The mechanism of interpersonal perception. Person's perception by person. Social perception

Getting to know one person about another is always accompanied by an emotional assessment of the partner, an attempt to understand his actions, forecasting changes in his behavior and modeling his own behavior. Since at least two people participate in this process and each of them is an active subject, in building an interaction strategy, each must take into account not only the motives and needs of the other, but also his understanding of the partner’s motives and needs. The process of interpersonal perception is also called social perception.

The mechanism of interpersonal perception is the way in which a person interprets and evaluates another. There can be quite a lot of such methods. Today we will look at the basic mechanisms of interpersonal perception: identification, empathy, egocentrism, attraction, reflection, stereotype and causal attribution.

Identification

The first and main mechanism of interpersonal perception is the identification of a person by a person. From the point of view of social psychology, it confirms the fact that the simplest way to understand a partner is to liken yourself to him.

In general, identification has several interpretations:

Identification of oneself with another individual based on an emotional connection.
Assimilation of the values, roles and moral qualities of another person.
Copying another person's thoughts, feelings or actions.

The most comprehensive definition of identification is as follows. Identification is an understanding of a partner through his conscious or unconscious identification with himself, an attempt to feel his state, mood and attitude to the world, putting himself in his place.

Human gestures and postures

In the post-war years, a fairly popular area of research in social psychology was the compilation of catalogs of culturally typical gestures and postures.

Here are some examples of expressive gestures that have universal meaning in European culture:

Clasped fingers - shame, humility, humility;
One finger clamped in the palm of the other hand - self-confidence;
Various “scratching” of the head - indecisiveness, unpreparedness.

In recent years, much has been written about poses as a means of self-expression. Let us only emphasize that the best studied set of behavioral reactions (postures, gestures) expressing the attitude towards a partner according to the following parameters: avoidance - approach, openness - closedness, dominance - submission. For example, spatial communication distance indicates the closeness or formality of contacts. American anthropologist and psychologist E.

Hall developed for his culture some norms of physical distance that correspond to different types of relationships:

Intimate distance - 0 - 30 cm;
Personal distance - 30 - 120 cm;
Social distance - from 120 to 360 cm;
Public distance is 360 cm or more.

Human voice and speech

On the one hand, each person has a unique, inimitable set of characteristics of voice and speech: Intonation associated with the volume and length of sentences, characteristic pauses and interjections in speech…. On the other hand, many voice parameters carry socially significant information that helps to “decode” their owner in communication situations.

The volume of the voice reflects the degree of dominance of a person in the communication space. A subjectively loud voice is associated with personal characteristics such as self-confidence, social courage and competence.

Pauses are another indicator of confidence. The absence of pauses is often interpreted as anxiety, uncertainty in one’s words. A pause is a well-known means of controlling a conversation and manipulating a person’s state.

The pace of speech is associated with temperament (which is quite fair); less often, a sensitive observer uses it to diagnose a person’s physical condition. An important aspect of communication is matching the rate of speech of the interlocutors. By slowing down or speeding up the pace of your own speech, you can actively influence both the course of the conversation and the state of your interlocutor.

Empathy

The second mechanism of interpersonal perception is closely related to the first. Empathy is the emotional desire to respond to the problems tormenting another person, to sympathize with him and empathize.

Empathy is also interpreted as:

Comprehension of the states of another individual.
A mental process aimed at identifying the experiences of others.
An action that helps an individual build communication in a special way.
The ability to penetrate the mental state of another person.

The ability for empathy increases when the interlocutors are similar, as well as when the individual gains life experience. The higher the empathy, the more colorful a person imagines the impact of the same event on the lives of different people, and the more aware he is of the fact that there are different views on life.

An individual prone to empathy can be recognized by the following characteristics:

Tolerance for other people's emotions.
The ability to delve into the inner world of your interlocutor without revealing your worldview.
Adapting your worldview to the worldview of another person in order to achieve mutual understanding.

Types and levels of communication.

The following types of communication are distinguished:

A) Intrapersonal communication

. This is a person’s internal dialogue with himself, thinking about problems, various issues, analyzing situations, making plans, etc.

B) Interpersonal communication

. This is communication between two or more people. Includes all the variety of forms and styles of communication.

