Social perception. Empathy

Social perception is a person’s figurative perception of himself, other people and social phenomena of the surrounding world. The image exists at the level of feelings (sensations, perceptions, ideas) and at the level of thinking (concepts, judgments, inferences).

The term “social perception” was first introduced by J. Bruner in 1947 and was understood as the social determination of perceptual processes.

Social perception includes interpersonal perception (person-to-person perception), which consists of perception external signs of a person, their correlation with personal qualities, interpretation and prediction of future actions. The expression “knowing another person” is often used as a synonym in Russian psychology, says A. A. Bodalev. The use of such an expression is justified by including his behavioral characteristics in the process of perceiving another, forming an idea of the intentions, abilities, attitudes of the person perceived, etc.

The process of social perception includes two sides: subjective (the subject of perception is the person who perceives) and objective (the object of perception is the person who is perceived). Through interaction and communication, social perception becomes mutual. At the same time, mutual knowledge is aimed primarily at understanding those qualities of a partner that are most significant for the participants in communication at a given moment in time.

The difference between social perception: social objects are not passive and indifferent in relation to the subject of perception. Social images always have semantic and evaluative characteristics. The interpretation of another person or group depends on the previous social experience of the subject, on the behavior of the object, on the system of value orientations of the perceiver and other factors.

The subject of perception can be either an individual or a group. If an individual acts as a subject, then he can perceive:

1) another individual belonging to his group;

2) another individual belonging to an out-group;

3) your group;

4) another group.

If a group acts as the subject of perception, then, according to G. M. Andreeva, the following is added:

1) the group’s perception of its own member;

2) the group’s perception of a representative of another group;

3) the group’s perception of itself;

4) the group’s perception as a whole of another group.

In groups, people’s individual ideas about each other are formalized into group personality assessments, which appear in the process of communication in the form of public opinion.

There are mechanisms of social perception - the ways in which people interpret, understand and evaluate another person. The most common mechanisms are the following: empathy, attraction, causal attribution, identification, social reflection.

IDENTIFICATION(Identification; Identifizierang) - psychological process, in which a person is partially or completely dissimilated from himself (see assimilation). An unconscious projection by a person of himself onto something other than himself: another person, business, or location. In other words, it is the subject's unconscious identification of himself with another subject, group, process or ideal. Is an important part of normal development. Empathy - comprehension of the emotional state of another person, understanding his emotions, feelings and experiences. In many psychological sources, empathy is identified with sympathy, empathy, and sympathy. This is not entirely true, since one can understand emotional condition another person, but not treat him with sympathy and sympathy. Well understanding the views and associated feelings of other people that he does not like, a person often acts contrary to them. A student in class, annoying an unloved teacher, can perfectly understand the latter’s emotional state and use the power of his empathy against the teacher. People we call manipulators very often have well-developed empathy and use it for their own, often selfish, purposes. The subject is able to understand the meaning of the experiences of another because he himself once experienced the same emotional states. However, if a person has never experienced such feelings, then it is much more difficult for him to comprehend their meaning. If an individual has never experienced affect, depression or apathy, then he most likely will not understand what another person is experiencing in this state, although he may have certain cognitive ideas about such phenomena. To comprehend the true meaning of another's feelings, it is not enough to have cognitive representations. Personal experience is also necessary. Therefore, empathy as the ability to understand the emotional state of another person develops throughout life and may be more pronounced in older people. It is quite natural that close people have more developed empathy towards each other than people who have known each other relatively recently. People from different cultures may have little empathy for each other. At the same time, there are people who have special insight and are able to understand the experiences of another person even if he tries to carefully hide them. There are some types of professional activities that require developed empathy, for example, medical practice, teaching, and theater. Almost any professional activity in the “person-to-person” field requires development this mechanism perceptions.

