Social Psychology

1. Social Psychology Lecture 4: Person Perception & Deception Jane Clarbour Room PS/BOO7 email: jc129 Tel: (01904-43)-3168

2. Objectives • Specify the kinds of social situationsin which person perception is important. • Give an account of what is meant by the self-fulfilling prophecy. • Describe the basic principles of the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS). • Evaluate tests of person perception. • Discuss the role of emotional control as a social skill in deception ability

3. Introduction • Definition of person perception • Forming of judgements about other people, particularly in relation to their personality or mood • Used in • Job interviews – can effect whole life • Psychiatric classification • Informal social contacts with others • Judgements we make affect our behaviour towards others

4. Different approaches • Person perception has been studied in a number of different ways: • Systematic biases in perception • Attribution theory • Implicit theories of personality • Focus on Accuracy and Deception

5. Impression Formation • Our impressions of others are shaped by their communication • Facial expressions. • Body movements. • Do people differ in using nonverbal cues? • Can women "read" nonverbal cues better than men?

6. Accuracy of person perception • Accuracy of person perception in relation to the social skills model • Interviewer: ability to select right person for the job • Accurate clinical diagnosis: to select correct treatment • Marital satisfaction: • happier marriages = better perception of partners non-verbal cues (Noller & Feeney, 1994)

7. Inaccuracy in person perceptionSelf-fulfilling prophecy • Self-fulfilling prophecy • An initial false definition of the situation which evokes a new behaviour which makes the originally false conception come true

8. Example of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: ROSENTHAL & JACOBSON (1968) • Children given IQ test • 20% randomly assigned to an experimental condition • teachers told academic development exceptional) • Retested at year end – experimental group showed sig. IQ improvement

9. Tests of Person Perception • Dates back to 1920’s • Based on tests of IQ • If possible to measure Indiv. Diffs in cognitive ability, also possible in social intelligence • But – problems in the development of scales to measure perceptual accuracy • How do you know when someone is accurately perceiving others?

10. The Profile of Non-verbal Sensitivity (PONS)Rosenthal et al., 1979 • A measure of people’s accuracy in the perception of non-verbal cues. • a 45-min b+w film made up of 220 numbered auditory and visual segments: • Randomised presentation of 20 short scenes portrayed by a young woman, each scene represented in different channels of NVC: • Facial expression • Body from neck to knees • Content filtered voice • Randomised spliced voice and various combinations of these cues

11. The PONS (Rosenthal et al., 1979) • Criterion • All scenes were posed and 8 raters chose best scenes for inclusion in PONS • Ss view the segments of the tape and are given choice of 2 situations it might represent • The criterion is whether or not they agree with the 8 raters.

12. PONS: Problems of criterion • There are a number of difficulties relating to the criterion for the PONS: • Assumption that the original 8 raters are themselves reasonably perceptive • Inter-observer agreement is no guarantee of validity • Assumption of a particular model of NVC

13. Assumptions… • If NV cues are learned, cultural specific code: • then the agreement of a number of representative judges of that culture is a relatively good criterion against which to evaluate people’s performance. • But, if NV cues are part of innate, unlearned responses to particular events: • then inter-observer agreement may be totally irrelevant

14. PONS: Construct validity • The PONS does measure what it is supposed to measure • Studies of occupational groups showed that people supposed to do well at PONS tasks did perform the best: • actors • students of visual arts • students of NVC • Comparison studies compared the PONS with self-ratings and observer ratings of NV cues • Self-ratings do not correlate highly with PONS • Observer ratings were highly sig. (r .22 ;p<.0001)

15. PONS: typical findings (1) • Sex: • consistent advantage for women • Development: • sig. main effects for age, with increasing accuracy for older Ss. • Cultural variation: • Cross cultural samples performed worse than Americans, but better than chance

16. PONS: typical findings (2) • Intelligence • No correlation with IQ, but does correlate with other measures of NV coding ability • Psychiatric groups • Both by psychiatric diagnosis or measures of psychoticism, more seriously disturbed patients do less well on PONS • Scores improved with practice • Again, supports NVC as a social skill

