Assimilation Processes

Many psychological terms have meanings similar to how those terms are used in everyday language. Such is the case with assimilation, which a plain old English dictionary defines as to absorb, digest, and integrate (usually into a culture), making disparate people/items similar. Its use in social psychology (across separate content domains) is similar; assimilation means that when a person observes and interprets other people, groups of others, or even the self, a variety of things are observed, and one of those observed items will draw to it, or absorb, the others, thus shaping and molding the meaning of the others.

The term was first used in social psychology by Fritz Heider in 1944 when describing interpersonal perception. When judging a person's behavior (trying to interpret what one has observed the person do), knowledge of that person's personality matters greatly. The personality colors one's interpretation of that person's behavior (so that it is absorbed by it). For example, when you observe a person cut ahead in a line, you may describe that behavior as “rude” if you know the person to be a rude type, but as “efficient” if you know that person to be a perpetually late type. The same exact act has two different meanings when assimilated by two different personality traits. Similarly, assimilation can happen in the reverse direction, when trying to infer what a person's personality is like based on a behavior one has observed. The behavior strongly guides one's inference about what the person is like. A cruel act will assimilate toward it the inference that the person is cruel as well. One's impressions of people are assimilated toward their action.

Research over the past 30 years has shown that it is not only a known personality trait that can assimilate. Indeed, any trait that one has recently been exposed to can shape how he or she sees a person. Witnessing a person acting mean toward a dog while on your way to the store may momentarily trigger or prime the concept “mean” in your mind without your even realizing it consciously. Once triggered, it now has the power to assimilate toward it any relevant new behavior you observe. Thus, once entering the store, the next person you encounter may be seen by you as mean if he or she acts in a way that is even moderately unfriendly. What is important about the act of assimilation here is that (a) you would never have inferred the person to be unfriendly if “mean” had not been triggered before, and (b) it occurs without your realizing it has an impact or that you were even thinking about the quality “mean.” Importantly, this is how stereotypes operate. Detecting a person's group membership (such as “woman”) will trigger stereotypes (such as women are emotional), even without your knowing it. This can then lead you to assimilate that person's behavior toward this trait so that the woman is actually seen by you as emotional even if she has provided no real evidence. Assimilation provides for people the evidence by absorbing the behavior and coloring how it is seen.

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