31027623 social perception
TRANSCRIPT
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Chapter 4Chapter 4Chapter 4Chapter 4
Social Perception:Social Perception:
How We Come toHow We Come toUnderstand Other PeopleUnderstand Other People
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Social PerceptionSocial Perception
Social perception is defined as the
study of how we form impressions of
and make inferences about other
people.
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Chapter OutlineChapter Outline
I. Nonverbal Behavior
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Nonverbal BehaviorNonverbal Behavior
Nonverbal communication is defined
as the way in which people
communicate, intentionally or
unintentionally, without words.
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Nonverbal BehaviorNonverbal Behavior
Nonverbal behavior is used to
express emotion, convey attitudes,
communicate personality traits, and
to facilitate or modify verbal
communication.
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Nonverbal BehaviorNonverbal Behavior
Facial Expressions
Charles Darwin believed that human emotional
expressions are universal -- that all humans
encode and decode expressions in the same
way
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Nonverbal BehaviorNonverbal Behavior
Facial Expressions
Modern research suggests that Darwin was
right for the six major emotional expressions:
anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, and
sadness.
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Nonverbal BehaviorNonverbal Behavior
Facial Expressions
Current research examines whether other
emotions have distinct and universal facial
expressions associated with them.
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Nonverbal BehaviorNonverbal Behavior
Facial Expressions
Culture also influences emotional expression;
display rules that are unique to each culture
dictate when different nonverbal behaviors are
appropriate to display.
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Nonverbal BehaviorNonverbal Behavior
Facial Expressions
Facial expressions may sometimes be hard to
interpret accurately because people may
display blends of multiple affects
simultaneously.
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Nonverbal BehaviorNonverbal Behavior
Other Channels of Nonverbal
Communication
Eye contact and gaze are also powerful nonverbal cues.
The use of personal space is a nonverbal behavior with
wide cultural variation.
Emblems are nonverbal gestures that have well
understood definitions within a given culture.
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Nonverbal BehaviorNonverbal Behavior
Multichannel Nonverbal
Communication
In everyday life, we usually receive information
from multiple channels simultaneously.
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Nonverbal BehaviorNonverbal Behavior
Gender Differences in Nonverbal
Communication
Women are better than men at both decoding and
encoding nonverbal behavior if people are telling the
truth. Men, however, are better at detecting lies.
This finding can be explained by social-role theory,
which claims that sex differences in social behavior are
due to societys division of labor between the sexes.
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Chapter OutlineChapter Outline
II. Implicit Personality Theories:
Filling in the Blanks
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Implicit Personality TheoriesImplicit Personality Theories
An implicit personality theory is a
type of schema people use to group
various kinds of personality traitstogether. Using these theories helps
us form well-developed impressions
of other people quickly.
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Implicit Personality TheoriesImplicit Personality Theories
The Role of Culture in Implicit
Personality Theories
Hoffman and colleagues (1986) found that
cultural implicit personality theories affect
how people form impressions of others.
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Chapter OutlineChapter Outline
III. Causal Attribution: Answering
the Why Question
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
Although nonverbal behavior may be
relatively easy to decode, there is
still substantial ambiguity about whypeople act the way they do.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
Attribution theoryis a description of
the way in which people explain the
causes of their own and otherpeoples behavior.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Nature of the Attribution Process
Fritz Heider is considered the father of
attribution theory. He believed that people
are like amateur scientists, trying to
understand other peoples behavior bypiecing together information until they arrive
at a reasonable cause.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Nature of the Attribution Process
He proposed a simple dichotomy for peoples
explanations: internal attributions and
external attributions.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Covariation Model: Internal
Versus External Attributions
The covariation modelstates that in order to form an
attribution about what caused a persons behavior,
we systematically note the pattern between the
presence (or absence) of possible causal factors andfocus on the consensus information, distinctiveness
information, and consistency information we gather
from the situation.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Covariation Model: Internal
Versus External Attributions
According to the covariation model, consensus
information is the information regarding how other
people besides the actor treat the target,
distinctiveness information is the information abouthow the actor treats other people besides the target,
and consistency information is the information about
how the actor treats the target across time and
different situations.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Covariation Model: Internal
Versus External Attributions
People are most likely to make an internal attribution
(attribute the behavior to the actor) when consensus
and distinctiveness are low but consistency is high;they are most likely to make an external attribution
(attribute the behavior to the target and/or situation)
when consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency
are all high.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Covariation Model: Internal
Versus External Attributions
The covariation model assumes that people
make causal attributions in a rational, logical
fashion.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Fundamental Attribution Error:
People as Personality Psychologists
The fundamental attribution erroris the
tendency to overestimate the extent to which
a persons behavior is due to internal,
dispositional factors and to underestimate therole of situational factors.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Fundamental Attribution Error:
People as Personality Psychologists
One reason people make the fundamental
attribution error is that observers focus their
attention on actors, while the situational
causes of the actors behavior are less salientand may be unknown.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Fundamental Attribution Error:
People as Personality Psychologists
Thus,perceptual salience, or the information
that is the focus of peoples attention, helps
explain why the fundamental attribution error
is prevalent.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Fundamental Attribution Error:
People as Personality Psychologists
The Two-Step Process ofAttribution occurs when
people analyze another persons behavior -- they
typically make an internal attribution automatically;
they then may consciously choose to engage in theeffortful, second step in the process, whereby they
think about possible situational reasons for the
behavior; after engaging in the second step, they may
adjust their original internal attribution to take into
account situational factors.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Fundamental Attribution Error:
People as Personality Psychologists
The spotlight effectoccurs when people
overestimate the extent to which their
behaviors and appearance are noticed by
others. This indicates that people are awareof others tendencies to commit the
fundamental attribution error.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Actor/Observer Difference
The actor/observerdifference is the tendency
to see other peoples behavior as
dispositionally caused, while focusing more
on the role of situational factors whenexplaining ones own behavior.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Actor/Observer Difference
One reason for the actor/observer difference
is perceptual salience: actors notice the
situations around them that influence them to
act, while observers notice the actors.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
The Actor/Observer Difference
The actor/observer difference also occurs
because actors have more information about
themselves than do observers.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
Self-Serving Attributions
Self-serving attributions are explanations for
ones successes that credit internal,
dispositional factors and explanations for
ones failures that blame external, situationalfactors.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
Self-Serving Attributions
One reason people make self-serving attributions is
to maintain their self-esteem.