REFLECTION - in social psychology, reflection is understood as imitation of the course of reasoning of another person. More often, reflection is understood as thinking about YOUR mental actions or mental states. Attraction - a special form of perception and cognition of another person, based on the formation of a stable positive feeling towards him. Through positive feelings of sympathy, affection, friendship, love, etc. Certain relationships arise between people that allow them to know each other more deeply. According to the figurative expression of the representative of humanistic psychology A. Maslow, such feelings allow you to see a person “under the sign of eternity,” i.e. see and understand the best and most worthy that is in him. Attraction as a mechanism of social perception is usually considered in three aspects: the process of forming the attractiveness of another person; the result of this process; quality of relationships. The result of this mechanism is a special type of social attitude toward another person, in which the emotional component predominates. Attraction can only exist at the level of individually selective interpersonal relationships, characterized by mutual attachment of their subjects. There are probably various reasons why we tend to like some people more than others. Emotional attachment can arise on the basis of common views, interests, value orientations or as a selective attitude towards a person’s special appearance, behavior, character traits, etc. The interesting thing is that such relationships allow you to better understand the other person. With a certain degree of convention, we can say that the more we like a person, the more we know him and the better we understand his actions (unless, of course, we are talking about pathological forms of attachment). Attraction is also significant in business relations. Therefore, most business psychologists recommend that interpersonal communication professionals express the most positive attitude towards clients, even if they do not really like them. Externally expressed goodwill has the opposite effect - the attitude can actually change to positive. Thus, the specialist develops an additional mechanism of social perception, which allows him to obtain more information about a person. However, it should be remembered that excessive and artificial expression of joy does not so much create attraction as destroy people’s trust. A friendly attitude cannot always be expressed through a smile, especially if it looks fake and too stable. Thus, a television presenter smiling for an hour and a half is unlikely to attract the sympathy of viewers. ^ The mechanism of causal attribution associated with attributing reasons for behavior to a person. Each person has their own assumptions about why the perceived individual behaves in a certain way. Attributing certain reasons for behavior to another, the observer does this either on the basis of the similarity of his behavior with some familiar person or known image of a person, or on the basis of an analysis of his own motives assumed in a similar situation. The principle of analogy, similarity with something already familiar or the same applies here. It is curious that causal attribution can “work” even when the analogy is made with a person that does not exist and has never really existed, but exists in the observer’s imagination, for example, with an artistic image (the image of a character from a book or film). Each person has a huge number of ideas about other people and images, which were formed not only as a result of meetings with specific people, but also under the influence of various artistic sources. On a subconscious level, these images occupy “equal positions” with the images of people who actually exist or actually existed. The mechanism of causal attribution is associated with certain aspects of the self-perception of an individual who perceives and evaluates another. Thus, if a subject has attributed negative traits and the reasons for their manifestation to another, then he will most likely evaluate himself by contrast as a bearer of positive traits. Sometimes people with low self-esteem show excessive criticality towards others, thereby creating a certain negative subjectively perceived social background, against which, as it seems to them, they look quite decent. In fact, these are only subjective sensations that arise as a psychological defense mechanism. At the level of social stratification, such intergroup relations as the choice of an outgroup and the strategy of social creativity are, of course, accompanied by the action of causal attribution. T. Shibutani spoke about the degree of criticality and goodwill that it is advisable to observe in relation to others. After all, every person has positive and negative traits, as well as behavioral characteristics due to his ambivalence as an individual, personality and subject of activity. In addition, the same qualities are assessed differently in different situations. Attribution of causes of behavior can occur taking into account the externality and internality of both the one who attributes and the one to whom it is attributed. If the observer is predominantly external, then the reasons for the behavior of the individual whom he perceives will appear to him in external circumstances. If it is internal, then the interpretation of the behavior of others will be associated with internal, individual and personal reasons. Knowing in what respects an individual is external and in which he is internal, it is possible to determine some features of his interpretation of the reasons for the behavior of other people. A person’s perception also depends on his ability to put himself in the place of another, to identify himself with him. In this case, the process of cognition of the other will go more successfully (if there are significant grounds for appropriate identification). The process and result of such identification is called identification. Identification how a socio-psychological phenomenon is considered modern science very often and in such different contexts that it is necessary to specifically stipulate the features of this phenomenon as a mechanism of social perception. In this aspect, identification is similar to empathy, but empathy can be considered as an emotional identification of the subject of observation, which is possible on the basis of past or present experience of similar experiences. As for identification, here intellectual identification occurs to a greater extent, the results of which are the more successful, the more accurately the observer has determined intellectual level the one he perceives. The professional activities of some specialists are associated with the need for identification, such as the work of an investigator or teacher, which has been repeatedly described in legal and educational psychology. Misidentification when misjudging the intellectual level of another person can lead to negative professional results. Thus, a teacher who overestimates or underestimates the intellectual level of his students will not be able to correctly assess the connection between the students’ real and potential abilities during the learning process. It should be noted that the word “identification” in psychology means a whole series of phenomena that are not identical to each other: the process of comparing objects based on essential features (in cognitive psychology), the unconscious process of identifying close people and the mechanism of psychological defense (in psychoanalytic concepts), one from socialization mechanisms, etc. In a broad sense, identification as a mechanism of social perception, combined with empathy, is a process of understanding, seeing another, comprehending the personal meanings of another’s activities, carried out through direct identification or an attempt to put oneself in the place of another. Perceiving and Interpreting the world and other people, a person also perceives and interprets himself, his own actions and motivations. The process and result of a person’s self-perception in a social context is called social reflection. As a mechanism of social perception, social reflection means the subject’s understanding of his own individual characteristics and how they manifest themselves in external behavior; awareness of how he is perceived by other people. One should not think that people are able to perceive themselves more adequately than those around them. Thus, in a situation where there is an opportunity to look at oneself from the outside - in a photograph or film, many remain very dissatisfied with the impression made by their own image. This happens because people have a somewhat distorted self-image. Distorted ideas even concern the appearance of the perceiver, not to mention the social manifestations of the internal state.

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Social perception

Introduction

Emergence and successful development interpersonal communication is possible only if there is mutual understanding between its participants. The process of understanding and cognition by a person of another in the course of communication is a mandatory component of communication. Conventionally, this process is called social perception. Social perception is the perception of a person by a person.

Since a person always enters into communication as a person, he is always perceived by other people as a person. Based outside behavior we, according to S.L. Rubinstein, as if we are “reading” another person, deciphering his inner world, personality traits behind external manifestations. The impressions that arise from this play important role, regulating the communication process. In the course of getting to know another person, an emotional assessment of her and an attempt to understand her logic of actions and course of thinking are simultaneously carried out, and then, on the basis of this, build a strategy for your own behavior.

The practical significance of this work on a given topic lies in the fact that a detailed study of social psychology and social perception, as its aspect, allows us to better understand the mechanisms that work in the social environment.

