Social ch 4
1 Perceiving Others
2 Social Perception
• The processes by which people come to understand one another
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• How we form impressions and make inferences about others
• Important in explaining, predicting, and controlling the behaviors of others
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3 “Elements” of Social Perception
• Social perception depends on our ability to perceive and interpret information about the other person
• Our impressions are often influenced by superficial characteristics
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• E.g., person’s name, pitch of their voice, how “familiar” they look, etc.
4 A Person’s Physical Appearance
• We evaluate faces quickly, spontaneously, and unconsciously
– Infer personal characteristics of the person from their face (and vice versa)
– Superficial facial cues can lead us to form quick impressions
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5 A Person’s Physical Appearance
6 Facial Features: Mature vs “Baby” Faces
• Baby faced ppl perceived as more honest and kind, but also more immature and capable
• Mature faced ppl are perceived as colder but more dominant and responsible
7 Why Do We Judge “Baby-Faced” Adults Differently?
• Two proposed explanations
1. We are genetically programmed to respond gently to infantile features
2. We learn to associate infantile features with helplessness, and overgeneralize this to baby-faced adults
8 Characteristics of the Situation
• We often use situational ‘ scripts ’
– Helps us anticipate the goals, behaviors, and likely outcomes in a particular setting
• Knowledge of social settings can provide context for understanding verbal and nonverbal behavior
– Example: people yelling in the street vs at a football game
9 Behaviors: Nonverbal Communication
• Unspoken language that helps us identify a person’s inner states
– Four ‘channels’
• Facial Expressions
• Eye Contact
• Body Language
• Physical Contact
– Big cultural variations in nonverbal communication
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10 Behaviors: Nonverbal Communication
11 Detecting Truth and Deception
• “No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.” – Freud
• How well can we tell when someone is lying to us?
– What should we look for to determine whether someone is being honest or deceitful?
12 Detecting Truth and Deception
• Who (or what profession) do you think is the best at detecting deception?
– Who makes the best lie detectors?
13 Detecting Truth and Deception
14 Why is Detecting Deception Difficult?
• We often look at behavioral cues that do not actually signal deception
– Facial expressions and body language can be very controllable
– Looking for signs of stress to indicate lying
• But what if the person is just really nervous?
– We should look for signs of cognitive effort
• E.g., asking person to recount the event in reverse order
15 Explaining Behaviors of Others
16 Dispositions and Attributions
• Dispositions are stable, underlying characteristics such as personality traits, beliefs, and abilities
– We infer these dispositions indirectly based on what the person says and does
– We use these dispositions to predict future behavior
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17 Dispositions and Attributions
• Attributions are the explanations we generate for the behavior of others (and ourselves)
– Personal attribution: attribute the behavior to an internal characteristic (e.g., personality, mood, or ability) of the person
• Ex. Blaming your bad study skills for a bad grade
– Situational attribution: attribute the behavior to external factors (e.g., luck, other people, task difficulty)
18 Jones’s Correspondent Inference Theory
• We try to infer whether a specific behavior corresponds to some underlying
disposition of the person
• Theory states our inference is based on:
– Target’s degree of choice
– How typical the behavior is
– Intended consequences of the behavior
• Learn the most when behavior is freely chosen, atypical, and does not have many positive outcomes
19 Kelley’s Covariation Theory
• Try to determine if behavior was due to individual or situational factors
• Theory states our inference is based on:
– Consensus Information
• How do other people react to same stimuli?
– Distinctiveness Information
• How does this person react to other stimuli?
• Ex. You like all other comedy shows but hate Big Bang theory
– Consistency Information
• Is the person’s reaction consistent across time?
