User:Atcovi/Spring2024/Social Psychology/Ch. 3

Social Perception: Seeking to Understand Others

Social perception is the process through which we seek to know other people. Involves understanding ways to gather and analyze information about people.

Quizlet: https://quizlet.com/873915786/social-psych-ch-3-flash-cards/

3.1 - Determine how the five basic nonverbal channels of communication help us judge emotional states
Nonverbal communication is communication that is not spoken language, including facial expressions and eye movements.
 * 1) Facial expressions - According to 90s studies, the 5 basic emotions exhibited on one's face are happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. Surprise is an iffy one. Emotions can take place in many combos, such as fear + anger. Small basic expressions, but thousands of variations.
 * 2) Eye contact is another form of communication. One who avoids eye contact may be seen as rude, whilst staring is seen as hostile.
 * 3) Body language are cues provided by the position, posture, and movement of one's body. For example, fidgeting is seen as lying. Emblems are body movements that carry a specific meaning in a foreign culture, such as the pinky finger pointing upwards being the 'middle finger' in China.
 * 4) Touching can range from friendliness to sexual assault.

Non-verbal cues
Paralanguage is a type of communication involving vocal effects that is NOT speech (tone, pitch). If someone's tone is aggressive and their pitch is lower, it may indicate the person's anger. Couples tend to show more paralanguage the stronger their relationship is.

The facial feedback hypothesis is the view that facial expressions trigger emotions (for example, smiling during a race eases pain and increases enjoyment).

Deception
Deception is lying, and a lot of people lie often. People struggle with seeing if people lie or not. To improve your chances of seeing if someone lies or not, focus on their non-verbal behavior vs. what they are saying. Also, sad individuals are more likely to detect deception.

How to Actually Look for Deception: Non-verbal cues

 * Avoiding eye contact, blinking a lot, fidgeting or even maintaining high level of eye contact are not real indicators of whether someone is lying or not. Fidgeting could actually mean someone is simply aroused emotionally for the occasion (a date). We tend to focus more on one's verbal cues rather than one's non-verbal cues, thus increasing difficulty in detecting one's deception.
 * The following are more accurate expressions of deception, so you must look at the non-verbal cues: microexpressions (facial expressions that last for less than a second), interchannel discrepancies (poor control between facial expression and body language), and exaggerated facial expressions.
 * Linguistic styles, or the aspects of speech that are separate from the meanings of their words, are decent indicators on whether someone is telling the truth or not. Examples of this are the pitch, speed, or frequency of being late to answering a question.

The Importance of Nonverbal Cues in Professional Settings

 * A 1979 study found that nonverbal cues played a major role in the relationship between a doctor and their patient. To increase such relationships, the doctor needs to communicate their emotions to their patients instead of act like a "robot".
 * Positive, powerful posture = higher chances of likeability in an interview.

3.2 - Explain how the process of attribution helps our understanding of others’ behavior
Why did she reject me? Is it because I'm ugly or is she too busy/in a relationship already?

Attribution is the process to seek the "why?" in other people's behaviors and learn more about the person's traits/character.

Correspondent Influence Theory by Jones and Davis, 1965
We use the knowledge we have about other people's behaviors as a guiding module to guess their traits/characteristics. For example, we assume that the waiter at BWW is a friendly person because she is being friendly with us (...or is it because her job requires her to act this way?).

We have a bias for this theory, since we will focus on actions that prove our inferences right.

Noncommon effects are conditions that can be caused by one specific factor, but not by others. For example, why does Manny continuously keep going to a church and comes out of the church with drama about a girl there? It's no longer because he finds peace in the church (since Manny is not getting any "peace" by attending this church with all the complaints he has about it), but its because he enjoys attention from girls, even if it harms him.

Lastly, we pay attention to actions that are low in social desirability (such as if your friend hits his dog, you'll remember that vs. him petting his dog).

We assume other people's behaviors that reflect their traits if they are freely chosen (waiter choosing to be friendly with no appearant force), yields noncommon effects (Manny likes girl drama), and low in social desirability (friend hitting your dog).

Kelley's Covariation Theory
Did the behavior result from internal/external causes, or BOTH?

Why is the manager not responding? Why did this friend leave me on read? Did these guys act the way they did because of internal causes (internal motivations) or external causes (aspects of the social/physical world)... or BOTH?

In this case, you may wonder if your friend did not respond because you have been rude to him and he's giving you "pay-back" or he had a big exam to focus on?

According to Kelly, we focus on three types of information: consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness. How do other people respond in this situation (↑ number of people respond same way, ↑ the consensus)? How many times does this person react in the same way to other events? How unique is this situation (↓ uniqueness, ↑ distinctiveness)?

We are likely to attribute another's behavior to internal causes (dispositional) in which ↓ consensus, ↓ distinctiveness & ↑ consistency.

We are likely to attribute another's behavior to external causes in which ↑ consensus, ↑ distinctiveness & ↑ consistency.

We are likely to attribute another's behavior to internal and external causes in which ↓ consensus, ↑ distinctiveness & ↑ consistency.

