Global Voices and Social Vision - Social Perception

Social Perception - Body Language, Proxemics, and etc.

1. Social Perception

2. What is social perception? Social perception refers to the ability to make accurate interpretations and inferences about other people from their general physical appearance, verbal, and nonverbal patterns of communication. Things like facial expressions, tone of voice, hand gestures, and body position or movement are all ques people with higher levels of social perception pick up on to work out what other people are thinking, feeling or are likely to do next. (Aronson et al, 2010) Having at least one person with higher levels of social perception on a team has been found to increase the likelihood of better performance of the team and of the team developing collective intelligence. ( Chikersal , Prerna, et al., 2017)

3. Social Perception Social perception refers to identifying and utilizing social cues to make judgments about social roles, rules, relationships, context, or the characteristics (e.g., trustworthiness) of others. This domain also includes social knowledge, which refers to one’s knowledge of social roles, norms, and schemas surrounding social situations and interactions. Tests of social perception include videotaped scenes that require the viewer to make inferences and judgments about ambiguous social situations based on limited verbal and nonverbal social cues Social Perception—the process through which we seek to know and understand other people. Social Perception allows people to know and understand other people in their, social world. This is a crucial process and one we must perform every day because perceiving and understanding others accurately provides a basic foundation of all social life.

4. Background : A. Observation The processes of social perception begin with observing persons, situations, and behaviors to gather evidence that supports an initial impression. 1. Persons – physical influence Although society tries to train people not to judge others based on their physical traits, as social perceivers, we cannot help but be influenced by others' hair, skin color, height, weight, style of clothes, pitch in voice, etc., when making a first impression. People have the tendency to judge others by associating certain facial features with specific personality types. For example, studies indicate that people are perceived as stronger, more assertive, and competent if they have small eyes, low eyebrows, an angular chin, wrinkled skin, and a small forehead. People tend to associate baby-faced people with impotence and harmlessness.

5. 2. Situations – context from prior experiences are able to easily predict the sequences or results of an event based on the extent and depth of their past experiences with a similar event. The ability to anticipate the outcomes of a situation is also greatly influenced by an individual's cultural background because this inevitably shapes the types of experiences. Situational observations either lead humans to have preset notions about certain events or to explain the causes of human behaviors.

6. 3. Behaviors – nonverbal communication Nonverbal communication helps people express their emotions, attitudes, and personalities. The most dominant form of nonverbal communication is the use of facial expressions to channel different emotions . Greatly influenced by Charles Darwin's research on facial expressions and book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), it is believed that all humans, regardless of culture or race, encode and decode the six "primary" emotions, (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust), universally in the same way. To encode means to communicate nonverbal behavior, while to decode means to interpret the meaning or intention of the nonverbal behavior. Decoding sometimes is inaccurate due to affect blend, (a facial expression with two differently registered emotions), and/or display rules, ( culturally dictated rules about which nonverbal behaviors are acceptable to display ). Other nonverbal cues such as: body language, eye contact, and vocal intonations can affect social perception by allowing for thin-slicing. Thin-slicing describes the ability to make quick judgements from finding consistencies in events based only on narrow frames of experience.

7. Non-Verbal Communication Think for a moment: Do you act differently when you are feeling very happy than when you are feeling really sad? Most likely, you do. Non-Verbal Communication People tend to behave differently when experiencing different emotional states. But precisely how do differences in your inner states—your emotions, feelings, and moods—show up in your behavior ? This question relates to the basic channels through which such communication takes place. Research findings indicate that five of these channels exist: facial expressions, eye contact, body movements, posture, and touching.

8. Facial Expressions More than 2,000 years ago, the Roman orator Cicero stated: “The face is the image of the soul.” By this he meant that human feelings and emotions are often reflected in the face and can be read there in specific expressions. Modern research suggests that Cicero was correct: It is possible to learn much about others’ current moods and feelings from their facial expressions. In fact, it appears that five different basic emotions are represented clearly, and from a very early age, on the human face: anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and disgust (Izard, 1991; Rozin,Lowery , & Ebert, 1994). Surprise, has also been suggested as a basic emotion reflected clearly in facial expressions.

9. Eye Contact We often learn much about others’ feelings from their eyes. For example, we interpret a high level of gazing from another as a sign of liking or friendliness In contrast, if others avoid eye contact with us, we may conclude that they are unfriendly, don’t like us, or are simply shy. If another person gazes at us continuously and maintains such contact regardless of what we do, he or she can be said to be staring A stare is often interpreted as a sign of anger or hostility—as in cold stare—and most people find this particular nonverbal cue disturbing . In fact, we may quickly terminate social interaction with someone who stares at us and may even leave the scene.

