Context effects in social perception.

"Concerned with the problem of field determinants of social perception, this study investigated contextual effects on judgments of photographs of persons. Photographs, designated as targets, were presented in contexts of two other photographs which were expected, on the basis of previous research, to vary in their probability of eliciting a particular judgment along a specified bipolar trait dimension. Data obtained clearly supported the hypothesized inverse relationships between the probability of the context eliciting a particular judgment and that of the target eliciting a similar judgment." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some contrast effects in social perception.

The classical psychophysical experiment requiring S to make judgments comparing 2 stimuli re some dimension stands as the model for this research, only the traditional inanimate stimulus has been replaced by people. "The major hypothesis of this paper is that an anchorage or standard is formed on the basis of the experience with the first person and that subsequently contrast occurs in the perception of the second stranger when there is a great perceived difference between the two." Ss listened to recordings of a psychologist and a student who was asked to talk about himself, and then rated the students and the psychologist on 2 questionnaires. The results confirmed those derived from traditional psychophysical experimentse indicating the relevance of laboratory findings to everyday life. From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:3GE50H. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stimulus pooling and social perception.

"The effects of stimulus pooling on judgments of personal attractiveness were investigated in an orthogonal factorial design, using as stimulus components identification type photographs which had been previously scaled on attractiveness… . The implications of the findings for (a) social perception… and (b) group judgment were considered." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impressions of groups as a function of the stimulus values of their individual members.

Beginning with a model of social perception in which the perceiver is assumed to operate according to the conventional canons of statistical inference, it was hypothesized that trait judgments of groups of individuals represented by facial photographs would match the mean values of these photographs judged individually and that confidence and the amount of information required before a judgment is reported will vary inversely with the variance in the set of photographs comprising the group, and directly with the significance of the judgment for the judge. Using different procedures and measures of the dependent variables, 2 experiments were performed which agreed in supporting the hypotheses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reversal response sets and the nature of person perception.

80 Ss, run individually, were required to make dichotomous trait judgments of previously scaled facial photographs on 3 different dimensions. The Experimental group was trained to make judgments which were the reverse of the norm value of each picture, thereby producing a reversal response set, while the Control group was trained to make norm consistent judgments. Only Ss manifesting awareness of the reinforcement contingency manifested learning. The results were taken as consistent with a mediational view of the perceptual process, and a new concept, a dispositional response, which has the capacity to operate on S-R probabilities at some point in the mediational process, was introduced to account for the present findings as well as others in perception demonstrating the influence of needs, attitudes, and emotions on perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A microgenetic approach to perception and thought.

"The present paper has been prepared as a microgenetic approach to perception and thought. Within this approach, thoughts and percepts are believed to undergo a very brief, but theoretically important, microdevelopment. Evidence was offered both to support the possibility that such microdevelopments do occur in the normal process of thinking and perceiving and to suggest some of the formal characteristics of such evolutions. Further, an attempt was made to delineate some of the possible implications of this approach for cognitive functioning in abnormal individuals and normal individuals under atypical conditions." 139-item bibliography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A direct link between gaze perception and social attention.

How information is exchanged between the cognitive mechanisms responsible for gaze perception and social attention is unclear. These systems could be independent; the “gaze cueing” effect could emerge from the activation of a general-purpose attentional mechanism that is ignorant of the social nature of the gaze cue. Alternatively, orienting to social gaze direction might be directly determined by the operation of cognitive mechanisms specifically dedicated to gaze perception. This second notion is the dominant assumption in the literature, but there is little direct support for this account. Here, we systematically manipulated observers' perception of gaze direction by implementing a gaze adaptation paradigm. Gaze cueing was reduced only in conditions where perception of specific averted gaze stimuli was impaired (Experiment 1). Adaptation to a pointing stimulus failed to impact gaze cueing (Experiment 2). Overall, these data suggest a direct link between the specific operation of gaze perception mechanisms and the consequential orienting of attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expected base rates and trait covariations in person perception.

