PSYC 3013 – PSYC 3013 –

Contemporary Issues Contemporary Issues

in Social Psychology in Social Psychology
Social Perception Social Perception
and
Social Cognition

Areas to be Covered What is Social Perception?

1. What is Social Perception? Social psychology focuses on explaining

2. Nonverbal Communication
influences on the individual’s thought and
3. Attribution
4. Impression Formation
Behavior including
5. Impression Management (Self-Presentation) 1) social perception and 2) social cognition

Social perception is a process through which

people seek to know and understand others

Nonverbal Communication:
Nonverbal Communication: The
The Unspoken Language of
Basic Channels
Expressions, Gazes and Gestures • Channels of nonverbal communication – think about antics
specific to your culture, gender, etc.:
¢ Temporary states exert important effects on
• Facial expressions
people’s behavior and social thought.
• Eye contact (gazes, stares, ‘cut eye’
Recognizing and understanding these • Body Movements (any emblems? – body movements
conditions is very useful. that carry specific meanings in a given culture?)
• Posture
• Touching (e.g. handshake, that conveys friendliness,
affection, sexual interest, caring, aggression, etc.)(with
COVID-19 what implications are there for not touching
¢ Nonverbal communication occurs between people – does this affect our interpretation of their
behavior?)
individuals using several nonverbal • Where would fragrance, clothing choice and color,
communication channels. teeth sucking, come in? How are non-verbal
interpretations affected by online interaction? (not
face-to-face)
¢ Article – Perception of being observed by a speaker
alters gaze behavior (link on eLearning page).

