Social perception

 Social perception is defined as the study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people. In order to know about other people, we depend on information gained from their physical appearance, and verbal and nonverbal communication. Missing information's are filled in by using an implicit personality theory: If a person is observed to have one particular trait, we assume that he or she has other traits related to this observed one. These assumptions help us to categorize people and then infer additional facts and predict behavior. An implicit personality theory is a type of schema people use to group various kinds of personality traits together. Like other schemas, using these theories help us form well-developed impressions of other people quickly. Social perceptions are also interlinked with self-perceptions. Both are influenced by self-motives. Society has the desire to achieve beneficial outcomes for the self and to maintain a positive self-image. Just as you prejudge the people you come across in society, you are being judged by them. As it is natural for humans to want to make a good impression on people, your self-perception's almost mirror other's social perceptions. 37 According to David Krech and Richard S. 

Crutchfield there are two major determinants of perception, structural factors and functional factors. By structural factors we mean those factors driving solely from the nature of the physical stimuli and the natural effects they evoke in the nervous system of the individual. Thus, for the Gestalt psychologist, perceptual organizations are determined primarily by the psychological events occurring in the nervous system of the individual in direct reaction to the stimulation by the physical objects. Sensory factors are independent of the perceiving individual’s needs and personality. The functional factors of perceptual organization are those, which derive primarily from the needs, moods, past experience and memory of the individual. All functional factors in perception are social in the usual sense of the term. Social perception is one important component of social competence and successful social life. Being competent in social perception includes three domains of competence: 

(1) knowing that other people have thoughts, beliefs, emotions, intentions, desires, and the like, 

(2) being able to “read” other people’s inner states based on their words, behavior, facial expression and the like, and 

(3) adjusting one’s actions based on those “readings”. That is, a socially competent person can make note of other people’s facial expressions, tone of voice, posture, gestures, words, and the like, and on the basis of these clues, make reasonably accurate judgments about that person’s state of mind, emotions, and intentions. Socially competent people then use these inferences about other people’s inner states to make good decisions about how to behave socially. Thus socially competent people must have knowledge of social rules, roles, routines, and scripts in their social lives. Furthermore, they must make use of this knowledge and of these scripts in their decision making and acting. They also have a concern for other people and make it a habit to adjust their behavior based on the needs of others. Finally, they have the confidence needed to interact socially and accept the vulnerability associated with potential rejection. Researchers have confirmed the fact that first impressions are important. Studies show that first impressions are easily formed, difficult to change, and have a long-lasting influence. Rather than absorbing each piece of new information about an individual in a vacuum, it is common for people to invoke a preexisting prototype or schema based on some aspect of the person, modifying it with specific information about the particular 38 individual to arrive at an overall first impression. One term for this process is schema-plus-correction. It can be dangerous because it allows people to infer many things from a very limited amount of information, which partially explains why first impressions are often wrong. If there is no special reason to think negatively about a person, one's first impression of that person will normally be positive, as people tend to give others the benefit of doubt. However, people are especially attentive to negative factors, and if these are present, they will outweigh the positive ones in generating impressions. One reason first impressions are so indelible is that people have a tendency to interpret new information about a person in a light that will reinforce their first impression. They also tend to remember the first impression, or overall schema, better than any subsequent corrections. Thus if a person whom one thinks of as competent makes a mistake, it will tend to be overlooked and eventually forgotten, and the original impression is the one that will prevail. Conversely, one will tend to forget or undervalue good work performed by someone initially judged to be incompetent. In addition, people often treat each other in ways that tend to elicit behavior that conforms to their impressions of each other. 

Stereotypes : Stereotypes are beliefs about people based on their membership in a particular group. Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral. Stereotypes based on gender, ethnicity, or occupation are common in many societies. Stereotypes have several important functions: 

1.They allow people to quickly process new information about an event or person. 

2.. They organize people’s past experiences. 

3.. They help people to meaningfully assess differences between individuals and groups. 

4.   They help people to make predictions about other people’s behavior. Nevertheless stereotypes can lead to distortions of reality for several reasons: 

5.a. They cause people to exaggerate differences among groups. 

6.b. They lead people to focus selectively on information that agrees with the stereotype and ignore information that disagrees with it. 

7.c. They tend to make people see other groups as overly homogenous, even though people can easily see that the groups they belong to are heterogeneous. One way to simplify things is to organize people into groups. For each group, we have a stereotype, a fixed set of characteristics we tend to attribute to all group members. Stereotypes enable us to make quick judgments, but these are often wrong. 

Gender stereotypes : Males are considered more independent, dominant, aggressive, scientific, and stable in handling crises. Females are seen as more emotional, sensitive, gentle, helpful, and patient. Evolutionary psychologists have speculated that humans evolved the tendency to stereotype because it gave their ancestors an adaptive advantage. Being able to decide quickly which group a person belonged to may have had survival value, since this enabled people to distinguish between friends and enemies. Some evolutionary psychologists believe that xenophobia, the fear of strangers or people different from oneself, has genetic roots. They argue that humans are to some extent programmed by their genes to respond positively to genetically similar people and negatively to genetically different people. Now communication is a vital part of human life. It is what allows us to share thoughts, feelings, wonderings, and knowledge with others and also shapes our social perceptions to a great extent. Though we use both verbal and nonverbal communication, the vast majority of communication we do is through nonverbal channels. The next section deals with nonverbal communication in detail.