicker, used in a hurry) and individuated processing (used when motivated to be accurate or when people don't fit categories), on a continuum

The Primacy Effect

The first traits perceived in an individual influence how subsequent information about them is viewed, making first impressions resilient

Belief Perseverance

The tendency to stick with an initial judgement even when new information arises that should prompt reconsideration

Attribution Theory

The study of how people explain the causes of behaviour; attributions are typically made for negative or unexpected events, and can be internal (dispositional) or external (situational)

Covariation Model (Kelley, 1967, 1973)

Model focusing on patterns between behaviour and the presence/absence of possible causal factors, examining how behaviour varies across time, place, actors and targets

Consensus

The extent to which other people behave the same way toward a stimulus as the actor does; low consensus leads to an internal attribution

Distinctiveness

The extent to which one actor behaves the same way toward other stimuli; low distinctiveness leads to an internal attribution

Consistency

The extent to which behaviour between an actor and a stimulus is the same across time and circumstances; high consistency leads to an internal attribution

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to attribute others' behaviour to their dispositions rather than to the situation

Two-Step Process of Attributions

People make dispositional attributions automatically (stage 1), only later incorporating situational information (stage 2) if the context is compelling enough or they are motivated for accuracy

Perceptual Salience

The tendency to use the most prominent information available (usually the actor) to explain their behaviour, rather than less prominent situational context

Taylor and Fiske (1975)

Observers seated facing two confederates in conversation rated the more visually prominent (salient) confederate as more leading in the conversation; this effect disappeared when observers faced both confederates equally

Actor-Observer Bias

Individuals tend to attribute others' behaviour to disposition but their own behaviour to situation (Jones & Nisbett, 1972)

Self-Serving Attribution Error

Individuals attribute their successes to dispositional factors and failures to situational factors (Miller & Ross, 1975), helping maintain self-esteem

Belief in a Just World

A defensive attribution assuming bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people

Bias Blind Spot

The tendency to believe other people are more susceptible to attributional biases than oneself

Pronin et al. (2002)

Found that people reported being less susceptible to self-serving attributions than the average American, demonstrating the bias blind spot

Culture & Attribution

Individualistic cultures prefer dispositional attributions, while collectivist cultures prefer situational attributions

Mezulis et al. (2004)

Found self-serving bias is strongest in the USA and lower in some Asian cultures; disputed by later studies (Hu et al., 2016) suggesting it can be just as strong

Emblems

Non-verbal gestures with well-understood definitions within a given culture, which often have different meanings in other cultures

Ekman et al. (1971-1997)

Found that 6 major emotional expressions (anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, sadness) are universal, encoded and decoded with equal accuracy across cultures, suggesting emotions are an adaptive evolutionary process

Affect Blends

When different parts of the face express different emotions simultaneously (e.g. an inappropriate joke producing surprise and laughter), which can impact decoding of facial expressions

Factors Affecting Decoding of Facial Expressions

Affect blends, people masking emotions, and cultural context