Social Psychology Lecture 2: Accuracy in Person Perception (2003) Jane Clarbour Room PS/BOO7 jc129Tel: ( )-3168

Objectives Specify the kinds of social situations in 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 perception Self-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: 1.Transcription of verbal content 2.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 validity IPT (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 1.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