Notes: Social Perception

Social Perception: Understanding How We Form Impressions and Make Attributions

Introduction to Social Perception

• Definition: Social perception is the study of how individuals form impressions of and make inferences about other people.

• Basis of Impressions: All impressions are derived from observable behavior, including:

  • What people do.

  • What people say.

  • Facial expressions.

  • Gestures.

  • Tone of voice.

• These observations lead to the formation of impressions and personal theories about others.

• Core Questions Explored:

  • How do people utilize nonverbal cues to comprehend others?

  • What is the speed of first impression formation, and why do they endure?

  • How do individuals ascertain the reasons behind others' actions?

  • What is the influence of culture on social perception and attribution processes?

Non-Verbal Communication

• Definition: Non-verbal communication encompasses how people communicate, both intentionally and unintentionally, without using words.

• Purpose:

  • Expression of emotion and personality.

  • Conveying attitudes.

• Quote: Ralph Waldo Emerson, in The Conduct of Life, stated: "When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first." This emphasizes the significance of nonverbal cues over verbal ones.

The Human Face: Encoding & Decoding

• The human face is considered the "crown jewel" of nonverbal communication due to its immense communicativeness.

• Two Phases of Nonverbal Communication:

  • Encode: The act of expressing or emitting nonverbal behavior.

    • Examples: Smiling, patting someone on the back.

  • Decode: The act of interpreting or inferring meaning from nonverbal behavior.

    • Examples: Interpreting a smile as "fake AF," deciding a pat was condescending rather than kind.

Species-Specific vs. Culture-Specific Cues

• Many nonverbal communication forms are species-specific, meaning they are universal across all humans, rather than culture-specific.

• Susskind & Colleagues (2008) Study:

  • Investigated facial expressions of fear and disgust.

  • Found that muscle movements for these emotions are opposite:

    • Fear: Enhances perception (e.g., widening eyes and nostrils to take in more information).

    • Disgust: Decreases perception (e.g., scrunching the nose and narrowing the eyes to block out noxious stimuli).

Challenges in Decoding Nonverbal Cues

• Affect Blends: Decoding is difficult when people display affect blends, where one part of the face registers one emotion, while another part registers a different emotion (e.g., smiling with sad eyes).

Cultural Differences in Nonverbal Communication

• While some facial expressions are universal, other nonverbal cues are less so, including:

  • Hand gestures.

  • Personal space.

  • Eye contact.

  • Head movements.

• Display Rules: These are culturally determined rules that dictate which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display. They are influenced by:

  • Gender:

    • Men are often discouraged from emotional displays like crying, whereas women are generally permitted.

    • Women may be discouraged from displaying an uninhibited smile in certain contexts.

  • Culture:

    • Eye Contact/Gaze: In some cultures (e.g., USA), lack of direct eye contact can be perceived as suspicious. In others, direct eye contact is considered disrespectful.

    • Personal Space: In the USA, people typically maintain a "bubble" of personal space. In cultures like the Middle East, South America, and Southern Europe, people tend to stand closer to each other and engage in more frequent physical touch.

Emblems

• Definition: Emblems are nonverbal gestures that possess specific, well-understood definitions within a particular culture.

• They typically have a direct verbal meaning (e.g., a thumbs-up can mean "good job").

• Crucially, emblems are NOT UNIVERSAL; their meanings vary significantly across cultures.

First Impressions: Speed and Persistence

"Judging a Book by Its Cover"

• First impressions are predominantly based on easily observable characteristics that we can see and hear about a person.

• These initial observations are critical to the formation of a first impression.

The Power of First Impressions

• Rapidity: People form initial impressions based on facial appearance in less than $100$ milliseconds (Bar, Neta, & Linz, 2006; Willis & Todorov, 2006).

• Early Development: Individuals begin to infer character from faces as young as $3$ years old (Cogsdill, Todorov, Spelke, & Banaji, 2014).

• Example: Baby Faces: Faces with features reminiscent of small children (e.g., big eyes, a small chin and nose, and a high forehead) are perceived as having childlike traits such as being naive, warm, and submissive.