This paper is primarily concerned with judgments about the characteristics of the general other and the incorporation of these expectancies in the judgment of specific others. Expectancies are defined in terms of (1) the perceived probability of occurrence of attributes in the general other, and (2) the perceived probability of joint occurrence of attributes in the general other. Along with other related variables, the veridicality of these expectancies are discussed. In addition, the idea of the greater informational value of atypical known behaviour about a specific other (behaviour which occurs infrequently in the general other) is considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Structural resemblance to emotional expressions predicts evaluation of emotionally neutral faces.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 9(4) of Emotion (see record 2009-11528-009). In this article a symbol was incorrectly omitted from Figure 1, part C. To see the complete article with the corrected figure, please go to http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0014681.] People make trait inferences based on facial appearance despite little evidence that these inferences accurately reflect personality. The authors tested the hypothesis that these inferences are driven in part by structural resemblance to emotional expressions. The authors first had participants judge emotionally neutral faces on a set of trait dimensions. The authors then submitted the face images to a Bayesian network classifier trained to detect emotional expressions. By using a classifier, the authors can show that neutral faces perceived to possess various personality traits contain objective resemblance to emotional expression. In general, neutral faces that are perceived to have positive valence resemble happiness, faces that are perceived to have negative valence resemble disgust and fear, and faces that are perceived to be threatening resemble anger. These results support the idea that trait inferences are in part the result of an overgeneralization of emotion recognition systems. Under this hypothesis, emotion recognition systems, which typically extract accurate information about a person's emotional state, are engaged during the perception of neutral faces that bear subtle resemblance to emotional expressions. These emotions could then be misattributed as traits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion perception explains age-related differences in the perception of social gaffes.

Young (59) adults viewed videos in which the same individual committed a faux pas, or acted appropriately, toward his coworkers. Older participants did not discriminate appropriate and inappropriate behaviors as well as young participants. Older participants also scored lower than young participants on an extensive battery of emotion recognition tests, and emotion performance fully mediated age differences in faux pas discrimination. The results provide further evidence for the role of emotion perception in a range of important social deficits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

A model for inferential accuracy.

Inferential accuracy is distinguished from other forms of accuracy in social perception, including differential and stereotype accuracy, and defined in terms of a person's ability, given limited information about a target person, correctly to judge other pertinent characteristics about that person. A model and accompanying paradigm are proposed for studying this process. Given the observation that judgments about the joint probability of traits tend to be highly stable across groups of judges, it is possible to obtain scale values for a set of personality characteristics for each target. Each judge's ratings of this target may be plotted with respect to these ranked scale values in such a way that the degree to which his own judgments parallel the consensual patterning of trait inferences may be determined. Two parameters, slope and intercept, determine a straight line summarizing this relationship. These parameters are hypothesized to correspond to the judge's sensitivity to trait inferential information, and his threshold for employing more or less remote inferential data. It is hypothesized that these two parameters will account for a major portion of the individual difference variance in tasks involving inferential accuracy. The evidence to date, although limited, suggests that while sensitivity is general across dimensions, threshold is more specific. Whereas sensitivity is potentially linked to accurate knowledge of lay personality theory, threshold may be related to a process similar to assimilative projection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The generality of social perception scores.

"This study of self-ratings and other-ratings was designed to investigate (a) whether it is justified to assume the generality of various distance scores regardless of the content involved, (b) the reliability of these scores, and (c) the effect on their generality and reliability when the sign of any of the distance measures is ignored. The method of data analysis employed is comparatively new and has been tried here for the first time." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of alcohol on person perception: A social cognitive neuroscience approach.

The acute effects of alcohol on cognitive processing of expectancy violations were investigated using event-related brain potentials and a cued recall task to index attentional and working memory processes associated with inconsistency resolution. As predicted, expectancy-violating behaviors elicited larger late positive potentials (LPP) and were recalled better than expectancy-consistent behaviors. These effects were moderated by alcohol and the valence of initial expectancies. For placebo group participants, positive targets performing negative behaviors elicited the largest LPP responses and were recalled best. For those in the alcohol groups, negative targets behaving positively elicited the largest LPP and recall responses. These findings suggest that alcohol does not globally impair working memory processes in person perception but instead changes the nature of valenced information processing. Findings are discussed in the context of alcohol's effects on working memory processes, reward sensitivity, and the prefrontal cortical structures thought to mediate them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Power and the objectification of social targets.

