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Alejandra Denise Salas Garca

Nonverbal Communication
Impression formation often begins with nonverbal communications or messages. When a person rubs you the wrong way; it may be due to a gesture,a grimace, or an averting of the eyes that generated your bad feelings. Nonverbal communication comes from many sources: the face, body movements, physical contact, and eye contact. Facial expressions: many of the conclusions we draw from other peoples communications are based on their facial expressions. Similing expresses happiness; furrowed brows and eye twitching suggest anger, disgust, or fear. That researchers find some people better at interpreting these expressions; similarly, people differ in their ability to convey information through nonverbal mechanisms. But most people can distinguish six basic emotions in the facial expressions of other people love, joy, anger, sadness, fear, and surprise.

Body language: Facial expressions are not the only way people communicate nonverbally. They also convey information about their moods and attitudes through body position and gestures a phenomenon called body language. Although small, differences in body language exist based on age and gender. The way younger people walk makes them appear sexier, more carefree, and happier than the way older people walk.

Physical Contact: Argyle (1972) found that individuals convey information nonverbally trough physical contact such as touching, hitting, striking, embracing, and kissing and trough proximity, that is, the physical distance maintained during interaction with other people.

Eye Contact: Researchers are well aware of another form of nonverbal communication the eyes convey a surprising amount of information about feelings. When a person looks at you, he or she may gaze brefly or stare. Psychologists call this process marking eye contact.

When people are looked at, they accept it as a sign of being liked. Frequent eye contact between a man and a woman may indicate that they are sexually attracted to each other. Generally, people prefer modest amounts of eye contact rather than constant or no eye contact.

Attribution
In getting to know other people, we often infer the causes of their behavior. When we do, we are making attributions. Attribution is the process by which someone infers or decides about other peoples motives and intentions from observing their behavior, deciding if the causes of behavior are dispositional (internal) or situational (external). At first, attribution seems like a fairly straightforward process based on common sense. But keep in mind that it must take into account internal as well as external causes of behavior.

People can be mistaken when they infer the causes of another persons behavior. Harold Kelleys (1972-1973) popular theory of attribution contains three criteria to help determine whether the causes of a behavior are internal or external: consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness. According to Kelley, to infer that someone s behaviors is caused by internal characteristics, people must believe that: Few other people in the same situation would act in the same way (low consensus); The person has acted in the same way in similar situations in the past (high consistency); The person acts in the same way in different situations (low distinctiveness).

To infer that a persons behaviors is caused by external factors, people must believe that: Most people would act that way in that sort of situation (high consensus); The person has acted that way in similar situations in the past (high consistency); The person acts distinctiveness). differently in other situations (high

Errors in Attribution: Kelleys theory treats us as if we are scientists who carefully and scientifically go about making attributions. Attribution theory is a rapidly emerging specialty in social psychology and theorists are not all in agreement about the nature of attributions; for example, Hilton (1990) asserts that the traditional view of the individual as a rational scientist trying to sort out relevant facts does not consider factors such as who is doing the explaning, to whom, or why an explanation is needed.

A Just World? According to Melvin Lerner (1970), many people believe that an appropriate relationship exists between what they do and what happens to them. In other words, they believe that the world is just, that people get what they deserve. A negative consequence of the just-world belief is that victims of crime, poverty, and other misfortune are often treated as if they brought these things on themselves. Why People Make Attributions?: What motivates us to want to know the causes of other peoples behavior? A traditional idea is that people engage in the process of attribution to maintain a sense of control over the environment. It helps us feel competent and masterful because we feel that knowledge about the causes of behavior will help us control and predict similar events in the future.

Self Perceptions
How would you describe yourself? Self-perceptions are peoples attitudes toward and beliefs about themselves, and are greatly affected by how other people perceive them. Thus, when social psychologists study self-perception, they examine how other people and social situations affect how people see themselves, and how that perception influences everyday behavior. Developing Self- Perceptions: Established early in life and reevaluated frequently, self-perceptions develop aver time and from experience. Adolescents then reassess their early self-perceptions, wich enables them to establish a firm identity consistent with both previous attitudes and new values. Successful completion of adolescence results in a persons ability to adapt to new situations while retaining a firm understanding of self and personal values.

Perceiving Others: We perceive others in relation to our own value systems and ideas our self-perceptions. An assertive person, for example, may view other assertive people as expressing normal, appropriate behavior. A quiet, shy, and passive person, on the other hand, may view assertive people as inappropiate, loud, or even aggressive. A persons frame of reference usually stars with himself or herself, and a comparision is made. Physical Appearance: Many factors determine a persons selfpeception, including physical appearance, work habits, athletic abilities, and success as a parent or mate. In general, attractive people are judged to have more positive traits and characteristics than unattractive people, especially when appearance is the first information provided.

Self Serving Biases: Social psychologists have found that most people are not realistics in evaluating themselves, their capabilities, or their behavior. The self-serving bias refers to peoples tendency to evaluate their own behavior as worthwhile, regardless of the ssituation. Most people consider themselves more charitable, more giving, more intelligent, more considerate, more sensitive, more likely to succed, and more of a leader than they consider most other people. Psychologists have focused on two possible explanations for the development and role of self-seving biases. First, developing a self-seving bias meets peoples needs for selfesteem and need to feel good about themselves in comparision to other people.