17. PONS: evaluation • PONS does have construct validity • Does not use an objective criterion • This raises some doubts about the validity of the test • So, the PONS is not an objective measure of NVC

18. Objective tests (1) • LA RUSSO (1978) Tested the clinical assumption that paranoid schizophrenics have special sensitivity to NVC • both groups saw 2 videos of people’s facial expressions as watched 2 lights in 2 conditions • Condition 1: encoder’s facial expression after actually receiving electric shock after red light, but no shock after white light • Condition 2: encoder’s posed expression after both lights

19. 2 x 2 Between Ss design • Half Ss saw posed encodings • Other half saw spontaneous encodings • Paranoid schizophrenics sig. more accurate than normal controls when judging posed encodings

20. The Social Interpretations Task (1)(Archer & Akert, 1977) • Comprises 20 unposed sequences of spontaneous behaviour • paired with multiple-choice questions requiring interpretation • unambiguous criterion of accuracy • (e.g. In one scene, 2 men discuss a game of basketball which they have just played, and the viewer is asked to judge which man won the game – The game did happen, and the researcher knows who won!)

21. The Social Interpretations Task (2)(Archer & Akert, 1977) The SIT was given to students in 2 conditions: • Transcription of verbal content • A full-channel version RESULTS: • Ss in the transcript condition actually did sig. worse than chance • Ss in the video condition did sig. better than chance.

22. Interpersonal Perception Task(IPT: Costanzo & Archer, 1989) • The improved IPT now organised around 5 key areas of social interaction (each having 6 scenes) totalling 30 objective Q’s with scores on 5 dimensions. • Status (6 scenes) • Intimacy (6 scenes) • Kinship (6 scenes) • Competition (6 scenes) • Deception (6 scenes)

23. Predictive validityIPT (Costanzo & Archer, 1989) • IPT given to 18 students on same floor of a dormitory • All Ss asked to complete a separate measure of their peer’s social sensitivity • Peer rating scale comprised 4 items rated on a 9-point scale (not true at all… very true) • Example items: “ is sensitive to the feelings of others” and “ is good at dealing with other people”. • RESULTS: • Ss rated as more socially sensitive got significantly higher scores on the IPT.

24. Other studies using IPT • SMITH, ARCHER, & COSTANZO (1991) using the IPT found sex differences in non-verbal cues: • Women perform better on the IPT than men • Women sig. under-estimate the number of questions they had correctly answered • Men sig. over-estimate • These findings are similar to findings by BELOFF (1992) in relation to IQ. • This suggests that women either underestimate performance and men overestimate performance – or both!

25. COSTANZO & ARCHER (1991) • Used the IPT to teach about non-verbal cues using a mixed 2 x 2 design: • Within-Ss variable: • multiple-choice questions • essays • Between Ss variable: • Taught using the IPT • Taught using traditional lecture

26. Results and Conclusions • Results: • The IPT group got sig. better marks on the essay question No diff. on the multiple-choice question • The IPT group also rated the presentation sig. higher than did the lecture group • Conclusion: • The IPT can be used to both objectively assess skill in non-verbal decoding but also to improve non-verbal perceptiveness

27. Criticisms of the IPT • The tests of deception are somewhat misleading. • Deception in naturally occurring situations may have bad consequences if detected – but no danger in the clips recorded for the IPT • Detection apprehension may in itself give cues to deceit. • Participants were TOLD to deceive – lacks motivation • No discussion of the possible implications of camera awareness

28. Deception as skilled social behaviour? • Social Skills Inventory (SSI: Riggio et al) • 3 types of skill involved in deception • Ability to send information (expressivity) • Ability to receive information (encode) • Ability to curtail spontaneous emotion, or pose artificial emotion • Method: • Ratings on the SSI • Ratings of social anxiety • Video recordings of truthful/deceptive persuasive message • Findings: • Socially anxious less believable (nervous cues?) • Expressive Ss rated are more believable when deceiving

29. Summary • Only recently have researchers compiled objective criteria of accuracy • The PONS suffers from lack of objectivity • Both the SIT and the IPT were developed using objective criterion • People are very poor at detecting lies • Development of cross-cultural measures