Module 2: Social Perception

Communication
Communication is the act of conveying meanings from one entity or group to
another through the use of mutually understood signs, symbols, and rules Effective
communication is a connection between people that allows for the exchange of thoughts,
feelings, and ideas, and leads to mutual understanding.
Components of Communication:
There are three component parts in an idealized communication system:
(i) Source

(ii) Channel

(iii) Receiver.

Forms of Communication:
The forms of communication may be divided into:
(a) Verbal Communication:- Communication through writing or speaking refers to verbal
communication. Thus verbal communication always requires the use of language. People
start speaking before they learn to write. So verbal or oral communication normally starts
with speaking. In written communication, books, news papers, letters, reports, records,
applications and instruction play major part.
(b) Nonverbal Communication:- Any communication without the use of speech and
language refers to nonverbal communication. Gestures, smiles, cries, signs and signals, all
traffic signs, red and green signals denoting “stop” and “proceed” respectively, expression of
attitudes and emotions through facial expression, change in body position, head movements
expressing Yes or No refer to nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication by the
large is used to communicate the various feelings, emotions, likes and dislikes preferences
and rejections of a person.
Skills for effective communication

1. Active listening
2. Nonverbal communication
3. Asking questions
4. Clarifying and summarising
5. Being empathetic
6. Providing feedback
7. Developing trust and rapport
8. Using humour
9. Maintain appositive attitude
10. Be aware of other people’s emotions

Speaking effectively

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 Speaking effectively is defined as speaking in such a way that your message is
clearly heard and, if possible, acted upon. There are two main elements to speaking
effectively: what you say, and how you say it.
There are three main elements of effective speaking

 The words you use.

 Your voice.
 Your other non-verbal communication, particularly body language.

Choosing Your Words

What you say—the words you choose—matters. It is important to choose carefully,
especially when you are saying something important. Things to consider include:

 Your audience. The words you choose will be different if you are talking to 200
people at a conference, a trusted colleague, your boss, or your children. You need to
think about your audience’s overall level of understanding of the subject, and also the
type of language that you use.

 Shorter sentences are easier to process and understand. Using shorter sentences
also creates urgency.

 Simpler words are also easier to understand. This is particularly important if your
audience are not all native speakers of the language.

Your Voice
 The sound of a voice and the content of speech can provide clues to an individual's
emotional state.
 if self-esteem is low, it may be reflected by hesitancy in the voice. A shy person may
speak quietly, but someone who is confident in themselves will be more likely to have
command of their voice and clarity of speech.

Body Language
A considerably amount of communication—some estimates suggest over 50%
—is non-verbal. Tone of voice, pace and emphasis are all part of non-verbal communication.
Body language includes how you stand, your facial expressions, the way you use your hands
to emphasise your speech, and even whether and with whom you make eye contact.

For communication to be effective, your non-verbal communication needs

to reinforce your words: the two must say the same thing. Non-verbal communication is
much harder to disguise than verbal.

Effective listening

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 Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the
communication process. Listening is key to all effective communication. In order to be an
effective listener one should:

-Maintain eye contact with the speaker. This will demonstrate to the speaker that the listener
is paying attention.

-Do not interrupt the speaker. Wait until he or she is completely finished, then ask questions.

-Control body language. As much as possible, sit still while listening. This implies that the
listener is paying full attention to the speaker. A nod of the head can be good, as it implies
agreement.

-A good listener knows that being attentive to what the speaker doesn't say is as important as
being attentive to what he does say. Look for nonverbal cues such as facial expressions and
posture to get the full gist of what the speaker is saying.

Social perception

Social perception is the process through which we seek to know and understand
other persons. It plays a key role in social behaviour and social thought.

Nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication refers to the communication that does not involve the
content of spoken language. Research findings indicate that there are some basic channels
through which nonverbal communication takes place. They are
1. Facial expressions-
The face is considered as the image of the soul. This implies that human
feelings and emotions are often reflected in the face and can be read there in specific
expressions. Modern research suggests that It is possible to learn much about others’ current
moods and feelings from their facial expressions. In fact, it appears that five different basic
emotions are represented clearly, and from a very early age, on the human face: anger, fear,
happiness, sadness, and disgust Although only five basic emotions are represented in distinct
facial expressions that can be recognized across various cultures, these emotions can occur in
many combinations and be shown to varying degrees. Some facial expressions provide clear
signals of underlying emotional states, and are recognized as doing so all over the world.
Cultural differences certainly do exist with respect to the precise meaning of facial
expressions, but unlike spoken languages, they do not seem to require much in the way of
translation.

