6th edition
Social Psychology
Elliot Aronson
University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia
Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College
slides by Travis Langley
Henderson State University
Chapter 4
Social Perception:
How We Come to
Understand Other People
“Things are seldom as they seem.
Skim milk masquerades as cream.”
– W. S. Gilbert
Other people are not easy to figure out.
Why are they the way they are?
Why do they do what they do?
We all have a fundamental fascination with explaining
other people’s behavior, but all we have to go on is
observable behavior:
–
–
–
–
–
What people do
What they say
Facial expressions
Gestures
Tone of voice
We can’t know, truly and completely, who they are and
what they mean.
Instead, we rely on our impressions and personal
theories, putting them together as well as we can,
hoping they will lead to reasonably accurate and useful
conclusions.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Social
Perception
Social Perception
The study of how we
form impressions
of and make
inferences about
other people.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Nonverbal Behavior
• What do we know about people when we
first meet them?
• We know what we can see and hear, and
even though we know we should not
judge a book by its cover, this kind of
easily observable information is crucial to
our first impression.
• With no words at all, we can
communicate volumes.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Nonverbal Behavior
Nonverbal Communication
The way in which people communicate,
intentionally or unintentionally, without
words.
Nonverbal cues include:
• facial expressions • body position/movement
• tone of voice
• the use of touch
• gestures
• gaze
Nonverbal Behavior
• We have a special kind of brain cell called
mirror neurons.
• These neurons respond when we perform an
action and when we see someone else perform
the same action.
• Mirror neurons appear to be the basis of our
ability to feel empathy.
• For example, when we see someone crying,
these mirror neurons fire automatically and
involuntarily, just as if we were crying ourselves.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Nonverbal Behavior
Nonverbal cues serve many functions in
communication.
• You can express “I’m angry” by narrowing your
eyes, lowering your eyebrows, and setting your
mouth in a thin, straight line.
• You can convey the attitude “I like you” with
smiles and extended eye contact.
• And you communicate your personality traits,
like being an extrovert, with broad gestures and
frequent changes in voice pitch and inflection.
Nonverbal Behavior
Some nonverbal cues actually contradict
the spoken words.
• Communicating sarcasm is the classic
example of verbal-nonverbal
contradiction.
• Think about how you’d say “I’m so happy
for you” sarcastically.
Facial Expressions of Emotion
Are facial expressions of emotion universal?
The answer is yes, for the six major emotional
expressions: anger, happiness, surprise, fear,
disgust, and sadness.
All humans encode or express these emotions in
the same way, and all humans can decode or
interpret them with equal accuracy.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
Facial Expressions of Emotion
• Paul Ekman and others have conducted
numerous studies indicating that the
ability to interpret at least the six major
emotions is cross-cultural—part of being
human and not a product of people’s
cultural experience.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
Facial Expressions of Emotion
• Other emotions such as guilt, shame,
embarrassment, and pride occur later in
human development and show less
universality.
• These latter emotions are closely tied to
social interaction.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
Facial Expressions of Emotion
Decoding facial expressions accurately is more
complicated than we have indicated, for three
reasons.
1. Affect blends occur when one part of the face
registers one emotion and another part, a
different emotion.
2. At times people try to appear less emotional than
they are so that no one will know how they really
feel.
3. A third reason why decoding facial expressions
can be inaccurate has to do with culture.
Culture and the Channels of
Nonverbal Communication
Display rules are particular to each culture
and dictate what kinds of emotional
expressions people are supposed to
show.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
Culture and the Channels of
Nonverbal Communication
Examples of display rule differences:
• American cultural norms discourage emotional
displays in men, such as grief or crying, but
allow the facial display of such emotions in
women.
• Japanese women will often hide a wide smile
behind their hands, whereas Western women
are allowed—indeed, encouraged—to smile
broadly and often.