Server-Flirting Example (right from the book)

Imagine that you see a server in a restaurant flirt with a customer. This behavior raises interesting questions. Why does the server act this way? Will you attribute the behavior to internal or external causes? Is the server simply someone who likes to flirt (an internal cause)? Or, is the customer extremely attractive—someone with whom many people flirt (an external cause)? According to Kelley’s theory, your decision (as an observer of this scene) would depend on information relating to the three factors mentioned earlier.

First, assume that the following conditions prevail:


 * You observe other servers flirting with this customer (consensus is high);
 * You have seen this server flirt with the same customer on other occasions (consistency is high);
 * And you have not seen this server flirt with other customers (distinctiveness is high)

Under these conditions—high consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness—you would probably attribute the server’s behavior to external causes. In other words, you would probably conclude that this customer is very attractive and that is why the server flirts with her.

On the other hand, if other servers don't flirt with the customer, the server flirts with the customer multiple times, and the server ALSO flirts with other customers, you'll attribute it to internal causes. Basically, the server is just a flirtatious person.

Other Dimensions of Causal Attribution

 * 1) Stability of factors that cause behavior.
 * 2) Are these factors controllable?

Personality traits/interests can deffo change & health can impact one's behavior.


 * Fate Attributions Versus Personal Choice - Belief in fate comes from a belief in God & complex causality [many factors have been placed for this event to occur].
 * Action Identification and the Attribution Process - How high is our interpretation of an event? How low is our interpretation of an event? Is she just putting money in a bank account because that's a convenient place to put it, or is she saving up for college?

"Across several studies, they found that the more others’ actions are interpreted at higher levels of abstraction (as reflecting more than the action itself), the more those people are also perceived as possessing complex motives, goals, and thought processes"

Correspondence Bias
We assume that Manny likes dramas with girls, but it may simply be that the girls he's had problems with are aggressive and rude. We overestimate causes to one's behavior rather than consider external factors. Corresponds with Kelley's theory. Assume the best in people.

We think like this because we think of the far-off future in 'abstract' ways, thus thinking about other people in terms of their traits.

This bias is SO strong that people still assumed an author's stance on a situation whilst reading their essay, even when the readers knew that the essay was intentionally written in a "pro" or "anti" stance!

A study was found that this bias was strong even in written E-Mail, where participants found the sender of an email rude despite the grammatical errors being attributed to a lack of mastery of English.

The correspondence bias may occur because of lack of observance on situational causes and use of general process (automatic reaction [RUDE!] to a controlled correction [oh wait, his mom died. Maybe that's why he is mad...]).

This bias occurs because we focus more on the actions of other people than the actions of our own behavior. Internal causes become more salient to us vs. external causes. In this case, the person is high in perceptional salience.

Actor-Observer Effect
We make excuses for ourselves, but not for others. This is mainly because we are aware about our external factors more than about other people's external factors.

Self-Serving Bias
"Positive --> internal; Negative --> external". This bias exists because we expect to succeed/want to protect our self-esteem. Self-esteem will remain unchanged (same as before) once external causes are attributed to negative events.


 * I made the soccer team in 2019 because I was a great player with a great mindset.
 * I didn't make the soccer team in 2020 because of my new shoes!

Applications of Attribution Theory

 * Depressed people believed the opposite of the self-serving bias, further worsening their depression.
 * Al-Qaeda attached their atrocities as 'responses' to the evil-doing of the West. Groups that commit wrongdoing tend to try and justify their actions vs. other people's behaviors (ex, the Israeli settler that's ok with communal violence against Arabs vs. the Arabs doing exactly that).

3.3 - Impression Formation and Management
Objective: Describe why initial information is important in forming perceptions of others

Impression formation is our impressions on others. It is effortless. Research into impressions bare resemblence to the Gestalt principle: The whole is often greater than the sum of its parts (each part of the world is interpreted in terms of its relationships to other parts or stimuli). We observe people not for the average of their traits, but we see how these traits are related to each other (= one integrated person). Solomon Asch, one of the founders of experimental social psychology, argued that we percieve traits, in other people, in relation to one another [trait] --> make up the integrated whole. In Asch's experiment, he found out participants did not "average" the traits listed, but made the central traits the determining factor: warm or cold. But the traits "polite" and "blunt" are NOT central traits.

How Quickly and Accurately are First Impressions Formed? Surprisingly, even working with thin slices, first impressions are relatively accurate (slightly better than chance) - but only for certain traits, such as if someone is a threat or not. They are also REALLY quick!

Can We Change First Impressions? Yes, but only under certain circumstances: reinterpreting previous information.

Impression Management
How do we create better impressions on others? What tactics are best for this?


 * Self-enhancement: efforts to increase our appeal to others. Make themselves look good through appropriate clothing & improved hygeine.
 * Other-enhancement: efforts to make the target person feel good in various ways. Complementing others, doing other people favors, and asking for advice.

Don't overdo them, as too much of anything is not good.