Studies on people perception were established as an independent area in the late 1950s. In the previous decade, the following stand out: Contribution by S. Asch: It shifts the focus of interest from the study of accuracy in the formation of impressions to the study of the process through which these impressions are formed. Only an adequate perception of the environment that surrounds us, both physical and social, allows our adaptation to it. Perception includes two processes: Recoding or selection of the enormous flow of data that comes to us from abroad and orn try to go beyond the information obtained, to predict future events and avoid or reduce surprise.
Historical development on people perception
The “New Look” trend: Introduction of the motivations and experiences of perceivers in the process of perceiving the natural world. Bruner and Goodman experiment: Children between 10-11 years old, half with high purchasing power and the other half poorer, had to adjust a variable luminous circle to the size of various coins. The control groups adjusted cardboard circles.
Results: The sizes of the most valuable coins were overestimated and those of the valuable hands were underestimated. The distortion was stronger in the poorest children. The fundamental thing in this approach is: Conceive the perception as a selective process, much more dynamic and functional than had previously been assumed.
Jones summarizes the main lines and avenues of researchsince the late 50s, in the perception studies: The perceiver as a reader of emotions. The perceiver as a good judge of personality. The perceiver as an integrator of information. The perceiver as causal attributor. The perceiver as a motivated actor.
People perception
Processes and phenomena that constitute the study area of ”social cognition”:
- Our reaction to whoever approaches will depend on the recognition of emotions that we carry out (diagnosis about your state of mind). This diagnosis is made from the observation of your face and other non-verbal signals.
- Us we will form an impression about her, for which, we will unite the various information elements that we have been collecting: physical appearance, clothing, way of speaking, attractiveness.
- We will make causal attributionsThat is, we will look for some cause to explain the behavior of said person. Our thoughts, feelings and behaviors regarding such a person will be mediated by the type of cause that we attribute to their behavior.
An activity underlying all of these processes is use of schemes (organized sets of knowledge we have about situations, people and ourselves).
Our reaction will be mediated by the processes of social inference: way in which we process information, store it, relate it to other information, retrieve it and apply it to the case in question.
Definition and characteristics of people perception
Studies of person perception and object perception have been closely linked.
Similarities between the perception of objects and that of people:
- Both types of perceptions are structured: When we perceive them, we create an order. One form of organization consists of creating categories. In the world of objects, the categories are clear (animal world, colors). When we perceive a person, we have a multitude of categories to classify their behavior, appearance and other information: it can be categorized based on their physical attractiveness, their personality, their origin, their university degree. There are people who almost exclusively use a categorical system (“friend-enemy”, “attractive-unattractive”). However, the majority will be based on one category or another depending on the context (“attractive-unattractive” in dating situations).
- Both in the perception of objects and people we tend to look for the invariant elements of the stimuli we perceive (no interest in superficial or unstable aspects).
- Our perceptions of objects and others have meaning. Heider and Simmel: When people perceive moving light points on a screen they usually describe “one point chasing another”, “the triangle flees the square.”
Differences between perception of objects and people:
- People are perceived as causal agents and objects are not: Human beings have the intention of controlling the environment, therefore, the “deception” factor is important in the perception of people (irrelevant in the perception of objects).
- Other people are similar to us, which allows us to make a series of inferences which we cannot do in the case of objects. Inevitably, social perception involves one’s own Self.
- The perception of people usually occurs in interactions that have a dynamic character: when we perceive another person, we are at the same time perceived.
Snyder, Tanke and Berscheid asked one group of students to have a telephone conversation with an “attractive” girl (photograph), and another group to do the same except that the girl was not attractive.
Results: The boys who thought they were talking to the “attractive” girl were more sociable, extraverted, and affectionate, and the girls who talked to the boys who believed them to be attractive were also more sociable, affectionate, and extraverted. This can be explained as a reaction to the behavior of your interlocutors.