• Japanese norms lead people to cover up
negative facial expressions with smiles and
laughter and to display fewer facial expressions
in general than is true in the West.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Culture and the Channels of
Nonverbal Communication
• Members of American culture become suspicious
when a person doesn’t “look them in the eye” while
speaking, and they find talking to someone who is
wearing dark sunglasses quite disconcerting.
• Cultures vary greatly in what is considered
normative use of personal space. Most Americans
like to have a bubble of open space, a few feet in
radius, surrounding them; in comparison, in some
other cultures, strangers think nothing of standing
right next to each other, to the point of touching.
Culture and the Channels of
Nonverbal Communication
Emblems
Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions
within a given culture; they usually have direct verbal
translations, like the “OK” sign.
The important point about emblems is that they are not
universal.
Each culture has devised its own emblems, and these need not
be understandable to people from other cultures.
President George H. W. Bush once used the “V for
victory” sign, but he did it backward—the palm of his
hand was facing him instead of the audience.
Unfortunately, he flashed this gesture to a large
crowd in Australia—and in Australia, this emblem is
the equivalent of “flipping the bird”!
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Multichannel Nonverbal
Communication
• Because nonverbal information is
diffused across these many channels, we
can often rely on one channel to
understand what is going on.
• This increases our ability to make
accurate judgments about others.
Multichannel Nonverbal
Communication
• Except for certain specific situations, such
as talking on the telephone, everyday life
is made up of multichannel nonverbal
social interaction.
• Typically, many nonverbal cues are
available to us when we talk to or observe
other people.
• How do we use this information?
• And how accurately do we use it?
Gender and Nonverbal
Communication
In general, women are better at encoding
and decoding nonverbal cues.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
Gender and Nonverbal
Communication
One exception is that women are less
accurate at detecting deception.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
Gender and Nonverbal
Communication
Social role theory of sex differences
suggests that this is because women
have learned different skills, and one is
to be polite and overlook lying.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
Gender and Nonverbal
Communication
According to Alice Eagly’s social role
theory, most societies have a division of
labor based on gender:
• Men work in jobs outside the home.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
Gender and Nonverbal
Communication
According to Alice Eagly’s social role
theory, most societies have a division of
labor based on gender:
• Men work in jobs outside the home.
• Women work within the home.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
Gender and Nonverbal
Communication
This division of labor has important consequences.
• First, gender-role expectations arise:
Members of the society expect men and women
to have certain attributes that are consistent with
their role. Thus women are expected to be more
nurturing, friendly, expressive, and sensitive than
men because of their primary role as caregivers
to children and elderly family members.
Gender and Nonverbal
Communication
This division of labor has important consequences.
• Second, men and women develop different sets of
skills and attitudes, based on their experiences in
their gender roles.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
Gender and Nonverbal
Communication
This division of labor has important consequences.
• Second, men and women develop different sets of
skills and attitudes, based on their experiences in
their gender roles.
• Finally, because women are less powerful in many
societies and less likely to occupy roles of higher
status, it becomes more important for women to
learn to be accommodating and polite than it is for
men.
Implicit Personality Theories:
Filling in the Blanks.
• To understand other people, we observe
their behavior but we also infer their
feelings, traits, and motives.
• To do so, we use general notions or
schemas about which personality traits
go together in one person.
Implicit Personality Theories:
Filling in the Blanks.
Implicit Personality Theory
A type of schema people use to group
various kinds of personality traits
together; for example, many people
believe that someone who is kind is
generous as well.
• If someone is kind, our implicit personality theory tells
us he or she is probably generous as well.
• Similarly, we assume that a stingy person is also
irritable.
Implicit Personality Theories:
Filling in the Blanks.
But relying on schemas can also lead us
astray.
• We might make the wrong assumptions
about an individual.
• We might even resort to stereotypical
thinking, where our schema, or
stereotype, leads us to believe that the
individual is like all the other members of
his or her group.
Culture and Implicit Personality
Theories
These general notions, or schemas, are
shared by people in a culture, and are
passed from one generation to another.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
Culture and Implicit Personality
Theories
A strong implicit personality theory in this
culture involves physical attractiveness.