B) Social communication

. This is communication between a person and a group of people, a team, or a large audience.

— You have observed more than once that in different life situations you face different goals and your different personal qualities are revealed. Depending on the situation, you choose one or another style (level) of communication.

The following levels (styles) of communication are distinguished:

A) Primitive level

At this level of communication, the other person is assessed from the point of view of need or unnecessaryness, usefulness or uselessness. When it is “necessary” or “useful,” they come into contact with the person; when it is “unnecessary,” they do not enter into contact or rudely push him away if he interferes with the achievement of any goal. In this case, the person is actually used as a thing, since after obtaining the desired result, interest in him, as a rule, quickly disappears (when communicating with a patient, this type of communication is unacceptable).

B) Manipulative level.

This level of communication is close to primitive, since it is also aimed at obtaining some benefit from the interlocutor. At the same time, the true goal is hidden from the person in every possible way. In such communication, a wide variety of methods of psychological influence on and control of a person are actively used. For example: flattery, intimidation, showing affection, deception, “showing off”, etc.

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Forms of communication between people, expression of feelings and emotions, manifestation of friendship and love

... is the main determining factor in communication between people, representing a set of certain codes formed by the cultural baggage of a given level, facilitating or complicating communication, but always determining ...

This type of communication is also unacceptable during interaction with the patient.

C) Formal role level.

At this level of communication, each participant acts strictly in accordance with his social role and position. It actually does not take into account individual personal qualities, the inner world of a person, his problems, etc. n. This style of communication is permissible only in rare extreme conditions, when the patient needs to provide urgent assistance and there is no opportunity to study his personality.

D) Business (professional) level.

Business communication occurs among people, as a rule, in connection with their participation in a certain joint activity and has the goal of achieving a common result. Therefore, at this level of communication, the individual characteristics of the interlocutor’s personality are taken into account, but the interests of the matter prevail, and even possible differences in views or opinions, as a rule, fade into the background. This style of communication occurs quite often between people.

D) Friendly level.

This level of communication is characterized by maximum openness of people to each other, sincerity, and trust; emotional experience for another person, sympathy for his problems, as well as readiness for mutual support and mutual assistance. This level of communication is acceptable when communicating with colleagues and close friends.

E) Communication at the level of “mask contact”.

This is a level of formal communication in which the interlocutors do not have the need and desire for a deep understanding of the other person, when a set of standard socio-psychological “masks” is used: politeness, compassion, respect, rigor, etc. In this case, the “mask” means a certain set of gestures, facial expressions, words, intonations. All this allows a person, firstly, to hide his true attitude towards his interlocutor; secondly, to protect yourself from the unwanted intrusion of others into your inner world, and thirdly, if necessary, to “smooth out rough edges” in relationships between people.

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Higir. How to find out secret thoughts by gestures

... the situation would be more suitable for you with gestures of open hands and unbuttoned clothes. Gestures of preening and courtship Research conducted ... in courtship, being the main “litmus test”. Communication with a sexually attractive partner makes the pupils involuntarily... in the functioning of the entire management apparatus, the cultural level of the manager, his style of activity, which should...

G) Secular level

This level is characterized by superficiality and pointlessness. People exchange phrases, words, signs of attention in strict accordance with generally accepted rules in a given society

How empathy is similar to identification

The empathy mechanism has some similarities with the identification mechanism. In both cases, there is a person's ability to see things from another person's point of view. However, empathy, unlike identification, does not imply identifying oneself with the interlocutor. By identifying with a partner, a person accepts his behavior model and builds a similar one. By showing empathy, an individual simply takes into account the interlocutor’s line of behavior, while continuing to build his own behavior independently of him.

Empathy is considered one of the most important professional skills of a psychologist, doctor, teacher and leader. Empathic attention (listening), according to K. Rogers, is a special attitude towards a partner, based on the synthesis of identification and empathy. Inclusion in another person, allowing one to achieve openness of contact, is an identification function. Such “immersion in the interlocutor” in its pure form has negative consequences - the psychologist “gets involved” with the client’s difficulties and begins to suffer from his problems himself. This is where the empathic component comes to the rescue - the ability to distance oneself from the partner’s state. Thus, the combination of such mechanisms as person-to-person identification and empathy allows the psychologist to provide real assistance to clients.