Objectification has been defined historically as a process of subjugation whereby people, like objects, are treated as means to an end. The authors hypothesized that objectification is a response to social power that involves approaching useful social targets regardless of the value of their other human qualities. Six studies found that under conditions of power, approach toward a social target was driven more by the target's usefulness, defined in terms of the perceiver's goals, than in low-power and baseline conditions. This instrumental response to power, which was linked to the presence of an active goal, was observed using multiple instantiations of power, different measures of approach, a variety of goals, and several types of instrumental and noninstrumental target attributes. Implications for research on the psychology of power, automatic goal pursuit, and self-objectification theory are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivational and judgmental determinants of social perception.

This experiment was designed to demonstrate that motivationally neutral judgmental processes operate in social perception to affect the characteristics attributed to a particular stimulus person. 72 female college students were induced to have either high or low liking for the other girl assembled with them. The S then exchanged 2 messages with her partner on the issue of college fraternities. Previously constructed notes were substituted so that each S received 2 messages that were approximately either 1, 2, or 4 scale units from her initial position (on an 11-point scale) on this issue. 2 major findings were obtained when Ss were asked to estimate the partner's attitude position: (a) Regardless of the objective discrepancy between their own and their partner's views, most of the Ss in the high-liking condition minimized the difference between themselves and the attractive other person. (b) As expected, a judgmental contrast effect occurred in the low-liking condition when the objective discrepancy between S's and the partner's beliefs was relatively great. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Judgeability in person perception: The confidence of leaders.

Leaders are often expected to evaluate their team workers. In the present study, the authors investigated the hypothesis that leaders express social judgments with more confidence than subordinates. Leadership is assumed to play the role of a metainformational cue leading people to feel entitled to judge. In Study 1, supervisors in a Portuguese firm expressed their evaluations of colleagues and superiors. In Study 2, leadership was attributed on the basis of alleged competence. In Study 3, leadership was explicitly attributed on a random basis. The results of the 3 studies support the hypothesis and are discussed within the framework of social judgeability theory (J. P. Leyens, V. Y. Yzerbyt, & G. Schadron, 1992, 1994). The confidence of leaders may become a norm that is constructed by others. Practical implications are discussed. To the same extent that leadership often resides in the eyes of followers, confidence may originate in the mind of leaders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group climate as a factor in the relevance and accuracy of social perception.

"Twenty-eight groups of five or four graduate students each, controlled for sex, education, and acquaintance were assigned to congenial or noncongenial group climates." The accuracy of social perception as a function of the "climate" of social interaction was studied. "Individuals in congenial groups were significantly more accurate in perceiving task oriented behavior of their group than were individuals in noncongenial groups… . Individuals in noncongenial groups were not more accurate in perceiving the interpersonal relations in the groups than were individuals in congenial groups." Other findings on accuracy of perception are reported. "It is concluded that social climates can predictably affect the perception of task-oriented behavior, but that further research on the relationships among social climate, ego-oriented behavior, and accuracy in social perception is necessary." 24 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distance as a determinant of influence in a two-person serial interaction situation.

"Pairs of Ss were placed in a social influence situation requiring judgments of the number of paratroopers seen in briefly exposed photographs… . distance (the size of the discrepancy between S's judgment and his partner's) was systematically varied by intercepting S's written estimate and replacing it with a bogus estimate at a predetermined distance. The amount of influence… is significantly related to distance." (24 ref.) From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:1GE30F. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of fear arousal and suppression of fear upon social perception.

A research was designed to study the effects of fear arousal and suppression of fear upon social perception. "It was hypothesized that individuals subjected to a fear-producing situation would tend to project their feelings upon some social objects, and further, instructions to inhibit emotional reactions would increase the amount of projection." Sixty male volunteers from introductory psychology classes were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Control, Fear-Expression and Fear-Suppression. "The data indicate that the arousal of fear results in a tendency to project fear onto a stimulus object in the environment. The results are also consistent with the hypothesis that suppression facilitates the tendency to project although, in this latter instance, one is less confident in rejecting the null hypothesis. Several alternative explanations of the effects of the suppression variable were considered and the role of cognitive variables in the projection process were discussed." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)