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Chapter 4: Perceiving Persons

Terms in this set (34)

social perception
a general term for the processes by which people come to understand one another
Willis and Todorov study
in this study, participants judged strangers based on their facial expressions; participants differed in length of exposure, but more time didn't change their judgment (they judged them the same no matter how long they were exposed)
baby-faced adults
have large, round eyes; high eyebrows; round cheeks; large forehead; smooth skin; and a rounded chin; tend to be seen as warm, kind, naive, weak, honest, and submissive (vs. mature-looking adults are seen as stronger, more dominant, and more competent); proves that the impressions we form of others are influenced by superficial aspects of their appearance
script
a preset notion about certain types of situations; help us anticipate goals, behaviors, and outcomes that are likely to occur in a particular setting; ex. one for dating; can vary by culture
mind perception
the process by which people attribute humanlike mental states to various animate and inanimate objects, including other people
nonverbal behavior
behavior that reveals a person's feelings without words, through facial expressions, eye contact, body language, touch, and vocal cues
six basic emotions that are universally recognized
happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust; however, in-group familiarity means that we are more accurate at judging the facial expressions of those within our own national, ethnic, or regional group (vs. members of less familiar groups)
facial expressions and survival
Darwin believed the ability to recognize emotion in others has survival value; he thought it was more important to identify some emotions (ex. anger, disgust) than others (ex. happiness)
reasons why no one can distinguish truth from deception well
1. there is a mismatch between the behavioral cues that actually signal deception and those we use to detect deception; 2. people tend to assume that the way to spot a liar is to watch for signs of stress, yet truth-tellers also show signs of stress in certain situations
higher voice
the best indicator that a person is lying (in contrast with fidgeting, lack of eye contact, or signs of stress, all of which can occur even when someone is telling the truth; cognitive effort might come into play - need more effort to remember and support lies - but isn't always effective)
attribution theory
a group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of behavior
personal attribution
attribution to internal characteristics of an actor, such as ability, personality, mood, or effort; commonly used by individualistic cultures
situational attribution
attribution to factors external to an actor, such as the task, other people, or luck; commonly used by collectivistic cultures
correspondent inference theory
the theory that people try to infer from an action whether the act corresponds to an enduring personal characteristic of the actor based on degree of choice, expectedness of behavior, and intended effects of the behavior
Kelley's covariation principle
in order for something to be the cause of a behavior, it must be present when the behavior occurs and absent when it does not; three kinds of info are useful - consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency
covariation theory
the theory that says behaviors that are high in consistency, low in consensus, and low in distinctiveness are attributed to the person, while high consistency, high consensus, and high distinctiveness in a behavior are often attributed to the stimulus/situation; low consistency = attributed to passing circumstances
availability heuristic
the tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances of it come to mind
false-consensus effect
the tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes and behaviors
base-rate fallacy
the finding that people are relatively insensitive to consensus information presented in the form of numerical base rates (or probabilities); influenced more by graphic, dramatic events
counterfactual thinking
the tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not
fundamental attribution error
the tendency to focus on the role of personal causes and underestimate the impact of situations on other people's behavior
belief in a just world
the belief that individuals get what they deserve in life, an orientation that leads people to disparage victims
impression formation
the process of integrating information about a person to form a coherent impression
information integration theory
the theory that impressions are based on perceiver dispositions and a weighted average of a target person's traits
priming
the tendency for recently used or perceived words or ideas to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information
implicit personality theory
a theory that says there is a network of assumptions people make about the relationships among personality traits and behaviors
central traits
traits that exert a powerful influence on overall impressions
primacy effect
the tendency for information presented early in a sequence to have more impact on impressions than information presented later
universal dimensions of social cognition
two dimensions are universally used when we judge and perceive others: social (warm/cold) and intellectual (competent/incompetent); 4 different quadrants
need for closure
the desire or need to reduce cognitive uncertainty, which heightens the importance of first impressions
confirmation bias
the tendency to seek, interpret, and create information that verifies existing beliefs
belief perseverance
the tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited
first impressions
people are slow to change these on the basis of new information (which is an example of belief perseverance)
self-fulfilling prophecy
the process by which one's expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations; perceiver's expectations affect perceiver's behavior toward the target, which affects the target's behavior toward the perceiver
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