Psychology Facts

▼ Person Perception ▼

Sorry if this is a little boring!! Hopefully, someone finds this interesting

》In social psychology, the term "person perception" refers to the different mental processes that we use to form impressions of other people.

》People often form impressions of others
very quickly, with only minimal information. We frequently base our impressions on the roles and social norms we expect from people.

》When it comes to noticing and interpreting another person's behaviors, individuals vary at this skill. In the overall population, person perception falls on a bell curve, meaning a few people are really good at it but most of us fall in the middle of the curve.

》We are actually pretty poor when it comes to assessing our own ability to perceive others. We overestimate our ability to successfully read other people and assume the things we are inferring about others are correct.

》In one study, 75% of surgeons surveyed reported that they had communicated well with their patients. However, when they asked the patients, only 21% reported satisfactory communication.

》Person perception is a skill that requires mental effort in the same way as solving a complicated math equation. Researchers call this mental effort "emotional labor". This mental effort we put into perceiving others is taxing and can lead to increased burnout over time.

》Physical cues can also play an important role. If you see a woman dressed in a professional-looking suit, you might immediately assume that she works in a formal setting, perhaps at a law firm or bank.

》One of the mental shortcuts we use in in-person perception is social categorization. In this process, we mentally categorize people into different groups based on common characteristics. Sometimes this process occurs consciously, but for the most part, social categorizations happen automatically and unconsciously.

》The fundamental attribution error means we give too much credit to an individual's traits and not enough credit to the context or the social situation

》The actor-observer bias is somewhat like the fundamental attribution error. It's when we assume other people's behavior is based on personality traits or dispositions, and we assume our own behavior is all about the broader situation.

》Need for cognition refers to the tendency to think carefully and fully about our experiences, including the social situations we encounter

》People with a strong need for cognition tend to process information more thoughtfully and therefore may make more causal attributions overall.

》In contrast, people without a strong need for cognition tend to be more impulsive and impatient and may make attributions more quickly and spontaneously

》Some people are entity theorists who tend to believe that people's traits are fundamentally stable and incapable of change. Entity theorists tend to focus on the traits of other people and tend to make a lot of personal attributions.

》On the other hand, incremental theorists are those who believe that personalities change a lot over time and who therefore are more likely to make situational attributions for events. Incremental theorists are more focused on the dynamic psychological processes that arise from individuals' changing mental states in different situations.

》There is a popular notion that people are born with the natural ability to read others well, and it's not something that can be taught. And while it's true that there is individual variation inability, the assumption that we cannot improve our personal perception skills through education and training is incorrect.