1
Q
social perception
A
processes by which people come to understand one another
2
Q
What three sources do we use as clues for elements of social perception?
A
- persons
- situations
- behavior
3
Q
What facial features tend to be associated with warmth, kindness, naiivety, weakness, honestness, and submissiveness? What facial features tend to be associated with the reverse?
A
- warmth, kindness, etc. : baby-faced features – large, round eyes; high eyebrows; round cheeks; large forehead; smooth skin; rounded chin
- reverse (stronger, dominant, more competent) : mature features – small eyes, low brows, small forehead, wrinkled skin, angular chin, wider faces relative to height
4
Q
What facial expressions may signal initial perceptions of trustworthiness? What facial expressions may signal initial perceptions of untrustworthiness?
A
- trustworthy: looking happy, U-shaped mouth, raised eyebrows
- untrustworthy: looking angry, mouth curls down, eyebrows form a V
5
Q
behavioral scripts
A
our predictions/expectations of a (familiar) situation based on prior experience or knowledge
6
Q
How does context affect our perceptions of emotions in a facial expression? What is an example from class about this?
A
- context makes it much faster and more automatic to understand someone’s emotions
- ex: tennis players winning or losing a point - when we think that they are winning or losing a point in tennis, we only think that because we know the context (they are playing tennis– they could really be experiencing torture or orgasm l o l)
7
Q
How do we derive meaning from our observations?
A
- by dividing continuous stream of human behavior into discrete “units”
8
Q
mind perception
A
- process by which people attribute human-like mental states to various animate and inanimate objects, including other people
9
Q
nonverbal behavior
A
- behavior that reveals a person’s feelings without words through facial expressions, body language, and vocal cues
10
Q
How does “familiarity breed accuracy” when it comes to recognizing emotions in the face?
A
- we are more accurate at judging faces from our own national, ethnic, or regional groups than from members of less familiar groups
11
Q
Familiarity breeds accuracy, but to what extent?
A
- People from all over the world are able to accurately categorize faces as to what emotion target is feeling
- But people are generally slightly better (~10%) at identifying/categorizing emotions of their own group
- Generally sensitive to the subtle cues that exist in our own culture that might not exist in other cultures
12
Q
Do we detect every emotional expression in the same amount of time?
A
- Some emotional expressions are more accurately categorized and more quickly perceived – helps us with communication, don’t detect the expressions at the same speed, however
13
Q
How might disgust be adaptive?
A
- food poisoning which is a real threat, we are less likely to consume something that has a bad odor bc we feel disgust
14
Q
What part of the brain does disgust activate? Does it do this when witnessing disgust in others?
A
- activates the insula
- activates insula when watching someone else sniff something disgusting – we experience it (even secondhand) on a neural level
15
Q
What is thin slicing when perceiving a person? Is it accurate?
A
- our social perceptions of someone in a very, very short amount of time
- often are actually accurate and intuitive
16
Q
What is the “eye contact effect”? When does this sensitivity become present?
A
- people who look us straight in the eye quickly draw and hold our attention, increase arousal, and activate key social areas of the brain
- this sensitivity is present from birth
17
Q
Are we better at detecting deception in someone when we observe their body language or facial cues?
A
- body language
18
Q
Do we as humans tend to be accurate in detecting deception? What reasoning supports this?
A
No, we often pay attention to behavioral cues that are not actually very telling
19
Q
What method do researchers argue is better at detecting lying? Why? What is an example of how researchers attempt this?
A
- we should both induce and focus on behavioral cues that betray cognitive effort because it has been theorized that lying requires more thinking
- ask truth tellers and liars to recount their stories in reverse chronological order – more effortful for the liars to do
- ask truth tellers and liars to maintain eye contact as much as possible w/interviewers
20
Q
attribution theory
A
a group of theories (two inferences; personal, situational) that describe how people explain the causes of behavior
21
Q
personal attribution
A
attribution to internal characteristics of an actor, such as ability, personality, mood, or effort
22
Q
situational attribution
A
attribution to factors external to an actor, such as the task, other people, or luck
23
Q
correspondent inference theory (Jones & Davis 1965)
A
- predicts that people try to infer from an action whether the act corresponds to an enduring personal trait of the actor (ex: is the person who commits an act of aggression a beast? is the person who donates money to charity and altruist?)
24
Q
What three factors do people use to make inferences of people?
A
1) choice
2) expectedness of behavior
3) effects or consequences of someone’s behavior
25
What factor does choice play in our interpretations of people?
behavior that is freely chosen is more informative about a person than behavior that is coerced by the situation
26
What factor does expectedness play in our interpretations of people?
- an action tells us more about a person when it departs from the norm than when it is typical, part of a social role, or otherwise expected under the circumstances
27
What factor does effects or consequences of someone's behavior play in our interpretations of people?