Formation mechanism

Mechanisms:

Identification. Comparison of the subject with images that were perceived before. It is built on personal experience, which can be practical and theoretical.
Stereotyping. The image, the idea of a person, his behavior, actions is built on stereotypes.
Empathy. This mechanism is expressed in people who know how to worry about others, sympathize, and express sincere emotions regarding the problems of other people.
Attraction. The mechanism of attracting people to each other. These are friendships or love relationships between individuals who communicate frequently with each other. Gradually they become attracted and begin to work together. The attraction consists of common interests, topics, and frequent meetings.
Reflection. A mechanism of self-immersion to focus on one’s own interests, thoughts, behavior, and actions.

The mechanisms can manifest themselves singly or in complexes.

Types of empathy

Empathic experiences can be adequate and inadequate. For example, someone else’s grief causes sadness for one, and joy for another.

In addition, empathy can be:

Emotional. It is based on the mechanism of projection and imitation of the effective and motor reactions of the interlocutor.
Cognitive. Based on intellectual processes.
Predicative. Expresses a person’s ability to predict the reactions of an interlocutor in a given situation.

An important form of empathy is empathy – the experience by one individual of feelings, emotions and states experienced by another. This happens through identification with the interlocutor and sympathy for him.

Egocentrism

The third mechanism of interpersonal perception, unlike the previous two, complicates the knowledge of each other by individuals, and does not facilitate it. Egocentrism is a person’s concentration on his personal experiences and interests, which leads to the fact that he loses the ability to understand people with a different worldview.

Egocentrism happens:

Cognitive. Manifests itself in the process of thinking and perception.
Moral. Illustrates a person’s inability to understand the reasons for the behavior of others.
Communicative. Expresses disrespect for the semantic concepts of the interlocutor.

Perceptual component

It helps to correctly interpret the appearance and behavior of a person when interacting with her. Without it, our ideas about others would be superficial and ineffective.

Thanks to perception, real thoughts, ambitions, and experiences do not escape our consciousness. However, it can manifest itself fully only if a person is not hostage to stereotypes and limiting beliefs. They do not allow you to objectively analyze the interlocutor and create a certain image in your head in advance, which is often far from reality.

Psychologist Daria Milai

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It is necessary not to rush to conclusions and allow yourself to form a reliable assessment. To get a truly accurate picture of your opponent, you need to communicate with him for a long time, get as much information as possible by observing his behavior in various situations.

It's probably happened that you've met someone you knew in the past and noticed how much they've changed. It becomes possible to reject the already formed perception of his personality and accept the characteristics that he has at the moment.

Reflection

When considering the psychological mechanisms of interpersonal perception, one cannot fail to mention reflection. Reflection is a person’s awareness of how he is evaluated and perceived by other individuals. That is, this is a person’s idea of what his interlocutor thinks of him. This element of social cognition, on the one hand, means a person’s knowledge of his interlocutor through what he thinks about him, and on the other hand, knowledge of himself through this. Thus, the wider an individual's social circle, the more ideas about how others perceive him, and the more a person knows about himself and others.

Practical implementation of perception

The element in question allows a person to competently interpret the appearance and behavior of the interlocutor. Based on the information received, a person forms his own conclusion about the distinctive personality traits and motives of actions. Perception has a great influence on the effectiveness of communication. With its help, the internal state of the interlocutor is analyzed.

Social perception allows you to correctly perceive surrounding objects and establish communication with them. The effectiveness of social perception directly depends on how much a person is not influenced by stereotypes; they have a negative impact on the objective assessment of the interlocutor, the result is the formation of a distorted image in the mind.

Stereotype

This is a very important and quite capacious mechanism of interpersonal perception. A stereotype in the context of interpersonal attraction is the process of forming an opinion about a person based on personal prejudices (stereotypes).

In 1922, to denote ideas associated with inaccuracy and lies, V. Limpan introduced the term “social stereotype.” As a rule, the formation of stable patterns of any social object occurs unnoticed even by the individual himself.

