The document is an academic writing assignment on social perception in psychology, defining key concepts such as non-verbal communication, facial expressions, eye contact, and body language. It discusses theories of attribution, including Heider's naive psychology, Jones and Davis' correspondent inference, and Kelley's model of causal attribution, highlighting biases in attribution. The author, Aastha Khandelwal, also provides feedback on an academic writing course that enhanced her knowledge and recommends its inclusion in university curricula.

1. ACADEMIC WRITING
ASSIGNMENT BY AASTHA
KHANDELWAL
email: aasthakhandelwal30@gmail.com
Student of Pondicherry University

2. TOPIC: SOCIAL PERCEPTION IN
PSYCHOLOGY

3. WHAT IS SOCIAL PERCEPTION?
● “The process through which we seek to know
and understand other people” (Baron &
Branscombe, 2012)
● “Social perception is the initial stage of
evaluating intentions and psychological
dispositions of others by analysis of gaze
direction, body movement, and other types of
biological motion” (Allison et al., 2000).

4. NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION
● Communication between individuals that does not
involve the content of spoken language.
● Relies on facial expression, eye contact and body
language.
● We spontaneously become submissive when another
person exerts dominance through their posture and
body movements (Tiedens & Fragale, 2003)

5. FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

6. FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
● Izard (1991), Rozin, Lowery & Ebert (1994)
stated that from a very early age, the five
basic emotions, anger, fear, happiness,
sadness and disgust are clearly represented.
● Complex expressions may be different across
cultures. (Carrell and Russell, 1996). For
example, a Chinese person may stick out his
tongue as an expression of surprise and not as
a sign of disrespect as would be interpreted
by an Indian

7. EYE CONTACT

8. EYE CONTACT
● Through eye contact people interpret hostility
or warmth.
● Kleinke (1986) interprets gazing as a sign of
liking or friendliness.
● Avoidance of eye contact can be interpreted
as unfriendliness, disliking or shyness.

9. BODY LANGUAGE:
GESTURES, POSTURE AND
MOVEMENT

10. BODY LANGUAGE: GESTURES,
POSTURE AND MOVEMENT
● Body movements can reveal information
about an individual’s apparent trait.
● Movements like touching and scratching
indicates emotional arousal.
● Sweeping and expansive gestures may
suggest force and vigour (emblems).
● Emblems: body movements carrying specific
meaning in a given culture.

11. PARALINGUISTIC CUES AND
SCENT
● Paralinguistic are the aspects of spoken
communication that do not involve words.
● Includes non verbal elements such as
intonation, inflection in voice, tone etc.
● Scent particles released by women can
convey subtle messages regarding changes in
menstrual cycle that can produce changes in
men’s testosterone levels (Miller and Maner,
2010).

12. ● It may include small “white lies” or an act to conceal
the truth for one’s advantages
● Important nonverbal cues to recognize deception by
others:
a) Micro expressions
b) Interchannel discrepancies
c) Eye contact
d) Exaggerated facial expressions
e) Rise in voice pitch
DECEPTION

13. CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN
INFERRING OTHER’S EMOTIONS
● In all cultures, nonverbal cues provide important
information about others emotions but the extent to
which it infer others’ feelings may vary across culture.
● Individualistic culture: occurrence of emotion “inside
from me”.
● Collectivistic culture: “ emotions come from my relations
with others”
● The culture you live in answers whether the emotion
reside inside or between people

14. THEORIES OF ATTRIBUTION
• Attribution theories are concerned with what processes people
use to infer others’ behaviour. It focuses on how people
explain the cause of events and others’ behaviour.
• For example, is he late to class because he is unpunctual or
because of some external factor like a road accident?

15. A formal definition is provided by Fiske and Taylor (1991, p. 23):
“Attribution theory deals with how the social perceiver uses
information to arrive at causal explanations for events. It examines
what information is gathered and how it is combined to form a causal
judgment”

16. Main theories of attribution
● HEIDER’S NAIVE PSYCHOLOGY THEORY
● JONES AND DAVIS’ CORRESPONDENT
INFERENCE ATTRIBUTION THEORY
● KELLEY’S MODEL OF CAUSAL ATTRIBUTION

17. HEIDER’S NAIVE PSYCHOLOGY
THEORY
● The earliest formulation of attribution theory
came from the work of Fritz Heider. (1958)
● He believed that people are a naive
psychologist and want to make sense of the
world around them. To do this, they try to seek
causation to the behavior of others.