We presume that “what is beautiful is
good”—that people with physical beauty
will also have a whole host of other
wonderful qualities.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Culture and Implicit Personality
Theories
In China, an implicit personality theory
describes a person who embodies
traditional Chinese values: creating and
maintaining interpersonal harmony, inner
harmony, and ren qin (a focus on
relationships).
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Culture and Implicit Personality
Theories
In Western cultures, saying someone
has an “artistic personality” implies
that the person is creative, intense,
and temperamental and has an
unconventional lifestyle.
The Chinese, however, do not have
a schema or implicit personality
theory for an artistic type.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Culture and Implicit Personality
Theories
Conversely, in China, there are
categories of personality that do
not exist in Western cultures.
For example, a shi gú person is
someone who is worldly, devoted
to his or her family, socially skillful,
and somewhat reserved.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Causal Attribution:
Answering the “Why” Question
If an acquaintance says, “It’s great to see you!” does she
really mean it?
• Perhaps she is acting more thrilled than
she really feels, out of politeness.
• Perhaps she is outright lying and really
can’t stand you.
The point is that even though nonverbal communication is
sometimes easy to decode and our implicit personality
theories can streamline the way we form impressions,
there is still substantial ambiguity as to what a person’s
behavior really means.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Causal Attribution:
Answering the “Why” Question
According to attribution theory, we try to
determine why people do what they do in
order to uncover the feelings and traits
that are behind their actions.
This helps us understand and predict our
social world.
The Nature of the Attribution Process
Fritz Heider (1958) is frequently referred to as the
father of attribution theory.
Heider discussed what he called “naive” or
“commonsense” psychology.
In his view, people were like amateur scientists,
trying to understand other people’s behavior by
piecing together information until they arrived at
a reasonable explanation or cause.
Heider was intrigued by what seemed reasonable
to people and by how they arrived at their
conclusions.
The Nature of the Attribution Process
When trying to decide what causes
people’s behavior, we can make one of
two attributions:
• An internal, dispositional attribution or
• An external, situational attribution.
Internal Attribution
The inference that a person is behaving
in a certain way because of something
about the person, such as attitude,
character, or personality.
External Attribution
The inference that a person is behaving a
certain way because of something about
the situation he or she is in.
The assumption is that most people would
respond the same way in that situation.
The Nature of the Attribution Process
Satisfied spouses tend to show one pattern:
• Internal attributions for their partners’ positive behaviors
(e.g., “She helped me because she’s such a generous
person”).
• External attributions for their partners’ negative behaviors
(e.g., “He said something mean because he’s so stressed
at work this week”).
In contrast, spouses in distressed marriages tend to display
the opposite pattern:
• Their partners’ positive behaviors are chalked up to
external causes (e.g., “She helped me because she
wanted to impress our friends”).
• Negative behaviors are attributed to internal causes (e.g.,
“He said something mean because he’s a totally selfcentered jerk”).
The Nature of the Attribution Process
Although either type of attribution is always
possible, Heider (1958) noted that we
tend to see the causes of a person’s
behavior as residing in that person
(internal explanation).
• We are perceptually focused on people—
they are who we notice.
• The situation (the external explanation),
which is often hard to see and hard to
describe, may be overlooked.
The Covariation Model:
Internal versus External Attributions
Harold Kelley’s major contribution to attribution
theory was the idea that we notice and think
about more than one piece of information when
we form an impression of another person.
Covariation Model
A theory that states that 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 whether or not the behavior occurs.
The Covariation Model:
Internal versus External Attributions
The covariation model focuses on observations of
behavior across time, place, actors, and
targets.
It examines how the perceiver chooses either an
internal or an external attribution.
We make such choices by using information on:
• Consensus,
• Distinctiveness,
• Consistency.
Consensus Information
Information about the extent to which other
people behave the same way toward the same
stimulus as the actor does.