There is an opinion that it is precisely because of poor meaningfulness that stereotypes are firmly entrenched in the form of stable standards and gain power over people. A stereotype arises in conditions of lack of information or is the fruit of a generalization of an individual’s own experience. The experience is often supplemented by information obtained from cinema, literature and other sources.

Thanks to a stereotype, a person can quickly and, as a rule, reliably, simplify the social environment, organize it into certain standards and categories, make it more understandable and predictable. The cognitive basis of stereotyping is formed by processes such as limitation, selection, and categorization of a large flow of social information. As for the motivational basis of this mechanism, it is formed by processes of evaluative popularization in favor of one or another group, which give a person a sense of belonging and security.

Stereotype functions:

Selection of information.
Formation and support of a positive self-image.
Creation and support of a group ideology that justifies and explains the behavior of the group.
Formation and support of a positive image of “We”.

Thus, stereotypes are regulators of social relations. Their main features are: economy of thinking, justification of one’s own behavior, satisfaction of aggressive tendencies, stability and release of group tension.

Aspects

Perception first appears at the stage of visual analysis of the communication object. Thus, physiognomy claims that there is a connection between an individual’s facial features and his psychological characteristics. Based on an assessment of the interlocutor’s appearance, the first assumptions are made regarding his inner world and behavior.

Then some emotional contact is formed. If the conversation has an unpleasant context, a negative perception of the opponent may well be formed. And vice versa.

In the process of communication, people observe their partner’s speech, facial expressions, gestures, and habits, receiving verbal and nonverbal information about his personality.

Classification of stereotypes

There are several existing classifications of stereotypes. According to V. Panferov’s classification, stereotypes are: social, anthropological, and ethnonational.

Let us dwell in more detail on A. Rean’s classification, according to which there are stereotypes:

Anthropological. They appear in the case when the assessment of a person’s psychological qualities and his personality depends on the characteristics of his appearance, that is, anthropological characteristics.
Ethnonational. They are relevant when a person’s psychological assessment is influenced by his belonging to a particular ethnic group, race or nation.
Social status. They take place if the assessment of an individual’s personal qualities occurs depending on his social status.
Social-role. In this case, personality assessment is subordinated to the social role and role functions of the individual.
Expressive and aesthetic. Psychological assessment of personality is mediated by a person’s external attractiveness.
Verbal-behavioural. The criterion for assessing a personality is its external features: facial expressions, pantomime, language, etc.

There are other classifications. In them, in addition to the previous ones, the following stereotypes are considered: professional (a generalized image of a representative of a particular profession), physiognomic (appearance traits are associated with personality), ethnic and others.

National stereotypes are considered the most studied. They illustrate people's attitudes towards certain ethnic groups. Such stereotypes often serve as part of a nation's mentality and identity, and also have a clear connection with national character.

Stereotyping, which arises in conditions of lack of information, as a mechanism of interpersonal perception, can play a conservative and even reactionary role, forming in people an incorrect idea of others and deforming the processes of interpersonal interaction and mutual understanding. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the truth or fallacy of social stereotypes purely on the basis of an analysis of specific situations.

Laws and factors

Types of factors:

external;
internal.

Internal:

Settings of personal perception. Human expectations often come down to assessing the future based on past identical situations.
Stimulation. A person’s visual examination of objects that are important to him at a certain period.
Personal experience. Allows you to perceive already studied objects.
Self-perception. Each individual perceives himself differently. Takes into account the personal characteristics that make him unique.
Character specifics. This is an individual specificity of perception, determined by the predominance of different character traits.

External factors - novelty, size, saturation, cyclicity, definability, discernibility, movement, opposition.

Causal attribution

When considering the mechanisms of social perception, one should not ignore such a fascinating phenomenon as causal attribution. Without knowing or insufficiently understanding the true motives of another individual’s behavior, people, finding themselves in conditions of information deficiency, may attribute unreliable reasons for their behavior to him. In social psychology, this phenomenon is called “causal attribution.”

By looking at how people interpret the behavior of others, scientists have discovered something called the fundamental attribution error. It occurs because people overestimate the importance of others' personality traits and underestimate the impact of the situation. Other researchers have discovered the phenomenon of “egocentric attribution.” It is based on the tendency of people to attribute success to themselves and failure to other people.

