[Social Psychology Course Note] Ch 4

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Social Perception: How We Come to Understand Other People

How do people use nonverbal cues to understand others ?

Social perception

When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ther Conduct of Life

  • Why are people the way they are ?
  • Why do people act the way do ?
    • Thinking about people and their bahavior helps us to understand and predict our social world
  • The study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people

Nonverbal Behavior

  • Evolution and facial expressions
    • Crown jewel of nonverbal communication: the facial expressions channel
    • Encode: express
    • Decode: interpret
    • Darwin
      • Nonverbal forms of communications is species, not culture, specific
      • e.g.
        • Fear: enhanced perception - facial and eye movements inxrease sensory input
        • Disgust: decreased perception - facial and eye movements decrease sensory input

Facial expressions of emotion are universal - anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, and sadness

Why is decoding sometimes difficult ?

  • Affect blends 情感混和

Culture and the channels of nonverbal communication

  • Display rules
    • Dictate what kinds of emotional expressions people are supposed to show
    • Are culture-specific
  • Display of emotion
    • American: men discouraged from emotional displays like crying, but women allowed
    • Japan: women discouraged from displaying uninhibited smile
  • Eye contact / gaze
    • America: suspicious when people do not “look them in the eye”
    • Nigeria, Puerto Rico, Thailand: direct eye contact considered disrespectful
  • Personal space
    • America: like bubble of personal space
    • Middle East, South America, southern Europe” stand close to each other and touch frequently

Emblems 象徵

  • Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture
  • Usually have direct verbal translations , like the “OK” sign
  • Not universal

How quickly do first impression form, and why do they persist ?

Impressions based on the slightest of cues

  • “Judging a book by its cover”
    • Easily observable things we can see and hear
    • Crucial to first impression

How quickly do first impressions form ?

  • Form initial impressions based on facial appearance in less than 100 milliseconds (Bar, Neta, & Linz, 2006; Wiils & Todorov, 2006)
  • Infer character from faces as young as 3 years old (Cogsdill, Todorov, Spelke, & Banaji, 2014)
  • e.g., baby faces
    • Features that are reminiscent(回憶) of those of small children (e.g., big eyes, small chin and nose, high forehead)
    • Tend to be perceived as having childlike traits

Thin-slicing 薄片擷取

  • Limited exposure can lead to meaningful first impressions of abilities and personalities
  • Thin-slicing
    • Drawing meaningful conclusions about another person’s personality or skills based on an extermely brief sample of behavior

The lingering(徘徊) influence of initial impressions

  • Primacy effect 初始效應
    • When it comes to forming impressions, the first traits we perceive in others influence how we view information that we learn about them later
  • Belief perseverance 信念的堅持
    • The tendency to stick with an initial judgment even in the face of new information that should prompt us to reconsider

Using first impressions and nonverbal communication to our advantage

  • Public speaking
    • Make sure opening is strong
  • Job interview
    • Dress, eye contact, body posture all affect evaluations
  • Hand shake qaulity
  • Body language
    • Power posing

How do people determine why others do what they do ?

  • Two theories
    • Attribution theory 歸因論
    • Covariation model 共變模型

The nature of the attribute process

  • Heider
    • “Father” of attribute theory
    • “Naive” or “commonsense” psychology
      • Viewed people as amateur scientists
        • Piece together information to figure out cause
  • Attribute theory
    • The way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people’s behavior
  • When deciding about causes of behavior, we can make one of two attributions
    • Internal, dispositional attribution 內歸因，個人特性歸因
      • Infer a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person (e.g., attitude, character, personality)
    • External, situational attribution 外歸因，情境歸因
      • Infer a person is behacing a certain way because of something about the situation