1. The concept of social perception

Social perception is one of the main and most important aspects social life; our attempts to understand others are an integral part of our daily life and take many various forms. Two of them are the most important. First, we try to understand the feelings, moods and emotions of other people - how they feel at the moment. We often receive this information through nonverbal cues, including facial expressions, eye contact, posture, and body movements. Secondly, we are also trying to understand the deeper reasons for the behavior of other people - why they behave this way and not otherwise, we strive to understand their motives, intentions and characteristics.

The tradition of research into social perception is one of the most enduring traditions in social psychology. Within its framework, practically the entire range of problems was defined, which later began to be developed in new area psychology. The problems of social perception were especially actively developed in the 70s, although the problem existed almost from the very first years of the separation of social psychology into an independent field of knowledge, but not necessarily under this name. The term “social perception” (“social perception”) was proposed by J. Bruner within the framework of the “New Look” he developed. Soon, in social psychology, this term acquired a different meaning: it began to denote the perception of social objects, and their range was strictly limited. Social objects were called: another person, a social group, a wider social community.

The process of social perception is a complex and branched system of formation in the human mind of images of public objects as a result of such methods of people’s comprehension of each other as perception, cognition, understanding and study. The term "perception" is not the most accurate in defining the formation of an observer's idea of his interlocutor, since this is a more specific process. In social psychology, such a formulation as “cognition of another person” is sometimes used as a more precise concept to characterize the process of human perception by a person.

The specificity of a person’s cognition of another person lies in the fact that the subject and object of perception perceive not only the physical characteristics of each other, but also behavioral ones, and also in the process of interaction, judgments are formed about the intentions, abilities, emotions and thoughts of the interlocutor. In addition, an idea is created of the relationships that connect the subject and object of perception. Social perception depends on emotions, intentions, opinions, attitudes, preferences and prejudices. In social perception there is certainly an assessment of another person, and the development, depending on this assessment and the impression made by the object, of a certain attitude in the emotional and behavioral aspects. This process of one person knowing another, evaluating him and forming a certain attitude is an integral part human communication and can be conditionally called the perceptual side of communication.

There are basic functions of social perception, namely: knowledge of oneself, knowledge of a communication partner, organization joint activities based on mutual understanding and the establishment of certain emotional relationships. The process of social perception involves the relationship between the subject of perception and the object of perception.

2. Structure and mechanisms of social perception

"Identification"(from Late Latin identifico - to identify), is a process of intuitive identification, a subject’s comparison of himself with another person (group of people), in the process of interpersonal perception. The term “identification” is a way of recognizing an object of perception, in the process of assimilation to it. This is, of course, not the only way of perception, but in real situations of communication and interaction, people often use this technique, when in the process of communication, the assumption of internal psychological state partner is built on the basis of an attempt to put oneself in his place. There are many results of experimental studies of identification - as a mechanism of social perception, based on which the relationship between identification and another phenomenon similar in content - empathy - has been identified.

"Empathy"- this is understanding another person by emotionally feeling his experience. This is a way of understanding another person, based not on the real perception of the problems of another person, but on the desire for emotional and sensory support for the object of perception. The process of empathy is in general terms similar to the identification mechanism; in both cases there is the ability to put oneself in the place of another, to look at problems from his point of view. It is known that empathy is higher the more people able to imagine the same situation from the point of view different people and understand the behavior of each of these people.

"Attraction"(from Latin attrahere - to attract, attract), is considered as a special form of perception of one person by another, based on a stable positive attitude towards a person. In the process of attraction, people not only understand each other, but form certain emotional relationships among themselves. Based on various emotional assessments, a diverse range of feelings is formed: from rejection, a feeling of disgust towards this or that person, to sympathy, and even love for him. Attraction also seems to be a mechanism for the formation of sympathy between people in the process of communication. The presence of attraction in the process of interpersonal perception indicates the fact that communication is always the implementation of certain relationships (both social and interpersonal), and generally attraction is more manifested in interpersonal relationships. Psychologists have identified different levels of attraction: sympathy, friendship, love. Friendship is presented as a type of stable, interpersonal relationship, characterized by stable mutual affection of its participants.

Sympathy(from the Greek Sympatheia - attraction, internal disposition) is a stable, positive, emotional attitude of a person towards other people or groups of people, manifested in goodwill, friendliness, attention, admiration. Sympathy encourages people to have a simplified mutual understanding, to strive to get to know the interlocutor in the process of communication. Love, highest degree emotional-positive attitude, influencing the subject of perception, love displaces all other interests of the subject, and the attitude towards the object of perception is brought to the fore, the object becomes the center of attention of the subject.

Social reflection is understanding another person by thinking for him. This is the internal representation of another in the inner world of a person. Understanding what others think of me is an important aspect of social cognition. This is both knowing another through what he (as I think) thinks about me, and knowing myself through the hypothetical eyes of another. The wider the circle of communication, the more diverse ideas about how he is perceived by others, the more a person ultimately knows about himself and others. Including a partner in your inner world is the most effective source of self-knowledge in the process of communication.

Causal attribution- this is an interpretation of the behavior of an interaction partner through hypotheses about his emotions, motives, intentions, personality traits, reasons for behavior with their further attribution to this partner. Causal attribution determines social perception the more more disadvantage information about the interaction partner. The most daring and interesting theory of constructing the process of causal attribution was put forward by psychologist G. Kelly; he revealed how a person searches for reasons to explain the behavior of another person. Attribution results can become the basis for the creation of social stereotypes.

