Social Perception and Communication

Dr. Bradford

Vocabulary

• Social Perception: the study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people (p. 76)

• Nonverbal communication: the way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words; nonverbal cues include facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position, gaze, etc.

Non-Referential and Referential Communication

Communication

NON-REFERENTIAL(without Signs)

= interacting with

REFERENTIAL(with Signs)

= interacting with + communicating about

(How) Do Humans Communicate Differently from Animals?

Learned Behavior SymbolicCommunica-tion

• CULTURE, ‘SYMBOLIC INTERACTION’, or HUMAN LANGUAGE = – learned and symbolic communicative

behavior.

Two ‘channels’ of Human Communication

All communication has two levels or dimensions: content and relationship

• All communication is both communication and communication about communication.

Content Relationship

Symbolic Body Language

Information Behavior (meta-information)

WHAT is communicated HOW something is communicated

Two ‘channels’ ofHuman Communication

• Human communication has two ‘channels’ operating at the same time: content and relationship.

• Words are spoken by someone to someone about someone (or something).

Communication

Messages

Two ‘channels’ of Human Communication

• Communication is any behavior perceived as expressing some message:1. What (information) is communicated, and 2. How (behavior) this info is expressed.

Other perceptionsSelectedMessage

Expressions

SelectedExpression

Body Language and Play

Negation and “NOT” There is no simple way of

expressing negation or the word “not” in body language!

Gregory Bateson (1972) proposed that playful behavior arose as a way of communicating the concept of “not.”

Responses to Communication at Relationship Level

• In interpersonal encounters, each person offers a definition of themselves and the other as part of an overall definition of the situation. We can distinguish 3 different ways that someone may respond to the definition of self (and other) offered by the other:

1. Confirmation/Acceptance2. Rejection3. Disconfirmation

Responses to Communication at Relationship Level

1) Confirmation/Acceptance Acceptance of the relationship implied in a

communication. Most communications are for validating our

selves and our relationships

Example: accepting friend requests on facebook.

Responses to Communication at Relationship Level

2) Rejection A rejection of the relationship someone is implicitly

attempting to create; Importantly, rejection presupposes recognition of what is

being rejected.

Responses to Communication at Relationship Level

3) Disconfirmation Occurs when someone does not recognize that

they don't recognize you (or the type of person or relation you are attempting to invoke).

Disconfirmation leads to a loss of self, depersonalization, and even dehumanization.

Responses to Communication at Relationship Level

3) Disconfirmation• It is thus far more dramatic than outright rejection. Whereas

a mis-match in perception occurs in both, with disconfirmation, there is no recognition by at least one party that the mismatch is happening!

• Watzlawick et al. (1967) write: “ [W]hile rejection amounts to the message 'You are Wrong', disconfirmation says in effect 'You do not exist'" (86).

• Bateson proposed that disconfirmation which was repeatedly experienced could lead to schizophrenia.

Responses to Communication at Relationship Level

3) Disconfirmation

– Example from Reading “Being Sane in Insane Places”

From film “One Flew OverThe Cookoo’s Nest”

Pseudo-patients act sane. In response, the nurses can either a) acknowledge and accept that they are acting sane; b) recognize that they are acting sane, but not believe it (i.e. reject their performance); or c) not even recognize that they are acting sane! The last response (i.e. disconfirmation) is what occurred in the study.

What are Signs?

• SIGNS (*as defined in this lecture*) are a type of stimulus producing a response to something other than itself.

• SIGNS REFER TO SOMETHING. Signs include symbols.– Signs can be natural or artificial: smoke is a sign of fire, as

is the word “fire”

FIRE

Causes, Signs, and Symbols1. CAUSES: physical

cause and effect; Uni-directional and Deterministic

2. SIGNS: indirectly triggers a response to something other than the stimulus; SIGN INDICATES SOMETHING ELSE to which you respond.

‘stimulus’ ‘response’

Rain cloud Responds NOT to the cloud directly, but to what it indicates: rain. You get an umbrella.

Domino effect

Causes, Signs, and Symbols3. SYMBOLS = – anything that re-presents something else to

more than one person.– a sign of a sign! (Human Language)

– {Notice that some perception or idea can be conveyed to someone else who hasn’t seen it.}

A says“It’s about to rain!”

B gets an umbrella

Rain cloud

SYMBOLS

Symbols can do two things:1. Symbols allow us to refer to or

talk about things that are not there. Words stand in for absent things, i.e. serve as substitutes for them. This is called context independence (aka ‘Displacement’).

• ‘X counts as Y’

“These Letters are symbols”

SYMBOLS

Symbols can do two things:2. Symbols can also create the

very things to which they refer!

• ‘X counts as Y’, where ‘Y’ is some relationship!

Symbols and Institutions

Symbolic Language is necessary to create institutions.

‘X counts as Y’• Examples: – Money. We can agree that paper

counts as money. But money (Y) has no existence apart from our definition of it.

– Rules of chess: the rules of chess create chess. Chess would not exist apart from these rules. (vs. rules of traffic, for example) Rules of chess

Non-Referential without SIGNS

{aka Non-ReferentialCommunication; Non-anticipatory interaction; Conversation of Gestures; Body Language, or Analogical Communication}

‘Natural‘ SignsNon-interactive Anticipation(smoke = sign of fire)

1. Signals2. *Symbols*(Human Language)

Types ofInteractive Behavior

Interactive Behavior(‘Communication’)

Referential using ‘Artificial’ SIGNS

{aka Referential Communication Anticipatory Communication, Language, or Digital Communication}