Our perception is our reality.

First vs Second order Reality

• First order: question, asked (ex: are you married), physical reality of the moment 

• Second order: how we react to the first reality

Interpersonal perception is the process of making meaning from the people in our environment and our relationships with them.

Components in the perception process: Selection, organization, interpretation

Selection: several factors affect selection:

• How unusual or unexpected the stimulus is

• Frequency of exposure to the stimulus

• Intensity of the stimulus

Organization: types of organization

• Physical construct: Appearance

• Role constructs: position in society, my life, etc

• Interaction constructs: this is what I notice about another person's behavior (friendly, shy, aggressive, humorous).

• Psychological constructs: emphasizing what this person's thoughts and feelings are (this person has anxiety; they are very confident, secure, and jealous).

Interpretation: influences of interpretation

• Experience with the other person

• Knowledge of the person

• Closeness of relationship with the person

Several influences affect the accuracy of interpersonal perceptions.

• Physiological states and traits (physical; states are temporary like a sickness: traits are ongoing and always impact our bodily rhythm)

• Culture and co-culture (culture influences communication; co-cultures can influence what you notice about others)

• Social roles (depending on our roles, we view things through lenses, ex: dad takes his toddler to a sporting game).

Stereotyping is a 3 part process.

1. Identify a group we believe someone belongs to

2. Recall a generalization about people in that age group

3. Apply the generalization to that person

Selective memory bias: remembering information that supports our stereotypes but forgetting information that doesn’t

Fundamental Forces in Interpersonal Perception

• Primary effect, our first impression of someone overshadows our later impressions of the person.

• Recency effect, our most recent impression of someone is more powerful than earlier impressions.

• Perceptual set is a predisposition to perceive only what we want or expect to perceive

Seeing through rose-colored glasses/lenses: usually when we are in love, if someone tells us a lot of good things about them, celebrities and public figures, people in our life we idolize (teacher, boss, mentor, parent). 

• Positivity bias: causes us to perceive information in an overly idealistic way.

• Negativity bias: leads us to view the information in an overly pessimistic way.

• Egocentrism: inability to take another person's perspective.

Attributions are the explanations we give for our and other people's behaviors.

Attributions vary according to their:

• Locus: where is the cause of the behavior located 

  • External, outside of self or control

  • Internal characteristics, habits, 

• Stability

  • Stable: relatively permanent, not easily changed (ex: traffic at certain times of the day)

  • Unstable: kind of random, doesn't always happen (ex: car accident)

• Controllability (is stimulus or thing in your control)

  • Controllable: (ex: behavior, running late with Starbucks).

  • Uncontrollable: (ex: running late because someone hit you with their skateboard or scooter).

3 common attribution errors:

• Self-serving bias: we attribute our successes to internal causes and our failures to external causes (save face and put our best foot forward)

• Fundamental attribution error: we attribute other people's behaviors to internal causes more often than to external causes (ex: someone cuts you off on the road and we assume they are rude, but we don't know why: kids, distracted, or rude).

• Over attribution: we focus on one characteristic of a person and attribute a wide variety of behaviors to that characteristic (ex: because someone is an only child, because of astrology)