1. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Chapter 4 Social Perception: How We Come to Understand Other People

2. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. PowerPoint Presentation Prepared By Fred W. Whitford Montana State University

3. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Social Perception Social perception is defined as the study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people.

4. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Chapter Outline I. Nonverbal Behavior

5. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Nonverbal Behavior Nonverbal communication is defined as the way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words.

6. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Nonverbal Behavior Nonverbal behavior is used to express emotion, convey attitudes, communicate personality traits, and to facilitate or modify verbal communication.

7. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Nonverbal Behavior Facial Expressions Charles Darwin believed that human emotional expressions are universal -- that all humans encode and decode expressions in the same way.

8. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Nonverbal Behavior Facial Expressions Modern research suggests that Darwin was right for the six major emotional expressions: anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, and sadness.

9. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Nonverbal Behavior Facial Expressions Affective blend is a facial expression in which one part of the face registers one emotion while another part registers a different emotion.

10. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Nonverbal Behavior Facial Expressions Current research examines whether other emotions have distinct and universal facial expressions associated with them.

11. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Nonverbal Behavior Culture and Channels of Nonverbal Communications Culture also influences emotional expression; display rules that are unique to each culture dictate when different nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display.

12. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Nonverbal Behavior Culture and Channels of Nonverbal Communications Emblems are nonverbal gestures that have well understood definitions within a given culture.

13. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Nonverbal Behavior Multichannel Nonverbal Communication In everyday life, we usually receive information from multiple channels simultaneously.

14. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Nonverbal Behavior Gender Differences in Nonverbal Communication Women are better than men at both decoding and encoding nonverbal behavior if people are telling the truth. Men, however, are better at detecting lies.

15. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Nonverbal Behavior Gender Differences in Nonverbal Communication This finding can be explained by social-role theory, which claims that sex differences in social behavior are due to society’s division of labor between the sexes.

16. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Chapter Outline II. Implicit Personality Theories: Filling in the Blanks

17. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Implicit Personality Theories An implicit personality theory is a type of schema people use to group various kinds of personality traits together. Using these theories helps us form well-developed impressions of other people quickly.

18. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Implicit Personality Theories Culture in Implicit Personality Theories Hoffman and colleagues (1986) found that cultural implicit personality theories affect how people form impressions of others.

19. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Chapter Outline III. Causal Attribution: Answering the “Why” Question

20. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution Although nonverbal behavior may be relatively easy to decode, there is still substantial ambiguity about why people act the way they do.

21. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Nature of the Attribution Process Attribution theory is a description of the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people’s behavior.

22. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Nature of the Attribution Process Fritz Heider is considered the father of attribution theory. He believed that people are like amateur scientists, trying to understand other people’s behavior by piecing together information until they arrive at a reasonable cause.

23. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Nature of the Attribution Process He proposed a simple dichotomy for people’s explanations: internal attributions and external attributions.

24. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Covariation Model: Internal Versus External Attributions The covariation model states that in order to form an attribution about what caused a person’s behavior, we systematically note the pattern between the presence (or absence) of possible causal factors and focus on the consensus information, distinctiveness information, and consistency information we gather from the situation.

25. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Covariation Model: Internal Versus External Attributions According to the covariation model, consensus information is the information regarding how other people besides the actor treat the target.

26. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Covariation Model: Internal Versus External Attributions Distinctiveness information is the information about how the actor treats other people besides the target, and consistency information is the information about how the actor treats the target across time and different situations.

27. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Covariation Model: Internal Versus External Attributions People are most likely to make an internal attribution (attribute the behavior to the actor) when consensus and distinctiveness are low but consistency is high; they are most likely to make an external attribution (attribute the behavior to the target and/or situation) when consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency are all high.

28. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Covariation Model: Internal Versus External Attributions The covariation model assumes that people make causal attributions in a rational, logical fashion.

29. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Covariation Model: Internal Versus External Attributions

30. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Correspondence Bias: People as Personality Psychologists The correspondence bias is the tendency to infer that people’s behavior corresponds to (matches) their disposition (personality).

31. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Correspondence Bias: People as Personality Psychologists The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overestimate the extent to which a person’s behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors.

32. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Correspondence Bias: People as Personality Psychologists

33. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Correspondence Bias: People as Personality Psychologists One reason people make the fundamental attribution error is that observers focus their attention on actors, while the situational causes of the actor’s behavior are less salient and may be unknown.

34. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Correspondence Bias: People as Personality Psychologists Perceptual salience, or the information that is the focus of people’s attention, helps explain why the fundamental attribution error is prevalent.

35. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Correspondence Bias: People as Personality Psychologists

36. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Correspondence Bias: People as Personality Psychologists The Two-Step Process of Attribution occurs when people analyze another person’s behavior by first making an automatic internal attribution, and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behavior, after which one may adjust original internal attribution.

37. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Correspondence Bias: People as Personality Psychologists The spotlight effect is the tendency to overestimate the extent to which our actions and appearance are salient to others.

38. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Correspondence Bias: People as Personality Psychologists

39. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Actor/Observer Difference The actor/observer difference is the tendency to see other people’s behavior as dispositionally caused, but focusing more on the role of situational factors when explaining one’s own behavior.

40. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Actor/Observer Difference One reason for the actor/observer difference is perceptual salience: actors notice the situations around them that influence them to act, while observers notice the actors.

41. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution The Actor/Observer Difference The actor/observer difference also occurs because actors have more information about themselves than do observers.

42. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution Self-Serving Attributions Self-serving attributions are explanations for one’s successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors.

43. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution Self-Serving Attributions Defensive attributions are explanations for behavior or outcomes that avoid feelings of vulnerability and mortality. Unrealistic optimism is a form of defensive attribution wherein people think that good things are more likely to happen to them than to their peers and that negative events are less likely to happen to them than to their peers.

44. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Causal Attribution Self-Serving Attributions One way we deal with tragic information about others is to make it seem like it could never happen to us. We do it through the belief in a just world, a form of defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things happen to bad people, and that good things happen to good people.

45. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Chapter Outline IV. Culture and Attribution

46. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Culture and Attributions Culture and the Correspondence Bias The correspondence bias is the inclination to conclude that people’s behaviors match their personalities. Although the correspondence bias is prevalent across cultures, people from collectivist cultures are more likely than Westerners are to notice situational information and to use it to form situational attributions.

47. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Culture and Attributions Culture and Other Attribution Biases Westerners are more prone to the self- serving bias than Easterners are. Defensive attributions, like the belief in a just world, are more prevalent in societies where extremes in wealth and poverty exist. And, the spotlight effect is more common among people in individualist cultures compared to those from collectivist cultures.

48. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Chapter Outline V. How Accurate Are Our Attributions and Impressions?

49. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. How Accurate Are Our Attributions and Impressions? Under many circumstances we are not very accurate, especially compared to how accurate we think we are.

50. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions What are the most often used and diagnostic channels of nonverbal communication? What are other channels of nonverbal communication? What functions do nonverbal cues serve?

51. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions What is the relationship between encoding and decoding? What are the six major emotional expressions that are universally encoded and decoded?

52. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions What are affect blends? What are display rules? What are examples of cross-cultural differences in display rules?

53. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions What are emblems? What are examples of these?

54. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions Who may be better at decoding nonverbal cues, extroverts or introverts, men or women?

55. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions How does the social-role theory explain gender differences in encoding and decoding nonverbal communication?

56. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions What is an implicit personality theory? What are functions of implicit personality theories?

57. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions What is attribution theory? What does it try to describe and explain? How do internal attributions differ from external ones?

58. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions What is the premise of the covariation model? What information do we examine for covariation when we form attributions? When are people most likely to make an internal attribution and an external attribution according to the covariation model?

59. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions What is the fundamental attribution error? Why does it occur? What is perceptual salience? What is the two-step process of attribution? What is the spotlight effect?

60. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions What is the actor/observer difference? Why does it occur?

61. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions When we form self-serving attributions to what do we attribute our successes and our failures?

62. Aronson Social Psychology, 5/e Copyright © 2005 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Study Questions What are defensive attributions? What is unrealistic optimism? What is the belief in a just world? What functions do these defensive attributions serve?