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Nonverbal Communication: The
Basic Channels
¢ Non verbal communication channels often
reveal persons emotional states.
¢ 2/3rds of all communication is nonverbal
¢ Paralanguage – How we Speak
¢ We learn more from the nonverbal cues than the
actual words the person uses.
¢ Tone – attitude or feeling conveyed through sound
¢ Pitch – highness or lowness
¢ Volume
Attribution: Understanding the
Causes of Others’ Behavior
¢ Our efforts to understand the causes behind others
behavior and the causes behind our behavior
¢ (we are not satisfied just to know how people behave, we
want to know why?)
¢ time, ability to control or influence circumstances, the belief
in fate versus personal choice, and the ways we interpret
others’ actions relevant to attribution.
Other Dimensions of Causal Attribution that
influence judgements concerning personal
responsibility
• Fate attributions vs personal choice – whether we
believe events are ’meant to be’ or we play a role in
causing those events affects attribution
• stable-unstable
• controllable-uncontrollable
• associated causes, culturally favored causes,
accessible causes, salient causes,
…all influence judgments concerning personal
responsibility
Nonverbal Communication:
Deception
¢ Which non-verbal cues help you to determine that the
individual is lying?
¢ Body movement e.g. fidgeting
¢ Microexpressions – fleeting facial expressions lasting
only a few tenths of a second.
¢ Interchannel discrepancies
¢ Eye movement
¢ Pitch of voice
¢ Exaggerated facial expressions
¢ Note – our mood influences our ability to recognize
deception – happy mood – decreased ability to
recognize deception.
Attribution: Influential Theories
¢ Correspondent Inference – proposed by Jones and
Davis 1965 – people often assume that others have
inner qualities that correspond with their observed
behaviors
¢ Kelley’s Covariation Theory (1972) – people attribute
the causes of others’ behavior to internal or external
factors
l Internal – caused by person’s traits
l External – caused by the situation
Attribution:
Some Basic Sources of Error
¢ Correspondence bias or fundamental attribution error
l Tendency to explain others’ actions as stemming from
(corresponding to) their dispositions, even in the
presence of clear situational causes
l Email correspondence – how the information is
presented affects your interpretation of the person …
e.g. Why so may grammatical errors? Person in too
much of a hurry or from another culture and English
not first language?
¢ Actor-Observer Effect: “you’re clumsy, I slipped”, “ I was
pushed, you fell” Tendency to attribute:
l own behavior mainly to situational causes
l behavior of others mainly to dispositional
causes
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Attribution:
Some Basic Sources of Error
¢ Self-Serving Bias:
“I’m Good; You are Lucky”
Tendency to attribute positive outcomes to internal causes,
l
but negative outcomes to external causes
• Cognitive and motivational factors may explain this bias
• This bias is stronger in individualist cultures
l Depressed people tend to do the opposite – attribute
negative outcomes to lasting, internal causes such as their
own traits or lack of ability, but attribute postiive outcomes
to temporary, external causes such as good luck or special
assistance from others.
Impression Formation and
Impression Management:
influences
¢ Impression formation – how we develop views of
others
¢ Solomon Asch (1946) studied “How we form unified
impressions of others in a quick and seemingly
effortless way?” (informed by gestalt psychology ‘the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts’)
¢ Influence from Personality Theories: Schemas
(regarding what characteristics fit together) Shape First
Impressions
¢ Cognitive Perspective of Impression Formation:
People focus first on information about others’ traits,
values, and principles when meeting others for the first
time. (first impressions count)
¢ Interesting Research Findings… What might be the implications?
¢ Florida Atlantic University. (2020, March 30). What are you looking
at? 'Virtual' communication in the age of social distancing: First-
of-its-kind study explores phenomenon of visual cues and live
video interactions. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 1, 2021 from
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200330093415.htm
l A person’s gaze altered during telecommunication if they
think person at other end of the conversation can see them.
l Compared fixation behavior of 173 participants in two
conditions. Persons fixated on the whole face in the real-
time condition. Participants fixated on the on the mouth
more in the pre-recorded condition.
l about the sender’s emotional state and the relationship with the
Attribution:
Some Basic Sources of Error
¢ Magical Thinking Why We Sometimes Believe
(Irrationally) That Our Thoughts Influence Events
l Do you ever image that your thoughts
can influence the external world?
l Magical thinking leads us to
overestimate our influence on the
external world—an effect that can be
viewed as another kind of attribution
error
Impression management:
The Fine Art of Looking Good – fueled by the
desire to make a favorable impression on others
¢ Self-Presentation Tactics: Self-Enhancement
l Audience pleasing – we want to please others
l Self-construction – try to live up to ideal image of self
l Intimidation – influence another through fear
l Self-promotion – promote own intelligence & competence
l Exemplification – present self as moral & worthy
l Supplication – play on others sympathies by acting weak,
helpless
l Self-handicapping – put obstacles in way as excuse for
failure
l self-monitoring- adjust behavior to suit situation & others
expectations
l self-embarrassment – deliberately embarrass self to fit in
¢ Other Enhancement
l flattery, express liking, agree with others views
l These tactics work to an extent, other factors may come
into play
¢ Interesting Research Findings… What might be the
implications?
¢ McAndrew, F.T., De Jonge, C.R.(2010). Electronic person
perception: What do we infer about people from the style of
their e-mail messages?
l Sample of 166 undergraduate students
l Researchers’ manipulated if email was written in first or third
person, along with presence or absence of expressive punctuation
and typographical errors
l Messages written in the third person were perceived as angrier and
more likely to be written by someone in supervisory relationship
with the recipient of the email.
l The presence or absence of question marks and/or exclamation
points was a strong determinant of the judgements that were made
recipient.
l Messages with high frequency of expressive punctuation were
more likely to be perceived to have been written by a female.
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 What is Social Cognition?
PSYC 3013 –
Contemporary Issues ¢ How people interpret, analyze, remember, and use
information about the social world.

in Social Psychology l Cognition often occurs automatically

Most of the time we use mental shortcuts to make

Social Cognition l
decisions and judgments about self and others
(heuristics)

l Cognition can influence affect and, affect can

influence cognition
• Remember: Affect refers to emotion

The Thinker in Social Psychology Social Cognition

(Fiske & Taylor)
¢ The Consistency Seeker
l Motivated by perceived discrepancies among their Areas of study include:
cognitions (exp. Cognitive dissonance) – may not be
accurate • Schemas
¢ The Naïve Scientist
l Person gathers all relevant data about the cause of a • Heuristics and automatic processing
person’s behavior and arrives at logical conclusion (uses
attributions) – may not be accurate
¢ The Cognitive Miser • Potential sources of error in social cognition
l Uses shortcuts to process info. (heuristics) – may not be
accurate • Relationship between Affect and Cognition
¢ The Motivated Tactician
l Person is a fully engaged thinker, uses multiple cogntive
strategies, chooses among them based on goals, motives,
needs (uses critical thinking?) – more accurate

