VL4 - Social Perception

Nonverbal communication Nonverbal communication is used to express emotion, convey attitudes, and communicate personality traits. People can accurately decode subtle nonverbal cues.

• Facial Expressions of Emotion

• culture and the channels of Nonverbal communication

First impressions: Quick but long-lasting We form impressions of other people based on their facial structure, possessions, attire, and a variety of other cues, and this process begins within milliseconds. Research on thin-slicing indicates that these snap judgments are not just quick; they also pick up on meaningful information and converge with the impressions formed by perceivers with even longer exposure to the target in question.

• the lingering influence of initial impressions:

• using First impressions and Nonverbal communication to our advantage

causal attribution: answering the “Why” Question According to attribution theory, we try to determine why people do what they do in order to uncover the feelings and traits that are behind their actions. This helps us understand and predict our social world.

• the Nature of the attribution process: internal/external

• the covariation model: internal versus External attributions: using consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency information

• the Fundamental attribution Error: people as personality psychologists: the tendency to believe that people’s behavior corresponds to (matches) their dispositions

• self-serving attributions: believe in a just world

• the “bias blind spot”: we think other people are more susceptible to attributional biases in their thinking than we are

culture and social perception Social psychologists have increasingly begun to consider cross-cultural differences in how people interpret the world around them. 

• Holistic versus analytic thinking

• cultural differences in the Fundamental attribution Error

• culture and other attributional biases