Chapter: 2 Social Perception Course: Social Psychology

The word perception comes from the Latin capere, meaning “to take”, the prefix per-
meaning “completely”. Methods of studying perception range from essentially biological
or psychological approaches through the philosophy of mind or in merleauponty’s
affirmation of perception as the basis of all sciences and knowledge.

Perception is the faculty of acquiring sensory experience. Study of the processes by

which humans gather and interpret visual information is largely the province of social
psychologists, who have identified several general principles of perception, and also
some effects upon it of motivation and attention.

Perception refers both to the experience of gaining sensory information about the world
of people, things, and events, and to the psychological processes by which this is
accomplished.

E.g. Attention and motivation are psychological processes which are derived from needs,
memory and past experiences of individuals.

There was a research done by Murphy on perception. He presented a series of ambigious

pictures to students. In one group thee were hungry students and in other group there
were students who just had their lunch. He found a marked tendency for such objects to
be percieved as food objects by the hungry students. Such effects were not present when
pictures were presented to the other group of students who just had their lunch.

Result: The difference between perception of the hungry and non-hungry students was
due to psychological process.

Social Perception:
The definition of social perception is how we make sense of social world.
It studies that how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people.

Communication:
The word "communication" is derived with the Latin root "communicare".

Verbal Communication:
Communication is the process of transferring information from a sender to a receiver
with the use of a medium in which the communicated information is understood by both
sender and receiver. It is a process that allows organisms to exchange information by
several methods. Communication requires that all parties understand a common language
that is exchanged.
E.g. Language is the basic mode of communication. There are auditory means, such as
speaking.

Non-Verbal Communication:
The way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally without using
words.

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Chapter: 2 Social Perception Course: Social Psychology

Non-verbal communication is used to express emotions, convey attitudes, communicate

personality traits and also facilitate and modify verbal communication.

The information about our inner selves like emotions, feelings and moods are
revealed through five basic channels:

1. Facial Expressions:
Results from one or more motion or position of the muscles of the face. These
movements convey the emotional state of the individual to observe. Facial expressions
are voluntary actions closely tied to emotions which are involuntary. Most of the facial
expressions are universal in nature.

E.g. Some facial expressions which are appropriate with emotions are normal i.e. facial
expressions that show happiness, sadness, anger and surprise. But some facial
expressions are considered bad in some cultures i.e. showing disgust and satire.

2. Eye Contact:
Event in which two people look at each other’s eyes at the same time. It influences social
behavior. Through eye contact people provide social and emotional information without
conscious control. In some context eyes can show strong emotions. It helps to regulate
conversation.

There was a research in which the research participant was communicating with a group
of people and he was wearing black sun glasses. He observed that people were unable to
pay attention to his speech and avoiding watching towards his face.

E.g. Eye contact varies in different cultures, social situations and interactions. In eastern
culture staring to direct eye contact with elder provoke misunderstanding leads to assume
that the person is aggressive and rude. Sometimes we avoid eye contact with people who
are disobeying i.e. breaking the rules in the society. Prolong eye contact can show
affection and interest. It also shows the attention level.

3. Body Language:
Communication using body movements instead of using sounds, verbal language or other
forms. It is also known as paralanguage which describes all forms of human
communication which is not verbal in nature.

E.g. Winking in which a person intentionally blink eyes or close one eye or both eyes for
a brief time to convey any naughty message. Sometimes they show slight movement of
eye brows.

4. Postures and Gestures:

Communication made with a part of the body. It helps to express feelings and thoughts.
People use gestures with body language in addition to words.

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Chapter: 2 Social Perception Course: Social Psychology

Gestures are specific signal of messages.

E.g. Pointing finger if placed on lips conveys a message to be quiet. It is also used to
show direction and diverting attention towards something.
It may offense some one when pointing finger is moved in a circle direction by the side to
forehead which shows a person is crazy.

Postures are the body movements.

E.g. Listening carefully and leaning towards any one shows attention level. Sitting on
chair in relax position shows confidence and also show anxiety. In class or in office a
person is expected to sit straight while at home he can sit in casual manner.