Schemas
Schemas Are Persistent

¢ Schemas are mental structures that help us to organize
social information and guide the processing of information
¢ Schemas
l Can be self-fulfilling
l Can help make sense of the social world
l Can result in inaccurate processing of information e.g. result
in prejudice
¢ Priming – helps schemas to persist
l Exposure to specific stimuli or events increases
availability of information (can be conscious or
unconscious)
¢ Self-fulfilling prophecy
l E.g. in relation to academic success

¢ Schemas exert strong effects on the following cognitive ¢ Perseverance Effect

processes:
l Schemas can remain strong even in the face of
l Attention (what we notice)
contradictory information
l Encoding (process of storing information)
l Retrieval (what we recover from memory)

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Heuristics and Automatic
Processing
¢ Experience of information overload results in use of mental
shortcuts called heuristics (see Gilovich article):
l Representativeness heuristic.. this behavior seems to
resemble… this person must be from that group
l Availability heuristics – related to priming – if I can recall
many instances,... It must be so
l Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic – e.g. the size of a
meal portion given could affect how much you eat…
depends on who your social comparison ’other’ is
l Status Quo Heuristic – ‘what is, is good’ – people use the
length of time a product or practice was in use to judge its
‘goodness’
Heuristics and Automatic
Processing
¢ Automatic Processing: After extensive experience with
a task or type of information, we reach the stage
where we can perform the task or process the
information in a seemingly effortless, unconscious and
automatic manner e.g. walking, riding a bicycle, driving
a car
¢ We do the same with people – once we have well developed
schemas we use automatic processing to determine how to treat
people e.g. prejudice and discrimination
¢ (Automatic processing is fast, relatively effortless, and intuitive. )
¢ Versus using controlled processing where we
think in a systematic, logical, and highly effortful
manner

Potential Sources of Error in Social Other Sources of Error in Cognition

Cognition include:
Gilovich - Systematic Biases include:
¢ Include :
•The ‘Compared to What?’ Problem l The Negativity Bias
•The ‘Seek and Ye Shall Find’ Problem
l Overly Pessimistic
•The Selective Memory Problem
l Thinking Too Much

•Other sources: l Magical Thinking

•Optimistic bias – powerful disposition to overlook risks and expect things to
turn out well – one example is the planning fallacy – our tendency to l Thought Suppression
believe that we can get more done in a given period than we actually can
l Failure to take account of
•Overconfidence bias – have greater confidence in our beliefs or moderating variables
judgements than is justified.
l Bracing for loss
•Counterfactual Thinking – ‘what might have been’ influences thought about
the outcome of a situation

Affect and Cognition

- Affect influences Cognition
(feelings can influence thought)
¢ Moods affect how new stimuli are perceived

¢ Inside Out movie – once used in the Film Analysis

¢ Information that evokes emotional reactions may be

processed differently than other kinds of information

¢ Mood congruent effects current moods strongly determine

which information in a given situation is noticed and entered
into memory

¢ Mood dependent memory effect determines what

information is retrieved from memory
¢ Example: Happy moods can increase creativity and make
people more susceptible to social influence and the use of
heuristics

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Affect and Cognition
Cognitive Strategies for enhancing
- Cognition influences Affect (thought can
influence feelings) and protecting the self
¢ Two-factor theory of emotion: the perception of ¢ Use of Social Comparisons
situations can determine emotional reactions l Downward social comparisons, upward social
(Schachter) comparisons
l Body arousal + cognitive label = experienced emotion
¢ Use of self-serving attributes
¢ Cognition can influence emotions by activating
schemas containing a strong affective component. ¢ Exaggerating our strengths and diminishing our
weaknesses
¢ Thoughts also can influence our affective states while
we try to regulate our own emotions and feelings. ¢ Believing we have control over the situation e.g.
¢ People make affective forecasts – predict how they ‘world’s dumbest stunts, etc’
would feel about an event they have not yet
experienced using cognition. Then respond to the
actual effect using emotion.