Chapter 4
Social Perception:
How We Come to
Understand Other People
Social Perception
• Social perception is defined as the
study of how we form impressions of
and make inferences about other
people.
Chapter Outline
I. Nonverbal Behavior
Nonverbal Behavior
• Nonverbal communication is defined
as the way in which people
communicate, intentionally or
unintentionally, without words.
Nonverbal Behavior
• Nonverbal behavior is used to
express emotion, convey attitudes,
communicate personality traits, and
to facilitate or modify verbal
communication.
Nonverbal Behavior
• Facial Expressions
Charles Darwin believed that human emotional
expressions are universal -- that all humans
encode and decode expressions in the same
way
Nonverbal Behavior
• Facial Expressions
Modern research suggests that Darwin was
right for the six major emotional expressions:
anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, and
sadness.
Nonverbal Behavior
• Facial Expressions
Current research examines whether other
emotions have distinct and universal facial
expressions associated with them.
Nonverbal Behavior
• Facial Expressions
Culture also influences emotional expression;
display rules that are unique to each culture
dictate when different nonverbal behaviors are
appropriate to display.
Nonverbal Behavior
• Facial Expressions
Facial expressions may sometimes be hard to
interpret accurately because people may
display blends of multiple affects
simultaneously.
Nonverbal Behavior
• Other Channels of Nonverbal
Communication
Eye contact and gaze are also powerful nonverbal cues.
The use of personal space is a nonverbal behavior with
wide cultural variation.
Emblems are nonverbal gestures that have well
understood definitions within a given culture.
Nonverbal Behavior
• Multichannel Nonverbal
Communication
In everyday life, we usually receive information
from multiple channels simultaneously.
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.
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.
Chapter Outline
II. Implicit Personality Theories:
Filling in the Blanks
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.
Implicit Personality Theories
• The Role of Culture in Implicit
Personality Theories
Hoffman and colleagues (1986) found that
cultural implicit personality theories affect
how people form impressions of others.
Chapter Outline
III. Causal Attribution: Answering
the “Why” Question
Causal Attribution
• Although nonverbal behavior may be
relatively easy to decode, there is
still substantial ambiguity about why
people act the way they do.
Causal Attribution
• Attribution theory is a description of
the way in which people explain the
causes of their own and other
people’s behavior.
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.
Causal Attribution
• The Nature of the Attribution Process
He proposed a simple dichotomy for people’s
explanations: internal attributions and
external attributions.
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.
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,
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.
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.
Causal Attribution
• The Covariation Model: Internal
Versus External Attributions
The covariation model assumes that people
make causal attributions in a rational, logical
fashion.
Causal Attribution
• The Fundamental Attribution Error:
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.
Causal Attribution
• The Fundamental Attribution Error:
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.
Causal Attribution
• The Fundamental Attribution Error:
People as Personality Psychologists
Thus, perceptual salience, or the information
that is the focus of people’s attention, helps
explain why the fundamental attribution error
is prevalent.
Causal Attribution
• The Fundamental Attribution Error:
People as Personality Psychologists
The Two-Step Process of Attribution occurs when
people analyze another person’s behavior -- they
typically make an internal attribution automatically;
they then may consciously choose to engage in the
effortful, second step in the process, whereby they
think about possible situational reasons for the
behavior; after engaging in the second step, they may
adjust their original internal attribution to take into
account situational factors.
Causal Attribution
• The Fundamental Attribution Error:
People as Personality Psychologists
The spotlight effect occurs when people
overestimate the extent to which their
behaviors and appearance are noticed by
others. This indicates that people are aware
of others’ tendencies to commit the
fundamental attribution error.
Causal Attribution
• The Actor/Observer Difference
The actor/observer difference is the tendency
to see other people’s behavior as
dispositionally caused, while focusing more
on the role of situational factors when
explaining one’s own behavior.
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.
Causal Attribution
• The Actor/Observer Difference
The actor/observer difference also occurs
because actors have more information about
themselves than do observers.
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.
Causal Attribution
• Self-Serving Attributions
One reason people make self-serving attributions is
to maintain their self-esteem.
A second reason is self-presentational, to maintain
the perceptions others have of one.
A third reason is because people have information
about their behavior in other situations, which may
lead to positive outcomes being expected and
negative outcomes being unexpected.
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.
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.
Chapter Outline
IV. The Role of Culture in the
Attribution Process
The Role of Culture
• Culture and the Fundamental
Attribution Error
Individualist cultures socialize people to prefer
dispositional attributions over situational ones. In
comparison, collectivist (often Eastern) cultures
emphasize group membership, interdependence, and
conformity to group norms. Therefore, Westerners
are more likely than Easterners are to commit the
fundamental attribution error.
The Role of Culture
• 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.
The Role of Culture
• 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.
Chapter Outline
V. How Accurate Are Our
Attributions and Impressions?
How Accurate Are Our Attributions and
Impressions?
• Under many circumstances we are
not very accurate, especially
compared to how accurate we think
we are.
How Accurate Are Our Attributions and
Impressions?
• Why Are Our Impressions of Others
Sometimes Wrong?
One reason is because of the mental
shortcuts, for example the fundamental
attribution error, we use in forming social
judgments.
How accurate Are Our Attributions and
Impressions?
• Why Are Our Impressions of Others
Sometimes Wrong?
Another reason is because people may use
faulty implicit personality theories to guide
their inferences.
How Accurate Are Our Attributions and
Impressions?
• Why Do Our Impressions Seem
Accurate?
One reason is that we often see people in
only a limited number of situations and never
have the opportunity to see that our
impressions are wrong.
How Accurate Are Our Attributions and
Impressions?
• Why Do Our Impressions Seem
Accurate?
A second reason is because people create
self-fulfilling prophecies about others and
treat them in ways that make their prophecies
come true.
How Accurate Are Our Attributions and
Impressions?
• Why Do Our Impressions Seem
Accurate?
A third reason we may not realize our
impressions are wrong is if a lot of people
agree on what a person is like -- even though
they may all be incorrect.
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?
Study Questions
What is the relationship between
encoding and decoding? What
are the six major emotional
expressions that are universally
encoded and decoded?
Study Questions
What are affect blends? What are
display rules? What are
examples of cross-cultural
differences in display rules?
Study Questions
What are emblems? What are
examples of these?
Study Questions
Who may be better at decoding
nonverbal cues, extroverts or
introverts, men or women?
Study Questions
How does the social-role theory
explain gender differences in
encoding and decoding
nonverbal communication?
Study Questions
What is an implicit personality
theory? What are functions of
implicit personality theories?
Study Questions
What is attribution theory? What
does it try to describe and
explain? How do internal
attributions differ from external
ones?
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?
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?
Study Questions
What is the actor/observer
difference? Why does it occur?
Study Questions
When we form self-serving
attributions to what do we
attribute our successes and our
failures?
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?
Study Questions
What are cultural differences in
the rate of the fundamental
attribution error? What is the
correspondence bias? What
cultural differences exist
regarding other attribution
biases?
Study Questions
What are some reasons why our
impressions of others are
sometimes incorrect? Why don’t
we know when our impressions
of others are wrong?