« Stereotyping." A stereotype is a stable image or psychological perception of a phenomenon or person, characteristic of members of a particular social group. Stereotyping is the perception and evaluation of another person by extending to him the characteristics of a social group. This is the process of forming an impression of a perceived person based on stereotypes developed by a group. The most common are ethnic stereotypes, in other words, images of typical representatives of a certain nation, endowed with national appearance and character traits. For example, there are stereotypical ideas about the pedantry of the British, the punctuality of the Germans, the eccentricity of the Italians, and the hard work of the Japanese. Stereotypes are tools of preliminary perception that allow a person to facilitate the process of perception, and each stereotype has its own social sphere applications. Stereotypes are actively used to evaluate a person based on social, national, or professional characteristics.

Stereotypic perception arises on the basis of insufficient experience in recognizing a person, as a result of which conclusions are drawn on the basis of limited information. A stereotype arises in relation to a person’s group affiliation, for example, according to his belonging to a profession, then the pronounced professional traits of representatives of this profession encountered in the past are considered as traits inherent in every representative of this profession (all accountants are pedantic, all politicians are charismatic). In these cases, a predisposition manifests itself to extract information from previous experience, to draw conclusions based on similarities with this experience, without paying attention to its limitations. Stereotyping in the process of social perception can lead to two different consequences: to simplify the process of one person’s knowledge of another and to the emergence of prejudice.

There are the following social-perceptual mechanisms, that is, the ways in which people understand, interpret and evaluate other people:

1. Perception appearance and behavioral reactions of the object

2. Perception of the internal appearance of an object, that is, a set of its socio-psychological characteristics. This is carried out through the mechanisms of empathy, reflection, attribution, identification and stereotyping.

Knowledge of other people also depends on the level of development of a person’s idea of himself, of his communication partner and of the group to which the individual belongs or thinks that he belongs. Knowing oneself through another is possible through comparing oneself with another individual or through reflection.

3. Stereotypes of social perception

Stereotypes are formed because we need to generalize information about the people around us: we simplify the picture of the world, making it more understandable. Problems arise when stereotypes are overgeneralized or incorrect.

Stereotypes in the perception of a person by a person, that is, strong opinions about personal qualities ah groups of people that determine attitudes towards them and behavior when interacting with representatives of these groups. Examples of stereotypes are statements such as “women are more emotional than men” or “the British are reserved and prim.”

Stereotypes can operate on both a conscious and unconscious level. For example, negative judgments towards national and racial minorities are usually socially disapproved, and stereotypes of the superiority of races and nations are not expressed at a conscious level. However, this does not mean that they have disappeared altogether. Let's say, arguing for the choice in favor of an applicant for an important position of a representative of their own nationality against a person of another nationality, those who made this choice may sincerely protest against the fact that racial preferences played a decisive role. This will not change the essence of the choice. Let us give examples of similar experiments that demonstrated the role of gender stereotypes.

The subjects were shown photographs of a “group working on research project", and asked to guess which participant contributed the most to the work. In same-sex groups, the person at the head of the table was more likely to be chosen; the same thing happened in mixed groups, where a man sat at the head of the table. However, in a group of three women and two men, where a woman sat at the head of the table, each of the men was chosen three times more often than all the women combined.

Most stereotypes are stereotypes of gender, age, race, nationality, profession, and social class. Examples are widely known and quite obvious. Stereotypes of appearance are also important for interpersonal interaction (pursed lips - evil person, bespectacled - smart, etc.). An example of an appearance stereotype that operates mainly on an unconscious level is the stereotype “beautiful means good.” It is expressed in the fact that externally more attractive people are assigned positive personal qualities, and less attractive people are assigned vices and shortcomings. The effect of this stereotype has been observed since the age of four.

The phenomenon of intragroup bias can also be conditionally attributed to stereotypes. It is expressed in a higher assessment of members of the group to which we ourselves belong, and a lower assessment of members of other groups. The concept of "group" in this case can vary over a very wide range - from residents of one house to residents of one country. The effectiveness of this stereotype is expressed even when membership in a particular group is determined by random factors (school class, fans of the same team).

What determines the formation of a particular stereotype? Of course, they are based on real differences between women and men, individuals different professions, ages, nationalities. We get information about them from own experience, from your friends and relatives, from funds mass media. However, both ourselves and other sources of information that we use are subject to various kinds of distorting phenomena that reduce the accuracy of social perception (social perception). Some of these phenomena are directly related to the formation of stereotypes; We now turn to their consideration.

How do stereotypes affect behavior and psyche? In addition to the obvious social consequences, stereotypes also have an impact on those who are subject to them. One of the main mechanisms of influence of stereotypes is the phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecy, based on the fact that stereotypes change the behavior of those who share them, which in turn influences the behavior of their communication partners towards conformity with the stereotype.

White American subjects acted out a job interview situation. Their behavior varied significantly depending on the job applicant's race: If the job applicant was black, interviewers sat further away from him, made less eye contact, ended the conversation more quickly, and made more speech errors. In the next experiment, specially trained imitators interviewed “applicants” (whites only) in a manner that resembled interviewing whites and blacks. Those who were interviewed in the same manner as blacks appeared more nervous and less focused, were more likely to be confused and confused, and were less satisfied with the impression they made on the interviewer.

