Social Relations Model

Definition

The social relations model is a theoretical and statistical approach to studying how people perceive others. Although investigations of person perception have a long history in social psychology, early methodological approaches relied on research participants reporting their perceptions of fictitious others who were described in brief stories. The social relations model allows researchers to move beyond such vignette studies and address a variety of questions related to interpersonal perception while studying real people engaged in real social interactions.

Background and History

Perceptions of other people are fundamental components of social interactions and, therefore, have a prominent place in social psychology. A person must perceive other people's traits accurately so that he or she can predict how they will behave. If you correctly perceive that someone is friendly, then you can probably expect that person to help you. What is more, people should also value knowing what other people think of them. For example, knowing that someone doesn't like you might be useful so that you can avoid interactions with that person. Such beliefs about how others perceive one's self are termed metaperceptions. Because person perception is so basic to social interaction, researchers have conducted many studies to learn how people form perceptions (Is John seen as friendly?), the attributions people make following perceptions (Why is John seen as friendly?), and the relative accuracy or inaccuracy of perceptions (Is John really friendly?).

Many of the early person perception studies, however, relied on vignettes, or stories, about imaginary other people. So, for example, a research participant might be given a paragraph that purportedly describes another student. After reading the paragraph, the participant would be asked to report his or her perceptions of the student in the story. Using such an approach makes person perception akin to object perception. That is, the target person becomes static and noninteractive, no different than perceptions about a chair or book. The vignette method has a clear advantage in that the researcher can control and manipulate the information that participants receive about the target person. Yet [Page 919]relying on written descriptions of another person removes much of the richness of real social interactions. Some researchers have improved the vignette approach by using videotapes of a person's behavior, which allows for a more vivid portrayal of the target person. Regardless of whether the vignette is presented as written or videotaped, participants in these studies know that the perceptual process is a one-way street. That is, although participants can make perceptions of the person in the vignette, the fictitious character cannot make a perception of the participant. Therefore, it would be unrealistic to ask participants to report on metaperceptions in such circumstances.

To further enhance the vignette method, some researchers have used assistants (called confederates) to pretend as if they are participants and engage the real participant in a seemingly authentic social interaction. Thus, participants believe that they are having an active, spontaneous interaction with another person. Under these conditions, participants should be able to report both perceptions and metaperceptions. Yet even a confederate approach to person perception is limited because the research assistant is generally required to play a prespecified role and use scripted responses. Thus, regardless of the specific approach described earlier, the researcher is not able to study the real giveand-take of an unscripted social interaction.

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