Download social perception

SOCIAL PERCEPTION
SOCIAL PERCEPTION
• Social perception is the study of how people form impressions of
and make inferences about other people.
•
Refers to the processes through which we use available
information to form impressions of other people, to assess what
they are like.
• We learn about other's feelings and emotions by picking up on
information we gather from their physical appearance, and
verbal and nonverbal communication.
•
Facial expressions, tone of voice, hand gestures, and body
position are just a few examples of ways people communicate
without words.
• A real world example of social perception would be
understanding that someone disagrees with what you said when
you see them roll their eyes.
•
Social perceptions can obviously be flawed - even skilled
observers can misperceive, misjudge, and reach the wrong
conclusions. Once we form wrong impressions, they are likely to
persist.
ATTRIBUTION
•
Attribution is being able to successfully identify a person's behavior based
on the current context of the situation.
•
Attribution is the process through which we link behavior to its causes - to
the intentions, dispositions and events that explain why people act the way
they do.
•
For example, if you are at a wedding, you attribute everyone's happiness
because getting married is a cause to celebrate.
 Most importantly, social perception is shaped by individual's motivation at
the time, their emotions, and their cognitive load capacity. All of this
combined determines how people attribute certain traits and how those
traits are interpreted.
THEORIES STUDIED
• Attribution Theory
- A large component of Social Perception is attribution.
-Attribution helps individuals understand and rationalize the behavior
of others through the use of information gathered by observation.
- People make attributions to understand the world around them in
order to seek reasons for a particular individual’s behavior.
- When people make attributions they are able to make judgments as
to what was the cause of a certain behavior.
- However, a common mistake people make is called Fundamental
Attribution Error.
Fundamental Attribution Error
• This means that the original explanation for the behavior was
misidentified.
• An example of this would be a mother misattributing her so n's
excitement to sugar from the candy he just ate, as opposed to the
real cause of his excitement being that his favorite TV show is on.
•
Implicit Personality Theory
- Implicit personality theory is commonly associated with social perception
because it identifies the biases we exhibit based on the limited information we
know about unfamiliar people.
- Every day we interact with unfamiliar people and in those brief moments of
interaction we pick up on the social cues presented and opinions are formed.
Implicit Personality Theory states that people divide the personality traits of
others into two groups:
 Central/Primary traits -Central traits are the highly influential traits that have a
strong impact on the overall impression of an individual.
Peripheral/Secondary traits - Peripheral traits are those produced and have
smaller impact on the overall impression.
•
Implicit personality theory helps explains social perception through
the use of central and peripheral traits.
•
When you are paying at the check out line at the grocery store and
the cashier woman comes across as snappy and rude these are the
central traits because we as customers want polite service. From that
central trait, as you walk away with your groceries the peripheral
traits, such as attractiveness or intelligence is tainted by her central
trait of being rude.
•
Implicit Personality Theory helps people to socially perceive others
by generating a broader outlook on their personality using central
and peripheral traits and use these traits to categorize people to
predict their behavior.
•
Social perception refers to the initial stages in which people
process information in order to determine another individual’s
mind-set and intentions.
•
According to the implicit personality theory, people pay
attention to a variety of cues, including visual, auditory, and
verbal cues to predict and understand the personality of others.
•
These help in filling in the gap of the unknown information
about a person, which is key for social skills and social
interactions.
Social Bias
•
Social bias is defined as "prejudicial attitudes towards particular
groups, races, sexes, or religions, including the conscious or
unconscious expression of these attitudes in writing, speaking,
etc (social)."
•
Some of the major effects of social bias
1. Self
2. Group
3. Interaction
1. Self
•
Dunning–Kruger effect – an effect by which people may
perform badly at a task, but lack the mental capability to
evaluate and recognize that they have done poorly (Hawes).
•
Egocentric bias – The tendency to give more credit to ourselves
from positive outcomes than an observer.
•
Overconfidence bias – Overestimating one's own confidence
(part of the Dunning–Kruger effect).
•
Forer effect (Barnum effect) – Placing high belief in a general
description thinking it was meant specifically for an individual.
One example is horoscopes.
2. Group
• Status quo bias – Tendency to favor certain
circumstances because they are familiar.
•
In group bias – Behaving a certain way to become
more favorable in a group.
•
Stereotyping – Attributing traits to people based on
certain traits of the group.
3. Interaction
• Halo effect – Tendency to believe in the nature of a person
(good/bad) based on general traits of people.
•
False consensus – Assuming others agree with what we do
(even though they may not).
•
Projection bias - Assuming others share the same belief as us.
•
Actor-observed bias - Tendency to blame our actions on the
situation and blame the action of others base on their
personalities.