• Thin-Slicing: Limited exposure to someone's behavior can lead to meaningful first impressions of their abilities and personalities.

  • Definition: Thin-slicing is the process of drawing significant conclusions about another person's personality or skills based on an extremely brief sample of their behavior.

The Primacy Effect and Belief Perseverance

• Primacy Effect: This phenomenon describes how the first traits we perceive in others exert a strong influence on how we interpret information we learn about them later. Initial information tends to be weighted more heavily.

• Belief Perseverance: This is the tendency to hold onto an initial judgment or belief, even when presented with new, contradictory information that should logically prompt a reconsideration of that judgment.

Real-World Impact of First Impressions

• Public Speaking: A strong opening is crucial to leave a positive first impression on an audience.

• Job Interviews: Factors such as dress, eye contact, and body posture significantly affect evaluations and hiring decisions.

• Handshake Quality: The quality of a person's handshake impacts assessments of their personality and the final hiring outcome (Stewart, Dustin, Barrick, & Darnold, 2008).

Body Language and "Power Posing"

• Carney, Cuddy, & Yap (2010) Study:

  • Investigated the effect of body posture on feelings of power and behavior.

  • High-Power Pose: Standing behind a table, leaning forward with hands firmly planted on the surface.

  • Low-Power Pose: Standing with feet crossed and arms wrapped around one's own torso.

  • Results: Participants who adopted a high-power pose felt more powerful and subsequently adopted a riskier strategy on a gambling task compared to those in a low-power pose.

  • Reference to Amy Cuddy: This research gained significant public attention through Amy Cuddy's work on power poses.

Causal Attributions: Answering the "Why"

Attribution Theory (Fritz Heider)

• Definition: Attribution theory describes how people explain the causes of others' behavior.

• Pioneer: Fritz Heider is credited with the initial development of attribution theory.

• Key Distinction: Heider's theory broadly distinguishes between internal and external attributions.

• Purpose: Attributions help us understand, explain, and predict social behavior, both our own and that of others.

• Consequences: The attributions we make have significant consequences for how we react to people and situations.

• Example: Columbine Incident: Media explanations for the Columbine shooting illustrate a wide range of attributions, from societal issues (prohibition of school prayer, under-funded schools), to cultural influences (video games, violent movies, music like Marilyn Manson), personal factors (bullying, parental neglect), and access to means (guns).

The "Players": Actor and Observer

• Actor: The person whose behavior is being explained.

• Observer: The person who is doing the explaining.

• Note: An individual can be both an actor and an observer, as we frequently explain our own behavior.

Personal (Internal/Dispositional) Attributions

• Definition: These reflect a person's personality, character, or attitude.

• Characteristics:

  • Behavior is perceived as voluntary.

  • Tells us something about the person's inherent traits.

  • Facilitates the prediction of future behavior.

  • Provides a sense of control over understanding others.

Situational (External) Attributions

• Definition: These explain behavior based on the environment or external circumstances.

• Characteristics:

  • Says little about the person's inherent traits.

  • Assumes most people would respond similarly in that specific situation.

  • Does not facilitate the prediction of future behavior.

Relationship Attributions

• Example: Happy Relationship:

  • Partner's Positive Behaviors: Tendency to make internal attributions (e.g., "She helped me because she's such a generous person.").

  • Partner's Negative Behaviors: Tendency to make external attributions (e.g., "He said something mean because he's so stressed at work this week.").

• Example: Unhappy Relationship:

  • Partner's Positive Behaviors: Tendency to make external attributions (e.g., "She helped me because she wanted to impress our friends.").

  • Partner's Negative Behaviors: Tendency to make internal attributions (e.g., "He said something mean because he's a totally self-centered jerk.").

The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

• AKA Correspondence Bias.

• Definition: When explaining the behavior of others, there is a pervasive tendency to:

  • Overestimate dispositional (internal, personal) causes of behavior.

  • Underestimate situational (external) causes of behavior.

• Example: Group Project Scenario:

  • Observer's View (You): If a student doesn't complete her part, you might attribute it internally: "She's lazy, inconsiderate, not motivated."