10. Body movements and Posture Our current moods or emotions are often reflected in the position, posture, and movement of our bodies. Together, such nonverbal behaviors are termed body language. They, too, can provide useful information about others. First, body language often reveals others’ emotional states. Large numbers of movements— especially ones in which one part of the body does something to another part (touching, rubbing, scratching)—suggest emotional arousal. The greater the frequency of such behavior, the higher the level of arousal or nervousness

11. Touching Suppose that during a brief conversation with another person, he or she touched you briefly. How would you react? What information would this behavior convey? The answer to both questions is, it depends. And what it depends on is several factors relating to who does the touching (a friend, a stranger, a member of your own or the other gender). Further the nature of this physical contact (brief or prolonged, gentle or rough, what part of the body is touched). And the context in which the touching takes place (a business or social setting, a doctor’s office). Depending on such factors, touch can suggest affection, sexual interest, dominance, caring, or even aggression. Despite such complexities, existing evidence indicates that when touching is considered appropriate, it often produces positive reactions in the person being touched. But remember, it must be viewed as appropriate to produce such reactions!

12. " Communication through touch is a form of physical contact that expresses feelings or emotion. Often, touch is used to show that you care or to help someone by directing them. Touch sends different messages depending on the context. Haptic communication is a branch of nonverbal communication that refers to the ways in which people and animals communicate and interact via the sense of touch. Touch is the most sophisticated and intimate of the five senses.[1] Touch or haptics, from the ancient Greek word haptikos is extremely important for communication; it is vital for survival.

13. B. Attribution The process through which we seek such information and draw inferences is known as attribution. More formally, attribution refers to our efforts to understand the causes behind others’ behavior and, on some occasions, the causes behind our behavior, too. APA defines it as – an inference regarding the cause of a person’s behavior or an interpersonal event. How does it affect? You meet an attractive person from your class. You ask them to hangout with you next week. The person answers, “No, sorry . . . I can’t do it next week.” Now, you are left wondering why they refused your invitation. Because they don’t like you as much as you like them or they are currently in a serious relationship? Because they are so busy with other commitments ? The conclusion you reach will be important to your self-esteem. And it will also strongly influence what you do next. The conclusion you reach will be important to your self-esteem. And it will also strongly influence what you do next.

14. This simple example illustrates an important fact about social perception: Often, we want to know more than simply how they are feeling right now. In addition, we want to know why they have said or done various things, and further, what kind of person they really are. What lasting traits, interests, motives, and goals they have. For instance, to mention just one of countless possibilities, we want to know if other people are high or low in self-control. If they are high in self-control we tend to view them as trustworthy. While if they are low on this aspect of self-regulation, we may conclude that they are unpredictable and not someone we can rely on (Righetti & Finkenauer , 2011).

15. Attribution Theories A large component of social perception is attribution. Attribution is the use of information gathered through observation to help individuals understand and rationalize the causes of one's own and others' behaviors. Psychological research on attribution began with the work of Fritz Heider in 1958, and was subsequently developed by others such as Harold Kelley and Bernard Weiner. People make attributions to understand the world around them in order to seek reasons for an individual's particular behavior. When people make attributions they are able to make judgments as to what was the cause or causes of a certain behavior . Attribution theory is the study of what systems and models people implement to make attributions about the behavior of others. It attempts to explain how we use information about the social environment to understand others' behavior.

16. One common bias people exhibit in attribution is called the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency for people to attribute others' actions or behaviors to internal traits as opposed to external circumstances. An example of how this may manifest in the real world as pointed out in research by Furnham and Gunter is how one's view of the justness of poverty may be affected by one's financial status: one who has not experienced poverty may see it as being more or less deserved than might someone who has been impoverished at some point. In this way, fundamental attribution error can be a barrier to empathizing with others, as one does not consider all the circumstances involved in the actions of others.

17. Two-step process of Attributions Unlike conventional attribution theories, the two-step process of attribution suggests that people analyze others' behaviors first by automatically making an internal attribution and only then considering possible external attributions that may affect the initial inference. Heider's most valuable contribution to the topic of attribution is the dichotomy: When attempting to decide why individuals behave a certain way, we can make either an internal or external attribution. Internal attribution , (also called dispositional attribution or personal attribution, is the assumption that an individual is acting a certain way due to something about that individual, such as personality, character, or attitude. External attribution , also called situational attribution , is the inference that an individual is acting a certain way due to the situation he or she is in; the assumption is that most individuals would respond in the same way in that similar situation. Essentially, people first assume that a person's behavior is due to his or her personality, and then attempt to modify this attribution by also factoring in the person's situation.