5. Emblems:
These are the symbol which shows social role and membership of a person to any
particular group. It also shows the profession of person as well as religious position.

E.g. Police uniform, Doctor’s white coat, Lawyers black coat etc.

6. Proxemics:
Ideal distance that we maintain between ourselves and other people. There is a standard
of acceptable distance between people according to relationships in different cultures.

E.g. Lovers sits closely with each other. Stranger sits or stands keeping some distance.
Parents and children have no distance between each other. When we are sharing any
secret we tend to come closer.

7. Paralanguage:
It’s all about the way we say things. We don’t deliver speech in a flat tone. To convey
emotions and to make message interesting we add vocal fillers.

E.g. err, umm sounds which helps to hide our nervousness and helps us to think while
communicating are the examples of vocal fillers.

8. Touch:
During communication we touch the hands and shoulders of the other person.
There was a research done on hand shake in which the assistant researcher was standing
at the door of the laboratory and he shakes hand with all the research participants who is
entering the room. He got instructions from the researcher to shake hands with firm,
moderate and weak level. After some time the researcher asked the research participants
to rate the research assistant. They rated him according to the hand shake level.
Firm hand shake: He is friendly, Moderate hand shake: He is average. Weak hand shake:
He is rude.

E.g. Putting arm across shoulder shows love and care. Hand shakes show friendliness. It
also shows departure and arrival.

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Chapter: 2 Social Perception Course: Social Psychology

9. Dress:
It is a powerful medium of communication. Dress shows the status of person. It shows
the profession of person. It also shows the occasion, event and situation. It shows the
nationality of person.

Recognizing Deception:
Usually people are lie according to their interests, to hide their emotions and true
motives/goals. It is very common in social settings.

Non-verbal cues helps us to identify the person is lieing or hiding some thing.

The basic channels of detecting deception are:

1. Micro expressions:
Expressions during few tenths of a second. These expressions come in small part of a
second that a person cannot suppress them and these are out of conscious control. These
are the true reflectors of inner feelings and emotions.

E.g. If a friend of ours come at your place wearing a new dress and she is not looking
good. She asks you how I am looking. You inspite of knowing she is not looking good
you lie to her avoid breaking her heart that you are looking great.

2. Interchannel Discrepancies:
When there is inconsistency between non-verbal cues and basic channel. A person when
speaks lie he is unable to control all non-verbal cues at the same time. He is able to
maintain facial expressions but unable to keep an eye-contact.

E.g. Child spends money on buying candies but due to fear of parents tells a lie that his
money is stolen. He will avoid eye-contact or stare more and blink eyes more and his face
color will turn yellow. His tone of voice will be very low and hesitant. He will keep a
distance. He will show exaggerated facial expressions like smile more or get extreme
serious.

3. Cognitive factors in Detecting Deception:

We can detect deception if we try harder and we get successful in the task. It is very
difficult to concentrate on each and every non-verbal cue and on content of the language
at the same time because we have limited cognitive abilities and limited capacity of
attention.

There was a research on detecting lie in which the researcher tends to know the cultural
differences in detecting lie. In his research he involved research participants across the
world belonging to different culture. He showed videotapes of people belonging to
different cultures and asked research participants to inform who is telling lie.

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Chapter: 2 Social Perception Course: Social Psychology

Result: People successfully identified lie of people who belonged to their culture. There
is cultural difference in detecting lie.

Attribution:
Causes and reasons behind behaviors and situations.

Attribution Error:
In terms of thinking about the social world we are perfect in it. During the efforts of
understanding others and ourselves we tend to make errors that lead to false conclusions.

How individual explain behaviors of others and understanding events.

Types of Errors:
There are two types of attribution error.

1. Internal:
The cause of the given behavior is assigned to the individual’s personality, attitude and
character (within the person) also known as dispositional.

2. External:
The cause of the given behavior is assigned to the situation in which the behavior is seen
(outside factors) also known as situational.

Fundamental Attribution Error:

Tendency of people to over-emphasize dispositional or personality-based explanation of
behavior observed in others and under-emphasize situational explanations.