  • Actor's View (Her): The student might attribute it externally: "I'm taking $5$ classes, working $30$ hours/week, my boyfriend cheated on me, and my grandmother is seriously ill."

• Actor-Observer Difference in Attributions: People tend to explain their own behaviors differently than they explain others' behaviors.

  • Self - Success: Often attributed to personal and stable factors (e.g., "I am so smart").

  • Other - Success: Often attributed to situational and unstable factors (e.g., "He got lucky").

  • Self - Failure: Often attributed to situational and unstable factors (e.g., "That test was unreasonable").

  • Other - Failure: Often attributed to personal and stable factors (e.g., "He's stupid").

The Two-Step Process of Attribution

1. Step 1: Make an Internal Attribution: This occurs quickly and spontaneously. People initially assume a person's behavior is due to something about that individual.

2. Step 2: Adjust Attribution by Considering the Situation: This step requires more effort and conscious attention. Often, people fail to make a sufficient adjustment, leading to the FAE.

Culture and Social Perception: Shaping Our Lenses

Analytic vs. Holistic Thinking

• Analytic Thinking (Western Cultures):

  • Values in Western cultures foster this style.

  • Focuses primarily on the properties of objects or people, paying less attention to the surrounding context or situation.

• Holistic Thinking (Eastern Cultures):

  • Values in Eastern cultures foster this style.

  • Focuses on the object or person and the surrounding context, as well as the relationships between them.

• fMRI Study on Cultural Experience and Brain Processing:

  • Investigated brain activation when judging the length of a line inside a box.

  • Conditions: Participants were instructed either to ignore the box (ignore context) or pay attention to the box (attend to context).

  • Results:

    • Americans showed greater brain activation when told to pay attention to context (indicating it was less natural for them).

    • East Asians showed greater brain activation when told to ignore context (indicating this was less natural for them).

    • This suggests that each culture has a default processing style, with effort required to switch to the less natural mode.

Cultural Differences in Attributions

• Individualistic Cultures (e.g., Western countries):

  • Members tend to prefer dispositional attributions; they "think like personality psychologists."

  • Graphs show Americans (individualistic context) consistently make a higher proportion of personal attributions than Indians across different age groups (from $8$ to Adult).

• Collectivistic Cultures (e.g., Eastern countries):

  • Members tend to prefer situational explanations; they "think like social psychologists."

  • Their greater situational focus is a matter of degree; they may still make initial dispositional attributions but are more likely to proceed to the "second step" of adjusting for situational factors.

  • Graphs show Indians (collectivistic context) consistently make a higher proportion of situational attributions than Americans across different age groups (from $8$ to Adult).

• Bicultural Priming Study (Example):

  • Bicultural participants (e.g., Chinese-Americans) were primed with images evoking either American or Chinese culture.

  • They were then asked to make attributions about the behavior of a "leader" fish in a pack.

  • The cultural prime influenced whether they made dispositional or situational attributions about the fish's behavior, demonstrating the contextual nature of cultural influence on attribution.

Self-Serving Bias

• Definition: The tendency to attribute one's successes to internal/dispositional factors and failures to external/situational factors.

• Cultural Prevalence: This bias is more prevalent in Western, individualistic cultures than in Eastern, collectivistic cultures.

• Example: Olympic Gold Success Explanations:

  • U.S. Reporters: Often discuss success primarily in terms of unique talent and personal ability (internal attribution).

  • Japan: Incorporate the role of other people, such as coaches and family, in explaining an athlete's success (external/relational attribution).

Attributions for Failure & Belief in a Just World

• Attributions for Failure:

  • U.S. (Individualistic): Tend to make attributions to external causes (e.g., "That test was unreasonable").

  • China (Collectivistic): Tend to make internal, self-critical attributions (e.g., "I am stupid"). Self-critical attributions can function to hold groups together and promote humility in some Asian cultures.

• Belief in a Just World:

  • Definition: The belief that people generally get what they deserve and deserve what they get; good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people.

  • Cultural Prevalence: This belief is more prevalent in cultures characterized by extreme differences in wealth, as it can serve to rationalize social inequalities and injustices.