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The effects of behavioural and cultural expectation cues on the perception of social episodes
Author(s) -
Forgas Joseph P.
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.2420080206
Subject(s) - psychology , multivariate analysis of variance , perception , social psychology , salient , dominance (genetics) , social perception , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , statistics , biochemistry , chemistry , mathematics , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , computer science , gene
The effects of behavioural and cultural expectation cues on the perception of a dyadic encounter were studied, using realistic videotaped interactions as stimuli. Intimate and non‐intimate non‐verbal interactions and intimate and non‐intimate episode definitions were combined in a 2 × 2 design and presented to subjects who rated both information sources separately (N = 20) as well as in congruent and incongruent combinations (N = 48). The contribution of each of these two cues to ratings of the combined episodes was analysed by Frijda's (1969) average relative shift technique, and a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) procedure. Results indicated that behavioural cues dominate perceptions, but this dominance is reduced in incongruent cue combinations, suggesting a weighted averaging strategy. Perceptions of the relationship between the interactants were more resistant to behaviour cue dominance than perceptions of the interaction. An analysis of open‐ended accounts by subjects substantiated these findings. The results suggest that cultural expectations of interaction episodes have a salient and non‐obvious effect on social perception.