Person Perception

1. Person Perception

2. Channels of Communication • Verbal • semantics, word meaning • Visual • gestures, distance, eye contact, facial expressions • Paralinguistic • pitch, amplitude, rate, voice quality

3. Channels of Communication • Verbal Channels • language, literal word meanings • Visual Channels • distance • the more intimate, the closer we stand • norm violations are readily noticed • gestures • meaning depends on context and culture • includes ‘body language’

4. Channels of Communication

5. Channels of Communication Which emotion does each face convey?

6. Channels of Communication Anger Fear Disgust Sadness Happiness Surprise

7. HAPPY!

8. Channels of Communication • Facial Expressions • can communicate sympathy, empathy, emotion, etc.

9. Channels of Communication • we’re fairly accurate at detecting broad emotional states through facial expressions • e.g. the difference between happy and sad

10. Channels of Communication • similar emotions are more difficult to distinguish • e.g., the difference between fear and surprise

11. Channels of Communication Facial Activation Coding System (FACS) Ekman & Friesen (1976)

12. Channels of Communication • Eye Contact • indicates interest (or the lack thereof) • love, affection, great concern • signal to end conversation • threat cue

13. Impression Formation • What information do we use? • the person’s role • e.g., bank president vs. bank teller • physical cues • e.g., physical attractiveness, clothing • salience • the quality that makes a particular stimulus stand out and be noticed • e.g., brightness, noisiness, motion, novelty

14. Impression Formation • Which traits do we use? • evaluations often made quickly with very little information • two main dimensions of evaluation (Kim & Rosenberg, 1980) • Task/Intellectual traits • i.e., how intelligent or competent a person is • Social/Interpersonal traits • i.e., how warm a person is

15. Impression Formation • Categorization • we spontaneously perceive people as members of social groups rather than as completely unique individuals • efficient way of dealing with little info • perceiving a person as a member of a social group affects the way we think of that person and can lead to stereotypes

16. Impression Formation • The Continuum Model of Impression Formation (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990) • Dual Processing • we use both categorically-based and individuating information to make impressions • time constraints  categorical inferences • accuracy  individuating inferences

17. Integrating Impressions • Implicit Personality Theory • certain traits often imply others • if we think someone is kind, we’re also likely to infer other positive traits (e.g., conscientious)

18. Integrating Impressions • Evaluation • the “goodness” or “badness” of a person • do we like or dislike the person? • Central Traits • traits that are highly associated with other characteristics • Kelley (1950) gave students a list of adjectives describing a visiting lecturer

19. Warm Condition Energetic Assured Talkative Warm Ironical Inquisitive Persuasive Cold Condition Energetic Assured Talkative Cold Ironical Inquisitive Persuasive Integrating Impressions Two Conditions (Kelley, 1950)

20. Integrating Impressions • students then rated the person on a series of evaluative dimensions • e.g., “How self-centered do you think this person is?” • scale from 1 (not at all) to 13 (extremely) • also rated self-centered, unsociable, unpopular, formal, irritable, humorless, and ruthless • all generally perceived to be negative traits

21. Integrating Impressions Kelley (1950) results Evaluative Dimension 1 = self-centered 2 = unsociable 3 = unpopular 4 = formal 5 = irritable 6 = humorless 7 = ruthless Adjective Evaluative Dimension

22. Integrating Impressions • Negativity Effect • we pay more attention and give more weight to the negative traits of a person when forming impressions • why might we do this? …but… • Positivity Bias • overall, we’re more likely to express positive rather than negative evaluations of people

23. Integrating Impressions • The Averaging Principle (Anderson, 1965) • the idea that pieces of information about a person or attitude are processed in terms of their evaluative implications and are then averaged together to form an overall attitude • assumption that everything we know about the person is given equal weight

24. Integrating Impressions • Weighted Averaging Model (Anderson, 1968) • traits deemed more important to the perceiver are given more weight than those deemed less important • no assumption that all aspects are given equal weight

25. Integrating Impressions • Imputing Meaning • what we already know about a person affects how new pieces of information are interpreted and integrated into our preexisting schema

26. Integrating Impressions • Imputing Consistency • Halo Effect • a liked person is assumed to have other good qualities • a disliked person is assumed to have other bad qualities

27. Integrating Impressions • What about inconsistent information? • we spend more time thinking about incongruent information because it is harder to integrate into our schema • more time and energy thinking about something results in …

28. Integrating Impressions • Stereotype • schema about the typical characteristics of members of a group or social category • Prototype • schema defined by the specific features of a particular type of person, social role, or situation (e.g., “snob,” “librarian”) • Exemplar • an example of a category that embodies the significant attributes of the category or the ideal of that category (e.g., Michael Jordan)

29. Motivated Person Perception • OUR goals and feelings influence the impressions we make of others • what goals do we have in interacting with the person? • what is our emotional and cognitive state?

