Social perception: the complex art of inferring things about others

Fact Checked

Under review

What do others think about you? How good are we at answering this question? In this article we want to address a concept as important as social perception.

Much of what you believe about others is not true. What’s more, there are those who consider themselves a true Sherlock Holmes of social perception, however, they fail in every inference and reading of other people’s behavior. And we fail because in real life Nothing is as complex as trying to understand people and get an image of what they can be like..

At some point we have all tried to explain those moments in which we see someone act in a unique way. If we observe someone crying at a subway stop, for example, we assume that she is suffering from lovesickness. The worried woman talking on the phone inside her car has that expression because, surely, her son has given her bad news…

We could give a thousand examples of those imaginative interpretations that our mind makes about many of the situations we encounter in our daily lives. And in almost 80% of cases we will have been wrong. We don’t say it, science says it. It’s more, Something that a study also reveals to us is that most of us make inaccurate assumptions about how others see us..

The fact that we take many things to be true does not mean that they really are. Each of us constructs our truths through social perception and this can sometimes lead us to useless suffering and reinforce notable prejudices and stereotypes.

Social perception defines those mental processes that allow us to make inferences and impressions about other people.. They are the considerations and interpretations we make when witnessing their behaviors, appearances, verbal and non-verbal language.

Read Also: Coloring mandalas: the ritual to rediscover yourself in the midst of calm

Psychological research on this topic began in the late 1950s thanks to the work of Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider. Being a leading figure in the Gestalt school, he published a work titled The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships that laid the foundation for how we evaluate others.

Later, Solomon Asch was also a pioneer in explaining to us how we construct those first impressions we make when meeting someone. According to him, we look at some central traits (appearance) and from there we deduce other peripheral traits (personality).

Likewise, he also told us that Social perception is not a reflection of reality, but for people it is our truth. And that, of course, can sometimes be problematic.

The lens through which you perceive the world is warped

Social perception acts as a lens through which we view reality. But we must be careful because it is deformed; It is not an exact reflection, and yet we do not realize it. The truth is that we look at the world and people through poorly graduated glasses.

Why are they poorly graduated? The problem is that we analyze the world through factors such as emotions, preconceived ideas, education, genetic predispositions, prejudices, stereotypes and endless more cognitive distortions. Daniel Kahneman, the well-known psychologist who received the Nobel Prize in economics, is an expert on all these distorting factors.

All of us use dozens of cognitive biases, which create a subjective social reality that bears no resemblance to objective social reality.. Now, more than one may wonder how important it is to live installed in “our own reality.”. Don’t we have the right to draw our own conclusions and live by them?

Be careful, because social perception can cause us to make inferences loaded with prejudices. Likewise, this psychological construct is what also causes people to have radical perceptions about things and find it difficult to reach agreements. Finally, We can accept interpretations about ourselves that completely limit our potential and well-being..

One of the greatest challenges that human beings have is to ensure that their social perceptions are as close to reality as possible. Only in this way would we shape a more respectful society, free of quick and dangerous judgments.

The way we think we are perceived and useless suffering

For some the earth is flat. For others, having a certain skin color is dangerous. There are those who view those who wear tattoos with fear and some fully trust in the goodness of human beings. Social perception causes each person to have a preferred reality and position themselves in it as the settler who conquers their plot of moral and ideological land to live in it.

Read Also: Loyalty is more powerful than blood to become family

However, Social perception also relates to how you believe others see you. And this can sometimes be stormy. People make constant evaluations about how those around us may be perceiving us. Did you like it? Did I seem interesting or ignorant to you? Insecure or determined, boring or witty?

Research work, such as those carried out jointly by the universities of Harvard, Cornell, Essex and Yale, revealed something very interesting to us. There is one piece of information that experts already knew: We tend to underestimate the impact we create on others. This study supports this because after a conversation with a stranger, we tend to believe that we have not made a good impression. It’s a mistake.

It is obvious that not everyone can like us. However, Our social perception of the impression we generate on others is “almost” always neutral or negative. This is called the liking gap. However, the truth is that we like each other more than we think.

Let’s stop doubting our worth or impact on those around us so much, because It is easier to like than to dislike. We also have an ill-adjusted lens to look at ourselves and this acts almost like a baseball bat hitting our own self-esteem. Let’s avoid it.

It is time to shape a social perception closer to reality to suffer less and also to avoid falling into something as dangerous as quick judgments, stereotypes and prejudices.