Person Perception (person + perception)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Person perception in the heat of conflict: Negative trait attributions affect procedural preferences and account for situational and cultural differences

ASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2004
Michael W. Morris
Disputes by their nature involve contentious behavior. If one attributes such behavior to underlying personality traits, these attributions can be quite damning. The current research investigated negative trait attributions and their impact on dispute resolution decisions. We hypothesized that judging one's opponent to be low in agreeableness and high in emotionality (e.g. stubborn and volatile) shifts one's preference towards more formal procedures , formal in the sense that a third party judge controls the process and outcome. Drawing on the attribution literature, we hypothesized that two antecedents of these judgments (and consequent preferences) are the perceiver's level of prior information and the perceiver's cultural proclivity to explaining behavior in terms of personal dispositions. Results of an experiment measuring reactions to a hypothetical dispute found that prior information and culture (USA vs Hong Kong) increased trait attributions and preferences for formal procedures. Additionally, expectancy measures showed interaction effects suggesting that disputants dynamically construct expectancies in light of their personality impressions. [source]


Familiarity and person construal: Individuating knowledge moderates the automaticity of category activation,

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 5 2009
Kimberly A. Quinn
In this experiment, we examined how perceivers' familiarity with targets moderates person construal. Based on evidence from object categorization that level of construal varies with expertise in a manner that maximizes cue validity, we reasoned that although social (i.e., group-level) categorization is functional for construing unfamiliar others (about whom little or no individuating information is available), it is less functional for familiar others (about whom a great deal of individuating information is available). Results from an automatic priming paradigm provided evidence for our reasoning: Participants categorized unfamiliar faces according to the most salient categorical dimension available in the visual information (in this case, sex), but did not do so for familiar faces. Implications for models of person perception are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


A face with a cue: exploring the inevitability of person categorization

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 5 2007
Douglas Martin
Recent research has explored the dynamics of categorical thinking, with debate centering on the putative automaticity of this process. In a further investigation of this topic, the current inquiry assessed the influence of critical category-cueing facial features on overt (i.e., category identification) and covert (i.e., category priming) measures of sex categorization. The results revealed that when a critical sex-specifying facial cue (i.e., hairstyle) was present, priming effects emerged even under suboptimal processing conditions (i.e., facial blurring). When this cue was absent, however, priming no longer occurred. Interestingly, category identification was largely unimpeded by feature removal or facial blurring. Taken together, these results underscore the efficiency of categorical thinking and the importance of task objectives and feature-based processing in person perception. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Psychological essentialism and cultural variation: children's beliefs about aggression in the United States and South Africa

INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2008
Jessica W. Giles
Abstract The present study compared indigenous South African versus African-American schoolchildren's beliefs about aggression. Eighty 7,9 year olds (40 from each country) participated in interviews in which they were asked to make inferences about the stability, malleability, and causal origins of aggressive behaviour. Although a minority of participants from both countries endorsed essentialist beliefs about aggression, South African children were more likely than American children to do so. Results also revealed some degree of coherence in children's patterns of beliefs about aggression, such that children responded across superficially different measures in ways that appear theoretically consistent. The authors consider these findings in light of debates concerning the role of cultural forces in shaping person perception. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Accentuate the Negative: Social Images in the Prediction and Promotion of Condom Use,

JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2001
Hart Blanton
Based on the negativity bias in person perception, we argue that behavioral decisions related to condom use are influenced by the social images that an individual has of people who do not use condoms, but that they are not influenced by the social images that an individual has of people who do use condoms. Three studies with college student samples indicated that the negative evaluations of people who do not use condoms predicts willingness to have sex without condoms. In contrast, positive evaluations of people who do use condoms showed no unique predictions. A fourth study demonstrated that a health message emphasizing the negative social consequences of having sex without condoms decreased willingness to have unsafe sex in comparison to a control, whereas a message that emphasized the positive social consequences of using condoms had no such effects on willingness. [source]


Judgments of moderator variables of agreement in person perception: A comparison of two cultures

ASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2005
Taeyun Jung
Three moderators of agreement in person perception, behavioral consistency, observability and social desirability, were studied. The major hypothesis is that the moderators can be estimated using the standing of targets on traits; that is, that as targets vary on a given trait, they vary on how they are seen as on the moderators. Using Korean (N = 135) and US (N = 81) samples, we tested this approach for 80 traits. Analyses revealed that moderators varied by the combination of trait and target standing in different ways for the two samples. In judgment of behavioral consistency over target standings, linear and curvilinear trends were stronger for the US sample than for the Korean sample. For observability, judgments were similar, although curvilinear trends were larger for the Korean sample. Furthermore, being extremely positive was perceived as less desirable for the Korean judges. These findings were discussed in terms of cultural differences. Moreover, a new approach to the study of moderators was proposed. [source]


Personality Correlates with Frequency of Being Targeted for Unexpected Advances by Strangers,

JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 5 2007
Kikue Sakaguchi
Female Japanese students answered questionnaires about personality (Sociosexual Orientation Inventory and the Big Five) and the frequency of having been targeted for unexpected advances by strangers. Women who reported having been frequently targeted for being "picked up" with sexual intentions had unrestricted sociosexuality (r = .38, p < .0001; n = 145) and had personalities that suggested unrestricted sociosexuality (extraversion and openness). The frequency of being targeted for inappropriate touching was not associated consistently with personality traits. Women who reported having been frequently targeted for nonsexual advances were likely to rate themselves high in agreeableness. The ecological significance of the ability to choose a stranger with whom to interact, based on person perceptions through brief observation, is discussed. [source]


Self-esteem and student nurses: A cross-cultural study of nursing students in Thailand and the UK

NURSING & HEALTH SCIENCES, Issue 1-2 2002
Siriphan Sasat PhD
Abstract Self-esteem is a key feature in a person's perception of their own worth. This report is of a study of the reported self-esteem levels of two groups of student nurses: one in Thailand and one in the UK. Purposive samples of 120 Thai students and 101 UK undergraduate nursing students were given the Culture-Free Self-Esteem Inventory (CFSEI-2). The CFSEI-2 is a self-reported inventory, which measures an individual's perception of self. The findings of the study indicate that the perceptions of own self-esteem in undergraduate student nurses in the UK and in Thailand were comparable to the normal ranges of self-esteem as assessed by the instrument. An independent sample t -test revealed that there were no significant differences in mean overall and subscale self-esteem scores between UK and Thai nursing students. There were no indications of differences in levels of self-esteem for UK and Thai nursing students experiencing different parts of their training. [source]


Associations among socioeconomic status, perceived neighborhood control, perceived individual control, and self-reported health,

JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2010
Spencer Moore
Recent research has suggested that perceived control and a person's perceptions of their neighborhood environment may mediate the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and health. This cross-sectional study assessed whether perceptions of informal social control mediated the association between SES and self-reported health, and if these two constructs represented distinct mechanisms linking SES with self-reported health. The sample consisted of 869 adults residing in 300 census tracts in Montreal, Canada. Multilevel methods were used to assess the associations among self-reported health, SES, perceived control, and perceived informal social control adjusting for sociodemographic variables. Perceived control (mediation estimate=,0.16, p<.001) and perceived informal social control (mediation estimate=,0.05, p<.05) partially mediated the association between SES and self-reported health. Perceived control did not mediate the association of perceived informal social control with self-reported health. Perceived informal social control may act alongside but distinct from perceived control as a mechanism linking SES to self-reported health. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]