Perception And Personal Behavior

Personal behavior refers to the attitude, actions, and mannerism in which one conducts themselves. This behavior directly influences ones perception of both themselves and the world around them (Golden, 2011). Perception includes both the way you see things, as well as how other people see you. Therefore, people alter the way they behave in order to reflect their own personal perception, or even to be perceived in a certain way. The following paper will be about how personal behavior and perception are influenced through self-efficacy, culture, and medical practitioners. When looking at self-efficacy, one can define it as the belief that an individuals has in their own ability to produce a desired outcome as a direct results of their actions.

Doctors must be thoughtful about the self-fulfilling prophecy. This can be defined as, “positive and negative expectations [which] can evoke cognitive and behavioral processes, which in turn can make the expectation true,” (Wurm, et al., 2013, p. 1088). Since a doctor is seen as a mentor, this will influence the patient by setting them up for a positive or negative experience. Self-fulfilling prophecy is reflected in the actions of the doctor including the way they treat the patient, how they talk to them, their attitude, and much more. For example, I had a really bad experience with an anesthesiologist. I have a history of becoming severely ill under the influence of anesthetics as my mother told him this, he pretended not to care and acted as if he knew better. He always had a negative attitude ever since he walked into the room. Therefore, he took no action prevent my illness before the surgery and sure enough, as soon as I woke up I became ill and was sick for a week afterwards. This just goes to show how this particular anesthesiologist followed the self-fulfilling prophecy by treating me negatively and acting negatively, to produce an undesired outcome. Another way medical professionals impact patients is shown by the amount of time one give to see and diagnose the patient. One report shows that a primary doctor will typically allot 15 minutes per patient (Katz, 2015). If you think about it, that is not very much time. First, you have explain to them how you are feeling and then based off that the doctor must perform tests in order to properly diagnose you. This can leave you feeling abandoned. Doctors must be mindful of this and allow enough time to thoroughly talk with patients while still being able to see multiple patients in one