 This is part two of lecture four and this part will be talking about first impressions How do we make a judgment about a person when we first meet this person? And this has everything to do with a general theme of social perception this is how we form impressions and make influences about people and Researches, especially social psychologists are very interested in this topic and there's been quite some research on this And I think also very nice research I will now tell you about one of my favorite studies done on the topic of social perception in this research the Social psychologist Willis and Todorov wanted to know how quickly people form impressions of others and what they did was they invited Participants to the lab and they placed them behind a computer screen and they showed them pictures of people random people They didn't know and they show these pictures very very quickly So either 100 milliseconds, which is one tenth of a second So super super quick or half a second or a thousand milliseconds. So that's one full second So still really really a short time So they show the picture and then they ask questions about the person in the picture So I will now do this little experiment with you I will show you a picture in the screen very quickly So please look at the screen carefully and I will show the picture really really fast. Okay Pay attention and I will ask questions after that So you saw a person on the picture? Hopefully now my question to you is how reliable do you think this person is and of course? You don't know this person, but what will be your sort of gut feeling? Do you think this person is reliable or unreliable? Okay, and secondly I want to ask you how certain are you of your answer? This was exactly what the participants also did in the study by Willis and Todorov and the researchers were interested in how quickly for people form impressions and also how their Perspective of how certain they are of their answers if that changes to the extent that they can watch a picture for a longer period of time So let's now relook at the results of this study So here you see a graph and you see that actually How high the bar is for a hundred five hundred or thousand milliseconds is basically the same this means that? People come up with a judgment about a person really really quickly and this doesn't depend on how long they can look at the picture They replicated this experiment again with when people could look at the picture as long as they wanted and still the judgment Remained the same so this means that within one one-tenth of a second We already form an impression about the personality of a picture of a person That's weird, huh? I mean you don't know the person based on what a person looks like we already have a gut feeling about a personality So I ask you a question about reliability But this study has also been done again by asking questions about how intelligent do you think this person is? How competent do you think this person is? Trustworthy attractive you name it basically all different personality traits were measured and for Didn't matter which personality trait was asked about Participants came up with a judgment and the judgment didn't change the only thing that did change over time was how certain people were of their answer So the longer people could look at the picture the more convinced they were that they were actually correct Even though they didn't know the person at all So There's consequences of this because of course we already saw in lecture three We extensively talked about how once we have an opinion about a person This also sets in motion our behavior and this is something we'll be talking more about in this lecture as well so once we have an opinion about a person how does this Influence how we treat this person and this is a topic that's also been studied over and over again in social psychology Already in 1977 by researcher called Snyder. He conducted also I think a very nice experiments in which he matched female and male students these students were all real Actual participants of the experiment. They didn't know each other. They were also not allowed to see each other But the researcher made pairs They were matched randomly and the task was really easy The man was asked so the male student was asked to call a female student that he was matched with Before they would have a conversation the male would receive some basic information For example, her name may be a little bit of background information and he also saw a picture and this was fake so the male students saw a fake picture of a Female student either of a relatively attractive student or of a less attractive Student and the pictures you see now in the screen are not of real participants. These are actually computer animated Pictures not used by Snyder in 1977. I'm pretty sure that technology didn't exist by then But these are our pictures that are so not real not actual persons, but used they use sort of the The rules of attractiveness basically to to make these faces either more or less attractive while remaining certain other Characteristic constant like the hair and the t-shirt and the background and the skin also pretty much So, okay There was this match male called the female and the only thing that differed was the picture that they saw beforehand So by now, I think you can already predict a little bit what happened, right? You're now starting to become experts in social psychology So you can probably guess that the conversations were different in the two groups So the males that were under the impression that they were calling an attractive female Versus the males that were under the impression that they were calling a less attractive females indeed the Conversations were different so these conversations were videotapes and later on the conversations were rated by Independent raters that didn't know anything about study and were only asked to either listen to the male or listen to the female and judge How friendly these conversations were and how friendly the male was to this female and vice versa And what the researchers found was indeed a difference So when a male was calling a female student and he thought she was attractive and remember these pictures were fake He was behaving in a more friendly way and as a response the female also responded friendly So these conversations went very smoothly. There was laughter. There was fun interactions. It was just a nice little chat Wow, there was a different situation when the male was calling a female student that he thought was less attractive And even though these females had no idea that these males saw a fake picture They responded so if you get a phone call from a guy that's not really Excited to talk to you and not very friendly. Of course, you're also not gonna be friendly in return So again, this is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy our expectation sets in motion our behavior And also we know and just want to repeat this that there's something called belief perseverance That's the tendency to stick with an initial judgment even in the face of new information So even if these males would have been informed the pictures that you saw were completely fake It's very hard to change your mind So these ideas stick pictures you see beforehand even if you retrospectively know these pictures are fake Steer your judgment. So