2. Eye contact
Eyes are considered as “windows to the soul.” We do often learn much about
others’ feelings from their eyes. For example, we interpret a high level of gazing from
another as a sign of liking or friendliness. In contrast, if others avoid eye contact with us, we

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may conclude that they are unfriendly, don’t like us, or are simply shy. While a high level of
eye contact with others is usually interpreted as a sign of liking or positive feelings, there is
one exception to this general rule. If another person gazes at us continuously and maintains
such contact regardless of what we do, he or she can be said to be staring. A stare is often
interpreted as a sign of anger or hostility and most people find this particular nonverbal cue
disturbing . In fact, we may quickly terminate social interaction with someone who stares at
us and may even leave the scene.

3. Body language
Our current moods or emotions are often reflected in the position, posture, and
movement of our bodies. Together, such nonverbal behaviours are termed body language,
and they, too, can provide useful information about others. First, body language often reveals
others’ emotional states. Large numbers of movements— especially ones in which one part of
the body does something to another part (touching, rubbing, scratching)—suggest emotional
arousal. The greater the frequency of such behavior, the higher the level of arousal or
nervousness. Larger patterns of movements, involving the whole body, can also be
informative. More specific information about others’ feelings is often provided by gestures.
These fall into several categories, but perhaps the most important are emblems—body
movements carrying specific meanings in a given culture

4. Touching
Touching depends on is several factors relating to who does the touching (a
friend, a stranger, a member of your own or the other gender); the nature of this physical
contact (brief or prolonged, gentle or rough, what part of the body is touched); and the
context in which the touching takes place (a business or social setting, a doctor’s office).
Depending on such factors, touch can suggest affection, sexual interest, dominance, caring, or
even aggression. Despite such complexities, existing evidence indicates that when touching is
considered appropriate, it often produces positive reactions in the person being touched

One acceptable way in which people in many different cultures touch strangers is
through handshaking. Research suggests that handshakes reveal much about other people—
for instance, their personalities— and that a firm handshake is a good way to make a
favourable first impression on others. In sum, touching can serve as another source of
nonverbal communication, and when it is appropriate it can induce positive reactions. If it is
viewed as inappropriate, however, it can encourage negative perceptions of the person doing
the touching.

Although facial expressions, body movements, gestures, eye contact, and

touching are basic and important sources of nonverbal information, they are not the only
ones. Much can also be learned from what are termed paralinguistic cues—changes in the
tone or inflection of others’ voices (quite apart from the meaning of their words). And recent
research indicates that even subtle cues relating to others’ body chemistry can be revealing
.
The Facial Feedback Hypothesis

The facial feedback hypothesis (Laird, 1984) suggests that there is a close
link between the facial expressions we show and our internal feelings, and that this
relationship works both ways: yes, the expressions we show reflect our internal feelings or
emotions, but in addition, these expressions also feed back into our brains and influence our
subjective experiences of emotion. In short, we don’t only show what we feel inside on our

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faces—we also sometimes feel, inside, what we show. Many studies offer support for this
view.

Detection of Deception

Recognizing deception seems to involve paying careful attention to both

nonverbal and verbal cues that can reveal the fact that others are trying to deceive us. With
respect to nonverbal cues, the following information has been found to be very helpful
1. Microexpressions: These are fleeting facial expressions lasting only a few tenths of a
second. Such reactions appear on the face very quickly after an emotion-provoking event and
are difficult to suppress. As a result, they can be very revealing about others’ true feelings or
emotions.
2. Interchannel discrepancies: These are inconsistencies between nonverbal cues from
different basic channels. These result from the fact that people who are lying often find it
difficult to control all these channels at once. For instance, they may manage their facial
expressions well, but may have difficulty looking you in the eye as they tell their lie.
3. Eye contact: Efforts at deception are often revealed by certain aspects of eye contact.
People who are lying often blink more often and show pupils that are more dilated than
people who are telling the truth. They may also show an unusually low level of eye contact or
surprisingly—an unusually high one as they attempt to fake being honest by looking others
right in the eye.
4. Exaggerated facial expressions: Finally, people who are lying sometimes show
exaggerated facial expressions. They may smile more—or more broadly—

In addition to these nonverbal cues, other signs of deception are sometimes

present in nonverbal aspects of what people actually say, or in the words they choose.
Whenpeople are lying, the pitch of their voices often rises—especially when they are highly
motivated to lie. Similarly, they often take longer to begin—to respond to a question or
describe events. And they may show a greater tendency to start sentences, stop them, and
begin again. In other words, certain aspects of people’s linguistic style can be revealing of
deception. In sum, through careful attention to nonverbal cues and to various aspects of the
way people speaks, we can often tell when others are lying—or merely trying to hide their
feelings from us.