Distinctiveness Information
Information about the extent to which one
particular actor behaves in the same
way to different stimuli.
Consistency Information
Information about the extent to which the
behavior between one actor and one stimulus
is the same across time and circumstances.
The Correspondence Bias:
People as Personality Psychologists
Specific errors or biases plague the
attribution process.
One common shortcut is the
correspondence bias:
the tendency to believe that people’s
behavior matches (corresponds to)
their dispositions.
The Correspondence Bias:
People as Personality Psychologists
• The pervasive, fundamental theory or
schema most of us have about human
behavior is that people do what they do
because of the kind of people they are, not
because of the situation they are in.
• When thinking this way, we are more like
personality psychologists, who see behavior
as stemming from internal dispositions and
traits, than like social psychologists, who
focus on the impact of social situations on
behavior.
The Correspondence Bias:
People as Personality Psychologists
The correspondence bias is so pervasive
that many social psychologists call it the
fundamental attribution error.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
The Correspondence Bias:
People as Personality Psychologists
One reason is that when we try to explain someone’s
behavior, our focus of attention is usually on the
person, not on the surrounding situation.
If we don’t know someone made a
F earlier in the day, we can’t
use that situational information
to help us understand her
current behavior.
And even when we know her
situation, we still don’t know
how she interprets it.
The F may not have upset her if she’s planning to drop the
course anyway.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
The Correspondence Bias:
People as Personality Psychologists
We can’t see the situation, so we ignore its
importance.
People, not the situation, have
perceptual salience for us.
We pay attention to them, and we
tend to think that they alone
cause their behavior.
Perceptual Salience
The seeming importance of information that is the focus
of people’s attention.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
The Correspondence Bias:
People as Personality Psychologists
The culprit is one of the mental shortcuts we discussed
in Chapter 3: the anchoring and adjustment heuristic.
The correspondence bias is
another byproduct of this
shortcut.
When making attributions,
people use the focus of their
attention as a starting point.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
The Two-Step Process
In sum, we go through a two-step process
when we make attributions.
1.
2.
First, we make an internal attribution; we assume that
a person’s behavior was due to something about that
person.
Then we attempt to adjust this attribution by
considering the situation the person was in. But we
often don’t make enough of an adjustment in this
second step.
The Two-Step Process
In sum, we go through a two-step process
when we make attributions.
1.
First, we make an internal attribution; we assume that
a person’s behavior was due to something about that
person.
2. Then we attempt to adjust this attribution by
considering the situation the person was in. But we
often don’t make enough of an adjustment in this
second step.
Why? Because the first step occurs quickly and
spontaneously whereas the second step requires
more effort and conscious attention.
The Two-Step Process
We will engage in the second step of
attributional processing if we
• Consciously slow down and think
carefully before reaching a judgment,
• Are motivated to reach as accurate a
judgment as possible, or
• Are suspicious about the behavior of the
target person (e.g., we suspect lying).
Culture and the Correspondence Bias
For decades, it was taken for granted that
the correspondence bias was universal:
People everywhere, we thought, applied
this cognitive shortcut when forming
attributions.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Culture and the Correspondence Bias
People from individualistic and collectivistic
cultures both demonstrate the
correspondence bias.
Members of collectivist cultures are more
sensitive to situational causes of behavior
and more likely to rely on situational
explanations, as long as situational
variables are salient.
Culture and the Correspondence Bias
North American and some other Western cultures
stress individual autonomy. A person is
perceived as independent and self-contained;
his or her behavior reflects internal traits,
motives, and values.
In contrast, East Asian cultures such as those in
China, Japan, and Korea stress group
autonomy. The individual derives his or her
sense of self from the social group to which he
or she belongs.
Culture and the Correspondence Bias
It would be a mistake to think that members
of collectivist cultures don’t make
dispositional attributions.
They do—it’s just a matter of degree.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
The Actor/Observer Difference
The actor-observer difference is an
amplification of the correspondence bias:
We tend to see other people’s behavior as
dispositionally caused, while we are more
likely to see our own behavior as
situationally caused.