– When consistency is high and consensus and distinctiveness are low, an internal attribution (personal factor) is most likely
– In contrast, a high consensus and distinctiveness with low consistency points to an external attribution (situational factor)
20 Attribution Biases
21 Cognitive Heuristics
• Availability Heuristic
– Estimate the likelihood that an event will occur based on how easily instances of it come to mind
• Can also lead to:
– False-consensus effect
• Overestimate the extent others share our attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions
– Base-rate fallacy
• Tendency to be more influenced by graphic, dramatic examples than numerical
base rates and probabilities
22 Base-Rate Fallacy
23 Counterfactual Thinking
• The tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not
24 Fundamental Attribution Error
• Tendency to overestimates the role of personal factors and underestimates the impact
of situations on other’s behaviors
• Research suggests that social perception is a two-step process
1. Identify behaviors and make quick personal attribution (automatic)
2. Adjust inference to account for situational influences (this requires attention, thought, and effort)
25 Culture and the Fundamental Attribution Error
26 Motivational Biases
• Wishful Seeing
– See things as we want to see them
• Need for Self-Esteem
– Make attributions that enhance or support our worldviews and beliefs
– Influences attributions we make for behaviors of others
27 Motivational Biases
• Belief in a just world
– Belief that individuals get what they deserve in life, often leading people to disparage or blame victims
– More likely to make individual rather than situational attributions when belief in a just world is high
– Belief in a just world can also increase when victim is more similar to the perceiver
28 Integrations and Impressions
From Attributions to Impressions
29 Information Integration
• Impression Formation
– The process of integrating information about a person to form a coherent impression
• Information Integration Theory states that impressions are influenced by:
1. Perceiver’s characteristics
2. A ‘weighted average’ of a target person’s traits
30 Perceiver Characteristics
• We tend to use ourselves as a frame of reference
• Mood and Embodiment effects
– Influenced by current mood, physical position, and sensations of our own bodies
• i.e., “warm”
• Priming Effect
– Also unconsciously influenced by recent experiences
31 The Priming of Social Behavior Without Awareness
32 Weighting of Target Characteristics
• Different traits may be less important across situations
• Trait negativity bias
– Negative information carries more weight than positive information
• Evaluation and weighting are also influenced by:
– Our implicit personality “theories”
– The order in which we learn the traits
33 Implicit Personality “Theories”
• Network of assumptions we have developed about the relationships among various types of people, traits, and behaviors
– E.g., Knowing someone has one trait leads us to infer they have certain other traits
as well
– These associations are based on our own (limited) experiences and may not be accurate
34 Order Effects
• Primacy Effect
– The tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have greater impact on impressions than information presented later
– “Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious”
– “Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, intelligent”
35 Primacy Effect Explanations
• Explanation #1
– Once we have formed an impression, we pay less attention to subsequent information
• Explanation #2
– Change-of-meaning-hypothesis : once we form an impression, we interpret subsequent information to fit with this impression
• E.g., calm can be interpreted as gentle (positive) or cold and calculating (negative)
36 Confirmation Biases
From Impressions to Reality
37 Confirmation Biases
• Our tendency to seek out, create, and more favorably evaluate information that agrees with our beliefs
• We are more likely to seek out and remember evidence that supports our impressions than evidence to the contrary
38 Confirmation Bias
39 Belief Perseverance
• Our tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited
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– Such perseverance may be beneficial (sometimes)
• E.g., Our beliefs about our abilities after a failure
– Our beliefs can lead us to interpret ambiguous information in ways that confirm these existing beliefs
40 Belief Perseverance
41 Confirmatory Hypothesis Testing
• We also try to confirm our suspicions rather than seek out information objectively
– Our expectations influence the evidence we choose to look for
– E.g., psychiatrists and medical doctors less likely to update their preliminary
diagnoses
• Note, we may often lack evidence to update our (negative) impressions
42 The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Process by which our expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways to confirm those expectations
– Our expectations of the target influences our own behavior towards the target
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– The target unwittingly adjusts their behavior based on our actions
– The target’s behavior justifies our expectations
• Rosenthal and Jacobson’s (1968) teacher expectation study
43 Social Perception: The Bottom Line
• Two ways of forming social perceptions
– Quickly and relatively automatically (default)
• Based on physical appearance, preconceptions, cognitive heuristics, with minimal behavioral evidence
• Influenced by superficial characteristics of perceiver and target
– Mindfully
• Based on careful observation, thought, and experiences with target
• Requires time and effort
44 Social Perception: The Bottom Line
• Our first impressions are typically automatic , and involve a number of biases
– Yet we still remain confident in these beliefs, and must be motivated to update
these impressions
• More experience with one another tends to increase the accuracy of our judgments, as does taking a more mindful approach when forming our impressions
- Mind perception = The process by which people attribute human-like mental states to various animate and inanimate objects, including other people.
- Nonverbal behavior = Behavior that reveals a person’s feelings without words through facial expressions, body language, and vocal cues.
- Priming = The tendency for recently used or perceived words or ideas to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information.
- Confirmation bias = The tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs.
- Impression formation = The process of integrating information about a person to form a coherent impression.
- Social perception = A general term for the processes by which people come to understand one another.
- Belief in a just world = The belief that individuals get what they deserve in life, an orientation that leads people to disparage victims.
- Availability heuristic = The tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances come to mind.
- False-consensus effect = The tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes, and behaviors.
- Base-rate fallacy = The finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information presented in the form of numerical base rates.
- Counterfactual thinking = The tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not.
- Fundamental attribution error = The tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the impact of situations on other people’s behaviors.
- Information-integration theory = The theory that impressions are based on (1) perceiver dispositions and (2) a weighted average of a target person’s traits.
- Belief perseverance = The tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited.
- Central traits = Traits that exert a powerful influence on overall impressions.
- Primacy effect = The tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later.
- Situational attribution = Attribution to factors external to an actor, such as the task, other people, or luck.
o Ex. Blaming the teacher for a bad grade
- Covariation principle = A principle of attribution theory that holds that people attribute behavior to factors that are present when a behavior occurs and are absent when it does not.
- Attribution theory = A group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of behavior.
- Self-fulfilling prophecy = The process by which one’s expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations.
- Personal attribution = Attribution to internal characteristics of an actor, such as an ability, personality, mood, or effort.
How do ideological motives color our attributions for the behavior of others? = When we see others acting in certain ways, we look for a correlation/reasoning between the person's motives and their behaviors. This often leads to biased judgements where we attribute behaviors to internal factors that align with our ideology.