The covariation model: internal versus external attributions

  • 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 not the behavior occurs
  • Focuses on how behavior covaries
    • Across time, place actors, and targets
  • Examines how perceiver chooses an internal or an external attribution
  • We make choices about internal versus external attributions by using three pieces of information
    • Consensus 共識 (別人面對相同刺激與主角有相同行為表現的程度)
      • The extent to which other people behave the same way toward the same stimulus as the actor does
    • Distinctiveness 區別 (主角面對不同刺激行為表現相同的程度)
      • The extent to which one particular actor behaves in the same way to different stimuli
    • Consistency 一致 (跨情境和時間，主角面對某一次刺激表現相同行為的程度)
      • The extent to which the behavior between one actor and one stimulus is the same across time and circumstances

When internal attribution occurs

  • Internal attribution occurs when
    • Consensus = Low
      • Behavior is unique to the person
    • Distinctiveness = Low
      • Person displays same behavior with different targets and in different situations
    • Consistency = High
      • The person’s behavior occurs reliably across occasions

When external attribution occurs

  • External attribution occurs when
    • Consensus = High
      • Other people behave similarly in the situation
    • Distinctiveness = High
      • The person’s behavior is specific to that situation or target
    • Consistency = High
      • The person’s behavior occurs reliably across occasions

Evaluation of the covariation model

  • Information about all three dimensions may not be available
    • People still make attributions
  • Consistency and distinctiveness used more than consensus

The fundamental attribution error 基本歸因誤差

  • Tend to make internal attributes for other people’s behavior and underestimate the role of situational factors

The role of perceptual salience 知覺顯著性 in the fundamental attribution error

  • Why does the fundamental attribution error occur
    • Tend to focus on person, not the surrounding situation
    • Use the focus of attention as a starting point

The two-step attribution process

  • Make an internal attribution
    • Assume that a person’s behavior was due to something about that person
    • Occurs quickly, spontaneously
  • Adjust attribution by considering the situation
    • May fail to make enought adjustment in second step
    • Requires effort, conscious attention
  • Engage in the second step if
    • You consciously slow down, think carefully before reaching a judgment
    • You are motivated to reach an accurate judgment
    • You are suspicious about the behavior
  • Two-step model less applicable in cultures where internal attributions not the default

Self-serving attributions 自利歸因

  • Explanations for one’s successes that credit internal, dispositional factors, and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors
  • Why do we make self-serving attributions
    • Maintain self-esteem
    • Want other to think well of us and admire us
    • We know more about the situational factors that affect our own behavior than we do about other people’s

Belief in a just world 公平世界的信念

  • The assumption that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get
  • Type of defensive attribution
  • Advantage
    • Allows people to deal with feelings of vulnerability, mortality
  • Disadvantage
    • Blaming the victim

The “bias blind spot”

  • People realize biases in attribution can occur
  • Believe other people more susceptible to attributional biases compared to self

What role does culture play in processes of socoal perception and attribution ?

Holistic versus analytic thinking

  • Analytic thinking
    • Values in Western cultures foster this kind of thinking
    • Focus on properties of object or people, pay less attention to context or situation
  • Holistic thinking
    • Values in Eastern cultures foster this kind of thinking
    • Focus on the object or person AND the surrounding context and relationships between them
  • Generalized cultural difference, but variability within cultures

Social neuroscience evidence

  • Judged length of line inside boxes
  • Two conditions
    • Ignore the box around each line (ignore context)
    • Pay attention to the box around each line (attend to context)
  • Result
    • Americans: greater brain activation when told to pay attention to context
    • East Asians: greater brain activation when told to ignore context

Cultural differences in the fundamental attribution error

  • Members of individualistic cultures
    • Prefer dispositional(支配) attributions
    • Think like personality psychologist
  • Members of collectivistic cultures
    • Prefer situational explanations
    • Think like social psychologists

Culture and other attributional biases

  • Self-serving bias
    • More prevalent in Western, individualistic cultures that Eastern collectivist cultures
  • Explanations of Olympic Gold Success
  • Failure
    • Make attributions to external causes in U.S., but internal causes in China
    • Self-critical attributions hold groups together in some Asian cutures
  • Belief in a just world
    • More prevalent in cultures with extreme differences in wealth