here you already see the impact of Attractiveness and attractiveness is something that we have to talk about when it comes to impression formation and first impressions And that is because beautiful people have a big advantage in the world of first impressions This is referred to in the overall umbrella term halo effect a halo effect means that once we see a Positive trait a positive characteristic. We tend to believe Or expect there's that there's going to be more positive things about this person So if a person is attractive we also mistakenly think that this person will probably also have other good character traits So basically this is a stereotype about attractive people sort of that. What is beautiful is good stereotype And we see this if we look at how beautiful people are treated in the world If you happen to have a more attractive face you have more success on dating applications You have more dates you have more pleasant conversations generally But also specifically when it comes to to mating and finding finding a partner Maybe not a big surprise there, but it is quite surprising that this effect of beauty Actually goes much further than only the domain of forming Relationships we know that attractive politicians for example also get more votes than less attractive politicians even when they sort of share the same Agenda points and and are basically comparable on many other domains Attractiveness matters a lot. We love voting for attractive politicians more so than less attractive politicians Also, if you're on the job market You have a much higher chance of both getting a job and also once you have a job attractive Candidates job candidates get paid more so they get offered higher salary than less attractive candidates So this this is actually quite a big difference, and I think this is something that we should also consider When we look at fairness and for example, there's now luckily a lot of focus also on distributions between males and females and females Get more chances on the job market In some areas for example in science, which I think is it is great But we should also be be very Much aware of the fact that attractiveness matters as well and that there's also discrimination based on attractiveness And also even in when it comes to to criminal behavior We know that attractive criminals are less likely to go to prison and also get lower fines So across the board Attractiveness really sort of is a big benefit in life Which might also explain our huge focus especially in the Western world on beauty But it's actually also something that is across the globe that the people are really on the lookout of of Improving their their appearance Which makes sense. So it makes sense in the sense that you just have better chances in life if you happen to be attractive Why is this? Well, there's actually two explanations one evolutionary explanation We know for example that new born babies of just a couple of days old Already have a preference for looking at beautiful faces compared to less attractive faces So if you have a really small baby on your lap and you happen to be very attractive Then this baby keeps on gazing into your eyes more so than if you are less attractive So it's in a way. It's sort of We are born with this tendency to prefer beauty Why this is might have to do with with evolution as well that beauty is sort of a signal for for reproduction value Maybe or or a health There's some some debate on that But apart from being born with it There's definitely also we are impacted and formed and shaped by the way we are brought up For example, look at the Disney princesses aren't they all just so so pretty then look at the villains Less attractive, right? So this is also good people also in movies Starting with with Disney movies, but this is also in Hollywood blockbusters The good guys are typically very attractive and the villains are less attractive or they have some something in their face or or Scars maybe or they have just weird aspects like a very they are much much Less skinny. They are they have a big nose you name it So here you see examples of less attractive villains. So this is also that something that is sort of forced upon us Learned behavior throughout our upbringing Okay, so we talked about appearance But if you see a person or you look up information like you could look up my LinkedIn profile You see it over here. You see my appearance. You see what I look like But you also come across much more information for example about my gender my age my ethnicity my nationality and Each part of this information is steering your judgments is helping you to form an impression of me And I say helping you but I should you know put that in quotation marks because it can also really put you on the wrong Foot and gave you the wrong impression about who I am and what personality traits I have Um, so we tend to judge personalities the moment we see a person But we don't only judge personalities. We also judge emotions So and this is also part of actually a big big part of the evolution theory Darwin already came up with that That's when it comes to emotions people are key experts experts in both encoding and decoding emotions And that means that with encoding we mean displaying emotions We know how to sort of display emotions key emotions in the face and we also know how to read emotions And here you see the six basic emotions that people can both encode and decode and we tend to be very good at this So I hope you can all recognize them all the different emotions. You see anger. You see happiness happiness surprise discussed sadness and What am I missing discussed I said, okay, so you see the six basic emotions And we can read them very well And we can also show them in the face and this has a big evolutionary value, of course Because once we see that a person is for example scared We know that there might be something dangerous in the surroundings So we might also adapt our behavior if a person is angry we read that in the face and we can use that for example to Make sure we go out of the way of this person to make sure we don't get in a conflict situation All people can do this across cultures we can read and recognize these emotions and show these emotions But it's important to know that when it comes to the emotion There's also something called display rules and that has to do with culture So across the globe even though we all are familiar with certain types of emotions There is some differences between cultures in when it is appropriate to show certain emotions For example in Japan a negative emotions tend to be covered up. It's sort of impolite to show negative emotions across the board Well, for example in the United States Sadness is pretty much inappropriate to show for meals, but it is appropriate for females. So You know, it's it is complicated and culture does play a very big role in when when and how people show Emotions so in this part of the lecture we saw that even before we have a conversation even before an interaction starts Just by seeing a person we are already really informed about what this person is like We have judgment about personality and about emotion So in a way before anything is said at all a lot actually already has been said So in the final part of this lecture, we're gonna see what happens when we indeed actually get to interact with the person