Intro
Hi guys! My name is Julia and I will be your host for today’s episode. On the 15th episode of A Pop Of Psych, I will be discussing the psychology behind social cues and the drive to social sensitivity. Personally, I think the concept of social cues is a very crucial part of life and not really understood. So let’s dive into this idea.
Segment 1: Background: Social Cues
To begin, what exactly are social cues?
Social cues are non-verbal signals that people send through body language and expressions and they can guide conversations or other social interactions by influencing our impressions of and responses to others.
In other words, communication without words.
When looking at social cues, most people look for eye contact, body language, or head orientation. These all correlate to attentiveness
Also, people look at social cues to decide whether or not other people like them by attempting to read their feelings.
People use some combination of verbal and nonverbal cues to make this judgment
For instance, if someone is saying nice things with a smile, high chances are that they feel positively toward you.
But If they turn away as you approach them, this could mean they would prefer not to be in your company, but it could also mean nothing at all, and that they have other things on their mind.
There are many ways of interpreting these signs and it is all dependent on you.
Some people have a harder time with interpreting social cues.
For people who have social anxiety disorder, interactions with others have different extra meanings.
They would have extreme fear and anxiety about any situation in which there’s the potential that they will be negatively evaluated.
They can enter into ordinary interpersonal situations on edge, and will be conditioned to interpret ambiguous situations in a way that they feel less of themselves.
They are expecting negative responses and some ambiguous situation can confirm their negative expectations.
People high in social anxiety have a harder time deriving positive social meanings from feelings of acceptance. They have a harder time shifting from negative to positive, but are quick to shift from positive to negative.
if you tend to be unsure about how you will be received by others, have an open mind toward gathering more evidence before you are convinced that people are rejecting you. Emotional cues from other people can help your relationships be that much more fulfilling.
Segment 2: Trigger to Adapt to Social Cues
In order to successfully establish and maintain social relationships, individuals need to be sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others.
Many studies have been done to predict that individuals who are especially concerned with social connectedness, or the need to belong, would be more socially sensitive and be particularly attentive to and accurate in decoding social cues.
This feeling of belonging is very important since the lack of belonging may have consequences such as anxiety like we discussed in the previous segment, anger, and antisocial and self-defeating behavior
During daily social interactions, one reason that individuals attend to social cues is so that they can decipher other people’s state of mind.
Some studies prove that a recall of social information was heightened after a rejection experience.
In most everyday interactions, social norms do not make blatant displays of admiration or rejection.
Usually, cues to social approval or disapproval are subtly expressed.
For instance, they are seen through facial displays, warm or cold vocal tones, or just in the orientation of their heads.
Individuals who are better able to detect and decode these cues should be advantaged in both deflecting further rejection and regaining inclusion by engaging in behaviors that receive warmer responses
Also, in a particular study, it was found that the need to belong was related to identifying vocal tone and facial emotion, both which are very common and widely used sources of social information.
Not only that, but being able to read social cues helps one be more empathetic.
Being able to interpret and see how others are feeling using facial expressions, voice tones, and body language helps learn emotion and understand it in the context of the other person
Like oh she/he/or their feeling sad, or happy, or scared
I remember feeling that way. I wonder why they are feeling that way. What can I do to help? These kinds of interpretations can be made by being able to identify those social cues.
There have been many studies done to prove these theories and you can check them out on our resources page for this episode on our website, at www.apopofpsych.wixsite.com/psych
Segment 3: Learning and Social Cues
The need to belong and desire to form interpersonal attachments is a fundamental motive with important consequences for social learning
Social information is very important to improve individual learning outcomes.
You can learn many different things in life by being observant to these cues.
Individuals can use their own experiences and others’ social cues to avoid harm
Normally, people learn about dangers in their environment by directly interacting with it or indirectly from social sources.
Directly interacting with the issue and having a trial-and-error takes time and can be harmful at times, so being able to avoid direct contact by looking at social sources is very beneficial
Learning about threats and dangers in the environment is important for survival across species. Many species, including humans, engage in social learning to leverage the knowledge others may have acquired about the environment.
Social learning sometimes takes the form of acquiring the behavior of a demonstrator, for example through imitation or teaching
For us, our demonstrator would be our parents or people we grow up with.
Another way of learning what others have experienced or have knowledge about is by paying attention to their gestures or other bodily expressions that might signal risks and rewards in the environment
One of the most quickly identified expressions is fear. Sometimes it can also be quickly identified when gaze is averted indicating that gaze direction and emotional expressions are contextually processed
The attentional effects of gaze cues are amplified with fearful expressions as these represent potentially more significant signals to the perceiver.
In the next segment we will be joined by Stacey.
Segment 4: Conversation
When you are interacting with others, do you pay attention to their social cues? For instance, their head orientation, facial expression, or tone of their voice?
Yes! Albeit it's a little hard because 80% of our social contact is now virtual, I would not actively look for social clues, but notice facial expressions. Sometimes I overthink someone’s facial expression in the middle of a conversation and not pay attention to what they are saying LOL.
When someone tells you something, even if your opinion was the same or different, does it affect your opinion on it?
I’m a pretty stubborn person. I would say the things in my eyes are subjective, I would be more likely to change my opinion on something that is objective.
There is a saying that “eyes can’t lie”, what do you think about this?
Personally, I don’t look into people’s eyes much, I tend to look at body language. How about you?
What do you think of sarcasm? Some people find it very hard to understand or realize when sarcasm is used.
Outro
In this episode, I discussed some concepts of social cues, why someone would want to interpret them, and the benefits of it.
As usual, please feel free to send in audio messages or requests through our Anchor link.
Also, you can check out the script and resources used on our website, and if you guys have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to visit our website apopofpsych.wixsite.com/psych, that is linked in the description.
Thanks for tuning in and we’ll be back next week with another informative and engaging episode within the next 2 weeks.
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