Person Perception

Social Perception
Taylor, Sears, Peplau
12th ed.
Baron and Branscombe
13th ed.

 Our impressions of others are the

most important judgments we form.
We use whatever information is
available to make such judgments,
about their personalities or form
hypotheses about the kinds of
persons they are.

 There are some general rules about how people form

impressions of others
1. People form impressions of others quickly on the basis of
minimal information available and go on to impute
general traits on them.
2. People pay special attention to the most salient features
of the persons, rather than pay attention to everything.
We notice the qualities that make the person distinctive
or unusual.
3. Processing information about people involves perceiving
some coherent meaning in their behavior. To an extent,
we use the context of a persons behavior to infer its
meaning instead of judging that in isolation.

4. We organize our perceptions by categorizing or

grouping stimuli. Rather than seeing people as
individuals, we tend to see people as members of
groups. People wearing lab coats are doctors (all are
same, doctors)
5. We use our enduring cognitive structures to make
sense of peoples behavior. If someone is a teacher,
professor, doctor etc., we perceive him according to
his profession.
6. A perceivers own needs and personal goals
influence how he or she perceives others. Perception
of a person you meet only once is different from the
perception you form about your new roommate.

What information do we
use?
Roles: When we try to organize information about
others, knowing their social role is important, ever
more important than their traits. There are many
ways to be extroverted (being comedian, politician,
etc.) but the information about concrete roles
(like being cheerleader, politician) provides
information than only knowing raw traits.
Role schemas are more useful than traits for recall.
People sitting in a seminar are easy to recall than
people described by general traits (like selfcentered or courageous people). When behavior is
out of context it creates ambiguity.

What information do we
use?
Physical cues: our first impressions
often draw on other peoples
appearance and behavior to infer
qualities about them (Livingston,
2001). That can lead to formation of
remarkably detailed impressions.
(seeing someone in burqa or in jeans
lead us to different impressions). We
even infer personality traits from a
persons face (Fielder and Schenck,

 Salience: people direct their attention to those aspects the

perceptual field that stand out i.e. the figure and ground principle.
Attention is drawn to bright, noisy, colorful, unusual, and novel
stimuli. A man in bright red sweater stands out.
Salience has a number of consequences
1. Salient behaviors draw more attention than subtler ones. (Taylor
and Fiske, 1978)
2. Salient behaviors influence perception of causality, as people
with more salient aspects are considered to be having more
influence over their social context. A front row student asking a
question would be considered more dominating than the back
row student asking the same amount of questions.
3. Salient aspects draw the extreme evaluations. Top of the Head
(evaluations occurring at the most superficial level).

From Behaviors to traits

From observable information such as appearance,
behavior, and even gestures, we quickly form
personality trait inferences about what the person
is like. (Gawronski, 2003). It is a more economical
and general way.
We try to summarize aspects of behavior in trait
forms instead of describing and recalling each and
every aspect.
Implicit Personality Theory: Traits are
interlinked so inferring one trait leads to connect it
with other similar traits and making an overview of
the personality. (Sedikides & Anderson, 1994).

 Central trait: A trait that is highly associated with many of

a persons other characteristics is called a central trait.
Kelleys (1950) experiment: students were given a warm
and cold description of a guest lecturer prior to the lecture.
All other aspects were same. After the lecture of about 20
minutes, students were asked to give impressions about the
lecturer.
Student receiving warm description reported the
lecturer to be less self centered, more sociable, more
popular, less formal, less irritable, more humorous,
less ruthless.
The trait inferences that we tend to evaluate in others are in
terms of their task related or intellectual capacities
and their interpersonal or social capacities (Kim &
Rosenberg, 1980)

Categorization
Categorization: perceiving people as members of groups or
categories rather than as distinct individuals.
Gender, race, religion, socioeconomic class all influence our
perceptions. Perceivers do not respond to salient stimuli in isolation,
they immediately perceive stimuli as part of some group or
category.
The categorization leads to social judgments about people in
stereotypical way.
Categorizing a person also increases the speed of processing.
Brewer, Dull, and Lui (1981), presented participants with photos of
people in three categories grandmother senior citizen young
woman with labels. Then they provided additional information
about each photo and measured the time to make impressions.
Information consistent with the prototype of the category was
processed quickly (e.g. kindly for grandmother)
Individuals prefer category judgments over individuated judgments.

Continuum model of impression

formation: Dual Processing
Dual processing: People can process information
in a careful, systematic fashion or in a more rapid,
efficient fashion.
We have the ability to make both category based,
stereotypical judgments and more individuated
judgments.
More depends on the context, usually we prefer
categorization but if that categorization is not
supported by available data at hand we might turn
to individuated processing (someone doing
something unique not consistent with his/her
stereotype (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990).
Sometimes we use heuristics, sometimes we dont.

