In social situations people regulate their emotions so that they are adjusted to certain scenarios or individuals. Before we express our emotional attitude, we first check if it is socially acceptable. We can describe this “checking” as facial work (the concept introduced by Goffman; cited in Hübler, 1998). Each person has a face, the public image associated with that particular individual. Continue reading
Have an interview or meeting coming up or simply need to make a good impression? Here are 4 tips on how to kill it:
1. Power stance
Whether you want to appear more powerful or need a confidence boost taking a more powerful stance is the way to go. Research has shown that taking a stance that involves open limbs and expansive gestures not only makes people feel more powerful but also increased their testosterone levels (Carney, Cuddy, & Yap, 2010). Such poses take up more space and when you dominate the space your mind gets the message.
2. Gesture for persuasion
Everyone knows that some people use their hands more than others while speaking. These movements are more than just a result of communication. Hand gestures increase the persuasive power of a message compared to no gesturing (Maricchiolo, Gnisci & Bonaiuto, 2009). Gestures that make what you’re saying more understandable are the most effective, such as pointing behind you when referring to the past. Continue reading
No way that’s his mom!
Social cognition is a sub-field within the larger discipline of social psychology and has been defined as “the study of mental processes involved in perceiving, attending to, remembering, thinking about, and making sense of the people in our social world” (Moscowitz, 2005, p.3). While some psychologists are content with analyzing only overt behavior, researchers in the field of social cognition prefer to dig deeper. Social behavior, from their perspective, is not directly determined by environmental factors that are external to the individual. Rather, it results from the internal cognitive processes which influence our interpretation of the social context. No social reality exists beyond that which we actively construct in our minds and it is this cognitive construction of social reality – our social cognition- that ultimately determines our behavior in social situations. Continue reading
Looks can be deceiving
Several features of the home environment are known to have a significant impact on aggression among children and adolescents. One feature that has received much attention in the psychological literature is family structure. Sheline, Skipper and Broadhead (1994, cited in Summers and Bakken, 2006) found that when compared to non-violent children, violent youngsters are about six times more likely to have unmarried parents and 11 times as likely to live with their fathers only. Other studies suggest that a lack of contact with fathers may also increase aggression. Pfiffner, McBurnett, and Rathouz (2001, cited in Summers & Bakken, 2006), for example, found a gradual rise in violent behavior starting with youths who lived with both parents, increasing for those who had some contact with their fathers and increasing further for those who had no contact with their fathers. Similarly, Fagan and Rector (2000, cited in Smith & Green, 2007), found that children from father-absent households usually harbor feelings of hostility, associate with deviant peers and get involved in negative activities. Continue reading
In many areas of Jamaica, interpersonal aggression and societal violence are commonplace. Such is the state of affairs that Jamaica has earned the unfavourable reputation of being one of the most violent countries in the world (Hickling, 2008). The staggering statistics attest to this fact. In the year 2000, Jamaica ranked third in the world in murders per capita and in 2005, the annual rate of homicide was more than three times the global average (World Bank, 2007, cited in Smith & Green, 2007). Continue reading
Aggression may be defined as harmful behavior which violates social conventions and which may include deliberate intent to harm or injure another person or object (Bandura, 1973, cited in Suris et al., 2004; Berkowitz, 1993, cited in Suris et al., 2004). In many cases it escalates into violence.
Aggression has also been viewed as a heterogeneous concept encompassing a wide variety of behaviours (Conner, 2004). Researchers have attempted to create more homogenous categories in this behavioural domain by identifying subtypes of aggression based on statistical techniques such as factor analysis. Two common subtypes supported by extensive research are overt and covert aggression (Conner, 2004). As the name suggests, overt aggression involves outward or open confrontational acts of aggression, such as physical fighting, verbal threats and bullying. On the other hand, covert aggression is more hidden and surreptitious; examples include stealing, truancy and arson. Continue reading