- acts that produce many desirable outcomes do not reveal a person's specific motives as clearly as acts that produce only a single desirable outcome
28
covariation principle (Harold Kelley 1967)
a principle attribution theory that holds that people attribute behavior to factors that are present when a behavior occurs (causes sth to happen) and are absent when it does not
29
consensus information
- info that tells us how different persons react to the same stimulus
30
distinctiveness information
- info that tells us how a person reacts to different stimuli
31
consistency information
- what happens to the behavior at another time when the person and the stimulus both remain the same
32
availability heuristic
the tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances of it come to mind
33
base-rate fallacy
the finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information presented in the form of numerical base rates
34
belief in a just world
the belief that individuals get what they deserve in life, an orientation that leads people to disparage victims
35
belief perseverance
- tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited
36
central traits
traits that exert a powerful influence on overall impressions
37
confirmation biases
- tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs
- results in attending to confirming info, and disregarding disconfirming
38
counterfactual thinking
- the tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not
39
false-consensus effect
- the tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes, and behaviors
40
fundamental attribution error
- tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the impact of situations on other people's behavior
41
impression formation
- process of integrating info about a person to form a coherent impression
42
information integration theory
- the theory that impressions are based on (1) perceiver dispositions and (2) a weighted average of a target person's traits
43
primacy effect
- tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later
44
priming
- tendency for recently used or perceived words or ideas to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information
45
self-fulfilling prophecy
the process by which one's expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations
46
people dislike seeing something inferior in the world that has their name on it
47
implicit egotism
48
we tend to focus on people who are more like us -- pay less attention to those who aren't -- can be used for good or evil,
49
implicit racial bias
if someone from different racial groups gives you a gentle touch on the shoulder, that implicit racial bias towards that person softens and diminishes
50
ikea effect
- ikea gives u good furniture for low cost bc they offload cost onto people where they have to build their own furniture, actually may have psychological benefits -- people who put in time and effort tend to value the item more
- people who build their own legos are more likely to keep them and feel more pride associated with it
- people tend to use products to signal value in their identities and competence to themselves and others
- people who are feeling bad tend to be more likely to want to build the ikea shelf to restore their competence
51
Do we judge books by covers?
yes! we have a crazy sensitivity to facial variations, actually (saw this in the two business-looking men in class)
52
What is the face "pop-out" effect?
- Shown an animal face first in a collage, took significantly longer to find the animal face than it took to find the human face shown in the same collage right after
- faces have some sort of evolutionary significance such that they capture our attention
53
pareidolia
the psychological phenomenon of seeing faces and even attributing personalities to these in inanimate objects
54
Willis and Todorov 2006 Face Perception
Group 1: 100 milliseconds
Group 2: 500ms milliseconds
Group 3: 1000ms milliseconds
The ratings made by group 1 were highly related to group 2 and 3
**Can form impressions of others extremely quickly from faces!
55
overgeneralization hypothesis
- We infer personality characteristics based on similarity of one’s appearance with learned associations
- Resemblances to angry or happy emotional expressions lead perceivers to infer those characteristics in personality
ex: Babyfacedness – to the extent a face has baby-like characteristics, we infer target has similar personality (warm, innocent, kind, weak, submissive) and have urges to act similarly to target (be caregiving and gentle) versus RBF
56
Is purely appearance an accurate depiction of personality? What is the exception & why ?
- mostly NOT accurate but we do use it even when we try not to, appearance thus often predicts outcomes
- extraversion seems to be one exception, but presumably bc it’s related to attractiveness and practice at being social
- some theories that a mom will actually pay more attention to the child that is more attractive
57
Criminal youth group study - who was punished more?
- Criminal youth groups – committed pretty serious crimes together as a group
- Who was punished more? – controlling for the same crime committed by everyone, those that looked more dominant and/or untrustworthy usually had a more severe punishment than those that looked less dominant and/or trustworthy
58
face in the crowd effect (anger pop-out effect) - what is it and why does it occur?
- tend to see the face that is angry pop out more quickly in a collage of other different facial expressions that are all the same, whereas we don’t see the face that is happy pop out more quickly in a collage of other different facial expressions that are all the same
- Since self-directed anger (with eye-gaze) indicates threat, it is important to detect (and avoid/respond) quickly (though this response doesn't occur unless eyes are directed toward you)
59
What are the 5 big personality factors? Which ones are we accurate at perceiving and with which ones are we less accurate?
- extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to new experience, agreeableness, and emotional stability (neuroticism)
- Accurate on extraversion and openness, not others
- Very bad accuracy on “trustworthiness/friendliness/intelligence”
60
example of the fundamental attribution error with castro - what was the study, what was the DV, what did it show
- Participants viewed a student giving a speech that was either pro or anti Castro
- Participants were told the student either chose the position or was assigned the position
- DV: asked participants how much the speechwriter supported Castro
- Hard for us to turn off our FAE, hard to separate a person from a situation? (we assume much more that it's their personality/own opinion that makes them more strongly for castro, without considering it could have also been assigned to them)
61
When asked to think of ourselves/characteristics and tehn think of our friends and their characteristics which group/person are we more likely to say "it depends on the situation"? What does this demonstrate?
- more likely to say “it depends on the situation” for ourselves than for others
- shows the FAE
62
Why does the FAE occur?
- we underestimate the power of situational factors
63
What is the two step process of impressions?
Two step process of impressions
1) form impression – this is automatic
2) correct/update impression for context – this takes effort
BUT, don’t always have enough resources to consider situational factors
64
Who is more likely to commit FAE?
- People who are cognitively busy or distracted are more likely to commit FAE
Reminder: large takeaway from SOCIAL psych is that situation is MOSTLY responsible for majority of our actions
65
What study was done to test cultural variation in FAE between Americans and East Asian populations?
- American and East Asian participants viewed a fish tank for a certain amount of time, then had a test of their memory
- Americans better able to describe the fish
- East Asians were better able to describe things in the tank
66
What is the takeaway of cultural variation between American and East Asian cultures in FAE?
- Idea is that among East Asian participants there is greater attention to environment and less of a focal attention to the things moving around in the tank
- Effect is small, but possibly real
67
What is the smoke detector hypothesis? What is the point of it? How is it seen in interest between men and women?
- demonstrates how a perceiver’s goals/beliefs influence how others are perceived
- idea is that a smoke detector going off very frequently when there isn’t a fire is far less dangerous than a smoke detector that never goes and there is a fire
68
How is the smoke detector effect demonstrated in a study of interest between men and women? What does it demonstrate?
- Could be advantageous to perceive smiles as signs of sexual interest (more so for men perceiving women)
- guy thinks that a girl was interested in her, but he did not approach her, or she wasn’t and he did approach her
- more problematic that she had interest and he didn’t approach
- heterosexual men are more likely to interpret a smile in women as potential mutual interest to avoid this smoke detector effect
- importantly! these men don't just think about it as mutual interest, they literally see it (interpret it) as interest to avoid the SDE
69
How does perceiver motivation play a role in accuracy of other peoples' intentions/social sensitivity? What study demonstrated that?
- Can improve accuracy/social sensitivity
- Duchenne vs. “Fake” smile study
- participants play game (cyberball) - either get accepted or socially excluded (rejected) – manipulate systematically whether you’re rejected or not, if you’re in the rejection group you’ll get the ball a few times and then you just start to get rejected
- following task, they guessed whether people are doing real (Duchenne) or “fake” smiles - those who were socially rejected were temporarily more accurate at detecting real smiles
70
What kind of info do we pay attention to when forming an impression of a person? What example was used in class?
- Negative info is more RARE - people tend to hide negative communication, when we do discover it, we tend to treat/perceive it as really diagnostic of that person’s character
- Say Nyesha likes going to the gym, tells good jokes, prefers dogs over cats, and donates to local charities…
and she is also a pedophile!
71
Is it easy to counterbalance negative information with equally positive information?
no, it's difficult
72
What is the primacy effect in forming first impressions of people / what does it demonstrate?
- Learning about some traits first influence how all subsequent traits are perceived
- shows that first impressions do matter, subsequent info less attended to, takes more to update impression
73
What example from class demonstrated the primacy effect?
- study from Asch, 1946
- Described a teaching assistant to some as intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious
- Described teaching assistant to others as envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, intelligent
- Same exact info but portrayed in different orders
- First description versus second description have more positive impression of teaching assistant in the first, first bit of info kind of anchors our impression of the rest of the characteristics
74
What was the example of confirmatory hypothesis testing from class?
- People did “getting to know you” interview in pairs
- Told their partner was introverted or extroverted
- Researchers were interested in questions partners asked:
- Introverted: have you ever felt left out of a social group?
- Extroverted: how do you liven up a party?
75
confirmation bias example from class (Hannah)
- Hannah
- Half participants told Hannah was from rich family, half poor family
- showed a video in which hannah was quizzed and she did ok (some hard questions right, some easy wrong)
- Those who thought she was poor had worse rating of "potential" than did those who thought she was rich
76
example of self-fulfilling prophecy from class (teachers expectations)
- Do teacher expectations influence performance in the classroom?
- Teachers told some students were “bloomers,” on verge of intellectual potential
- In fact, “bloomers” were randomly selected
- 8 months later, “Bloomers” were performing better in the classroom
How? High expectations lead to more challenging homework, attention, praise, feedback, which positively impact student
PSYC 215
flashcards
Decks in class (10)
# Cards