Locus of Control: one reason that people may use self serving attribution biases and errors is to develop a sense of control that enables them to maintain self-esteem and belief in their own ability to succeed and be happy. Psychologist Julian Rotter (1966) described such misrepresentations in terms a sense of control that enables them to maintain self-esteem and belief in their own ability to succeed and be happy. Psychologist Julian Rotter (1966) described such misrepresentations in terms of developing an internal locus of control. A persons locus of control, influences how he or she views the world and identifies the causes of success or failure in his or her life.

Conformity
People often conform to the behavior and attitudes of their peer or family groups. Similary, the desire to conform can induce people to do things they might not do otherwise. Conformity occurs when a person changes his or her attitudes or behaviors to be consistent with other people or with social norms. Conformity in Groups: Groups strongly influence conformity. Researcher Solomon Asch found that people in a group adopt its standard, wich may be as simple as an individual refraining from speaking during a public address or as pervasive as a whole nation discriminating against a particular ethnic group.

Conforming to Individuals: Asch also found that people imitate the behavior of those whom they respect and value. Variables in Conformity: How do groups influence individual behavior? One variable is the amount of information provided when a decision is made. When people are uncertain of how to behave in ambiguous situations, they seek the opinions of others. Another important variable that determines the degree of conformity is the relative competenmce of the group. People are more likely to conform to the decision of a group if they perceive its members as more competent than themselves.

The issue of independence also helps explain

conformity (or the lack of it). Although people in a group would like to be independent. They would to have to face the consecuences of their independence, suchsc as serious disapproval, peer pressuere to comform, being seen as deviant, and becoming less powerful. Conformity is expedient and conserves mental energy. But not everyone conforms to group pressures all the time, when the peolpe

Theories of conformity
Several theories have atemptend to explain

why people conform. The social conformity approach states that people conform to avoid the stigma of being wrong, deviant, out of line, or different from others. Another explication for the precense or absence of conformity in a group relies on attribution. When a person can identify causes for other peoples behavior in a group, and he or she strongly disagrees with those causes, conformity dissapears.

Obedience and Milgram Study


According to psychologist, obedience is the

process by which a person complies with the orders of another person or group. Milgram studies the obedience. Milgrams studies questiones to what degree behavior is sensitive to both authoryty and peer pressure. Surprising, most subjects werw willing to deliver extreme levels of shock when told to do so. The man on the right was one of the few subjects who quit the experiment rather

(E)

Experimenter-Teacher-Learner

orders the (T), the subject of the experiment, to give what the latter believes are painful electric shocks to a (L), who is actually an actor and confederate. The subject believes that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual electric shocks, though in reality there were no such punishments. Being separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated

Obedience and Milgram Study

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Influence techniques to induce Compliance


Managers, salespeople, parents, and

politicians all apply the principal of social psychology and influence people daily by using social psychology tecniques.

always stumer is The co right!!!

Modeling
Is a powerful

technique by wich peolpe adopt new behaviors and attiudes by withnessing others engaged in those behaviors and then expressing those attitudes themselves.

Incentives
Nothing succeds in

eliciting a particular behavior better than a desired incentive.


Ex. Offering a large

monetary bonus to a sales agent for yearend sales performance usually boosts sales

BEHAVIOR IN GROUP
Membreship does confer certain adventages,

which is why people belong to all kinds of groups. The are formal groups and informal groups. A group can be either a large number of people or a small number of people, even two, who are loosely realted and have some common goals and recognize their relationship with another ans sense of shared pupose.

Social Facilitation
Is one effect of the precense of a group, and

is a change in performance, either better or worse, because the presence of other people. The precense of others produces heightened arousal, which leads to a greater likelihood of performing a strong or likely response. One teory suggest that fear of evaluation (not the presences of people) brings about changes in performance.

Social Loafing
The decrease in productivity that occurs when

an individual works in a group instead of alone. Most psychologists claim that social loafting occurs when individual performance within a group cannot be evaluated. Social loafting is minimized when the task is attractive and rewarding, and the group is commited to high task is attractive and rewarding, and the group is commited to high task performance.

Group polarization
In groups, people may also be willing to adopt

behaviors slightly more extreme then their individual behaviors. People in group initially perceive themselve as being more extreme than the other members of group. They belive they are more fair, more right-minded, more liberal, and so on. After a group becomes polarized, many people in the group may share the same opinion; when such an event occurs (as it often does with government officials), people sometimes fall into a trap called groupthink.

Psychology and government: The problem of groupthink


The tendence of people in a group to seek

concurrence with each other when reaching a decision, usually prematurely. Groupthink occurs when group members reinforce commonly held beliefs in the interest of getting along, rather than effectively evaluating alternative solutions to the problem. The group does not allow its members to disagree or take dissenting opinions and evaluate options realistically. It discredits or ignores information not held in common.

Groupthinks is not inevitables, it is not

common enough that social psychologist considerer it an important issue in group influence on decision making. Students of political science, goverment, and history can use the concept of groupthink to train new ledars and promote more rational decision making.

Unrestrained Group Behavior


When placed in a group, normally thougful

people have been know to take part in irrational behaviors. A key component of understrained behavior such as streaking or mob violence is anonymity. Anonymity produces a lack of self-awareness and self-perception that leads to decrease concern with social evaluation. No single individual can be held responsible for the behavior of a group; this view focuses

Deindividuation is the procces by which

individuals los their distictive personalities in the context of a group. With deindividuation, people, peolpe alter their thoughts about decision.

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