The effect occurs because perceptual
salience and information availability differ
for the actor and the observer.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
The Actor/Observer Difference
Actors have more information about themselves
than observers do.
Actors know how they’ve behaved over the years;
they know what happened to them that
morning.
They are far more aware than observers are of
both the similarities and the differences in their
behavior over time and across situations terms,
actors have far more consistency and
distinctiveness information about themselves
than observers do.
Self-Serving Attributions
Self-Serving Attributions
Explanations for one’s successes that
credit internal, dispositional factors and
explanations for one’s failures that blame
external, situational factors.
Defensive Attributions
Explanations for behavior that avoid
feelings of vulnerability and mortality.
Self-Serving Attributions
Why do we make self-serving attributions?
1. Most people try to maintain their self-esteem
whenever possible, even if that means distorting
reality by changing a thought or belief.
• We are particularly likely to engage in self-serving
attributions when we fail at something and we feel
we can’t improve at it.
• The external attribution truly protects our selfesteem, as there is little hope we can do better in
the future.
• But if we believe we can improve, we’re more likely
to attribute our current failure to internal causes and
then work on improving.
Self-Serving Attributions
Why do we make self-serving attributions?
1. Most people try to maintain their self-esteem
whenever possible, even if that means distorting
reality by changing a thought or belief.
2. We want people to think well of us and to admire
us. Telling others that our poor performance was
due to some external cause puts a “good face” on
failure; many people call this strategy “making
excuses.”
Self-Serving Attributions
Why do we make self-serving attributions?
1. Most people try to maintain their self-esteem
whenever possible, even if that means distorting
reality by changing a thought or belief.
2. We want people to think well of us and to admire
us. Telling others that our poor performance was
due to some external cause puts a “good face” on
failure; many people call this strategy “making
excuses.”
3. We know more about our own efforts than we do
about other people’s.
Self-Serving Attributions
• One form of defensive attribution is to believe that
bad things happen only to bad people or at least,
only to people who make stupid mistakes or poor
choices.
• Therefore, bad things won’t happen to us
because we won’t be that stupid or careless.
• Melvin Lerner called this the belief in a just
world—the assumption that people get what they
deserve and deserve what they get.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Self-Serving Attributions
The just world belief has unfortunate
consequences:
• Victims of crimes or accidents are often seen
as causing their own fate.
• People tend to believe that rape victims are to
blame for the rape.
• Battered wives are often seen as responsible
for their abusive husbands’ actions.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Culture and Other Attributional Biases
There is some evidence for cross-cultural
differences in the Actor-Observer Effect
and in Self-Serving and Defensive
Attributions.
Typically, the difference occurs between
Western, individualistic cultures and
Eastern, collectivistic cultures.
How Accurate Are Our Attributions
and Impressions?
Our impressions are sometimes wrong because of the
mental shortcuts we use when forming social
judgments.
To improve the accuracy of your attributions, remember
that the mental shortcuts we use, such as the
correspondence bias, can lead us to the wrong
conclusions sometimes.
Even with such biases operating, we are quite accurate
perceivers of other people.
We do very well most of the time.
In fact, most of us are more accurate than we realize.
How Accurate Are Our Attributions
and Impressions?
Our impressions are sometimes wrong because of the
mental shortcuts we use when forming social
judgments.
In
short,
we
are
capable
of
To improve the accuracy of your attributions, remember
that making
the mental shortcuts
we use, such as the
both stunningly
correspondence bias, can lead us to the wrong
accurate
assessments of
conclusions
sometimes.
Even with
such biases
we are quite accurate
people
andoperating,
horrific
perceivers of other people.
We do attributional
very well most of themistakes.
time.
In fact, most of us are more accurate than we realize.
6th edition
Social Psychology
Elliot Aronson
University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia
Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College
slides by Travis Langley
Henderson State University