Social Psychology Is Social Perception Always Accurate?

Social Psychology Is Social perception always accurate?

Kirstie Domican

10170247

07/12/2014

Abstract

What is social perception? Social perception is the process through which we seek to know and understand people. (Baron Branscombe and Byrne ED 12 2009 P75)

It influences us in social behavior and thought.

In other words it is the study of how people make impressions and make opinions about other people by the way their look or the way they speak.

There is 3 principle aspects to Social Perception

* Non-verbal communication

* Attributions

* Impression formation and Impression Management

These principle aspects will be discussed in depth.

The purpose of this essay is to discuss weather social perception is always accurate but first let me define what the 3 principle aspects are.

Nonverbal communication is "communication between individuals that does not involve the content of spoken language. It relies on the use of facial expressions eye contact, and body language" Baron et al 2009, It is Basically all types of body language.

Attributes are "the processes through which we seek to identify the causes of others behavior and so gain knowledge of their stable traits and characteristics and dispositions Baron et al 2009, Attribution is really only wanting to know why people do certain things.

Finally Impression formation is how we form first impressions of others, along with impression management which is how we present ourselves to individuals and produce a favorable impression for example going for a job interview and presenting ourselves in a mannerly way.

Main Body

Nonverbal communication as noted above is an unspoken language that includes facial expressions etc.

Baron and Branscombe 2013 note that we pay careful attention to non-verbal cues provided by the changes in their facial expressions, eye contact, postures, body movement, and other expressive actions.

Ko, Judd & Blair also state that these nonverbal cues can also affect our own feeling as we are trying to figure out how other people feel.

Eye contact is a nonverbal cue, but can the perception of eye contact be accurate?

Yes and No....

For example, a high level of eye contact is usually understood as a sign of interest in one another but there is an exception staring. Staring "is prolonged gaze that maintains regardless of what we do and this is understood to be a sign of anger or hostility Baron et all 2009.

In fact we use nonverbal communication to understand others, and their emotional states by the nonverbal cues. Baron et all 2009

Attribution

Again attributes are the effort of humans to understand why people act the way they do. Baron et al 2009 P97.

Attributions are understood be extremely difficult there are many theories to go with attributions.

The Correspondent inference theory by Jones and Davis 1965, this theory describes how we use others behaviors as a basis for inferring their stable dispositions in other words to make sense of the things happening to and around them by attributing those events to certain factors. Baron et al 2009

Another theory would be Kelley's of casual attributions this refers to the question why?

In Kelley's theory has 3 stages to it. Theses 3 stages are unconscious processes of the mind it consists of Consensus, consistency and distinctiveness. (Simple psycholohy.org)

According to Kelley's theory 1972 "We are most likely to attribute another's behavior to internal causes under conditions in which consensus and distinctiveness are low but consistency is high " Baron and Branscombe 20013

There are Errors within the Attributes although it is discussed that humans have a generally good grasp of thinking in the social world there can be errors after all we are humans.

"We are subjects to several types of errors" Baron and Branscombe 2013

We tend to perceive others as acting as they are because they come underneath certain categories such as dis-organized people, this is called correspondent bias Jones 1979.

Baron et all states that the correspondent bias is also known as the fundamental attribution error and that it is the tendency to overestimate the impact of dispositional cues on others behaviors which basically mean we over think in certain type of scenarios, for example you are walking down the road and a man is running lets his notes fall, and his suit is messed and his tie is not tied properly we automatically think that this man is dis-organized and messy. But in fact he might be just having