Social perception

Forming impressions and interpretations of other people from behavior, appearance and context. Observing a movement is different from establishing its intention, cause or emotional meaning.

Inferring an emotional state from cues such as facial expression, voice, behavior and context. Accuracy depends on a justified criterion for the state and on the response alternatives supplied by the task.

Identifying fear from available information, such as facial expressions. Performance depends on which diagnostic features are sampled as well as on how they are interpreted, and need not measure the observer's own subjective fear.^[ref]

A procedure in which an observer selects an emotion interpretation from specified alternatives. Above-chance performance supports discrimination among those alternatives under that task; it does not establish that the same categories would be produced spontaneously without prompting.

The degree to which a person, feature or category captures attention or is readily available for interpretation in a social setting. Salience helps explain what enters a social attribution, but does not by itself determine its causal validity.