Person Perception

Definition

Person perception refers to a general tendency to form impressions of other people. Some forms of person perception occur indirectly and require inferring information about a person based on observations of behaviors or based on second-hand information. Other forms of person perception occur more directly and require little more than seeing another person. Both of these types of person perception provide a foundation from which subsequent judgments are formed and subsequent interactions are shaped.

History and Background

In social psychology, the phrase person perception has historically referred to the perception of others that leads to judgments of traits and dispositions. Given that Bill kicked a dog, what kind of impression is an observer likely to form? Much of the early research investigating such impressions had roots in attribution theory. Fritz Heider proposed that people can attribute the behaviors of others to factors that are internal (personality, dispositions, etc.) or external (situational constraints), but that people are prone to make internal attributions. These basic observations affected decades of research and provided an important foundation for two related theories, in particular. Harold Kelley's covariation model, for example, described how people discern the attitudes of others based on simple factors surrounding observed behaviors. Similarly, Edward E. Jones and Keith Davis's theory of correspondent inferences described why people infer that behaviors reveal personality. Thus, the early research in this area investigated when and how people infer traits from behaviors.

Indirect Person Perception

Many of the personal attributes that observers may want to know about another person (e.g., whether the person is loyal, honest, or contemptible) are not directly observable. Instead, these attributes or traits must be discerned—either from observing the person's actions (actually watching the person behave in a loyal or honest manner) or from interpreting information provided by a third party (e.g., what a roommate conveys [Page 663]about Jill or what the experimenter reveals). In each case, the general perception of a person is the product of inference, and the attribution theories that were proposed a half a century ago remain valid in understanding how such perceptions occur.

Observers watch what people do, and they make judgments about others based on those observations. When a psychology professor is seen responding to an upset student in a dismissive way, for example, one may infer that this occurred because of some aspect of the professor's disposition or because of unfortunate circumstances of the interaction. Classic studies in social psychology attempted to bring similar scenarios into the laboratory. Participants in these studies judged the attitude of a hypothetical person who was described in a vignette as advocating an unpopular political position. Sometimes this action was described to have been voluntary; other times, this action was described to have been compelled (e.g., an experimenter asked the person to advocate a specific position). Across all such studies, participants reported that the target's behavior revealed his or her true attitude, even when that behavior had been coerced by the situation. Thus, observers tend to assume that behaviors convey attitudes and dispositions, and this occurs even when compelling situational grounds for that behavior are present. When perceiving the dismissive professor, therefore, observers are apt to conclude that the professor is callous, and not that the response was compelled by the situation (e.g., the next class that was already streaming into the classroom). These perceptions are called correspondent inferences, and the tendency to attribute actions to dispositional factors has been called the correspondence bias and the fundamental attribution error.

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