1. Perceiving people

2. Agenda
1. Observation: The elements of social perception 2. Attribution: From elements to dispositions 3. Integration: From dispositions to impressions

3. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception

4. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception Judging a book by its cover
A person's physical appearance
people often make snap judgments of others based on physical appearances
Experiment, Willes and Todorov (2006)
Showed college students photographs of unfamiliar faces for 1/10th of a second, half a second, full second, without time exposure – impressions were highly correlated (trustworthy, competent, likable, aggressive, attractive)
Warm-hearted: Full, round face, large eyes, more attractive (works reverse). Adults with baby-faced features are seen as having childlike qualities)

5. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception Influence of evolution
Evolution: Programmed to respond gently to infantile features so that babies are treated with loving care

6. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception Perceptions of situations
People have preconceptions or "scripts" about certain types of situations. These scripts guide our interpretations of behavior and our anticipation
Example: First date described by US college students (16 steps)
Black, and Turner in 1979, asked participants to read 18 different scenarios, all of which represented a doctor’s office script. The participants were later asked to complete either a recall task or a recognition task.
Participants tended to recall certain parts of the stories that were not actually present, but part of the script

7. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception Scripts of emotions and movements
Photographs of human expression, same face, once interpreted as fear (threatened by dog), happy (won in the lottery)
Recognizing people’s movements, even in the dark, universal, allows us to detect others by movements

8. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception Mind perception
Mind perception: Process by which people attribute humanlike mental states, (thinking, emotions and intentions) to various animate, inanimate objects and people
The more objects function outside the norm the more mind we attribute (intention)
Example: vacuum cleaner, car

9. 5 min pair work
Exchange briefly: Think of how you attribute mind to objects (if they don’t function the way you want/outside the norm/seem to have their own will). Which objects are those/have those been and in which way have you attributed mind/treated them more like humans?

10. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception Mind perception Machines or humans – Intention maters
Imagine the elevator is broken and it stops at every second floor or…. Someone presses the buttons intentionally….

11. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception Mind perception Intention changes experience
Participants received electric shocks – One group was told they were intentionally, the other was told they would happen unintentionally

12. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception Mind perception Dehumanization
Reference: Class on discrimination
Mind attribution and ingroup or outgroup (example racism)
Decreased mind attribution and dehumanization
The more/less mind we attribute to people, the more we like/dislike a character
Low mind attribution can serve people to justify dehumanization
Recent large-scale survey investigated links between mind perception and morality.
Mind and emotions: Step mother example
discuss which people were attributed less of a mind, how we attribute less mind by calling people animal’s names

13. Group discussion: Mind perception
Before you discuss decide who is going to write down keywords and will summarize the discussion results for the class in the end
Discuss the following question minutes
Discuss who (individuals/roles/jobs/groups of people) do we sometimes attribute less mind to: Find examples for who do we judge to have less emotions (cold hearted), have less intention (no own will), less complex thinking?
How do we dehumanize, do you speak in a certain way about people/call them inhuman names/attribute animal names to people, which ones? Example Hitler called Jews cockroaches.
What can be consequence of these judgments? Find concrete examples related to the present or past.

14. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception Perceiving non-verbal behavior
Nonverbal behavior: behavior that reveals a person’s feeling without words, through facial expression, body language and vocal cues.
People all over the world are able to recognize primary emotions
In-group advantage when judging emotions from people of same ethnicity or nationality. Study: Recognizing emotions expressed by Americans: 60 percent of Chinese participants living in China, 83 percent of Chinese living in America, 93 percent of non-Chinese Americans

15. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception Evolutionary benefit
Evolutionary benefit: Important to detect emotions, especially emotions such as anger, participants reacted to anger with frowning even when presented subliminally (without conscious awareness)
People more than recognize disgust, they experience it on a neural level

16. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception
Detecting deception.
How can you tell that someone lies?
Video example and discussion

17. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception

18. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception
Detecting deception
P. Eckman and W. Friesen showed series of films to nurses, where asked to show or conceal their true feelings, observers were asked to distinguish
Distinguishing trust from deception people use nonverbal cues to detect deception but are often not accurate in making these judgments because they pay too much attention to the face and neglect body cues that are more revealing
Face easier to control unlike nervous movements of hands and feet

19. 1. Observation: The elements of social perception Detecting deception
Voice most likely to tell: When people lie they tend to hesitate, then speed up and raise the pitch of voice
Instead of focusing on stress, we should focus on cognitive efforts, tell the events the reverse way

20. 2. Attribution: From elements to dispositions

21. 2. Attribution: From elements to dispositions Attribution theories
Attribution is the process by which we explain people's behavior and identify inner dispositions (Fritz Heider, 1985)
Personal attribution
Attribution to internal characteristics of an actor such as ability, personality, mood, or effort
Situational attribution
Attribution to facts external to an actor such as the task , other people, or luck

22. Activity
Attribute the following characteristics (situational or dispositional to you and a friend)

23. 2. Attribution: From elements to dispositions Attribution theory
People begin to understand others by making personal or situational attributions for their behavior
Example: Why did Zidane lash out, forcefully head-butting his Italian opponent, Aggression and short temper or was he provoked?

24. 2. Attribution: From elements to dispositions
Attribution biases - we use cognitive heuristics- rules of thumb that enable us to make judgments that are quick but often in error
Fundamental attribution error: the tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the impact of situations on other people's behavior

27. 2. Attribution: From elements to dispositions Covariation principle
Kelly argues that people can act like scientists as they make attributions about the causes of other peoples’ behavior. That is, we vary conditions and determine how those variations determine outcomes. By doing so, we can identify what we believe to be the cause of the outcome Three kind of covariations are used to define the cause of the outcome
Consistency
Distinctiveness

29. 3. From dispositions to impressions

30. 3. From dispositions to impressions
Fill in the blank

31. 3 .From dispositions to impressions
Fill in the blank

32. 3. From dispositions to impressions
Priming: The tendency for recently used or perceived words or ideas to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information
Primacy effect
The tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later
Need for closure
the desire to reduce cognitive uncertainty which heightens the importance of first impressions

33. 3. From dispositions to impressions
Implicit personality theory
A network of assumptions people make about the relationships among traits and behaviors
Central traits
Traits that exert a powerful influence on overall impression

34. 3. From dispositions to impressions Confirmation bias
Belief perseverance
The tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited
- first impressions may survive in the face of inconsistent information - ambiguous evidence is interpreted in ways that bolster first impressions - the effect of evidence that is later discredited preservers because people formulate theories to support their initial beliefs