30. Motivated Person Perception • Goals • Devine, Sedekides, & Furman (1989) found that simple anticipation of future interaction with someone produced the greatest recall of that person’s attributes and behavior • paradoxically, those told to “remember the target’s attributes” had the lowest rate of recall

31. Motivated Person Perception • Perceiver’s Cognitive & Emotional State • being preoccupied with other things affects how we perceive others • more likely to view the traits of others as stable and enduring (i.e., the fundamental attribution error) if cognitively and/or emotionally preoccupied

32. Attribution • Attribution Theory • attempts to answer when and how people ask “why?” questions • Not actually a theory, but a field of study • Attribution • an explanation for the causes of behavior or attitudes • We make attributions for our own behavior and the behavior of others

33. Attribution • According to Heider (1958), humans have two strong motives: • the need for a coherent understanding of the world • the need to control our environment

34. Attribution • In order to understand and control the environment, we need to be able to predict the behavior of those around us • When something unexpected or unpleasant happens, we’re more likely to form causal attributions • any consequences to not doing this?

35. Attribution • Dispositional/Internal Attributions • perceiving the cause of a person’s action as stemming from his or her disposition (e.g., personality, ability, or attitudes) • Situational/External Attributions • perceiving the cause of a person’s behavior as situational (i.e., forces acting on the person, such as social influence or economic incentives)

36. Attribution • Correspondent Inference Theory • Jones & Davis (1965) • is an individual’s action due to his or her enduring personal characteristics or to momentary situational influences? • we use the context in which behavior occurs to determine this question • when an action appears to reflect personal dispositions, it is called a correspondent inference

37. Attribution • Is the behavior socially desirable? • if undesirable, we’re likely to infer an underlying disposition since the behavior is counter-normative • however, when observing socially desirable behavior, we’re not likely to infer an underlying disposition since acting in socially desirable ways is generally expected

38. Attribution • is the behavior freely chosen or determined by the situation? • the intended outcome of a behavior can give information about the motive behind the behavior • is this behavior part of a social role? • our preexisting expectations of a person’s dispositions can affect later attributions we make about that person’s behavior

39. Attribution • Kelley’s Covariation Theory (1967) • Covariation • determining how strongly two things are related • when we expect two things to occur together, we tend to overestimate the actual degree of covariation

40. Attribution • when determining covariation, Kelley devised three questions to ask: • is the behavior distinctive? • does the person respond to other stimuli differently? • is there consensus? • is the behavior of others the same? • is the behavior consistent? • does this person always behave like this when presented with the same stimuli in the same situation?

41. Attribution • You’ve just gone to see a comedic movie with friends. You didn’t find it very funny and didn’t laugh much. Your friends and most of the audience laughed a lot. In general, you usually don’t enjoy comedies or movies in general. • was your behavior distinctive? • was there consensus between you, your friends, and the audience? • was your behavior consistent? • Situational or Dispositional attribution?

42. Attribution • Kelley’s Covariation Theory (1967) • consensus • is behavior of others the same to the same stimulus? • consistency • does the person respond to the same stimuli in the same manner across time and different circumstances? • distinctiveness • how does the person respond to other stimuli?

43. Attribution • Biases in the Attribution Process • Fundamental Attribution Error • more likely to attribute behavior to internal disposition rather than external causes • Jones & Harris (1967) • participants read essays on a controversial topic by writers who had either: • chosen their stance, or • were instructed to write from a particular stance • even when participants were told that the essay writers were not free to decide their stance, participants overestimated the role of internal dispositions in writing the essay

44. Attribution • Self-Serving Attributional Bias (Miller & Ross, 1975) • the tendency for people to see their own positive behaviors as internally caused and their own negative behaviors as externally caused • Actor-Observer Effect (Jones & Nisbett, 1972) • when we observe others, we overestimate dispositional factors • when attributing our behavior, we generally overestimate situational factors

45. Attribution • False Consensus Effect • exaggerating how common one’s own opinions or behaviors are • False Uniqueness Effect • exaggerating how uniquely positive one’s own abilities are

46. Accuracy of Judgments • Judging Personality • we’re often incorrect about the personality of others • perceptions depend more on what we value in others • personality measurement is difficult even in the laboratory • even more difficult measuring people’s accuracy in determining personality • personality traits aren’t very consistent from situation to situation

47. Accuracy of Judgments • we’re better at determining some personality traits than others • broad traits (e.g., intro/extroversion) • interrater reliability is high. • specific traits (e.g., “honesty”) • less agreement among raters. • observable traits are easier to determine than unobservable traits

48. Deception • Nonverbal Leakage • the communication of true emotions through nonverbal channels even when the person’s verbal communications attempt to conceal the emotions • often through body language and paralinguistic cues

49. Deception • Accuracy in Detecting Deception • perceivers can detect deceptive messages, but not very well • when we know of a person’s motive to lie, we’re more likely to detect deception • but, since we generally don’t expect people to lie, lies are usually taken at face value

50. Deception • The Giveaways • increase in blinks, hesitations, speech errors, and fidgeting • high-pitched speech • dilated pupils • hesitating, less fluid speech • more negative and distancing statements • negative tone of voice • interchannel discrepancies more likely • motivated liars are easier to detect than those who will not benefit from lying