18. According to Heider, most people apply the following
three explanations to understand others’ behavior :
● We explain others’ behavior as being caused by
their internal characteristics.
● We explain others’ behavior as being caused by the
surrounding situation, i.e., situational attribution.
● We explain others’ behavior as being unintentional
and probably not occurring again in the future.
● Hence, This theory tries to understand behavior on
the basis of simple naive explanations by the people.

19. JONES AND DAVIS’
CORRESPONDENT INFERENCE
ATTRIBUTION THEORY
● Jones and Davis(1965) developed a
correspondent inference theory which tells us how
we infer whether a behavior is due to internal
attributes or situational causes.
● They state that we assess whether there is a
correspondence between personality and
behavior by processing three types of information

20. ● Social Desirability
Socially desirable behaviors are those which are consistent
with social norms. Socially undesirable behavior leads
people to infer an underlying disposition.
● Choice
Behavior which is freely chosen is indicative of a person’s
underlying characteristics.
● Non-common effects
Refers to when a behavior has a unique consequence.
Behavior with non-common effects tell us more about
dispositions than behavior with common effects.

21. KELLEY’S MODEL OF
CAUSAL ATTRIBUTION
● He developed a logical model for judging
whether a particular action should be
attributed to some characteristic
(dispositional) of the person or the
environment (situational).
● The term covariation means that a person has
information from multiple observations, at
different times and situations, and can
perceive the covariation of an observed
effect and its causes.

22. The model states that we need to consider three types
of information before coming to the conclusion of the
cause of the behavior. These three kinds of evidence
are:
1. Consensus
2. Distinctiveness
3. Consistency

23. ATTRIBUTION TYPE AND CATEGORY OF
INFORMATION
EXAMPLES
Internal disposition.
(Rajesh is an aggressive
person)
● High consistency
● Low distinctiveness
● Low consensus
Rajesh is always
aggressive towards
Shyam.
Rajesh is aggressive
towards most of the other
people.
Nobody else acts
aggressively towards
Shyam.

24. Stimulus object
(Shyam causes Rajesh to
behave aggressively)
● High consistency
● High distinctiveness
● High consensus
Rajesh is always
aggressive towards
Shyam.
Rajesh is not aggressive
towards most of the other
people.
Nobody else acts
aggressively towards
Shyam.

25. Context
(Rajesh was in a bad
mood because he had
lost his purse )
● Low consistency
● High distinctiveness
● Low consensus
Rajesh has never been
aggressive towards
Shyam
Rajesh is not aggressive
towards most of the other
people.
Nobody acts aggressively
towards Shyam.

26. ATTRIBUTION BIASES AND
ERRORS
1. Correspondence bias/ Fundamental attribution error
2. Actor Observer Effect
3. The self-serving Bias
4. Cognitive Heuristics
5. The False Consensus Effect

27. CORRESPONDENCE BIAS/
FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR
“The tendency to draw inferences about a
person’s unique and enduring dispositions from
behaviors that can be entirely explained by the
situations in which they occur.”
—Gilbert and Malone

28. ACTOR OBSERVER EFFECT
● The tendency to attribute our own behavior to
situational causes but the behavior of others to internal
(dispositional) causes.
● As actors, our attention is focused on the situations.
● But as observers our attention is focused on the
individual, hence why we make the fundamental
attribution error.

29. SELF-SERVING BIAS
● Tendency to attribute our own positive outcomes to
internal causes, but negative ones to external causes.
● Anticipatory self-serving bias (self-handicapping as
berglas termed): people who anticipate failure,
intentionally and publicly make external attributions
before the event.

30. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Academic writing course in Swayam by Dr Ajay
Semalty gave me an opportunity to learn the
basics of academic writing. This course was very
helpful and expanded my knowledge.

31. Feedback
I would recommend the Academic writing course
to every budding researcher. Indian universities
lack such a course in their curriculum, thereby
making research writing a very daunting task and
unexplored filed for students. This course should
be included in the curriculum of every subject. I
learned innumerable things from this course. This
course is very comprehensive and includes all
that you need to know about academic writing
in one single place. This course covered the
basics as well as the advanced aspects of
academic writing.

32. THANK YOU