What features of other people do you think we particularly focus on when making judgments?

Learning Objectives

1. Describe how people use behaviors and traits to form initial perceptions of others.
2. Summarize the role of nonverbal behaviors in person perception.

People are very skilled at person perceptionThe process of learning about other people.—the process of learning about other people—and our brains are designed to help us judge others efficiently [Haselton & Funder, 2006; Macrae, 2010].Haselton, M. G., & Funder, D. C. [2006]. The evolution of accuracy and bias in social judgment. In M. Schaller, J. A. Simpson, & D. T. Kenrick [Eds.], Evolution and social psychology [pp. 15–37]. Madison, CT: Psychosocial Press; Macrae, C. N., & Quadflieg, S. [2010]. Perceiving people. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey [Eds.], Handbook of social psychology [5th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 428–463]. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Infants prefer to look at faces of people more than they do other visual patterns, and children quickly learn to identify people and their emotional expressions [Turati, Cassia, Simion, & Leo, 2006].Turati, C., Cassia, V. M., Simion, F., & Leo, I. [2006]. Newborns’ face recognition: Role of inner and outer facial features. Child Development, 77[2], 297–311. As adults, we are able to identify and remember an unlimited number of people as we navigate our social environments [Haxby, Hoffman, & Gobbini, 2000],Haxby, J. V., Hoffman, E. A., & Gobbini, M. I. [2000]. The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4[6], 223–233. and we form impressions of those others quickly and without much effort [Carlston & Skowronski, 2005; Fletcher-Watson, Findlay, Leekam, & Benson, 2008].Carlston, D. E., & Skowronski, J. J. [2005]. Linking versus thinking: Evidence for the different associative and attributional bases of spontaneous trait transference and spontaneous trait inference. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89[6], 884–898; Fletcher-Watson, S., Findlay, J. M., Leekam, S. R., & Benson, V. [2008]. Rapid detection of person information in a naturalistic scene. Perception, 37[4], 571–583. Furthermore, our first impressions are, at least in some cases, remarkably accurate [Ambady, Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000].Ambady, N., Bernieri, F. J., & Richeson, J. A. [2000]. Toward a histology of social behavior: Judgmental accuracy from thin slices of the behavioral stream. In M. P. Zanna [Ed.], Advances in experimental social psychology [Vol. 32, pp. 201–271]. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Recent research is beginning to uncover the areas in our brain where person perception occurs. In one relevant study, Mason and Macrae [2004]Mason, M. F., & Macrae, C. N. [2004]. Categorizing and individuating others: The neural substrates of person perception. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16[10], 1785–1795. doi: 10.1162/0898929042947801 used functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI] scans to test whether people stored information about other people in a different location in the brain than where they stored information about animals, and they found that this was the case. The areas of the prefrontal cortex that were more active when people made judgments about people rather than dogs are shown in red in Figure 6.1.

Figure 6.1

Recent advances in neuroimaging techniques have provided information about the brain structures that are involved in person perception. The prefrontal cortex shows strong activation when we are thinking about another person. Data are from Mason, Banfield, and Macrae [2004].Mason, M. F., & Macrae, C. N. [2004]. Categorizing and individuating others: The neural substrates of person perception. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16[10], 1785–1795. doi: 10.1162/0898929042947801

Learning about people is a lot like learning about any other object in our environment, with one major exception. With an object, there is no interaction: We learn about the characteristics of a car or a cell phone, for example, without any concern that the car or the phone is learning about us. It is a one-way process. With people, in contrast, there is a two-way social process: Just as we are learning about another person, that person is learning about us, or potentially attempting to keep us from accurately perceiving him or her. For instance, research has found that when other people are looking directly at us, we process their features more fully and faster, and we remember them better, than when the same people are not looking at us [Hood & Macrae, 2007; Mason, Hood, & Macrae, 2004].Hood, B. M., & Macrae, C. N. [2007]. Look into my eyes: The effect of direct gaze on face processing in children and adults. In R. Flom, K. Lee, & D. Muir [Eds.], Gaze-following: Its development and significance [pp. 283–296]. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Mason, M. F., Hood, B. M., & Macrae, C. N. [2004]. Look into my eyes: Gaze direction and person memory. Memory, 12[5], 637–643.

In the social dynamic with others, then, we have two goals: First, we need to learn about them, and second, we want them to learn about [and, we hope, like and respect] us. Our focus here is on the former process—how we make sense of other people. But remember that just as you are judging them, they are judging you.

We have seen in Chapter 4 "The Self" that when people are asked to describe themselves, they generally do so in terms of their physical features [“I am really tall”], social category memberships [“I am a woman”], and traits [“I am friendly”]. These characteristics well reflect the dimensions we use when we try to form impressions of others. In this section, we will review how we initially use the physical features and social category memberships of others [e.g., male or female, race, and ethnicity] to form judgments and then will focus on the role of personality traits in person perception.

One of the important tasks of everyday life is to form judgments about other people.

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Research Focus

Forming Impressions From Thin Slices

Although it might seem surprising, social psychological research has demonstrated that at least in some limited situations, people can draw remarkably accurate conclusions about others on the basis of very little data and that they can do this very quickly. [Rule & Ambady, 2010; Rule, Ambady, Adams, & Macrae, 2008; Rule, Ambady, & Hallett, 2009].Rule, N. O., & Ambady, N. [2010]. Democrats and Republicans can be differentiated from their faces. PLoS ONE, 5[1], e8733; Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., Adams, R. B., Jr., & Macrae, C. N. [2008]. Accuracy and awareness in the perception and categorization of male sexual orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95[5], 1019–1028; Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., & Hallett, K. C. [2009]. Female sexual orientation is perceived accurately, rapidly, and automatically from the face and its features. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45[6], 1245–1251.

Ambady and Rosenthal [1993]Ambady, N., & Rosenthal, R. [1993]. Half a minute: Predicting teacher evaluations from thin slices of nonverbal behavior and physical attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64[3], 431–441. made videotapes of six female and seven male graduate students while they were teaching an undergraduate course. The courses covered diverse areas of the college curriculum, including humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. For each instructor, three 10-second video clips were taken—10 seconds from the first 10 minutes of the class, 10 seconds from the middle of the class, and 10 seconds from the last 10 minutes of the class.

Nine female undergraduates were asked to rate the 39 clips of the instructors individually on 15 dimensions, including optimistic, confident, active, enthusiastic, dominant, likable, warm, competent, and supportive. Ambady and her colleagues then compared the ratings of the instructors made by the participants who had seen the instructors for only 30 seconds with the ratings of the same instructors that had been made by actual students who had spent a whole semester with the instructors and who had rated them at the end of the semester on dimensions such as “the quality of the course section” and “the section leader’s performance.” The researchers used the Pearson correlation coefficient to make the comparison [remember that correlations nearer +1.0 or –1.0 are stronger correlations]. As you can see in the following table, the ratings of the participants and the ratings of the students were highly positively correlated.

Table 6.1 Forming Accurate Impressions in Only 30 Seconds