Stereotypes often determine the attribution of behavior, the explanation of its causes by certain factors. Thus, the stereotype “old people become decrepit and get sick a lot” leads to the fact that both they themselves and those around them consider age to be the main cause of illnesses and infirmities of elderly people, while this could be, for example, a change in lifestyle due to retirement or worries about the death of a loved one.

Conclusion

In general, the process of social perception is complex mechanism interaction of social objects in an interpersonal context and is influenced by many factors and characteristics, such as age characteristics, perceptual effects, past experiences, and personality traits.

Thus, in this work we found out that social perception is the perception, understanding and assessment by people of social objects, primarily themselves, other people, and social groups. The perceptual side of communication includes the process of forming an image of another person, which is achieved by “reading” physical characteristics partner’s psychological properties and behavioral characteristics.

The perception of social objects is qualitatively different from the perception of the material world. This happens because, firstly, the social object is not passive and not indifferent in relation to the perceiving subject. By influencing the subject of perception, the perceived person strives to transform the idea of himself in a direction favorable for his goals.

Secondly, the attention of the subject of social perception is focused primarily not on the moments of image generation as a result of the reflection of perceived reality, but on semantic and evaluative interpretations of the perceived object, including causal ones.

Thirdly, perception social subjects characterized by greater fusion of cognitive components with emotional (affective), greater dependence on the motivational and semantic structure of the activity of the perceiving subject.

List of used literature

social perception cognition

1. Andreeva G.M. Social Psychology. Moscow: Aspect Press, 2008.

2. Bodalev A.A. Perception and understanding of man by man. -- M, 2008.

3.Dontsov A.I., Emelyanova T.P. The concept of social representations in modern psychology. - M., 2002.

5. Rubinshtein S.L. Fundamentals of general psychology - St. Petersburg: Publishing House \"Peter\", 2009 - 712 p.

6. http://www.elitarium.ru

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Mechanisms of social perception

There are six main components of social perception: observation, attribution, integration, confirmation, reflection and identification. Let's look at each component separately.

Observation

Social perception processes begin with observing people, situations, and behaviors to gather evidence to support initial impressions.

Faces - physical influence

While society teaches us not to judge others based on their physical attributes, we can't help but form opinions about people based on their hair and skin color, height, weight, clothing style, tone of voice, and more the first time we meet.

We tend to judge others by associating certain facial features with specific types personality. For example, research shows that people are perceived as stronger, more assertive and competent if they have small eyes, low eyebrows, an angled chin, wrinkled skin and a small forehead.

Situations – context of previous experiences

People can easily predict the sequences or outcomes of an event based on the extent and depth of their past experience with a similar event. The ability to anticipate the outcomes of a situation also depends heavily on a person's cultural background, as this inevitably shapes the types of experiences.

Behavior - nonverbal communication

Nonverbal communication helps people express their emotions, feelings and attitudes. The dominant form of nonverbal communication is faces. Other nonverbal cues: , eye contact, intonation. We try to “read” such signals in order to understand for ourselves what kind of person this is, how to treat him and how to behave.

Attribution

After we have observed a person and read the signals, it is time to draw conclusions to determine his internal dispositions.

Attribution theory

A significant component of social perception is attribution. Attribution is the use of information gathered through observation to understand and rationalize the reasons for one's own behavior and the behavior of others. People create attributes to understand the world around them.

Associated with this phenomenon is a fundamental one - the tendency of people to explain the actions or behavior of other people by their internal traits, and not by external circumstances. For example, if a person is poor, we tend to think that it is his own fault, although in many cases this is not the case. But what is more curious is that we explain what happens to ourselves by external factors. This attitude towards others can hinder the emergence of.

Integration

Unless harsh judgments have been made from observations of people, situations, or behavior, people integrate dispositions to form impressions.

Information integration theory

Norman H. Anderson, an American social psychologist, developed information integration theory in 1981. He argues that a person's impressions are formed by personal perceptual dispositions and a weighted average of the characteristics of the target individual.

People use themselves as a standard or frame of reference when evaluating others. These impressions formed about others may also depend on the current, temporary mood of the perceiver.

This theory is also called priming. Priming is the tendency to change your opinion or impression of a person depending on what words and images you have recently heard and perceived.

Implicit theory of personality

Implicit theory of personality is a type of model that people use to integrate different personality traits. People pay attention to a variety of cues, including visual, auditory, and verbal, to predict and understand other people's personalities to fill the gap of unknown information about a person to assist in social interactions.

Certain traits are seen as particularly influential in shaping a person's overall impression; these are called central features. Other traits have less influence on the formation of impressions and are called peripheral.

Confirmation

Once attributes are created and integrated, people form impressions that are reinforced by confirmations and self-fulfilling prophecies.

Competence as social perception

Despite the fact that people are often subjected to, they can judge correctly.

Can perceive social influence more accurately if they have sufficient experience. The more you communicate, the more you understand.
Knowledge of social perception can be improved by learning the rules of probability and logic.
People can make more accurate judgments about others when they are motivated to be unbiased and accurate.

Reflection

- this is a person’s attention to himself and to his consciousness, in particular, to the products of his own activity, as well as some kind of rethinking of them.

It seems that reflection has to do exclusively with understanding oneself, but this is not so. When we interact with another person, we develop prejudices, beliefs, impressions, and cognitive distortions in our psyche. To get rid of them and begin to perceive information more objectively, you need to learn to reflect.