E.g. Person’s action depends on what kind of a person that person is rather than
environmental or social factors influencing the person.

Ultimate Attribution Error:

We tend to assume that whole group have similar disposition. It may be based on
stereotypes.

E.g. Children are innocent. “They all are like that.”

Actor-Observer Bias:
When actions tend to attribute their own behavior to situational causes, but tend to
attribute the behaviors of those we observe to their disposition to personal causes.

E.g. “If others do it, it’s their fault, if I do it, it’s not my fault, it’s because of the situation
I am in.

Self-Serving Bias:

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People credit successes internally and failure externally. People attribute to protect their
self-esteem.

E.g. If a student gets good grades he assumes I am genius. If get bad grades he assumes
that teacher is biased.
Group Serving Bias:
It takes place between groups rather than individuals. Group member make dispositional
errors for their group’s success and situational errors for their group’s failure. They also
attribute success of other group as situational and failure as dispositional.

E.g. If a task is given to two groups and if a group completes the task on time they will
attribute it as dispositional that they are hard working and intelligent. If a group fails to
complete the task on time they will attribute it as situational that time was less and task
was tough, load shedding, lack of man power or lack of sources delayed the task.

Self-Handicap Bias:
Any action or choice of performance setting that enhances the opportunities to externalize
failure and to internalize success.

People seek out obstacles to their own success that minimizes their own performance as a
cause for failure. When task is ego-involving and performance is anticipated.

E.g. University arranges a function and they asks students to organize the function. There
is a chance that students will participate in organizing the function who is less interested
in studies and they know they won’t get good marks in future so they get busy in some
task to satisfy themselves.

Negativity Bias:
Tendency of people when evaluating the causes of the behavior of person they dislike,
they will attribute positive behavior to situational and negative behavior to dispositional.

E.g. If a person we dislike get angry and inspite of knowing that its our fault we will
attribute that he is ill mannered and aggressive. If he acts in a good manner we attribute
that he is behaving positively because there were a large number of people.

Positivity Bias:
Tendency of people when evaluating the causes of the behavior of person they like, they
will attribute positive behavior to disposition and negative behavior to situational.

E.g. If a friend misbehaves with us we tend to assume that the situation made him get
aggressive, the weather was hot or it was my fault. If he behaves in good manner we
assume that he is kind hearted.

Impression Formation:

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Islamabad. Email: [email protected] Page 6
Chapter: 2 Social Perception Course: Social Psychology

Impression formation is the process of integrating information about a person to form an

overall impression. A social psychological term referring to the way in which strangers
develop perceptions of each other.

A study by Solomon Asch suggests that attractiveness is a central trait, so we presume all
the other traits of an attractive person are just as attractive and sought after.
He presented one group of judges with a description of a target person who was described
as

Intelligent, skilful, industrious, warm, determined, practical, and cautious

And another group of judges with a description that was identical apart from the
replacement of warm with cold.

Intelligent, skilful, industrious, cold, determined, practical, and cautious

The warm/cold trait turned out to be central in the sense of profoundly affecting the
overall impression of the target person. When the list of traits contained warm, 91 per
cent of judges guessed that the target person was also generous, compared with only 8 per
cent when the list contained cold. When the stimulus list included warm, the target person
tended to be perceived as also being happy, humorous, sociable, and popular, but when
the stimulus list included cold, most judges thought the stimulus person would not have
those traits but would be persistent, serious, and restrained.

Central Trait:
This is a general characteristic found in some degree in every person. These are the basic
building blocks that shape most of our behavior although they are not as overwhelming as
cardinal traits.

E.g An example of a central trait would be honesty.

Peripheral Trait:
These are the characteristics which are not present in every individual. It not much
contributes more substantively to, or is not much correlated with central traits.

E.g. An example of peripheral trait would be hard working.

Primacy Effect:
Primacy effect this refers to the process by which early information colors our perception
of subsequent information. The commonsense notion that first impressions are the most
compelling is not always correct. First impressions may count most because subsequent
information is more difficult to absorb although recent information may be remembered
most clearly.

