Social Perception II: Person Perception

Trait Perception: Unifying impression

• Are all contents of a person (trait) perceptions equally important?

• What’s a trait? Why focus on a trait?

  • relatively stable characteristics

  • such as personality (but still debated)

  • second most frequently used category

  • relatively unique to person perception

• Person Perception as Impression Formation (Solomon Asch, 1946)

  • Stage 1: View A List of Traits Describing a Stranger

  • Stage 2: Provide Impressions of the Stranger

  • saw that both set A and set B results were different even though there was only one word different

    • Set A had the word “warm”

    • Set B had the word “cold”

• Are all traits equally important?

  • they tried changing other traits, to see if they effect the overall impressions

  • their conclusion is that not all traits are equally important

  • warm and cold are more important than others

• Central traits

  • Qualities that, When Changed, Alter the Entire Impression of a Person

  • Qualities that, When Changed, Alter the Meaning of Other Traits

Trait Perception: Searching for Central Traits

• What makes a trait central? Julius Wishner, 1960

  • Participants (Students) Rated their instructors on each of the 53 traits

  • Researchers Computed the correlations between the 53 traits across

  • Central Traits are More Correlated with Other Traits

  • Given the High Correlations, Changing the Central Traits Will Change the Person’s Standing on Many Other Traits, Thus Changing the Overall Impression

• What is the problem with this definition?

  • what’s the threshold for high or low correlation

  • any traits can become central traits

  • central traits will differ given different subsets of traits examined → select a more comprehensive set of traits is how you fix this problem

  • central traits will differ given different specific trait items used (synonyms) → factor analysis solved this problem

• Factor analysis of trait ratings (Rosenberg et al., 1968)

  • Factors are not specific trait terms used

  • Factors are underlying constructs that drive the correlations among different trait Perceptions

  • Some colors are more correlated than others

    • why are the perceptions of these colors are more correlated?

      • all colors come from the three primary colors, R, G,B

      • these colors are influenced by a common color factor more than other color factors

    • he asked participants using a trait list to rate a person by the list

    • you can plot at the end the specific trait and find along which axes the trait varied the most

      • the Social Good-Bad (blue)

      • intellectually Good-Bad (green)

Trait Perception: Comprehensive Set To Find Central Traits

• lexical approach

• language models help sample traits that are most different

• turn the abstract words into numbers for the computer

Social Cognition III: Trait Perception

Trait Perception From Faces

• how people perceive others using words

• how people perceive others based on information of the person

• which facial features are central in impression formation?

  • what facial features matter?

    • eyes/ shape

    • mouth/ smiling or frowning

    • eyebrows/shape or position

  • structural resemblance to emotional expressions

  • Overgeneralization Theory (Leslie Zebrowitz, 2017)

  • recognizing emotional cues → survival (fight or flight) → anger cues → danger situation → threat → overgeneralize: resemblance to anger → threat

    • based on evolutionary pov, other facial features that may be important could be…

      • Babyfaceness

        • how might babyfaceness influence trait perception?

          • recognizing babies → survival of genes → weak, warm → overgeneralize: adults with babyface → weak, warm

      • Attractiveness

        • how might attractiveness influence trait perception?

          • attractive people are more desirable

          • Overgeneralization theory

            • recognizing fitness → survival of genes → mate, desire

            • overgeneralize: attractive people → fit → desirable

          • overgeneralize: attractiveness Halo Effect → more friendly, confident (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, and Longo, 1991)

      • Familiarity

        • recognizing familiar people → kinship → safe, trust → overgeneralize: people looks familiar → trustworthy

      • Demographics (gender, age, race)

      • Facial structures

        • face Width-to-Height Ratio

        • face roundness, heartshapeness

        • cheekbone prominence

        • eye shape, eye size, nose shape, nose size, lip fullness

        • structural resemeblance to emotional expressions most important

        • the importance of other features depend on traits

Trait Perception From Body

• Generate different stimuli using a computational model

• Then they were asked to measure trait perception from the body

• Factor analysis to understand which features of the body shift trait perception the most

• Conclusion is that there are two body shape features that predict trait perception: weight and shapeliness

• associations between body shapes and trait perceptions reflect stereotypes, not the truth!

Trait Perception From Context

• Study: color intensity increases perceived extraversion and openness for zero-acquaintance judgments

  • generated stimuli: backgrounds with different color intensities

  • asked people to perceive the extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability

  • results: people thought that more saturated background = more open-minded and extrovert etc.

  • generated stimulus: clothes with different color intensities

  • same as before but whether more or less saturated clothing changes trait perception

  • results: more saturated color = more likely to be thought be open-minded, etc.