G. Kelly identified three types of attribution:

Personal. The reason is attributed to the one who performed the action.
Objective. A cause is attributed to the object upon which the action is directed.
Attribution related to circumstances. The cause of what happens is attributed to circumstances.

The observer usually resorts to personal attribution, and the participant, as a rule, attributes everything to circumstances. This feature is clearly visible in the attribution of success and failure.

An important issue in considering causal attribution is the question of the attitude that accompanies the process of perceiving a person by a person, especially in the formation of an impression of an unknown person. This was revealed by A. Bodylev through experiments in which different groups of people were shown a photo of the same person, accompanied by characteristics such as “writer”, “hero”, “criminal” and so on. When the installation was triggered, the verbal portraits of the same person were different. It was revealed that there are people who do not lend themselves to stereotypical perception. They are called selectively stereotypical. Having examined the mechanisms of social perception, let us now briefly talk about its effects.

Characteristics and features of stereotyping: how the perceptual side of communication is manifested in it

Perception is closely related to stereotypes existing in society. Their formation in the process of communication can occur under the influence of a number of circumstances:

The superiority factor. It occurs in a situation of obvious inequality between interlocutors in a certain area: in terms of financial status, social status, intellectual abilities. A person often overestimates the characteristics of those who are superior to him on a characteristic that is significant to him. Conversely, feeling our advantage, we often underestimate our opponent.
Degree of attractiveness. One way or another, our perception depends on the emotional component, in particular on sympathy or antipathy. Outwardly attractive people are seen as happier, more confident, and more successful.
Factor of attitude towards us. As a rule, individuals who treat us well are perceived favorably. Conversely, those who evaluate us negatively appear worse.

All these distortions can most often be observed when forming a first impression of a person. However, to build effective communications, it is worth remembering that stereotyping interferes with an objective analysis of personality.

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Communication barriers may also arise when transmitting information. They lead to distortion of the transmitted message and cause misunderstanding between the participants in the conversation:

use of jargon, unfamiliar words, terms;
the presence of emotional inhibitions (thoughts and feelings that are difficult or prohibited to demonstrate to another individual);
lack of interest in the subject of conversation;
differences in point of view;
physical disabilities (hearing or speech problems);
inability to analyze the behavior and state of a partner due to the characteristics of the communication channel (telephone, Internet);
linguistic or dialectical differences;
the desire to hear what one wants, and not what actually is;
differing cultural norms;
difference in worldview and worldview.

It is simply impossible to get rid of barriers when establishing communication. The spoken remark always reaches the addressee in a distorted form, passing through several levels of his internal “filtering.”

What happens is that during a conversation, the communicator encodes the text, and the recipient decodes it. That is, when wanting to convey information to the interlocutor, it is necessary to isolate its general meaning, which must be conveyed and then “encrypt” it using verbal and non-verbal symbols. When providing feedback, you can understand whether the transmitted ciphers were correctly perceived and interpreted.

To build the communication process as efficiently as possible, you need to know the context in which the dialogue is being built:

In what social event does it occur?
Is this formal or informal communication?
Is this a chance meeting or should the interaction continue in the future?
Are you included in the game format? Is the problem being discussed serious and real?

Based on the answers to these questions, you can choose the appropriate behavior style:

Humanistic. Aimed at mutual knowledge of the inner worlds of opponents, which generates empathy.
Manipulative. An attempt to impose your position on the interlocutor. The mechanism can be used in both positive and negative ways.
Ritual. Assumes the presence of actions expected within a given cultural framework.

Transactional analysis will also help to establish contact. This is a way of organizing communicative interaction based on regulating the positions of opponents. The personality of each person includes three roles: parent (talks about what needs to be done), adult (harmoniously combines desire and necessity) and child (relies solely on emotional “wanting”). To communicate effectively with people, you need to ensure that these categories coincide. Otherwise, there is a risk of not being able to correctly perceive what was said.

By understanding the context and choosing the appropriate conversational style, you can steer the conversation in the right direction.

Effects of Interpersonal Perception

The effect of interpersonal perception is always formed on the basis of stereotypes.