Attribution
The process through which we seek such information and draw inferences is
known as attribution. More formally, attribution refers to our efforts to understand the causes
behind others’ behaviour and, on some occasions, the causes behind our behaviour, too.

Theories of atttibution
Because attribution is complex, many theories have been proposed to explain
its [Link] classic views are
[Link] of correspondent inference
Jones and Davis’s (1965) theory of correspondent inference—asks how we use
information about others’ behaviour as a basis for inferring their traits. In other words, the
theory is concerned with how we decide, on the basis of others’ overt actions, whether they
possess specific traits or dispositions likely to remain fairly stable over time. Often,
individuals act in certain ways not because doing so reflects their own preferences or traits,
but rather because external factors leave them little . According to Jones and Davis’s theory

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we focus our attention on certain types of actions—those most likely to prove informative
First, we consider only behaviour that seems to have been freely chosen, while largely
ignoring ones that were somehow forced on the person in question. Second, we pay careful
attention to actions that show noncommon effects—effects that can be caused by one specific
factor, but not by others. Finally, Jones and Davis suggest that we also pay greater attention
to actions by others. That are low in social desirability than to actions that are high on this
dimension. In other words, we learn more about others’ traits from actions they perform that
are somehow out of the ordinary than from actions that are very much like those of most
other people. In sum, according to the theory proposed by Jones and Davis, we are most
likely to conclude that others’ behavior reflects their stable traits .i.e., we are likely to reach
correspondent inferences about them, when that behavior (1) is freely chosen; (2) yields
distinctive, noncommon effects; and (3) is low in social desirability

2, Kelley’s theory of causal attributions

According to Kelley, in our attempts to answer the why question about
others’ behaviour, we focus on three major types of information. First, we consider
consensus—the extent to which other people react to a given stimulus or event in the same
manner as the person we are considering. The higher the proportion of people who react in
the same way, the higher the consensus. Second, we consider consistency—the extent to
which the person in question reacts to the stimulus or event in the same way on other
occasions, over time. And third, we examine distinctiveness—the extent to which this person
reacts in the same manner to other, different stimuli or events.
According to Kelley’s theory, we are most likely to attribute another’s behaviour
to internal causes under conditions in which consensus and distinctiveness are low but
consistency is high. In contrast, we are most likely to attribute another’s behaviour to external
causes when consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness are all high. Finally, we usually
attribute another’s behaviour to a combination of internal and external factors when
consensus is low but consistency and distinctiveness are high.

Two other important dimensions of causal attribution relate to whether specific causes of
behaviour are stable over time and controllable or not controllable,
When two or more potential causes of another person’s behaviour exist, we tend to
downplay the importance of each- an effect known as discounting. When a cause that
facilitates a behaviour and a cause that inhibits it exist, but the behaviour occurs, we assign
added weight to the facilitative factors- an effect known as augmenting. Augmenting occurs
in many situations. For example it can boost perceptions of women who become
entrepreneurs.
The basic assumptions of Kelley’s theory have been confirmed in a wide range of
social situations, so it seems to provide important insights into the nature of causal
attributions.
Basic source of errors in attribution
Our efforts to understand other persons are subject to several types of errors that can
lead us to false conclusions about why others have acted as they have and how they will
behave in future. Some of the basic sources of errors in attribution are:
1, The correspondence bias-—the tendency to explain others’ actions as stemming from
dispositions even in the presence of clear situational causes . This bias seems to be so general
in scope that many social psychologists refer to it as the fundamental attribution error.
2. The actor–observer effect -the tendency to attribute our own behaviour to situational
(external) causes but that of others to dispositional (internal) ones. Thus, when we see another
person trip and fall, we tend to attribute this event to his or her clumsiness. If we trip,

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however, we are more likely to attribute this event to situational causes, such as water on the
sidewalk.
3. self-serving bias -this tendency to attribute our own positive outcomes to internal causes
eg. One’s own traits or characteristics) but negative ones to external factors (e.g. chance, task
difficulty).

