Perceiving Persons

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Chapter 4

• Perceiving Persons

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Social Perception

• The process by which people come to understand
  one another.
• Well look at
• The raw data of social perception
• How we explain and analyze behavior
• How we integrate our observations into coherent
  impressions of other persons
• How our impressions can subtly create a distorted
  picture of reality
• Were both perceiver and target

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Observation The Elements of Social
PerceptionPersons

• First impressions are often subtly influenced by
  different aspects of a persons appearance.
• We prejudge people based on facial features.
• We read traits from faces, as well as read traits
  into faces, based on prior information.
• We judge baby-faced adults differently than
  mature-faced adults.
• Why? Explain the explanation.

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Silent Language of Nonverbal Behavior

• Behavioral cues are used to identify a persons
  inner states, as well as his or her actions.
• What kinds of nonverbal cues do people use?
• Facial expressions of emotion and .

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Distinguishing Truth from Deception

• Freud No mortal can keep a secret betrayal
  oozes out of him at every pore.
• Channels of communication differ in terms of ease
  of control.
• Face is relatively easier for deceivers to
  control.
• Nervous movements of our body are somewhat harder
  to control.

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Why Do We Have Difficulty Detecting Deception?

• Mismatch between the behavioral cues that
  actually signal deception and the ones used to
  detect deception.
• Four channels of communication provide relevant
  information
• Words Cannot be trusted
• Face Controllable
• Body Somewhat more revealing than face
• Voice Most revealing cue
• Perceivers tune in to the wrong channels

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Attribution Theories

• Dispositions stable characteristics, such as
  personality traits, attitudes, and abilities
• Attribution theories describe how people explain
  the causes of behavior
• Heider Explanations can be grouped into two
  categories
• Personal Attributions (Internal disposition)
• Situational Attributions (External)

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Attributional Biases

• Do we really analyze behavior in a rational,
  logical manner?
• Do we really have the time, motivation, or
  cognitive capacity for such elaborate and mindful
  processes?
• The answer?
• Sometimes yesSometimes no.

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Cognitive Heuristics

• Cognitive heuristics are information-processing
  rules of thumb.
• Enable us to think in ways that are quick and
  easy
• Problem is that using cognitive heuristics can
  frequently lead to error.

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Availability Heuristic

• The tendency to estimate the likelihood that an
  event will occur by how easily instances of it
  come to mind.
• Problems with relying on the availability
  heuristic
• False-consensus effect

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Fundamental Attribution Error

• When we explain other peoples behavior we tend
  to
• Overestimate the role of personal factors, and
• Overlook the impact of situations

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The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

• The process by which ones expectations about a
  person eventually lead that person to behave in
  ways that confirm those expectations.
• Rosenthal Jacobsons (1968) Pygmalion in the
  Classroom study