Social Perception

Lecture 2
BS-2
Course Instructor: Ms. ERUM KAUSAR
Resources
Robert M. Krauss, Nonverbal Behavior and Nonverbal
Communication, Pages 1-4 (PDF)

Baron 14th Edition

Myers Social Psych PDF

Content
Nonverbal Communication
Attribution
 Theories of Attribution
 Applications of Attribution Theory
 Impression Formation and Management
Case example
I was selling a used car. I placed an ad in the local newspaper, and the
first person who came to see it drove all the way from city. He took
the car for test drive, and then quickly offered me a figure close to the
asking price. “Sold!” I said and felt happy about the transaction. He
wrote me a cheque, and after the documents were signed, he drove
off in my car.

Can you guess what happened next??

When I tried to cash his cheque, it bounced. Apparently, he had
closed his account and moved out of the state, leaving behind a pile
of unpaid bills. Now I realize that there were clear signs that I should
have noticed. He never looked me in the eye as we spoke and seemed
a little nervous throughout the entire transaction. Also, his wife, stood
far away and seemed a little upset when he handed me the cheque.
And he seemed in a hurry from the moment he arrived and did not
really check out the car carefully.
One of the most complex mysteries we face in life – and one we can
not leave unsolved – is other people.

We spend a lot of time thinking about others, trying to understand

why they do what they do, whether they mean what they say, and
how they feel about us.

This process is referred to as Social Perception.

Nonverbal Communication
The Unspoken Language of Expressions, Gazes, and Gestures
 - Taken from Baron

Nonverbal Communication—communication between individuals

that relies on an unspoken language of facial expressions, eye
contact, and body language

 Basic channels
 Facial expressions—reveal current moods/feelings
 Eye contact—indicates positive feelings (except staring)
 Body language (gestures, posture, movements)—reveals emotional states, cultural
emblems (symbols)
 Touching—suggests affection, sexual interest, dominance, caring, aggression
 - Taken from Krauss (till slide 17)

Charles Darwin- Why do facial expressions of emotions take a

particular form?
They are the way they are because earlier in the evolution they
served a function

Surprised- Widening of eyes, to increase information coming in

from the visual field

Disgust- Wrinkled nose to block foul odours

These had functional value before but why are they important now?

Overthe course, they now carry communicative value. They

communicate to the other individual how one is feeling

They provide others with external evidence of an individual’s

internal state
Nonverbal behaviours assist in communication so much so that they
are known as nonverbal communication

Zajonc stated- Facial expressions are not just the means of

expressions or communication. All the facial muscles involved in
producing facial expressions impact the flow of blood and
determine whether your brain will be cooler or not.
 Temperature of the blood will accordingly either promote or inhibit
the related neurotransmitter and result in the subjective emotional
experience.

 “Vascular
theory of emotional efference" (Zajonc,1985; Zajonc,
Murphy, & Inglehart, 1989)

 Based on this theory, facial expressions do serve the communicative

purpose, but their primary purpose is the biological work. The
facial actions can change the way one feels.
Gaze Direction
What is gaze direction in communication?
Do you just continually stare throughout a conversation?
Activity: Need two volunteers to have a conversation. One will ask
questions, the other will answer.
Butterworth (1978)- Gaze direction involves two important tasks:

Monitoring the listener, to see if

Planning speech, what they comprehend the
to say next? information or not
When one knows exactly what to say, gaze direction is maintained

When one does not know what to say, they look away. Why?

There are certain nonverbal behaviours that can be produced

voluntarily…Name one?
DisplayRules – Social Norms – dictate that one exhibit at least a
moderately pleased expression on certain special occasions

Nonverbal behaviours give off information about you, as well as

have a strong impact on your own system too.
Recognizing Deception -Baron

 Microexpressions— fleeting (brief) facial expressions lasting only a few

tenths of a second
 Interchannel discrepancies (nonverbal cues are inconsistent)
 Eye contact (blink more, unusually low or high eye contact)
 Exaggerated facial expressions (overly broad smile)
 Linguistic Style—aspects of speech apart from the meaning of the words
employed (pitch of voice)
 Lies are less complex, less related to the self, and more negative.
Attribution
Understanding The Causes Of Others’ Behavior
 - Myers (Page 102-117)

People make it their business to explain other people, and social

psychologists make it their business to explain people’s
explanations. So, how – and how accurately – do people explain
others’ behaviour? Attribution theory suggest some answers
THINK ABOUT IT!

Imagine you meet a colleague for the first time on the first day
of a new job or placement and you say ‘hello’ in a polite and
friendly manner. Your colleague, who you don’t really know
yet, looks at you as if you’ve just hurled the world’s worst
insult at her. She then walks off without saying a word. You in
turn are left wondering what on Earth has just happened. What
are you likely to think?
You are likely to think one of the two things…
1) Attribute the behaviour to something internal, such as traits,
nature, personality etc.

2) Attribute the behaviour to something external, such as a situation

the individual has been in.

- Our judgements of people depend on how we explain their behavior

Attributing Causality: To the person or the
situation
What is attribution?

Attribution—process through which people seek to identify the

causes of others’ behavior and so gain knowledge of their stable
traits and dispositions (nature)

The explanations of causes of behaviors and events

For example…
If someone comes late to class, teacher can say the following:
1. Student must feel uninterested in the class
2. The traffic must have caused the delay

 First one is DISPOSITIONAL ATTRIBUTION (attributing

behavior to person’s disposition and traits)
Second one is SITUATIONAL ATTRIBUTION (attributing to the
environment or situation)

 - Read Kelley’s Theory of Causal Attribution from Baron as well.

