Ch 4: Perceiving persons

Social perception, the processes by which people come to understand one another.
Physiognomythe art of reading character from faces.
Notions about certain types of situationsscripts that enable us to anticipate the goals, behaviors, and
outcomes that are likely to occur in a particular setting.
Pryor and Thomas Merluzzi (1985) asked U.S. college students to list the sequence of events that take
place in this situation. From these lists, a picture of a typical American first date emerged. Sixteen steps
were identified, including: (1) male arrives; (2) female greets male at door; (3) female introduces date to
parents or roommate; (4) male and female discuss plans and make small talk; (5) they go to a movie; (6)
they get something to eat or drink; (7) male takes female home; (8) if interested, he remarks about a
future date; (9) they kiss; (10) they say good night. Sound familiar? Pryor and Merluzzi then randomized
their list of events and asked participants to arrange them into the appropriate order. They found that
those with extensive dating experience were able to organize the statements more quickly than those who
had less dating experience. For people who are familiar with a script, the events fall into place like pieces
of a puzzle.
In a new and developing area of research, social psychologists are interested in mind perception, the
process by which people attribute humanlike mental states to various animate and inanimate objects,
including other people.
Non verbal behaviour: People can reliably identify at least six primary emotions: happiness, sadness,
anger, fear, surprise, and disgust.
Illustrating what Christine and Ranald Hansen (1988) called the anger superiority effect, researchers
have found that people are quicker to spotand slower to look away fromangry faces in a crowd than
faces with neutral and less threatening emotions.
A structure in the brain known as the insula was activated not only when participants sniffed the
disgusting odor but also when they watched others sniffing it. This result suggests that people more than
recognize the face of disgust; they experience it at a neural level.