There are three effects in total:

Halo effect. It is expressed when one person exaggerates the homogeneity of another's personality, transferring an impression (favorable or not) of one quality onto all other qualities. During first impression formation, the halo effect occurs when an overall positive impression of a person leads to a positive evaluation of all of his qualities, and vice versa.
The primacy effect. Appears when assessing a stranger. The role of the installation in this case is played by the information that was presented earlier.
The effect of novelty. This effect of interpersonal perception operates when evaluating a familiar person, when the latest information about him becomes most significant.

Forming an idea about an interlocutor always begins with assessing and perceiving his physical appearance, appearance and demeanor. In the future, this information forms the basis for the perception and understanding of this person. It may depend on a number of factors: the individual characteristics of a person, his level of culture, his social experience, aesthetic preferences, and so on. An important issue is also the age characteristics of the person who perceives.

For example, a child who has just started going to kindergarten, when communicating with people, relies on primary ideas about them, which he formed while communicating with his parents. Depending on how the child’s relationships were previously, he shows irritability, distrust, obedience, compliance or stubbornness.

Chapter 12. SOCIAL PERCEPTION

People act and feel not in accordance with actual facts, but in accordance with their ideas about these facts. Everyone has their own specific image of the world and the people around them, and the person behaves as if these images, and not the objects they represent, are the truth.

Some images in almost all normal individuals follow the same pattern. A person imagines his Mother as virtuous and affectionate, his Father as stern but fair, his own body as strong and intact. If there is reason to think otherwise, then the very thought of this is deeply hateful to a person. He prefers to feel as before, in accordance with these universal figurative templates and regardless of their relationship to reality...

Changing your image is not easy, and the pain of this process is one of the reasons why it is avoided in every possible way. When a loved one dies, it takes considerable effort to adjust one's view of the world to the changed situation. This effort, called mourning, is very debilitating and leads to fatigue and weight loss. People in a state of grief often get up in the morning more tired than they go to bed in the evening, and feel as if they had worked hard all night. They really do a lot of hard work overnight, changing their mental images...

E. Bern.

"Introduction to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis for the Uninitiated"

The essence of social perception • Mechanisms of social perception • Personal image as a perceived and transmitted image. Effects of perception • Features of the formation of social attitudes

The concept of social perception is largely determined by the concept of image, since the essence of social perception lies in a person’s figurative perception of himself, other people and social phenomena of the surrounding world. The image as the result and form of reflection of objects and phenomena of the material world in the human mind is the most important key condition for perception. In terms of content, the image is objective to the extent that it adequately reflects reality. The image exists at the level of feelings (sensation, perception, idea) and at the level of thinking (concept, judgment, inference).

In most sources the perception

is interpreted as the process and result of a person’s perception of the phenomena of the surrounding world and himself.
Perception is associated with the conscious identification of a particular phenomenon and the interpretation of its meaning through various transformations of sensory information. Social perception
is people’s perception, understanding and assessment of social objects: other people, themselves, groups, social communities, etc.
(Psychology: Dictionary / Under the general editorship of A.V. Petrovsky, M.G. Yaroshevsky. - M., 1990). Social perception includes interpersonal perception, self-perception and intergroup perception. 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 correctness of this assessment is not always obvious.

The processes of social perception differ significantly from the perception of non-social objects. This difference lies in the fact that social objects are not passive and indifferent to the subject of perception. In addition, social images always have semantic and evaluative interpretations. In a 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 identified - 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.

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 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.

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” sphere requires the development of this perception mechanism.

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: the quality of the relationship. 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 relationships. 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 determined by 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 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, here there is a greater degree of intellectual identification, the results of which are the more successful the more accurately the observer has determined the intellectual level of the one he perceives. In one of E. Poe's stories, the main character, a certain Dupin, in a conversation with his friend, analyzes the course of reasoning of a little boy whom he had been observing 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 a very simple game: one of the players holds 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 perfectly if he now takes an odd number. So I’ll 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 your intellect with the intellect of your opponent.”

That’s it,” said Dupin. “And when I asked the boy how he achieves such complete identification, which ensures 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 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.

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.

By perceiving and interpreting the world around us 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. So. 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.

Interacting with others, each person sees a large number of people’s reactions to him. These reactions are mixed. And yet, the characteristics of a particular person predetermine certain characteristics of the reactions of others to him. In general, everyone has an idea of how the people around him generally treat him, on the basis of which part of the image of the “social self” is formed.