Context Effects
Context Effects: Social judgments are strongly dependent on the context
in which it is made (Bless & Wanke, 2000).
Two types of context effects
Contrast: (biased) tendency to perceive a communicators position as
further away from the individuals own position than it actually is. Photos
of people are rated as much less attractive when they are preceded by
attractive faces (Wink, Bless & Igou, 2001).
Assimilation: Perceiving a communicators position as closer to ones
own position than it actually is. When attractive and unattractive faces are
presented simultaneously, unattractive faces are rated relatively attractive
Assimilation is more likely to occur when processing information at
categorical or stereotypical level. It is less likely when behavioral
information about a person is processed more thoroughly (Thompson et al.
1994)
On hearing reports about other peoples behavior we usually take into
consideration the context in which the behavior is reported.

Integrating Impressions
How do we combine the piecemeal information into an overall impression?
Evaluation: the goodness or badness of another person, object or concept
(Osgood, Suci, & Tannebaum, 1957).
Negativity Effect: we tend to pay special attention to negative or more
threatening aspects. Impressions are influenced more by negative traits
than by positive traits (Ohman, Lundqrist, & Esteves, 2001; Vonk, 1993).
Positivity Bias: People perceive people positively more often than
negatively. The reason is that most behavior is positive. People generally act
in good ways. Also when we have positive expectations from others, we
tend to retain that positive information about others.
Emotional information: Perceivers notice emotionally charged information
and make great use of it in their judgment about others. We infer from
peoples emotions about how they are. In a study people saw a videotape of
a person who was in a neutral , happy or angry mood. The happy mood
elicited more stereotypical, heuristic processing of information about the
persons characteristics, while neutral mood elicited more thorough and
systematic processing of information.
Averaging Principle: Evaluating information about a person is averaged
together to form an overall impression (Anderson, 1968).

 We impute meanings in perception about other

persons and try to make a meaningful impression.
Shift of meaning for the same trait can occur if
the behavior is judged in a new context. (the
meaning of intelligence changes if people know
the person they are going to see is warm, friendly
and if they know the person is cold, ruthless.
People tend to form evaluatively consistent
characterizations of others, even if they have only
a few pieces of information available. That leads
to Halo effect

 We do remember inconsistent information about other

persons (if someone tells us that our acquaintance is
not like that as I thought). In order to integrate this
information into our congruent schematic set, we have
to work a lot to figure out what and how to do. When
people are cognitively too busy in other tasks, the bias
to remember inconsistent information is eliminated.
Some incongruent behaviors are situation specific,
some are mildly congruent, so are remembered easily.
When they are so incongruent and difficult to manage,
people sometimes accept the incongruency.

 Schemas: a schema is an organized, structured set of cognitions,

including some knowledge about the category, some relationships
among the various cognitions about it, and some specific examples
(Taylor, and Crocker, 1981).
Another name for stereotypes.
Schemas help us process complex bodies of information by
simplifying and organizing them.
Person schemas are structures about people.
Schemas can be of single persons (e.g. schemas of famous leaders,
schema of a cultured person) or person types (e.g. schema of
introvert)
Stereotypes: Schemas about groups. Attributing specific traits to
particular group of people.
Schemas about other relevant categories related to groups.
Schemas about group leaders and group followers.

 Prototype: In drawing inferences

about another person, we often draw
on the prototype of the schema. The
prototype is the abstract ideal of the
schema. Schema of a football player
we have an abstract idea of what a
football player is.
Exemplars: the prototypes are
formed on the basis of specific
examples.

 Motivated Person Perception

Our impressions about other people are affected
by our motives.
Telling participants about forming a coherent
impression of other person (impression formation
goal) or to remember the separate bits of
information they might be exposed to
(remembering goal) leads to different formations.
Under first condition people make more coherent
impressions than the second condition.

 Anticipating future interactions with someone

creates different social goals than simply
trying to learn about that person.
Devine, Sedikides, Fuhrman (1989) asked
people to learn information about five persons
under various goal conditions.
Anticipated interaction, form an impression,
compare to self, compare to friend, remember,
Greatest recall for anticipated interaction,
slowest recall for the remembering group.

 The need to be accurate usually more extensive and less biased

information about the person.
In a study (Neuberg, 1989) students were asked to interview a
job candidate. Half were led to expect that the candidate was
unpleasant and the other half didnt get any expectation
information.
Half the students were encouraged to form accurate impressions
about the target, the others were not. The students who did not
have the goal of accuracy generally formed negative impressions
and consistent with their expectations. While those students who
had been encouraged to form accurate impressions formed more
positive impressions actively undermining the expectations they
were having.
So the goal of more accurate leads to more thorough processing
of information confirming dual processing of information

Attributing the Causes of

Behavior
Jones and Daviss Correspondent Inference Theory
People engage in variety of actions but only a few of
those reveal their personal qualities (e.g. smiling,
greeting, mannerism)
Dispositional/Internal attribution: perceiving a
persons actions as stemming from stable characteristics
such as personality.
Situational attribution: Perceiving the cause of
persons action as due to situational forces.
Correspondent inference theory: How people infer
that a persons action is due to his or her enduring
personal characteristics.

