Lecture 07 & 08

• Can form impressions of others extremely quickly from faces.
• Resemblances to angry or happy emotional expressions lead perceivers to infer those characteristics in personality.
• The Primacy Effect: suggests that learning about some traits first influences how all subsequent traits are perceived.
• High expectations lead to more challenging homework, attention, praise, feedback, which positively impact student.
• Confirmation Biases: when once a first impression is formed, people have a tendency to look for information to confirm that impression, rather than to disconfirm it
• Negativity Bias: negative information about a target will be remembered and disproportionately inform our impression of them

  • we forget the basic/positive information about someone, but we remember negative/unique information
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: when an individual's expectations about a situation or another person lead to behaviours that cause those expectations to come true

  • because of a pre-existing expectation, we act differently towards them which could make it actually true
• First impressions matter, subsequent info less attended to, takes more to update impression.
• There are many individual differences that can influence how we interpret information when forming impressions of others, such as motivation, cognitive beliefs, and current emotions.
• Confirmatory Hypothesis Testing: aprocess where people do a "getting to know you" interview in pairs, with one partner being told they are introverted and the other extroverted
• Those who were socially rejected are more accurate at detecting real smiles.
• People in happy moods tend to be more optimistic, lenient, and less critical in evaluations, giving them a "benefit of the doubt".
• Perceiver factors that can improve accuracy or social sensitivity include motivation, beliefs, and emotions.
• People don't typically think about how their own goals or beliefs influence their perception of others.
• Duchenne smiles involve the zygomaticus and orbicular ocularis muscles.
• We use others’ appearance to make inferences into their personality, including their bodies, clothes, face, etc.
• The face of danger is seen quickest amongst a crowd of faces.
• Faces capture our attention because the info in the face had consequences on our outcomes.
• Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) / Correspondence bias: The tendency to overlook the impact of a situation and attribute someone’s actions to their disposition
• Underestimate the power of situational factors
• In general, East Asians demonstrate the FAE to a lesser extent than Westerners - seems they consider the context more-so (small effect but possibly real)
• Why did Mayweather punch McGregor? -because he is aggressive (Personal attribution) -because they were boxing (Situational attribution)
• Situation (over personal) is MOSTLY responsible for majority of our actions
• Two step process of impressions:

  1- Form impression (automatic)

  2- Correct/update impression for context (takes effort)
• We observe/analyze others to explain their behaviour

  (2) Inferences that are made :

  1. Personal (Intrinsic) - person's personal motivation to do something
  2. Situational (Extrinsic) - person's environment influencing motivation to do something
• People say “It depends on the situation” more for themselves than for others
• We observe and analyze others to explain their behavior - Heider, 1958
• While taking the context into account, humans are pretty good at estimating some traits but bad at others.
• Pareidolia: seeing faces and attribute personality where no faces exist
• Babyfacedness: to the extent a face has baby-like characteristics, we infer target has similar personality (warm, innocent) and have urges to act similarily to target (zebrowitz & Mcdonald, 1991)
• Overgeneralization Hypothesis: we infer characteristics based on similarity of one's appearance with learned associations
• Use other's appearances to make inferences into their personality, motivations, and skills
• Good at accurately characterizing faces as to what emotion the target is feeling for basic emotions but less success at more complex emotions
• Faces in the Crowd Effect: emotional or unique faces stand out more easily in a crowd than neutral or non-unique faces

  • comes from instinct of survival
• Humans are pretty good at accurately estimating some traits but not others:

  Big 5 Personality Factors

  1. Extraversion (accurate)
  2. Conscientiousness
  3. Openness to new experience (accurate)
  4. Agreeableness
  5. Emotional Stability
• 
  

  Our accuracy at identifying the following traits:

  • Narcissism of person: accurate
  • Whether someone if gay/straight: shaky accuracy
  • Someone's Trustworthiness/Friendliness/Intelligence: bad accuracy
• (Goldberg, 1978) People say whether they are extraverted or introverted "depends on the situation"
• Why does the Fundamental Attribution Error Occur?

  underestimating the power of situational factors
• Perceiver Factors: Motivation

  • determines what we notice, making us more likely to see things that match our goals
  • shapes how we understand social situations, making us more inclined to see them in a way that fits what we already believe or want
• Perceiver Factors: Beliefs

  • Beliefs act as a filter for how we perceive others, leading us to pay attention to behaviors and cues that confirm our existing beliefs
  • more likely to interpret ambiguous situations in a way that aligns with our preexisting beliefs