Chapter 5 Social Perception

1. Chapter 5
Social Perception

2. Introduction
‣ Social perception is one aspect of social cognition.
‣ Social perception can be described as a perception that mainly
helps people understand other people in their social set-up.
‣ It can also be described as an area of study that focuses on
impressions that we form about others and how we make
inferences about other’s behaviour.

3. Person Perception
Person perception focuses on how impressions are created, information used while impressions are
created, biases that affect the impressions and the accuracy of the impressions.
In person perception, we form impressions about others.
In this, people are categorised in a meaningful manner on the basis of various factors—physical and
psychological.
Some of the main sources that helps us derive information are:
1. Physical appearance:
2. Verbal behaviour
3. Actions or behaviours
4. Non-verbal behaviour
5. Environmental set-up or context

4. Impression and Impression Management
‣ Impression is an important term when we talk about person perception.
‣ Impressions are nothing but how we organise information about a particular person.
‣ Impressions can be termed as meaningful as we are able to understand certain constant characteristics or traits in an
individual.
‣ These impressions can then be utilised to not only predict an individual’s behaviour in the future but also understand
his/her behaviour in the past.
‣ There are three main dimensions that determine the impressions that we generate about certain personality traits
(Hansen, 1984). These dimensions are:
Evaluative: This has to do with how we evaluate people. It can be in terms of good or bad. Interviewers may discuss
about a particular candidate being good, for example. This is also one of the most relevant of the three dimensions.
When we meet a particular person for the first time, we are going to categorise him/her on the basis of this dimension.
Potency: This mainly deals with the potentiality of the person that we are forming impression about. This can be in
terms of weak or strong.
Activity: The third dimension has to do with activity, that is, whether the person is active or passive.

5. Attribution
‣ Attributions can be described as the interpretations or inferences that we make about
the causes behind behaviours of others, our own behaviour and also events.
‣ It can also be described as the process through which information is sought by us,
though more formally it can be described as effort of an individual to the reasons or
causes behind the behaviour of other individuals and also , in certain cases, one’s
own behaviour (Baron & Byrne, 1995).
‣ One of the major driving forces while making social inferences is the attribution of
causality as that assists in making the world more meaningful and contributes to
reducing the unpredictability (Crisp & Turner, 2010).

6. Dimensions of Causality
‣ Locus of attribution: Locus of attribution can be internal or external. Internal attributions
highlight the role of personal characteristics, traits, abilities and feelings of an individual
that determine behaviour. On the other hand, external attribution focuses on the external
factors such as the demands and constraints in the situation or environment (Weiten,
Hammer & Dunn, 2012).
‣ Stability and instability: Attributions can also be categorised based on stability and
controllability (discussed next) of the inferences made by the individuals. Stability can be
described as the degree to which the causes are termed as being comparatively stable and
permanent as opposed to being unstable, temporary and fluctuating (Crisp & Turner, 2010).
‣ Controllability: Controllability can be described as the degree to which others influence
the causes as opposed to degree to which these causes are random or cannot be controlled.

7. Theories of Attribution
Correspondent inference theory: This theory was proposed by Jones and Davis in 1965. According to this
theory, when social inferences are made by an individuals, the stable personality characteristics determine the
behaviours of an individual (Crisp & Turner, 2010). The preference is given to the internal characteristics rather
than external or situational attributions. This holds true also because the internal attributions are perceived as
being more stable when compared with attributions that are situational or external. Thus correspondent
inferences are drawn about an individual’s behaviour by utilising the information about that individual’
behaviour and its effect. This is done on the basis of whether the behaviour appears intentional or unintentional,
that is, correspondent inferences are drawn when the effect of an individual’s behaviour appear to be
intentional, and correspondence is also determined when the effects of the behaviour are seen as socially
undesirable. Thus, the correspondence is determined based on whether it conforms to the social norms. Yet
another aspect that is important in this context is the non-common effects principle. A behaviour can be termed
as having a non-common effect when it has consequences that are unique.
Thus, there are three main information, social desirability, choice (intentional or not) and non common effect,
when attributions are made with regard to the causality of behaviour of other individuals.

8. Theories of Attribution Cont…
The covariance model: This model was proposed by Harold Kelley in 1967 in which the covariation denotes a
tendency to seek an association between certain cause and certain effect with reference to different
situations (Sears, Peplau & Taylor, 1991). Thus if a certain cause appears to be associated with certain effect in
different conditions, and if the effect does not occur when that cause is absent, then the effect is attributed to
that cause. Thus, there is a covariation between the cause and the effect. For example, if Ishan gets nervous
before his dance performance but is not otherwise nervous in his day-to-day life, could we term Ishan as
inherently nervous? Apparently not. The effect that is nervousness in this case will be attributed to the cause,
that is, dance performance, and in absence of dance performance, Ishan will not display any nervousness.
This is similar to what is done by scientists where they look for study causality based on how it is associated
with the effect in different conditions of the experiment. This model thus also called as ‘naive scientist model’.
According to Kelly, three types of information are used while making causal attributions, and attention is paid
to whether the effect is same across the stimulus object, actors (individuals) and contexts (Sears, People &
Taylor, 1991). This is based on whether the behaviour is specific to a certain stimulus object or not, whether
the behaviour is specific to certain actor (individual) or not and whether the behaviour is specific to certain
situation or not.

9. Attribution Biases
Fundamental attribution bias: Individuals may display a general
tendency to make attributions that are based on internal factors rather than
external factors, and this is termed as fundamental attribution bias.
Actor-Observer bias: This can be described as a tendency to attribute
one’s own behaviour to external factors and the behaviour of others to
internal factors.
Self-serving attribution: This states that our success is attributed to
internal factors and failures to external factors.