PSYC2012 - Chapter 4 - Social Perception

Impression formation

the forming of the first knowledge that a person has concerning another person

What do people base their initial impressions of others on?

Facial features, stereotypes, at times false information

Thin-slicing

Drawing meaningful conclusions about other people based off of extremely brief samples of behavior

Nonverbal communication

The way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words. (Tone of voice, eye movements, body posture)

What are the six universal emotions?

Joy, fear, sadness, anger, disgust, and surprise (WATCH INSIDE OUT)

What is the purpose of nonverbal communication?

To express emotions and personality and convey attitudes while not speaking

Encode

to express or emit nonverbal behavior, such as smiling or patting someone on the back

Decode

to interpret the meaning of the nonverbal behavior other people express, such as deciding that a pat on the back was an expression of kindness

What did Charles Darwin propose about facial expressions?

That they were vestiges (structures with lost usages) that were once useful physiological reactions. For instance, if someone ate something that tasted terrible, they'd wrinkle their face and then eject the food from their mouths.

Affect blends

facial expressions in which one part of the face registers one emotion while another part of the face registers a different emotion

Display rules

cross-cultural guidelines for how and when to express emotions

Belief preserverance

tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them

Emblems

nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture; they usually have direct verbal translations, such as the OK sign

What did David Matsumoto's trip to the Olympics reveal about the nature of facial expressions when comparing blind athletes with sighted athletes

That the placement of their bone structures were the same when they won and when they lost respectively; proves that facial expressions are innate

Emotional labor

Expressing and regulating emotions so that they are organizationally desirable in work environments is common in our social world.

Surface acting

hiding one's inner feelings and faking emotional expressions in response to display rules

Deep acting

trying to modify one's true inner feelings based on display rules

What types of jobs are more likely to succumb to emotional labor?

Interpersonal ones that involve interacting with people outside of the work environment (teachers, Disneyland employees, etc)

What can emotional labor lead to in terms of one's perception of their job?

Leads to decreased enjoyment of job, lower self-esteem, and more sick days due to emotional drainage

Attribution theories

theories designed to explain how people determine the causes of behavior, whether it be their own behavior or someone else's

Given that facial expression is a key component of nonverbal communication, how do people with facial paralysis communicate?

By relying on communication strategies such as expressive words, hand gestures, and laughter

Primacy effect

In terms of impression formation, traits that are listed first tend to have more of an influence than ones that are listed later

internal attribution

attributing the cause of a person's behavior to an internal personality trait or disposition

External attribution

explaining someone's behavior by referring to the situation

Covariation model

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 the behavior occurs

What are the three parts of the covariation model?

consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency

Consensus information

information about the extent to which other people behave the same way toward the same stimulus as the actor does. Do other people behave in the same way?

HIGH = yes, situational (environment)

LOW = no, dispositional (personality)

Distinctive information

The extent to which a particular actor behaves in the same way toward different stimuli. Is the behavior unique to the stimuli?

HIGH = yes, situational (environment)

LOW = no, dispositional (personality)

Consistency information (Kelley)

The extent to which the behavior between one actor and one stimulus is the same across time and circumstances. How frequently does this person engage in this behavior in this situation?

HIGH = Always, dispositional

LOW = Unknown; something unusual is going in the situation

According to Kelley's theory, it is hard to make any sort of straightforward attribution when ______ is low

Consistency**

People are more likely to make an internal attribution when ___ and ____ are low

Consensus and distinctiveness

Fundamental attribution error (correspondence error)

the tendency for observers, when analyzing another's behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition

Perceptual salience

How certain pieces of information stand out and grab our attention.

Two-Step Attribution Process

analyzing another person's behavior first by making an automatic internal attribution and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behavior, after which one may adjust the original internal attribution

Self-serving attributions

explanations for one's successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one's failures that blame external, situational factors

Belief in a just world

A form of defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people

Bias blind spot

the tendency to think that other people are more susceptible to attributional biases in their thinking than we are

Holistic Thinking Style

a type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other; this type of thinking is common in East Asian cultures

Analytic Thinking Style

A type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context; this type of thinking is common in Western cultures

People in ______ cultures tend to prefer dispositional attributions

Western, individualistic

People in ______ cultures tend to prefer situational attributions

Eastern, collectivist

Actor-observer bias

the tendency to blame our actions on the situation and blame the actions of others on their disposition. More common with failures

Infromation access

Actors having more information about themselves than do observers (e.g., how consistent a present behavior is to past behavior)

Motivational bias

Desire to maintain and improve one's self esteem

I

2 step attributional process

analyzing behavior first by making an automatic internal attribution & then only thinking about possible situational reasons for the behavior

bias blind spot:

The tendency to think that other people are more susceptible to attributional biases in their thinking than we are