Attributing the Causes of

Behavior
We use the context to infer whether other persons behavior is
dispositional or situational.
1. Social desirability: if the behavior is against socially desirable norms
then it is perceived as having dispositional origin
2. Whether behavior is freely chosen or restricted by social constraints
3. People consider the intended consequences of anothers behavior when
inferring the causes of behavior. When a persons actions produce many
consequences, it is hard to know the persons actual motives when it
produce distinct consequences then it is easy to infer the motives
underlying behavior. (giving up high paying job for something else)
4. Knowing whether the behavior is part of a social role. If a fire fighters
helps to put off fire, it might be due to his profession.
5. We interpret others behavior on the basis of our preexisting
expectations about their true dispositions. (a known liberal/obstinate
person occasionally confirming to parents might not be perceived as
very confirmative).

Attributing the Causes of

Behavior
Harold Kellys (1967) Covariation Theory
People try to see if a particular cause and particular effect go
together across different situations.
We use three types of information to validate our tentative causal
attributions.
Consistency, distinctiveness, consensus
Consistency: the extent to which an individual responds to a given
stimulus or situation in the same way on different occasions
Consensus: the extent to which other people react to some
stimulus or event in the same manner as the person we are
considering
Distinctiveness: the extent to which an individual responds in the
same manner to different stimuli or events.
High distinctiveness, high consistency, high consensus leads to
more attribution of trait oriented behavior.

Biases in Attribution
Fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977)
People often overestimate peoples action as
originating from dispositions then they actually are.
If someone does not greet us on some occasion, we
may think that the person is cold, unwelcoming
The research shows that the attributional judgments
are usually made spontaneously, automatically, we
here about other peoples behavior (Gilbert &
Mallone, 1995)
Using information to see behavior in situational
context seems to be a secondary option (Gilbert et
al. 1992).

Biases in Attribution
Automatic processing: this occurs
when after an extensive experience
with a task or type of information, we
reach the stage where we can
perform the task or process the
information in a seemingly effortless,
automatic and non conscious
manner.
Controlled processing: systematic,
logical and highly effortful processing

Biases in Attribution
When people are cognitively busy
(thinking about other things) they do
not go for deeper processing and
seeing behavior in proper context.
If we know people well then we usually
make situational attribution.
The dispositional attribution tendency
is more seen in people in USA and
western countries than in Asia.

Biases in Attribution
Actor-Observer bias: (Jones and Nisbett, 1972)
There is a discrepancy in attributing behavior while
judging others and judging oneself.
Dispositional attribution is seen more when we judge
others while judging our own behavior we situational
attribution.
One of the reasons is the actor has more information
available for oneself than about the other people.
It may be due to different perspectives. The visual
field of the observer is dominated by the actor and
his/her most salient aspects (leading to dispositional
judgment). While the actor him/herself is not just
focusing on the most salient aspects of his/her own
behaviors even situation is more salient.

Biases in Attribution
False Consensus effect
People tend to imagine (by exaggeration) everyone responds the way
they do. We tend see our own behavior as typical.
Students in a campus were asked to walk around the campus for 30
minutes wearing a large board containing the message eat at Joes.
Some students agreed and some refused. Both groups said that about
two thirds of other students in the campus would do what they did. Both
groups proved wrong showing the false consensus they had. (Ross,
Greene, House, 1977).
Reasons might be people seek out company of others who are similar to
them in many ways. So they guess other people would do the same.
Our own opinions are most salient so sometimes it becomes obvious that
others should do the same
Sometimes we make subjective solutions to problems according to our
own construal of situations ignoring many ambiguous details.
People need to see their own beliefs good and appropriate and project
this to others

Biases in Attribution
False Uniqueness Effect:
We tend to overestimate our abilities and under
estimate others abilities. (Marks, 1984).
Self-Serving Attributional Bias
People see their positive behaviors as internally
caused while their negative behaviors as caused
by external circumstances.
Victory in a match is seen as due to ability while
a defeat is seen as due to situational factors.

Facial Expressions and

Gestures
People typically possess 5 basic emotions
Anger, happiness, fear, sadness and disgust (Izard, 1991)
The variety of mixed emotions are spontaneously reflected
by our facial expressions
Gold medal winners smile clearly as do bronze medal
winners, while silver medal winners rarely smile. Or show
social smiling
We exchange gazes with people we are more familiar or
feel close to. While avoiding eye contact might show
unfriendliness or shyness.
Continuous long durational gaze might be termed as
Staring
Facial Feedback Hypothesis