For example, ask yourself questions like:

Am I treating the person well? Why? What in my experience, judgment and impression can distort my perception?
Am I treating this person badly? Why? What is inside of me that allows me to make just such a judgment?

Thanks to reflection, you can understand, for example, that you treat a person poorly because they spoiled your mood earlier. Or that you are overly idealizing your interlocutor because you just found out good news, and he was the first to meet you.

Remember that your perception can be influenced by: thinking, perceptual mechanisms, behavioral patterns, emotional responses, cognitive distortions and much more.

Identification

Identification is a partially conscious mental process likening oneself to another person or group of people. It manifests itself as a protective mechanism or adaptive process, for example, in parents, when they perceive children as an extension of their “self”.

The adaptive process is formed from childhood. We want to absorb the behavior of other people, which is absolutely normal: first we accept primitive structures, then more complex ones. Problems arise when we want to adopt character traits, values, and norms.

In our case, this is what matters: when we are dealing with a person we want to be like, we tend to idealize him, even those traits that we do not like.

Factors influencing social perception

There are two such factors: accuracy and inaccuracy.

While the pursuit of precision is laudable, it requires experimentation. Of course, this is impossible in everyday life. And inaccuracy is entirely influenced by the effects of social perception, which we will talk about now.

Effects of social perception

When in contact with another person, we tend to be subject to social perceptual effects, also called cognitive biases. These are the effects that turn out to be thinking errors, as a result of which we make inaccurate decisions and perceive a person incorrectly.

Halo effect() - when a person’s general unfavorable or favorable opinion is transferred to his unknown traits. An example is the misconception that a handsome stranger is considered worthy.
Novelty effect- a phenomenon manifested in the fact that an opinion about a familiar person is formed based on the latest information, and about a stranger - under the influence of the first impression. This can lead to a halo effect.
Primacy effect– first information about stranger is dominant: everything subsequent is evaluated under the influence of the initial one.
Presence effect- how better person masters any skill, the stronger and more effective it is in the presence of other people.
Role effect– when behavior determined by role functions is perceived as a personality trait. For example, if a boss reprimands us, we tend to think that he has a bad character.
Advance effect– disappointment from the fact that we have attributed some character traits to a person (for example, due to the halo effect), but in fact it turned out that they are not characteristic of him.
Presumption of reciprocity- a person believes that the “other” treats him the way he treats the “other.”

As we see, our perception of people is influenced by great amount factors. There is only one conclusion that can be drawn: do not rush to make a verdict - and certainly do not convince yourself that you definitely never judge people. Everyone does this to one degree or another. Therefore, be careful and first of all master the skill of reflection - this way you can ask yourself the right questions as to why you treat a person this way and not otherwise.

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The processes of social perception differ significantly from the perception of non-social objects. This difference also lies in the fact that social facilities are not passive and indifferent towards the subject of perception. In addition, social images always have semantic and evaluative interpretations. In a certain sense, perception is interpretation. But the interpretation of another person or group always depends on the previous social experience of the perceiver, on the behavior of the object of perception at the moment, on the system of value orientations of the perceiver and on many factors of both subjective and objective order..

The mechanisms of social perception are the ways in which people interpret, understand and evaluate another person. The most common mechanisms are the following: empathy, attraction, causal attribution, identification, social reflection.

1. Empathy- understanding the emotional state of another person, understanding his emotions, feelings and experiences. In many psychological sources, empathy is identified with sympathy, empathy, and sympathy. This is not entirely true, since you can understand the emotional state of another person, but not treat him with sympathy and empathy. Well understanding the views and associated feelings of other people that he does not like, a person often acts contrary to them. A student in class, annoying an unloved teacher, can perfectly understand the latter’s emotional state and use the power of his empathy against the teacher. People we call manipulators very often have well-developed empathy and use it for their own, often selfish, purposes.

Women are believed to be more empathetic than men. This is most clearly manifested in their tendency to more demonstratively express outwardly their understanding of others and empathy. Empathy can be learned. The experience of men busy with work with people - psychotherapists, psychologists, etc. - shows that as a result of training and practice they achieve a high ability for empathy and its expression. Anyone can achieve this with desire and practice.

The ability to “read” facial expressions, gestures, postures, glances, handshakes, and gait of the perceived person can be of great help in teaching empathic understanding. You should pay attention to the words he uses that reflect feelings: “unpleasant,” “insidious,” “unexpected,” etc. It is necessary to imagine as clearly as possible what we ourselves would feel in the speaker’s place in such situations.

To comprehend the true meaning of another's feelings, it is not enough to have cognitive representations. Personal experience is also necessary. That's why empathy as the ability to understand the emotional state of another person develops throughout life and may be more pronounced in older people. It is quite natural that close people have more developed empathy towards each other than people who have known each other relatively recently. People belonging to different cultures, may have little empathy towards each other. At the same time, there are people who have special insight and are able to understand the experiences of another person even if he tries to carefully hide them. There are some types of professional activities that require developed empathy, for example, medical practice, teaching, and theater. Almost any professional activity in the “person-to-person” sphere requires the development of this perception mechanism.

2. The mechanism of causal attribution associated with attributing reasons for behavior to a person. Each person has their own assumptions about why the perceived individual behaves in a certain way. Attributing certain reasons for behavior to another, the observer does this either on the basis of the similarity of his behavior with some familiar person or known image of a person, or on the basis of an analysis of his own motives assumed in a similar situation. The principle of analogy, similarity with something already familiar or the same applies here.