The subject may be quite clearly aware of exactly which of his characteristics and personal manifestations are most attractive or repulsive to people. He can also use this knowledge for certain purposes, adjusting or changing his image in the eyes of other people. The perceived and transmitted image of a person is usually called image.

So, the image of a person is his perceived and transmitted image. An image occurs when the observer receives a relatively stable impression

about another person, his observable behavior, appearance, statements, etc.
Image has two sides: subjective, i.e. the transmitted image of the person who is perceived, whose image is created, and objective, i.e. perceived by the observer. The transmitted and perceived images may not coincide. In addition, the transmitted image does not always reflect the essence of the individual. There is a so-called image credibility gap when there is the above-mentioned discrepancy. The image can be accepted or not accepted, causing a corresponding positive or negative attitude towards oneself. The main conditions for the accepted image are identified: orientation towards socially approved forms of behavior that correspond to social control, and orientation towards the middle class (as the most numerous) according to social stratification. In other words, a person in his self-manifestation must be approved by the majority, without being only a typical representative of this majority, but trying to surpass it by some criterion. If a person does something that is condemned by the demands of the majority, then even with a positive attitude from others, his image will not be accepted. If a person’s image is not perceived by others or has negative characteristics from their point of view, then the following conclusions can be drawn regarding his social self-manifestation: either he neglects generally accepted customs, or he asserts his own self,
neglecting social norms. It is no coincidence that figures for whom public popularity is important have so-called image makers - specialists who deal with the problems of formation and development of a popular image.

There are three levels of the perceived image: biological, psychological, social. The biological level involves the perception of gender, age, health, physical characteristics, constitution, and temperament. The psychological level involves the analysis of such factors as character, will, intelligence, emotional state, etc. Social - includes rumors, gossip, some information that has become known about a given person through various social sources.

Of course, in the process of perception, distortions of the perceived image are possible, which are caused not only by the subjectivity of interpretation, but also by some socio-psychological effects of perception. From this point of view, distortions are objective in nature and require certain efforts of the perceiver’s personality to overcome them. The most significant information about a person is the first and last (primacy effect)

and
the recency effect).
At the same time, if we know a person for a long time, then the most significant will be the latest information about him.
If a person is unfamiliar to us or we know him very poorly, then the first information received is the most significant. In addition, a large value produces
positive or negative
effect .
Usually this effect occurs in relation to a person about whom a general evaluative idea is formed due to a lack of information. Let’s say a teacher who came to this class for the first time, but heard very commendable reviews from other teachers about N.’s academic successes and knows that N. is an excellent student, will be predisposed to treat this student accordingly. Especially if N. is active in the first lesson. In the future, even when N. is not quite ready for the lesson, the teacher can be very loyal to her educational activities. The same can happen with students who have a negative image from teachers.

A.S. Makarenko, being the head of a colony for juvenile delinquents in the 20s, deliberately did not read the personal files of the children coming to him and did not introduce these files to the teachers of the colony. His calculation is clear: he did not want to form negative attitudes among teachers, since they, by creating expectations, enter into social control and contribute to the provocation of very specific behavior in pupils. It should be noted that A.S. Makarenko was one of the most successful social educators in the world, who, in the harsh conditions of the economic crisis and totalitarian political regime, created a unique educational system capable of providing conditions for the development and self-development of colonists.

Speaking about the various distortions of perception, it is impossible to ignore one of the most common - stereotypes.

In a broad sense, a stereotype is an excessive generalization of a phenomenon that turns into a stable belief and influences a person’s system of relationships, modes of behavior, thought processes, judgments, etc. The process of forming stereotypes is called stereotyping. Stereotyping carries not only negative phenomena. It is necessary for any person, since it includes a certain simplification of the image in stereotyped social situations and when interacting with familiar people. Stereotypes determine habits and, thus, enter into social control, predetermining human behavior in certain cases. Stereotypes help us make decisions in a typical, repeating situation and thus save mental energy, reducing reaction time and speeding up the cognition process. At the same time, stereotypical behavior prevents the adoption of new decisions. The ability to overcome interfering stereotypes is an important condition for social adaptation.

