Social perception

Social perception - Nonverbal communication, Attribution theories, Attribution biases.

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1. ACADEMIC WRITING ASSIGNMENT BY AASTHA KHANDELWAL e mail: [email protected] Student of Pondicherry University

2. TOPIC: SOCIAL PERCEPTION IN PSYCHOLOGY

3. WHAT IS SOCIAL PERCEPTION ? “The process through which we seek to know and understand other people” ( Baron & Branscombe, 2012) “Social perception is the initial stage of evaluating intentions and psychological dispositions of others by analysis of gaze direction, body movement, and other types of biological motion” ( Allison et al., 2000).

4. NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION Communication between individuals that does not involve the content of spoken language. Relies on facial expression, eye contact and body language. We spontaneously become submissive when another person exerts dominance through their posture and body movements ( Tiedens & Fragale, 2003)

5. FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

6. FACIAL EXPRESSIONS Izard (1991), Rozin, Lowery & Ebert (1994) stated that from a very early age , the five basic emotions, anger, fear, happiness, sadness and disgust are clearly represented. Complex expressions may be different across cultures . (Carrell and Russell, 1996) . For example, a Chinese person may stick out his tongue as an expression of surprise and not as a sign of disrespect as would be interpreted by an Indian

7. EYE CONTACT

8. EYE CONTACT Through eye contact people interpret hostility or warmth. Kleinke (1986) interprets gazing as a sign of liking or friendliness. Avoidance of eye contact can be interpreted as unfriendliness, disliking or shyness.

9. BODY LANGUAGE: GESTURES, POSTURE AND MOVEMENT

10. BODY LANGUAGE: GESTURES, POSTURE AND MOVEMENT Body movements can reveal information about an individual’s apparent trait. Movements like touching and scratching indicates emotional arousal. Sweeping and expansive gestures may suggest force and vigour (emblems). Emblems: body movements carrying specific meaning in a given culture.

11. PARALINGUISTIC CUES AND SCENT Paralinguistic are the aspects of spoken communication that do not involve words. Includes non verbal elements such as intonation, inflection in voice, tone etc. Scent particles released by women can convey subtle messages regarding changes in menstrual cycle that can produce changes in men’s testosterone levels ( Miller and Maner, 2010).

12. It may include small “white lies” or an act to conceal the truth for one’s advantages Important nonverbal cues to recognize deception by others: Micro expressions Interchannel discrepancies Eye contact Exaggerated facial expressions Rise in voice pitch DECEPTION

13. CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN INFERRING OTHER’S EMOTIONS In all cultures, nonverbal cues provide important information about others emotions but the extent to which it infer others’ feelings may vary across culture. Individualistic culture: occurrence of emotion “inside from me”. Collectivistic culture: “ emotions come from my relations with others” The culture you live in answers whether the emotion reside inside or between people

14. THEORIES OF ATTRIBUTION Attribution theories are concerned with what processes people use to infer others’ behaviour. It focuses on how people explain the cause of events and others’ behaviour. For example, is he late to class because he is unpunctual or because of some external factor like a road accident?

15. A formal definition is provided by Fiske and Taylor (1991, p. 23): “Attribution theory deals with how the social perceiver uses information to arrive at causal explanations for events. It examines what information is gathered and how it is combined to form a causal judgment ”

16. Main theories of attribution HEIDER’S NAIVE PSYCHOLOGY THEORY JONES AND DAVIS’ CORRESPONDENT INFERENCE ATTRIBUTION THEORY KELLEY’S MODEL OF CAUSAL ATTRIBUTION

17. HEIDER’S NAIVE PSYCHOLOGY THEORY The earliest formulation of attribution theory came from the work of Fritz Heider. (1958) He believed that people are a na ive psychologist and want to make sense of the world around them. To do this, they try to seek causation to the behavior of others.

18. According to Heider, most people apply the following three explanations to understand others’ behavior : We explain others’ behavior as being caused by their internal characteristics. We explain others’ behavior as being caused by the surrounding situation, i.e., situational attribution. We explain others’ behavior as being unintentional and probably not occurring again in the future. Hence, This theory tries to understand behavior on the basis of simple naive explanations by the people.

19. JONES AND DAVIS’ CORRESPONDENT INFERENCE ATTRIBUTION THEORY Jones and Davis(1965) developed a correspondent inference theory which tells us how we infer whether a behavior is due to internal attributes or situational causes. They state that we assess whether there is a correspondence between personality and behavior by processing three types of information

20. Social Desirability Socially desirable behaviors are those which are consistent with social norms. Socially undesirable behavior leads people to infer an underlying disposition. Choice Behavior which is freely chosen is indicative of a person’s underlying characteristics. Non-common effects Refers to when a behavior has a unique consequence. Behavior with non-common effects tell us more about dispositions than behavior with common effects.

21. KELLEY’S MODEL OF CAUSAL ATTRIBUTION He developed a logical model for judging whether a particular action should be attributed to some characteristic (dispositional) of the person or the environment (situational). The term covariation means that a person has information from multiple observations, at different times and situations, and can perceive the covariation of an observed effect and its causes.

22. The model states that we need to consider three types of information before coming to the conclusion of the cause of the behavior. These three kinds of evidence are: 1. Consensus 2. Distinctiveness 3. Consistency

23. ATTRIBUTION TYPE AND CATEGORY OF INFORMATION EXAMPLES Internal disposition. (Rajesh is an aggressive person) High consistency Low distinctiveness Low consensus Rajesh is always aggressive towards Shyam. Rajesh is aggressive towards most of the other people. Nobody else acts aggressively towards Shyam.

24. Stimulus object (Shyam causes Rajesh to behave aggressively) High consistency High distinctiveness High consensus Rajesh is always aggressive towards Shyam. Rajesh is not aggressive towards most of the other people. Nobody else acts aggressively towards Shyam.

25. Context (Rajesh was in a bad mood because he had lost his purse ) Low consistency High distinctiveness Low consensus Rajesh has never been aggressive towards Shyam Rajesh is not aggressive towards most of the other people. Nobody acts aggressively towards Shyam.

26. ATTRIBUTION BIASES AND ERRORS Correspondence bias/ Fundamental attribution error Actor Observer Effect The self-serving Bias Cognitive Heuristics The False Consensus Effect

27. CORRESPONDENCE BIAS/ FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR “ The tendency to draw inferences about a person’s unique and enduring dispositions from behaviors that can be entirely explained by the situations in which they occur.” —Gilbert and Malone

28. ACTOR OBSERVER EFFECT The tendency to attribute our own behavior to situational causes but the behavior of others to internal (dispositional) causes. As actors, our attention is focused on the situations. But as observers our attention is focused on the individual, hence why we make the fundamental attribution error.

29. SELF-SERVING BIAS Tendency to attribute our own positive outcomes to internal causes, but negative ones to external causes. Anticipatory self-serving bias (self-handicapping as berglas termed): people who anticipate failure, intentionally and publicly make external attributions before the event.

30. ACKNOWLEDGMENT Academic writing course in Swayam by Dr Ajay Semalty gave me an opportunity to learn the basics of academic writing. This course was very helpful and expanded my knowledge.

31. Feedback I would recommend the Academic writing course to every budding researcher. Indian universities lack such a course in their curriculum, thereby making research writing a very daunting task and unexplored filed for students. This course should be included in the curriculum of every subject. I learned innumerable things from this course. This course is very comprehensive and includes all that you need to know about academic writing in one single place. This course covered the basics as well as the advanced aspects of academic writing.

32. THANK YOU