deeper into the inferences people make based on even brief online cyber encounters and Facebook profiles.
Research Box 5.1
Implicit Personality Theories
Hypothesis: Participants will project their beliefs about how their own personality traits covary onto other persons. They would assume that if their own traits—say creativity and extraversion—were positively correlated, then they would project that same correlation onto the social targets.
Research Method: College freshmen rated both themselves and their roommates on 11 personality traits and also reported their beliefs about how likely it was that, if a person possessed one trait, that that person also possessed the other.
Results: The results confirmed the hypothesis: Participants’ implicit personality theories predicted their assessment of the qualities of their roommates.
Conclusion: People use their beliefs about their own personalities as anchors from which to understand or predict the personalities of others.
Source: Adapted from Critcher, C. R., & Dunning, D. (2009). Egocentric pattern projection: How implicit personality theories recapitulate the geography of the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 1–16.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: When an initially inaccurate expectation leads to behaviors that cause that expectation to come true
Nonverbal Communication And Emotional Expressions
Words exchanged between people are tremendously influential in the kinds of relationships they develop and the impressions they form of each other. Another very important element of interpersonal perception is the behavior that accompanies our communication (Hall, Coats, & LeBeau, 2005; Weisbuch, Seery, Ambady, & Blascovich, 2009). Nonverbal behavior and communication form the foundation of human social behavior (Ambady & Weisbuch, 2010) and are essential to the smooth functioning of nonhuman primate societies, such as chimpanzee groups (Preston & de Waal, 2002). In this section we’ll talk about two categories of nonverbal communication: body language and emotional expression, both of which provide information to other people about what we are thinking, feeling, and intending.
Nonverbal behavior includes any perceptible social behavior that is extra linguistic and not primarily intended to manipulate the physical world (Ambady & Weisbuch, 2010; Depaulo & Friedman, 1998). Paul Ekman broke down nonverbal communicative behaviors into five categories, each with a different communicative function: emblems, illustrators, manipulators, regulators, and emotional expressions (Ekman, 2004). Emblems are gestures that have a direct linguistic translation into one or two words or a phrase. A great example of an emblem is the fist pump, which many athletes, like golfer Tiger Woods, display to convey a celebratory Yeah! Other examples include elements of sign language and gestures such as the “OK” signal or the Y-shaped peace sign. Illustrators are gestures that help to illustrate what is being said, and they typically accompany rather than replace words. Pointing to an object or holding one’s hands a certain distance apart to convey a particular size are illustrators.
The third type of nonverbal behavior consists of regulators, which help to guide interactions between people. For instance, nodding one’s head can represent “mm-hmm,” and turning one’s head and body away from one conversation partner to signal that it is time for him to stop talking and to yield the floor to another conversation partner. Ekman calls his fourth category adaptors and describes them as behaviors that, while they may have once been performed to fulfill a bodily need or to manage emotions or interpersonal contacts, have evolved to serve a communicative function. For instance, children may learn to self-groom in order to improve their appearance, but as adults may engage in the same behavior even when grooming is not intended. Thus scratching one’s head may become a symbol for deep thinking, whereas wiping the forehead can suggest a tiring thought or situation (Ekman, 2004). The final category is affective displays or emotional expressions and is the subject of the next section.
Emotional Expressions: Universal or Culturally Specific?
How skilled are you at accurately detecting a person’s mood with just a quick glance at her face? You are probably pretty good: The perception of faces may be our most developed perceptual skill (Haxby, Hoffman, & Gobbini, 2000), and research has shown that faces are processed by the brain differently than are other stimuli (Viggiano & Marzi, 2010). This is not surprising, given that emotional expressions are almost entirely contained in the face (Ekman, 1999). One of the primary research questions related to emotional expressions has to do with their universality or cultural specificity. Do you think that other people—including those from cultures different from you own—interpret facial expressions the way that you do? Some of the most important early thinking about the evolutionary basis of emotional expressions was by Charles Darwin in his seminal 1872 book The Emotional Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals.
During his world travels, Darwin (1872) observed numerous similarities in the facial expressions of humans across different cultures and between humans and some nonhuman animals. Darwin obtained data from several sources, including his own observations of infants and of animals, responses to facial photos of expressions from a small sample of adults, and a survey of missionaries and others who had contact with isolated cultures. Darwin (1872) argued that the primary function of facial expressions was communication between individuals and that the ability to recognize the emotions reflected in many expressions had great survival value to our ancestors (Matsumoto, Keltner, Shiota, O’Sullivan, & Frank, 2008).
The evolutionary perspective on emotional expression makes five basic claims, each of which has received considered empirical support: specific facial expressions of emotion (1) are universally found in appropriate, emotionally arousing situations; (2) are correlated with self-reports of emotional experiences; (3) are embedded in broader sets of emotional responses; (4) are universally recognized as distinct; and, (5) serve important functions in interpersonal relationships and social situations (Matsumoto et al., 2008). For instance, research conducted over the last few decades has supported Darwin’s claims about both the universality of some expressions and the cultural specificity of others. Take a look at the photo below. Can you name each of the emotions conveyed in the six facial expressions? The chances are that you have little difficulty in doing so. These six expressions—anger, surprise, fear, happiness, sadness, and disgust—are held to be universally recognized across cultures (Ekman, 2007; Ekman & Friesen, 1971; Ekman et al., 1987).
Universal Recognition Of Facial Expressions
Can you name these six expressions? Happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Anger, Disgust, Fear
WCSU, Peggy Stewart.
Paul Ekman, who conducted much of the cross-cultural research on expressions, makes the fascinating admission that when he began studying facial expressions, he was firmly convinced that Darwin was wrong and that facial expressions were socially learned and entirely culture dependent (Ekman, 2007). In his very readable book on emotions, Ekman relays how, after being initially convinced of the contrary, his own research proved that he was incorrect and that, in fact, the six expressions listed above were cross-culturally universal. Ekman’s story demonstrates the self-correcting nature of science: Careful scientific research can help scientists resist the confirmation bias and throw out incorrect hypotheses. In addition, a review of Ekman’s progression of studies shows how persistence and the use of multiple research methods in the pursuit of truth can allow science to continually improve its validity.
Ekman