- The perception of people is more complex than the perception of physical stimulisince we tend to have many crucial attributes that are not observable with the naked eye, and accuracy in social perception is more difficult to verify.
Impression Formation Definition
S. Asch’s research:
How do we organize the observed data into a single, unified impression?
Asch leans towards a gestalt conception: the various elements are organized as a whole (gestalt or configuration), so that each feature affects and is affected by all the others, generating a dynamic impression. Some traits have a greater impact on others. They are the central features. The traits presented to subjects as descriptors of a person are called stimulus traits. The traits on which the stimulus person must be classified are called response traits. Model verification by Asch:
A group of subjects received a description of a person that contained different traits (stimulus traits) and among which was the trait “affectionate.”
Another group received a description that contained the same traits and the trait “cold.” The only difference between both lists of traits was “affectionate” and “cold.”
Results:
- The two groups responded differently both in writing profiles (more positive in the group that heard affectionately) and in choosing adjectives.
- When Asch presented the same stimulus traits but using “polite-impolite” (instead of “affectionate-cold”), the differences were weaker.
Conclusions:
- “Affectionate and cold” were core traits in this context, since they served as a guide for the organization of information into a coherent whole: some characteristics were assigned to the affectionate person and the opposite ones to describe the cold person. Several characteristics are not affected by the affectionate/cold variation.
- A change in one of the product qualitiesuce a substantial modification in the overall impression.
This change should not be confused with the “halo effect”: When a positive trait tends to have other positive traits associated with it, and a negative trait tends to have other negative ones associated with it. He halo effect cannot explain Asch’s results, because the change does not occur in all qualities (in a positive direction in the case of affectionate and negative in the case of cold), but is limited to some characteristics.
What does it depend on whether a trait is central or peripheral?:
The content and function of a quality depend on the context, that is, on the other stimulus features.
- In another experiment in which “warm and cold” appeared alongside a different list of stimulus traits, they turned out to be entirely dependent or peripheral traits.
It is not that the same quality can be central or peripheral depending on the environment, but rather, when a trait changes context and goes from being central to peripheral, for example, there is a change in its meaning.
Asch’s work began two important lines of research:
- It refers to the ways in which information is processed (information integration).
- It refers to the relationship between stimulus traits and response traits. It led to Implicit Theories of Personality.
Theories of person perception
Theories of person perception
- Relational tendency models.
- Linear combination models.
- Fiske and Neuberg model
Relational tendency models:
- They correspond to the Asch’s gestalt conception: all elements combine with each other to produce a single meaningful gestalt.
- Each characteristic has a meaning that is not independent of the meaning of the other characteristics.
- When the individual receives inconsistent information, he or she can do two things:
- Changing the meaning of the characteristics (“happy” does not have the same meaning accompanied by “silly and calm” as “affectionate and relaxed.” This change occurs first in the descriptive dimension and then in the evaluative dimension (“happy” has a value more positive in the second case).
- Infer new features that allow contradictions to be reduced.
Linear combination models:
- The informative elements do not change their meaning but are combined with each other, adding, averaging or multiplying, so that the resulting impression is the result of the additive combination of some properties of the stimulus.
- The value of each trait is independent of the value of the others.
- There is a dimension along which any type of stimulus can be located (evaluative dimension).
- Sum model: The final impression is the result of the sum of the values of each trait separately.
- Average model: The final impression would be the arithmetic mean of the values of each of the traits separately (better model than the previous one).
- Weighted average model: Anderson formulated this model to overcome the explanatory limitations of the previous one.
The initial impression (Io) it’s a kind of general bias that we use in our perceptions. It can be favorable, unfavorable or neutral.
Po (weight or importance of the initial impression)depends on various factors, but one of the most important is the number or importance of the information elements that make up the impression (the more you know a person, the less importance the initial impression is).
One way to solve the appearance of contradictory information in a stimulus would be to dismiss the inconsistency, giving less weight to the features that are contradictory. It basically occurs in the evaluative dimension.
Various studies support both linear combination models and…