18. Kelley’s Covariation Theory According to American social psychologist Harold Kelley, individuals make attributions by utilizing the covariation principle. The covariation principle claims that people attribute behavior to the factors that are present when a certain behavior occurs and the factors that are absent when it does not occur. There are three types of covariation information that are particularly helpful: consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency. If a single individual and a large majority of individuals behave similarly in reaction to a specific stimulus, then the individual's behavior is attributed to the stimulus and is high in consensus. The individual's behavior due to this specific stimulus should be compared to the individual's behavior in reaction other stimuli within the same broader category. This helps judge whether the level of distinctiveness information is high, and thus attributed to the stimulus. Lastly, consistency information is used to see what happens to the behavior at another time when the individual and the stimulus both remain unchanged.[1]

19. C. Impression Formation and Management A. Impression Formation When we meet another person for the first time, we are—quite literally—flooded with information. We can see, at a glance, how they look and dress, how they speak, and how they behave. Although the amount of information reaching us is large, we somehow manage to combine it into an initial first impression of this person— a mental representation that is the basis for our reactions to him or her . Clearly, then, impression formation is an important aspect of social perception. In many cases, in order to form impression about others’ personality, we combine information in terms of personality traits. Moreover, we do it possibly in a mathematical way. We assign some positive or negative value to all the traits inferred in the person. Then we derive an additive or average value of those traits.

20. Impression Management The desire to make a favorable impression on others is a strong one, so most of us do our best to “look good” to others when we meet them for the first time. Social psychologists use the term impression management (or self-presentation) to describe these efforts to make a good impression on others, and the results of their research on this process suggest that it is well worth the effort: People who perform impression management successfully do often gain important advantages in many situations. The different techniques for boosting image fall into two categories: Self Enhancement – Effort to increase their appeal to others. With respect to self-enhancement, the strategies include effort to boost one’s physical appearance through style of dress, personal grooming and the use of various props. (example: eye glasses).

21. Additional tactics of self enhancement involves efforts to describe oneself in positive terms. Other Enhancement Individuals use many different tactics to induce positive moods and reaction in others example: flattery. In addition there are acts like soothing others, taking interest in their work, helping them, etc. Integration Unless a snap judgement is made from observing persons, situations, or behavior, people integrate the dispositions to form impressions.

22. Information Integration Theory Norman H. Anderson, an American social psychologist, developed the information integration theory in 1981. The theory states that impressions are made from the perceiver's personal dispositions and a weighted average of the target individual's characteristics. The differences among perceivers are due to people using themselves as a standard, or frame of reference, when judging or evaluating others. People also tend to view their own skills and traits as favorable for others to also have. These impressions formed about others can also be influenced by the current, temporary mood of the perceiver. A concept called, priming also affects a perceiver's impressions of others . Priming is the tendency for recently perceived or implemented concepts or words to come to mind easily and influence the understanding of the new information. Trait information also impacts people's impressions of others, and psychologist Solomon Asch was the first to discover that the existence of one trait tends to indicate the existence of other traits . Asch claimed that central traits exist that exert a strong effect on the perceiver's overall impressions. Lastly, the sequence in which a trait is realized can also influence the trait's impact. Research shows that there is a tendency for information presented at the beginning of a sequence to have a greater effect on impressions than information presented later on, a concept called primacy effect.

23. Implicit Personality Theory Implicit personality theory is a type of model people use to group various kinds of personality qualities together. Put in another way, implicit personality theories describe the way an observer uses the traits displayed by another person to form impressions about that other person. People pay attention to a variety of cues, including: visual, auditory, and verbal cues to predict and understand the personalities of others, in order to fill in the gap of the unknown information about a person, which assists with social interactions. Certain traits are seen as especially influential in the formation of an overall impression of an individual; these are called central traits . Other traits are less influential in impression formation, and are called peripheral traits . Which traits are central or peripheral is not fixed, but can vary based on context. For instance, saying that a person is warm versus cold may have a central impact on an individual's impression formation when paired with traits such as "industrious" and "determined", but have a more peripheral impact when paired with traits such as "shallow" or "vain".[7] Kim and Rosenberg[8] demonstrate that when forming impressions of others, individuals assess others on an evaluative dimension. Which is to say that, when asked to describe personality traits of others, individuals rate others on a "good-bad" dimension. People's implicit personality theories also include a number of other dimensions, such as a "strong-weak" dimension, an "active-passive" dimension, an "attractive-unattractive" dimension, etc. However, the evaluative "good-bad" dimension was the only one that universally appeared in people's descriptions of others, while the other dimensions appeared in many, but not all, people's assessments. Thus, the dimensions included in implicit personality theories on which others are rated vary from person to person, but the "good-bad" dimension appears to be part of all people's implicit personality theories.