The mechanism of causal attribution is associated with certain aspects of the self-perception of an individual who perceives and evaluates another. So, if the subject attributed to another negative traits and the reasons for their manifestation, then he will most likely evaluate himself by contrast as a bearer of positive traits. Sometimes people with low self-esteem show excessive criticality towards others, thereby creating a certain negative subjectively perceived social background, against which, as it seems to them, they look quite decent.

3. Social perception includes reflection . As a mechanism of social perception, social reflection means the subject’s understanding of his own individual characteristics and how they manifest themselves in external behavior; awareness of how he is perceived by other people. One should not think that people are able to perceive themselves more adequately than those around them. Thus, in a situation where there is an opportunity to look at oneself from the outside - in a photograph or film, many remain very dissatisfied with the impression made by their own image. This happens because people have a somewhat distorted self-image. Distorted ideas even concern the appearance of the perceiver, not to mention the social manifestations of the internal state.

It is possible to optimize the process of reflective understanding of another person through effective listening techniques:

Clarification - turning to the speaker for clarification (“Explain again...”);

Paraphrasing - repeating the interlocutor’s thoughts in your own words (“In other words, you think that...”);

Summarizing - summing up the main thoughts of the partner (“If I summarize what you said...”);

Reflections of feelings - the desire to reflect in your own words the feelings of the speaker (“It seems to me that you feel...”).

It is always desirable to understand your partner, but it is not always useful to say it out loud. If we let's understand the person deeper than he wanted, and let's say it directly, the result may turn out to be the opposite - the person will “close down”. Sometimes understanding and remaining silent is more valuable than “getting into your soul” with your “understanding.”

4. Social perception is accompanied attraction (attraction) - a special form of knowing another person, which is based on the formation of a stable positive feeling towards him. A communication partner is understood better if the perceiver experiences sympathy, affection, a friendly or intimate-personal relationship with him.

Emotional attachment can arise on the basis of common views, interests, value orientations, or as a selective attitude towards a person’s special appearance, behavior, character traits, etc. The interesting thing is that such relationships allow you to better understand the other person. With a certain degree of convention, we can say that the more we like a person, the more we know him and the better we understand his actions (unless, of course, we are talking about pathological forms of attachment).

Attraction is also significant in business relationships. Therefore, most psychologists working in business, recommend that interpersonal communication professionals express the most positive attitude towards clients even if they do not actually like them.

However, it should be remembered that Excessive and artificial expression of joy does not so much create attraction as destroy people's trust. A friendly attitude cannot always be expressed through a smile, especially if it looks fake and too stable. Thus, a television presenter smiling for an hour and a half is unlikely to attract the sympathy of viewers.

5. A person’s perception also depends on his ability to put himself in the place of another, to identify himself with him. In this case, the process of cognition of the other will go more successfully (if there are significant grounds for appropriate identification). The process and result of such identification is called identification. Identification as a socio-psychological phenomenon is considered by modern science very often and in such different contexts that it is necessary to specifically stipulate the features of this phenomenon as a mechanism of social perception. In this aspect, identification is similar to empathy, but empathy can be considered as an emotional identification of the subject of observation, which is possible on the basis of past or present experience of similar experiences. As for identification, what happens here to a greater extent is intellectual identification, the results of which are more successful the more accurately the observer has determined the intellectual level of the one he perceives. In one of E. Poe's stories main character, a certain Dupin, in a conversation with his friend, analyzes the line of reasoning little boy, which he had been watching for some time. The conversation is precisely about one person’s understanding of another on the basis of the mechanism of intellectual identification.

“...I know an eight-year-old boy whose ability to guess correctly in the game of odd and even won him the admiration of everyone. This is very simple game: one of the players clutches several pebbles in his fist and asks the other whether he is holding an even number or an odd number. If the second player guesses correctly, then he wins the pebble, but if he guesses incorrectly, then he loses the pebble. The boy I mentioned beat all his school friends. Of course, he based his guesses on some principles, and these latter consisted only in the fact that he carefully watched his opponent and correctly assessed the degree of his cunning. For example, his obviously stupid opponent raises his fist and asks: “Even or odd?” Our student answers “odd” and loses. However, in the next attempt he wins, because he says to himself: “This fool took an even number of pebbles last time and, of course, thinks that he will cheat very well if he now takes an odd number. So I will say “odd” again!” He says “odd.” !" and wins. With a slightly smarter opponent, he would have reasoned like this: “This boy noticed that I just said “odd,” and now he will first want to change the even number of pebbles to an odd one, but he will immediately realize that this is too simple, and will leave their number the same. So I'll say "even!" He says "even!" and wins. This is the logical reasoning of a little boy whom his comrades dubbed "lucky." But, in essence, what is it? Just,” I answered, “the ability to completely identify one’s intellect with the intellect of the enemy.”

That's it, said Dupin. - And when I asked the boy how he achieves such complete identification, ensuring his constant success, he answered the following: “When I want to find out how smart, or stupid, or angry this boy is, or what he is thinking about now, I try to give my face exactly the same expression that I see in his face, and then I wait to find out what thoughts or feelings arise in me in accordance with this expression..." (According to E. Stories. - M., 1980 . -P. 334). As we can see, this passage illustrates the action of the mechanisms of identification and empathy in a boy’s knowledge of his peer in order to win the game. The identification mechanism in this case clearly prevails over empathy, which also takes place here.