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Chapter: 2 Social Perception Course: Social Psychology

E.g. First impression is the last impression.

Recency Effect:
Recency effect a recency effect is the tendency for individuals to be most influenced by
what they have last seen or heard, because people tend to retain the most complete
knowledge about the most recent events. However, under certain circumstances, primacy
effects prevail and sometimes the first rather than the last event will be the most
influential.

E.g. First impression is not always the last impression.

Halo effect:
Halo effect this refers to a common bias, in the impression people form of others, by
which attributes are often generalized. Implicitly nice people are assumed to have all nice
attributes. This can lead to misleading judgments.

E.g. Clever people may falsely be assumed to be knowledgeable about everything. An

attractive person can do no wrong.

The role of physical attractiveness in impression formation:

An important dimension of forming an impression of someone is what that person looks
like. If he or she dresses sloppily, is clumsy, and is physically unattractive, we are
inclined to dislike him or her, or in general think negatively about him or her.

Cunningham (1986) had male college students rate photographs of beauty contest
finalists and ordinary-looking college women, and then analyzed the differences in facial
features between the two groups. One way that they differed was that the beauty contest
women tended to have "widely spaced eyes, small noses, small chins, wide pupils, high
eyebrows, and a big smile." These features were associated with positive personality
ratings, such as intelligent, sociable, and assertive.

Result: Research supports the claim that beautiful people are perceived as having
excellent personalities.

Karen Dion (1972) reported that physical attractiveness does indeed influence other
people's impressions. She had women read reports of severe classroom disruptions by
elementary schoolchildren. In some cases the report was accompanied by a photograph of
a very attractive child, while in other cases the photo was of an unattractive boy or girl.
The subjects tended to blame the disruptive behavior on the ugly children, saying that it
was easy to see that they were "brats." On the other hand, when the photo was of a
beautiful child, the women tended to excuse him or her.

Impression Management:
Efforts made by individual to produce favorable first impression on others.

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Islamabad. Email: [email protected] Page 8
Chapter: 2 Social Perception Course: Social Psychology

It is a goal-directed conscious or unconscious attempt to influence the perceptions of

other people about a person, object or event by regulating and controlling information in
social interaction.

1. Self-Monitoring:
Self-monitoring refers to the process through which people regulate their own behavior in
order to "look good" so that they will be perceived by others in a favorable manner. It
disintinguishes between high self-monitors, who monitor their behaviour to fit different
situations, and low self-monitors, who are more cross-situationally consistent.

E.g. The actor, shaped by the environment and target audience, sees interaction as a
performance. The objective of the performance is to provide the audience with an
impression consistent with the desired goals of the actor.

2. Self-Enhancement:
Self-enhancement or the drive for positive evaluations. It asserts that people want to be
known and understood by others according to their firmly held beliefs and a feeling about
themselves, that is self-views (i.e. self-concepts and self-esteem).

E.g. Physical appearance, such as clothes, body posture. For example, the low self-esteem
person who evokes reactions that confirm her negative self-views by slumping her
shoulders and keeping her eyes fixed on the ground.

Other cues, such as the cars we buy, the houses we live in, the way we decorate our living
environments.

3. Other Enhancement:
Tactics to induse positive moods and reactions in others.

E.g. Flattery is mostly used by people in which they make statements that praise target
person, his or her traits and organization in which he is working. Other tactics involves
saying YES to the target person in every decision. Showing high degree of interest.doing
small favors and expressing liking of person non-verbally.

4. Slime Effect:
Tendency to form a very negative impression of other’s who “lick upward and kick
downward”.

E.g. A person who in a work setting play up to his superiors but treat subordinates with
disgust.

Conclusion:
The result of all this discussion is that some times these tactics are successful if a person
use them with care and with cleverness otherwise it can creat hazards for him.

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Islamabad. Email: [email protected] Page 9
Chapter: 2 Social Perception Course: Social Psychology

Sometimes we have cognitive load when we are performing any task. We have limited
capacity to do multiple tasks so we fail to concentrate on the task or concentrating on our
self image.

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Islamabad. Email: [email protected] Page 10