Person Perception

Person Perception

The mental processes we use to form judgements and draw conclusions about the characteristics and motives of other people are called person perception. If you break it down a person is a human and perception is the process of integrating or organizing and interpreting sensations. This, in short, means that person perception is the clues we draw to judge another person. It is forming impressions on someone without getting to know them first. Person perception is an active and subjective process that always occurs in some interpersonal context. Every interpersonal context has three key components; they are as follows:

1. The characteristics of the individuals you are attempting to "size up".

2. Your own characteristics as the perceiver.

3. The specific situation in which the process occurs.

Each component influences the conclusions you reach about other people. As a psychological process, person perception follows some basic principals. All the principals will be illustrated with a classroom scenario.

1. Your reactions to others are determined by your perception of them, not by who they really are. You treat others according to how you perceive them to be. For example, when you walk into the classroom on the first day of school, you almost instantly start to form a judgment about everyone. There are three seats left you quickly decide not to sit next to the big, burly man with a scowl on his face, and the ugly little man who is talking to himself. Why, because you perceived them to be potentially threatening, but the truth maybe that the man with the scowl on his face is a florist that is very tired and is getting home too late. As for the other guy, he could be talking in to a recorde...

... middle of paper ...

...he current study explored projection in close relationships of cohabiting partners. In one study, structural equation modeling revealed significant components of projection when spouses reported the depressive symptoms of their partners. In another study the same analysis was expanded to include spouses' reports on a variety of effective states, attitudes and the behavior of their partners. It was demonstrated that the degree of projection increased with the increase of magnitude of the correlation between the self-views of the spouses. A cognitive process that accounts for this finding is proposed, along with a view of projection as a heuristic device rather that a bias. I believe this to be true and I think that we should continue to study person perception. It is very interesting to me to read about how and why we choose to be friends with different people.