A second reason is self-presentational, to maintain
the perceptions others have of one.
A third reason is because people have informationabout their behavior in other situations, which may
lead to positive outcomes being expected and
negative outcomes being unexpected.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
Self-Serving Attributions
Defensive attributions are explanations for behavior
or outcomes that avoid feelings of vulnerability andmortality. Unrealistic optimism is a form of defensive
attribution wherein people think that good things are
more likely to happen to them than to their peers and
that negative events are less likely to happen to them
than to their peers.
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Causal AttributionCausal Attribution
Self-Serving Attributions
One way we deal with tragic information about others
is to make it seem like it could never happen to us.We do it through the belief in a justworld, a form of
defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad
things happen to bad people, and that good things
happen to good people.
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Chapter OutlineChapter Outline
IV. The Role of Culture in theAttribution Process
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The Role of CultureThe Role of Culture
Culture and the Fundamental
Attribution Error
Individualist cultures socialize people to prefer
dispositional attributions over situational ones. In
comparison, collectivist (often Eastern) cultures
emphasize group membership, interdependence, andconformity to group norms. Therefore, Westerners
are more likely than Easterners are to commit the
fundamental attribution error.
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The Role of CultureThe Role of Culture
Culture and the Correspondence
Bias
The correspondence bias is the inclination to
conclude that peoples behaviors match their
personalities. Although the correspondence bias is
prevalent across cultures, people from collectivistcultures are more likely than Westerners are to notice
situational information and to use it to form
situational attributions.
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The Role of CultureThe Role of Culture
Culture and Other Attribution Biases
Westerners are more prone to the self-serving bias
than Easterners are. Defensive attributions, like the
belief in a just world, are more prevalent in societies
where extremes in wealth and poverty exist. And, thespotlight effect is more common among people in
individualist cultures compared to those from
collectivist cultures.
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Chapter OutlineChapter Outline
V. How Accurate Are Our
Attributions and Impressions?
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How Accurate Are Our Attributions andHow Accurate Are Our Attributions and
Impressions?Impressions?
Under many circumstances we are
not very accurate, especially
compared to how accurate we thinkwe are.
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How Accurate Are Our Attributions andHow Accurate Are Our Attributions and
Impressions?Impressions?
Why Are Our Impressions of Others
Sometimes Wrong?
One reason is because of the mental
shortcuts, for example the fundamental
attribution error, we use in forming socialjudgments.
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How accurate Are Our Attributions andHow accurate Are Our Attributions and
Impressions?Impressions?
Why Are Our Impressions of Others
Sometimes Wrong?
Another reason is because people may use
faulty implicit personality theories to guide
their inferences.
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How Accurate Are Our Attributions andHow Accurate Are Our Attributions and
Impressions?Impressions?
Why Do Our Impressions Seem
Accurate?
One reason is that we often see people in
only a limited number of situations and never
have the opportunity to see that ourimpressions are wrong.
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How Accurate Are Our Attributions andHow Accurate Are Our Attributions and
Impressions?Impressions?
Why Do Our Impressions Seem
Accurate?
A second reason is because people create
self-fulfilling prophecies about others and
treat them in ways that make their propheciescome true.
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How Accurate Are Our Attributions andHow Accurate Are Our Attributions and
Impressions?Impressions?
Why Do Our Impressions Seem
Accurate?
A third reason we may not realize our
impressions are wrong is if a lot of people
agree on what a person is like -- even thoughthey may all be incorrect.
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
What are the most often used anddiagnostic channels of
nonverbal communication? What
are other channels of nonverbal
communication? What functions
do nonverbal cues serve?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
What is the relationship betweenencoding and decoding? What
are the six major emotional
expressions that are universally
encoded and decoded?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
What are affect blends? What aredisplay rules? What are
examples of cross-cultural
differences in display rules?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
What are emblems? What areexamples of these?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
Who may be better at decodingnonverbal cues, extroverts or
introverts, men or women?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
How does the social-role theoryexplain gender differences in
encoding and decoding
nonverbal communication?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
What is an implicit personalitytheory? What are functions of
implicit personality theories?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
What is attribution theory? Whatdoes it try to describe and
explain? How do internal
attributions differ from external
ones?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
What is the premise of the covariation
model? What information do we
examine for covariation when weform attributions? When are people
most likely to make an internal
attribution and an external attributionaccording to the covariation model?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
What is the fundamental
attribution error? Why does it
occur? What is perceptual
salience? What is the two-step
process of attribution? What is
the spotlight effect?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
What is the actor/observer
difference? Why does it occur?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
When we form self-servingattributions to what do we
attribute our successes and our
failures?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
What are defensive attributions?What is unrealistic optimism?
What is the belief in a just world?
What functions do these
defensive attributions serve?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
What are cultural differences in
the rate of the fundamental
attribution error? What is the
correspondence bias? What
cultural differences exist
regarding other attributionbiases?
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Study QuestionsStudy Questions
What are some reasons why ourimpressions of others are
sometimes incorrect? Why dont
we know when our impressions
of others are wrong?