Are there times when we make mistakes in attributing sources of
behavior?

This phenomenon is called

MISATTRIBUTION
What is Misattribution?
You wave at a friend and they don’t wave back at you. How would
you describe their behavior?

Lets
assume that they just got to know that they failed an exam.
What would the cause be? Situational or dispositional?

When a behavior is attributed to the wrong source, it results in

Misattribution.
Some Basic Sources of Error
1) Fundamental Attribution Error:
Also known as Correspondence Bias (in Baron’s book)

When one underestimates situational influences and overestimates

dispositional influences of others behaviors

FAE leads to misattribution

 - Taken from Baron’s book

2) Actor-Observer Effect:
 Tendency to attribute own behavior mainly to situational causes, but the
behavior of others mainly to internal (dispositional) causes

3) Self-Serving Bias:
 Tendency to attribute positive outcomes to internal causes, but negative
outcomes to external causes
 Cognitive and motivational factors may explain this bias.
 This bias is stronger in individualist cultures.
Theories of Attribution
Frameworks for Understanding How We Attempt To Make Sense of the Social
World
 - Taken from Baron’s Book

Jones and Davis’ (1965) Theory of Correspondent Inference—

describes how people use others’ behavior as a basis for
inferring their stable dispositions
Jones and Davis’ theory helps us understand the process of
making an internal attribution. They say that we tend to do this
when we see a correspondence between motive and behavior.
 For example, when we see a correspondence between someone
behaving in a friendly way and being a friendly person.
Dispositional(i.e., internal) attributions provide us with information
from which we can make predictions about a person’s future
behavior. The correspondent inference theory describes the
conditions under which we make dispositional attributes to the
behavior we perceive as intentional.
Davis used the term correspondent inference to refer to an occasion
when an observer infers that a person’s behavior matches or
corresponds with their personality.
 - Myers

Fritz Heider (1958) – Pioneer of the attribution theory

 Talks about how people make sense out of everyday events and use
‘commonsense psychology’
 Internal and external cause.
 Self-serving bias

Self-serving bias is defined as people’s tendency to attribute positive events

to their own character but attributes negative events to external factors. (It’s a
common type of cognitive bias that has been extensively studied in social
psychology)
Activity

Write down or think about names of your class fellows when a

particular trait is mentioned
Assertive
Calm
Dedicated
Warm
Lazy
Argumentative
Aggressive
Impulsive
Responsible
Inferring Traits
The above activity was for the phenomenon called ‘Spontaneous
Trait Inference’ – An effortless automatic inference of a trait after
exposure to someone’s behavior or even facial expressions
Application of Attribution
Theory
Insights and Interventions
Attribution and Depression -Baron


Depressed persons often show a self-defeating pattern of
attributions, which is the opposite of the self-serving bias.
 Attribute negative outcomes to stable, internal causes
 Attribute positive outcomes to temporary, external causes
Impression Formation and
Impression Management
Combining Information About Others
Pygmalion Effect -Taken from Myers

Self-fulfilling Prophecy, Rosenthal Effect or Pygmalion Effect

The Pygmalion Effect, also known as the Rosenthal Effect, refers

to the phenomenon of people improving their performance when
others have high expectations of them. For students, when teaches
expect a lot, students often perform better.
Primacy VS Recency
 Myers Page 242-243

Primacy Effect- Other things being equal, information presented

first usually has the most influence

Recency Effect- Information presented last sometimes has the most

influence

Recency effects are less common than Primacy effects

First is Best?
Dana Carney and Banaji (2008) discovered that order can also
effect simple preferences

When presented similar looking bubble gum pieces, 62% chose the
first piece
Active Experience or Passive Reception?
Myers Page 244-45

How powerful are spoken words? Do you think they always have
an impact?
Who was your favourite teacher in grade 10?
Do you remember any of her lectures?
 Active engagement captures the other person's attention and carries
an expectation that he will comprehend the message, remember it,
and then take action.
Passive reception of a message, like listening to a lecture, is less
likely to have an impact.
Testing the impact of spoken words
 Thomas Crawford (1974) and others
 Visited homes of people from 12 churches before and after hearing sermons
 Sermon’s content- racial prejudice and injustice
 When asked in the AFTER interview ‘have you heard or read anything about
racial discrimination?’ Only 10% recalled that they had just heard a sermon
about it
 Remaining 90% were asked ‘did your priest talk about prejudice in the last
couple of weeks?’ 30% denied such a sermon
 The words did not have much power
Power of Advertising and Media
Recall some advertisements and share the impact it had on you and
others

E.g.Dispirin ad
Elections and votes

Rhyming- Increases fluency and believability

E.g. Telefun
 Taken from Baron

Asch’s (1946) Research on Impression Formation

 Impression Formation involves more than combining individual traits.
ImplicitPersonality Theories—beliefs about what traits or
characteristics tend to go together
 These theories are similar to a schema.
 Implicit theories can influence the impressions of others more than
people’s actual traits.
 An example is the implicit personality theory people hold regarding the relationship
between birth order and personality traits.
Impression Management
Impression Management (Self-Presentation)—efforts to produce
favorable first impressions on others
 Research indicates that it does have positive effects.
Tactics of impression management
 Self-enhancement—boost one’s appeal to others
 Boost physical appearance, boast about abilities
 Other-enhancement—induce positive moods in others
 Use flattery, express liking, agree with their views
 If overused, tactics can boomerang (slime effect can occur).