Social Psychology

Social Psychology Lecture 2: Accuracy in Person Perception (2003) Jane Clarbour Room PS/BOO7 email: jc129 Tel: (01904-43)-3168

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 social skills in deception ability

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

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

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?

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)

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

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 • 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. (p<.0001)

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

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

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

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!)

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.

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)

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.

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!

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

Deception • Deception as a social skill • Types of deception • Impression management and deception • The SSI as a measure of deception • Personality and deception

Deception as skilled social behaviour? • Kashy & DePaulo (1996) • Deception as everyday antisocial behaviour • Lies achieve basic goals in social interaction • ‘Other oriented’ lies • ‘Self-oriented’ lies • Related to intimacy

Personality and deception (Kashy & DePaulo, 1996) • Machiavellianism • Self-serving, ambitious, dominated • Confident, relaxed, talented • Self-confessed ‘successful’ liars • Mould others to suit own agenda

Impression Management and Deception (Kashy & DePaulo, 1996) • Public Self-Consciousness & Other Directedness • ‘self-oriented’ lie • Lies and deceives to present better self-image But… People who lie most score higher on measures of extraversion and sociability!

Skilled social communication (SSI: Riggio, 1989) 3 types of skill involved in social communication • Ability to send information (expressivity) • Ability to receive information (encode) • Ability to curtail spontaneous emotion, or pose artificial emotion (control)

SSI subscales & domains (Riggio, 1989) • Social Communication (Verbal) • Social Expressivity • Social Sensitivity • Social Control • Emotional Communication (Non-verbal) • Emotional Expressivity • Emotional Sensitivity • Emotional Control

Deception as skilled social behaviour? • Social skills and deception ability (Riggio, Tucker & Throckmorton, 1987) • Method: • Ratings on the SSI • Ratings of social anxiety • Video recordings of truthful/deceptive persuasive message • Findings: • Socially anxious less believable (nervous cues?) • Ss high on social control are more believable when deceiving

Summary • Only recently have researchers compiled objective criteria of accuracy in person perception • 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 • Social control is related to ability to pose emotions

Social Psychology