Person Perception

By
Dr. Khusboo
Assistant Professor
What is Person Perception?
 Person perception is the study of the cognitive processes involved in categorizing people and
their behavior, forming inferences about their qualities and the causes for their action, arriving
at attributions that explain behavior, and making predictions about what people are like and
likely to do.
 Simply put, Person Perception relates to how we form impressions of other people.
How is it formed?
 Person perception is a very subjective process that can be affected by a number of variables.
Factors that can influence the impressions you form of other people include the characteristics
of the person you are observing, the context of the situation, your own personal traits, and
your past experiences.
 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.
Gestalt Theory of Impression
Formation
 The first impression we make of a person can be significant because it has a strong influence
on behavior towards someone. Psychologist Solomon Asch “proposed two contrasting models
of impression formation: the “elementaristic” model and a gestalt view”.
 The elementaristic approach is the belief that an impression is formed by the summation of
separate pieces of information.
 The basis of gestalt psychology is the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Thus, separate elements are not summed up, but they interact, influencing each other. For,
instance, it has been found that adding one positive trait to a person’s description leads to a
more positive impression, and the same happens with negative traits (Hauser & Schwarz,
2018).
 Thus, there are more influential “central” and less significant “peripheral” traits. Nevertheless,
recently a third theory has been developed, which can be called a refined version of the gestalt
model. According to this theory, certain elements take on more or less weight, depending on
the context of the interaction, thus, many factors influence impression formation (Singh,
2020).
 The main difference between Gestalt theory and its refined version is the way of forming a
complete impression.
 The first assumes that traits are first summed up and then interpreted as a whole. According to
the second, on the contrary, each trait is interpreted depending on the context and then added
to the interpretation of the remaining characteristics.
 For example, if the person is described as attractive, sincere, honest, armed, and dangerous,
the last two elements are likely to be more influential (Singh, 2020).
 In this way, the disadvantage of Gestalt theory is that it does not take into account the context
of the interaction, which can change the value of traits.
Shortcuts used
 One of the mental shortcuts used in person perception is social categorization. In this process,
one 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. Some of the most common social categories are age,
gender, occupation, and race.
 As with many mental shortcuts, social categorization has both positive and negative aspects.
Social categorization allows one to make rapid judgments. Realistically, an individual simply
does not have time to get to know every person they come into contact with. Using social
categorization allows them to make decisions and establish expectations of how people will
behave quickly, allowing them to focus on other things.
 Problems with this technique include the fact that it can lead to errors, as well as to
stereotyping or even prejudice.5 Imagine that you are getting on a bus. There are only two
seats available. One is next to a petite, elderly woman; the other is next to a burly, grim-faced
man. Based on your immediate impression, you sit next to the elderly woman, who
unfortunately turns out to be quite skilled at picking pockets.
Implicit Personality Theory
 Implicit personality theory refer to individuals’ notions about what
personality characteristics tend to co-occur in people. It describes
how individuals think of individual traits as relating to and occurring
with each other.
 For example, someone may associate sternness with coldness or
humor with intelligence. Or someone may want to correlate warmth
with generosity, or a sense of humor with intelligence.
 Once we know something about a cardinal trait, we assume that the
person also exhibits other traits that are commonly linked to that key
characteristic.
 For example, if you observe that a new co-worker is very happy, you
might immediately assume that they are also friendly, kind, and
generous.
Person Perception and Self Perception
 Perception of self is the same process as perception of others, just turned on
oneself. We sense information about ourselves, either through self-appraisal or
from the feedback from others. We use this information to create our self-
image, a list of our traits and characteristics.
 Self-perception is the process of observing and interpreting one’s own
behaviors, thoughts, and feelings, and using those observations and
interpretations to define oneself. It is thought that since we cannot know
certain things about ourselves for certain, we look to our own behaviors to tell
us what our beliefs and attitudes are.
 For example, many people have difficulty identifying what exactly they are
feeling in any given situation. Lacking that self-awareness, they might try to
infer their emotional state from their actions. For example, if a friend tells me
that she was recently promoted, I might notice that I make excuses to leave the
room or avoid interacting with her. While I don’t know that I am jealous of her
success, I might reasonably infer from my avoidant behaviors that I’m
experiencing some kind of negative feeling toward her.
Thank you.