As a result of stereotyping, a social attitude

- predisposition, a person’s readiness to perceive something in a certain way and act in one way or another.
The peculiarities of the formation of social attitudes are associated with the fact that they have some stability and carry the functions of facilitation, algorithmization, cognition, as well as an instrumental function (introducing the individual to the system of norms and values of a given social environment). An installation can help to perceive the image of another person more correctly, acting on the principle of a “magnifying glass” during attraction, or it can block normal perception, obeying the principle of a “distorting mirror”. In any case, the attitude is a kind of filter of trust or distrust in relation to incoming information. One of the leading domestic researchers of social attitudes, D.N. Uznadze, believed that attitudes underlie selective activity
, and therefore are an indicator of possible directions of activity. Knowing a person's social attitudes, one can predict his actions. Changes in attitudes depend on the novelty of information, the individual characteristics of the subject, the order in which information is received and the system of attitudes that the subject already has.

Since the attitude determines the selective directions of an individual’s behavior, it regulates activity at three hierarchical levels: semantic, target and operational.

On the semantic

At the level of attitudes, they are of the most general nature and determine the relationship of the individual to objects that have personal significance for the individual.
Goals
are usually associated with specific actions and a person’s desire to complete the work he has started.
They determine the relatively stable nature of the activity. If the action is interrupted, then the motivational tension still remains, providing the person with the appropriate readiness to continue it. The effect of unfinished action was discovered by K. Levin and more thoroughly studied in the research of his student - B.V. Zeigarnik (Zeigarnik effect). At the operational
level, the attitude determines the decision-making in a specific situation. It promotes the perception and interpretation of circumstances, primarily on the basis of the past experience of the subject’s behavior in a similar situation and the corresponding prediction of the possibilities of adequate and effective behavior.

J. Godefroy identified three main stages in the formation of social attitudes in a person in the process of socialization. The first stage covers the period of childhood up to 12 years. The attitudes that develop during this period correspond to the parental models. From 12 to 20 years of age, attitudes take on a more specific form. At this stage, the formation of attitudes is associated with the assimilation of social roles. The third stage covers a period from 20 to 30 years and is characterized by the crystallization of social attitudes, the formation on their basis of a system of beliefs, which is a very stable mental new formation. By the age of 30, installations are distinguished by significant stability and fixity. It is extremely difficult to change them.

In the process of perceiving and interpreting another person, stereotypes and attitudes do not always arise, but in standard and repeated situations they are constant companions of social perception.

Questions on the topic

What is the specificity of social perception as opposed to simple perception?

What role does image play in social perception?

What mechanisms of social perception are the most common from your point of view? Which of them are most important for a teacher in his teaching activities when interacting with students?

Why is causal attribution often called the most insidious mechanism of social perception?

What are the similarities and differences between empathy and identification as mechanisms of social perception?

Is a person’s perception of himself always a social reflection?

What changes can happen to a person’s social attitudes after 30 years of age? (See chapter “Human Social Development”.)

Tasks for independent work

Based on an analysis of the content of E. Bern's idea given in the epigraph to the chapter, explain how social perception is determined by the feelings of the perceiving person? Think about how this relates to social control?

Independently formulate three definitions of social perception depending on its type. (See Social Perception in Course Concepts.)

Provide examples that illustrate the gap between a person's perceived and communicated image (the “credibility gap”). Analyze the reasons for the breakup.

Using the definition of a social attitude in the Course Concepts section, analyze the components and functions of a social attitude.

Literature

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Perception and understanding of man by man. - M., 1993.

Bodalev A.A.

Personality and communication. - M., 1995.

Godefroy J.

What is psychology. - M., 1992. - T. 2.

Dyachenko M.I., Kandybovich L.A.

Psychology: Dictionary-reference book. -Minsk, 1998.

Dyachkova E.K.

Imageology for a leader. - Novosibirsk, 1998.

Kelly G.

The process of causal attribution // Modern foreign social psychology: Texts. - M., 1984.

Krol L. P., Mikhailova L. A.

Man - orchestra: microstructure of communication - M, 1993.

Uznadze D. N.

Experimental foundations of attitude theory. — Tbilisi 1966.