The professional activities of some specialists are associated with the need for identification, such as the work of an investigator or teacher, which has been repeatedly described in legal and educational psychology. Misidentification when misjudging the intellectual level of another person can lead to negative professional results. Thus, a teacher who overestimates or underestimates the intellectual level of his students will not be able to correctly assess the connection between the students’ real and potential abilities during the learning process.

As a result of studying the chapter, the student should:

know and correctly understand the essence and main features of the functioning of social perception and mutual understanding;
be able to correctly comprehend the psychological mechanisms of manifestation of social perception and mutual understanding;
own initial skills to achieve effectiveness in the implementation of perception and mutual understanding of people.

In the process of interaction, people's perception and understanding of each other play a huge role. The results and content of their joint activities depend on how effective they are. Based on their analysis, one can make predictions about their mutual behavior.

The essence of social perception

General characteristics of social perception

Social perception(social perception) represents difficult process: a) perception of external signs of other people; b) subsequent correlation of the results obtained with their actual personal characteristics; c) interpretation and prediction on this basis of their possible actions and behavior. It always involves an assessment of another person and the formation of an attitude towards him in emotional and behavioral terms, as a result of which people build their own strategy for their activities.

Social perception involves perception interpersonal, self-perception and perception intergroup.

In a narrower sense, social perception is considered as interpersonal perception: the process of perceiving a person’s external signs, correlating them with his personal characteristics, interpreting and predicting his actions on this basis.

The social perceptual process has two sides: subjective(the subject of perception is the person who perceives) and objective(the object of perception is the person who is perceived). In interaction and communication, social perception is mutual. People perceive, interpret and evaluate each other, and the accuracy of this assessment is not always accurate.

Features social perception are:

– activity of the subject of social perception, meaning that he (individual, group, etc.) is not passive and not indifferent in relation to what is perceived, as is the case with the perception of inanimate objects. Both the object and the subject of social perception influence each other, strive to transform ideas about themselves in a favorable direction;
– integrity of the perceived showing that the attention of the subject of social perception is focused primarily not on the moments of image generation as a result of the reflection of perceived reality, but on semantic and evaluative interpretations of the object of perception;
– motivation of the subject of social perception, which indicates that the perception of social objects is characterized by a great unity of its cognitive interests with emotional relationships to what is perceived, a clear dependence of social perception on the motivational and semantic orientation of the perceiver.

Social perception usually manifests itself as:

1. Group members' perceptions.
a) each other;
b) members of another group.
2. Human perception:
- a) yourself;
- b) your group;
- c) “out-group”.
3. Group perception:
- a) your person;
- b) members of another group.
4. A group's perception of another group (or groups).

There are usually four main functions social perception:

self-knowledge, which is the initial basis for assessing other people;
knowledge of interaction partners, giving the opportunity to navigate the social environment;
establishing emotional contacts, ensuring the selection of the most reliable or preferred partners;
formation of readiness for joint activities based on mutual understanding, allowing you to achieve the greatest success.

In the course of social perception, images and ideas about oneself and partners are formed, which have their own characteristics. Firstly, their content structure corresponds to the diversity of human properties. It necessarily contains components of external appearance that are firmly associated with the characteristic psychological traits of his personality. For example: "smart eyes", " strong chin", "kind smile", etc. This is no coincidence, since the person who knows him paves the way to the inner world of his partner through behavioral signals about the states and properties of what he perceives. Constitutional signs of external appearance and the originality of its design with clothes and cosmetics play the role of standards and stereotypes socio-psychological interpretation of personality.

Secondly, another feature of these images is that mutual cognition is aimed primarily at understanding those qualities of the partner that are most significant at the moment for the participants in the interaction. Therefore, the image-idea of a partner necessarily highlights the dominant qualities of his personality.

Standards and stereotypes of mutual knowledge are formed through communication with a person’s immediate environment in those communities with which he is connected in life. First of all, this is a family and ethnic group, which have their own cultural and historical specifics of people’s activities and behavior. Along with these patterns of behavior, a person learns political-economic, social-age, emotional-aesthetic, professional and other standards and stereotypes of human knowledge by man.

Thirdly, the practical purpose of mutual representations of partners is that understanding the psychological appearance of an individual is the initial information for determining the tactics of one’s behavior in relation to the participants in the interaction. This means that the standards and stereotypes of mutual knowledge between people perform the function of regulating their interaction and communication. A positive and negative image of a partner reinforces a relationship of the same direction, removing or building psychological barriers between them. The discrepancies between mutual ideas and the partners’ self-esteem conceal the causes of psychological conflicts of a cognitive nature, which from time to time develop into conflictual relationships between interacting people (Bodalev A. A., 1995).

From the immediate image of a partner, a person, in the process of social perception, rises to knowledge about a person in general, and then returns to self-esteem. By making these circles of mutual knowledge, he clarifies information about himself and the place he can occupy in society.

Usually, a number of universal psychological mechanisms are identified that ensure the very process of perception and evaluation of another person and allow the transition from what is externally perceived to his assessment, attitude and prediction of probable behavior. This:

1) stereotyping;
2) empathy and attraction;
3) reflection;
4) causal attribution.