Applications of Attribution Theory

Attribution and Depression

Depression is the most common psychological disorder. In fact, it has been

estimated that almost half of all human beings experience such problems at some time during
their lives. Although many factors play a role in depression, one that has received increasing
attention is what might be termed a self-defeating pattern of attributions. In contrast to most
people, who show the self-serving bias described above, depressed individuals tend to adopt
an opposite pattern. They attribute negative outcomes to lasting, internal causes such as their
own traits or lack of ability, but attribute positive outcomes to temporary, external causes
such as good luck or special favours from others. As a result, such people perceive that they
have little or no control over what happens to them—they are simply being blown about by
the winds of unpredictable fate. And once they are depressed, the tendency to engage in this
self-defeating pattern is strengthened, and a vicious cycle is often initiated.
Fortunately, several forms of therapy that focus on changing such attributions
have been developed, and appear to be quite successful. These new forms of therapy focus on
getting depressed people to change their attributions—to take personal credit for successful
outcomes, to stop blaming themselves for negative outcomes and to view at least some
failures as the result of external factors beyond their control.

Attribution and prejudice

In many situations it is difficult to know whether negative outcomes experienced by
minority persons are the result of prejudice or other factors. Because of this uncertainty, when
such persons attribute these outcomes to prejudice, some bystanders conclude that they are
wrong and so think so less highly of them.
Attribution theory explains why minority persons who are the victims of
discrimination are often reluctant to challenge it. They fear that if they attribute negative
outcomes to prejudice, they will be perceived negatively by others.

Impression formation
Impression formation is the process through which we form
impressions of others. Impression formation is an important aspect of social perception. Most
people are concerned with making good first impressions on others because they believe that
these impressions will exert lasting effects.
According to Solomon Asch (1946), we do not form impressions
simply by adding together all of the traits, we observe in other persons. rather, we perceive
these traits in relation to one another so that the traits cease to exist individually and become

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indeed, part of an integrated dynamic whole. In order to find out how we form unified
impressions of others in the quick and seemingly effortless way, Solomon Asch conducted an
experiment. He gave individuals lists of traits supposedly possessed by a stranger, and then
asked them to indicate their impressions of this person by putting check marks next to traits
that they felt fit their overall impression of the stranger.
intelligent—skillful—industrious—warm—determined—practical—cautious
intelligent—skillful—industrious—cold—determined—practical—cautious
People who read the list containing warm were much more likely to view
the stranger as generous, happy, good-natured, sociable, popular, and altruistic than were
people who read the list containing cold. The words warm and cold, Asch concluded, were
central traits—ones that strongly shaped overall impressions of the stranger and colored the
other adjectives in the lists. Asch concluded that forming impressions of others involves more
than simply combining individual
!First impressions are formed very quickly and even if based on limited
information, can be somewhat accurate. However, confidence in the accuracy of such
impressions is not closely related to their actual accuracy.

Impression Management
Impression management (or self-presentation) to describe these efforts to make a
good impression on others. People who perform impression management successfully do
often gain important advantages in many situations

Tactics of impression management

While individuals use many different techniques for boosting their image,
most of these fall into two major categories: self-enhancement—efforts to increase their
appeal to others—and other-enhancement—efforts to make the target person feel good in
various ways.
With respect to self-enhancement, specific strategies include efforts to boost
one’s appearance—either physical or professional. Physical appearance relates to the
attractiveness and physical appeal of the individual, while professional appearance relates to
personal grooming, appropriate dress, and personal hygiene. Additional tactics of self-
enhancement involving efforts to appear competent and accomplished through such steps as
describing past achievements, describing positive qualities one possesses , taking
responsibility for positive events in one’s life that occurred in the past , or explaining how
they overcame daunting obstacles.

In other enhancement strategies, individuals basically seek to induce

positive moods and reactions in others through the use of a variety of tactics. The most
commonly used tactic of this type is ingratiation—flattering others in various ways
Additional tactics of other-enhancement involve expressing agreement with the target
person’s views, showing a high degree of interest in this person, doing small favours for
them, asking for their advice and feedback in some manner, or expressing liking for them
nonverbally (e.g., through high levels of eye contact, nodding in agreement, and smiling);
Existing evidence indicates that impression management works; it often succeeds in
generating positive first impressions of the people using it.

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Implicit personality theories
Implicit personality theories are beliefs about what traits or characteristics
tend to go together, can be viewed as a specific kind of schema, suggest that when individuals
possess some traits, they are likely to possess others, too. Such expectations are strongly
shaped by the cultures in which we live These tendencies to assume that certain traits or
characteristics go together are very common and can be observed in many contexts. In sum,
our impressions of others are often strongly shaped by our beliefs about what traits or
characteristics go together. Indeed, these beliefs are often so strong that we will sometimes
bend our perceptions of other people to be consistent with them. We can form impressions of
others that reflect our implicit beliefs more than their actual traits.