Social Perception: Overview

1. Social Perception: Overview • How do we make attributions about social behavior? • Internal versus External attributions • Do people make attributions in a logical, rational way? Or, do we make some consistent errors? • Fundamental attribution error • Actor-observer bias • How do we make inferences about another person from nonverbal behavior? • Social Interpretations Task (SIT; Archer & Costanzo; Archer & Akert) • How well can we detect deception and lying?

2. Attributions • How do we make social inferences, from both verbal and nonverbal behavior, to understand WHY a person might be behaving in a particular way?

3. Example • Janet and Michael go on a date and, at the end of the evening, he promises to call her tomorrow. Tomorrow comes along, but Michael doesn’t call. In thinking about this situation, Janet might come up with different explanations for his behavior. What are some possible explanations for Michael’s behavior?

4. Causal attributions • Internal attribution: Explain in terms of something about the person (e.g., Michael is rude and unreliable) • External attribution: Explain in terms of something about the situation (e.g., Michael couldn’t call because he’s in the hospital and unconscious)

5. 2 big questions • How do people explain another’s behavior? • Role of subjective vs. objective • What kinds of errors do people make when explaining another’s behavior?

6. Two attributional biases • Fundamental attribution error • Actor-observer difference

7. Fundamental attribution error • Fundamental attribution error: the tendency to overestimate the impact of internal, personality causes and to underestimate the impact of situational causes when explaining another person's behavior.

8. Jones & Harris (1967) • Observers readily attribute another's behavior to personality even when situational factors clearly important • Read essays or listened to speeches supposedly written by members of debating team. Speech supported or attacked Fidel Castro.

9. Jones & Harris • IV #1: Observers were told that the debater chose or was assigned the pro- or anti-Castro position • IV #2: Speech was Pro or Anti • DV: Observers estimated debater’s true opinion

11. Example • Choose 20 students from class and randomly assign 10 to read a pro-choice speech and 10 to read an anti-abortion speech. Class estimates their true opinions.

12. Fundamental Attribution Error(Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz, 1977) Demonstrates how people ignore the situation, and attribute behavior to dispositions. Simulated quiz game Randomly assigned Stanford students to role of questioner or contestant Questioners: Generate difficult trivia questions

13. Variables • IV: Role of questioner or contestant • DV: Rate general knowledge (relative to average Stanford student) of contestants and questioners

15. Causal Attributions • The Correspondence Bias: People as Personality Psychologists The Two-Step Process of Attribution occurs when people analyze another person’s behavior by first making an automatic internal attribution, and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behavior, after which one may adjust original internal attribution.

16. Causal Attribution • The Actor/Observer Difference The actor/observer difference is the tendency to see other people’s behavior as dispositionally caused, but focusing more on the role of situational factors when explaining one’s own behavior.

17. Example • Imagine you are working on a group project and one of the other students does not complete her part. • Your view: She’s lazy, inconsiderate, not motivated. (internal, personal) • Her view: I’m taking 5 classes, working 30 hours/week, my boyfriend cheated on me, and my grandmother is seriously ill. (external, situational)

18. Causal Attribution • The Actor/Observer Difference One reason for the actor/observer difference is perceptual salience (figure vs. ground): actors notice the situations around them that influence them to act, while observers notice the actors.

19. Causal Attribution • The Actor/Observer Difference The actor/observer difference also occurs because actors have more information about themselves than do observers.

20. How do we make inferences about another person from nonverbal behavior? • Body language, facial expressions, touching, tone of voice • Nonverbal cues can provide a range of information (e.g., information about a person’s relationship to another person, or about whether a person is lying)

21. How well do you perceive others? • Social Interpretations Task (SIT) developed by Dane Archer and colleagues (AKA as “Interpersonal Perception Test)

22. Lie Detection Rate Among Different Groups (Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1991) In this study, Ps had a 50-50 chance of guessing accurately. Chance = 50% GroupAccuracy Rate College students 52.8 CIA, FBI, military 55.7 Police investigators 55.8 Trial judges 56.7 Psychiatrists 57.6 U.S. Secret Service Agents 64.1

23. Do men and women differ in their scores on the Social Interpretations Task?

24. Scores are fairly stable over time • The IPT is stable – reliability coefficients around .70 (e.g., over 2 wks)

25. IPT • Correlates modestly with personality measures • High self-monitors (who attend to social/situational cues) tend to score higher on the IPT. (r = .25, p < .05) than those who are low self-monitors (who are less likely to change their behavior in response to situational cues). • Extraverts also are somewhat better than introverts (Akert & Panter, 1986).

26. What does the IPT demonstrate? • People attend to multiple channels of nonverbal and verbal behavior in order to decode and understand a social situation • They do so with a reasonable (above chance) accuracy • Some people – those who seem to practice this skill (extraverts, high self-monitors, women) – do better than others.

27. More on lying and deception….video clip

28. Lying by College Students & Community Members in Everyday Life (DePaulo et al., 1996) • Number lies/week 10.4 • % lied to/week 34% • % said told no lies 5% • Reasons for lying • Self-centered 51% • Other-oriented 25% • Neither 24%

29. Lies, Lies (DePaulo et al., 1996) • How was lie delivered? • Face to face 79% • By telephone 20% • In writing 1% • Was lie discovered? • No 59% • Yes 19% • Don’t know 19% • Unclassified response 3% • % said would tell the lie again 77%