What Is the Connection Between Culture and Perception?

Social perception includes interpersonal perception and self-perception. Interpersonal awareness refers to the perception of the relationship between people, including understanding of people's external characteristics, personality characteristics, judgment and understanding of human behavior. This consciousness occurs mainly in interpersonal communication, and various communication behaviors are the objects of perception. Communicative behavior refers to the words, attitudes, and actions that people contact and exchange with each other in communication, including etiquette, conversation, expressions, assistance, violations, and other behaviors.

Interpersonal perception is mainly the understanding of the relationship between people and society.

Perception is the reaction of the human brain to the whole of things when objective things directly affect human senses. Perception, like sensation, is a direct reflection of objective things acting on the senses, but it is not a reflection of the individual attributes of things, but an overall reflection of the various attributes and parts of things. In the process of knowing objective things, people first get the feeling of the individual attributes of objective things. When the feelings accumulate and organically integrate into one to form a reflection of the whole thing, they reach consciousness. Generally speaking, the richer the attributes of things you feel, the more complete your perception. Therefore, perception is the foundation of perception, and perception is the depth of perception.

The main characteristic of interpersonal perception is that there are obvious emotional factors involved in the perception process, that is, people not only perceive each other, but also form a certain attitude with each other. Based on this attitude, it can lead to a variety of emotions. For example, love some people, sympathize with some people, and dislike others. The emotions generated in the process of interpersonal perception are determined by a variety of factors, such as how close people are to each other, how frequently they interact with each other, and how similar they are to each other, all will greatly affect the emotions in interpersonal perception. Generally speaking, the closer people are to each other, the more frequently they interact, and the more similarities they have, the easier it is to have friendship, sympathy, and affection. ^[1]

When knowing others, there are many factors that affect our judgment. The main psychological factors affecting interpersonal perception are:

Personal perception, understanding and evaluation of others, also known as interpersonal perception, is the basic content of social perception research. Interpersonal perception research examines the processes and ways in which perceptual subjects process information about others, as well as the main factors affecting interpersonal perception.

Schematic processing

Contemporary cognitive psychology believes that perception of objects and events is not a simple replica of external stimuli. Some of these factors are noticed and some are ignored. The memory of objects and events is not a simple copy of the original perception, but a simplified, organized reconstruction of the original perception. This memory structure is called a schema. The process of searching the memory for the schema that best matches the input of sensory information is called schema processing. Schemata and schema processing allow people to organize and process large amounts of information more efficiently. One does not have to perceive and remember the full details of each new object and event, but only to code and remember its outstanding features, to find out which pattern it has previously remembered. Schematic processing is usually performed quickly and automatically, and it is not even noticeable what information processing is in progress. This perception concept is very suitable for social psychology. In fact, social psychology has already used some schema-like concepts, such as stereotypes, values, and latent personality theory.

People form many patterns of people and events in daily life. When someone tells you that you will meet an extraverted person, you will immediately extract an extraverted type of figure and expect to see what kind of person you will see. The schema of an extrovert is composed of a set of intrinsically connected attributes, such as good communication, enthusiasm, impulse, and loud speech. This pattern of people is called a prototype. Archetype refers to the most typical representative of a category. When we have a better understanding of a person, we replace the more general one with a more specific one. Some psychologists divide the prototype into three levels. Under the general concept of extraverted people (superordinate level), comedians and social people (basic level) can be imagined. Under the concept of comedic people, they can be distinguished Circus clowns, comedians, jokers in daily life (subordinate level). The most commonly used level is the ability to make a clear division between concepts and the richest content. Generally speaking, the concept of basic level is more commonly used.

In addition to prototypes, we also have schemas for various events. This schema is called a script, which is a program that performs typical activities in typical situations. When we were invited to a birthday party, we had a picture of a birthday party in our heads. This abstract schema helps us anticipate what will happen and what action to take.

Schema processing can accelerate the cognitive process, but it is also prone to distortion and bias, because schema is a simplification of reality and has no one-to-one relationship with reality stimulation. Schema-related information is valued, and irrelevant information is ignored. This is a manifestation of the exchange of speed and accuracy usually found in information processing. Stereotypes are a special case of schemata.

Latent personality theory. Everyone has formed a latent personality theory in their past experience, that is, a latent idea about the relationship between various traits. The so-called potential means that it is not formally expressed, but it affects the judgment of people. Some people tend to put friendliness and cleverness together instead of cleverness and egoism. This is a latent personality theory. It is a simple view of people, by which information is simplified and organized. This view may be right or wrong. People also tend to think that the behavior of others is consistent, try to use certain stable characteristics to explain the constancy of others' behavior, and ignore the variability of behavior. The theory of latent personality may have certain commonness and variability within a certain culture. ^[3]

Core traits

Various traits are important in forming an impression. SE Ash calls the most influential traits the core traits. He used seven adjectives to describe a person: smart, skilled, hard-working, enthusiastic (or indifferent), determined, hard-working, cautious. If it includes enthusiasm, most people describe the person as generous, happy, and humane; if it includes indifference, the person is mainly described as not generous, unhappy, and inhuman. It can be seen that enthusiasm or indifference is the core trait. If you use elegance or bluntness instead of enthusiasm or indifference, the impression you get is not much different. It can be seen that elegance or rigidity is not a core trait.

Further research shows that the core nature of core traits depends on other information and the nature of the judgments made. If other traits are close to the core trait, the role of the core trait is weakened, and if the judgment is about motor skills, then enthusiasm or apathy does not have a special impact.

Background effect. The effect of context on interpersonal perception is that the effect of a new trait on general impressions depends on other existing traits. Wisdom is generally a good trait. It plays a good trait on the background of other good traits such as passion and care, but it does not play a good trait on other bad traits such as a cold and ruthless background. Intelligence is a trait that can be threatening and destructive in cold and ruthless people, while it can be sympathetic and far-sighted in passionate people. ^[4]

Halo effect

Similar to background effect. Most people's judgments of others are originally based on good and bad. When a person is considered good, he is shrouded in a positive aura, and thus given other good qualities. If he is considered bad, he is shrouded in a negative aura and consequently given other bad qualities. This latter effect is also called the devil effect. A person's evaluation of others is often affected by his overall impression of the person being evaluated. The more obscure the trait being evaluated, the more difficult it is to measure, and the more obvious this effect becomes.

Because the halo effect is not conducive to evaluation, psychologists using evaluation scales have come up with some ways to overcome it, such as using one trait and one trait to evaluate the appraiser, making the appraiser's knowledge equal and training the appraiser. ^[5]

First and lasting effects

The principle proposed in the study of general psychological memory, this principle also plays a role in the formation of impressions. It shows that the order in which information is entered has a significant impact on impression formation. The information received first has the most effect, and the information received last has a greater effect. The former is called the causal effect, and the latter is called the proximate effect. These two effects may seem contradictory, but they are not. One of the two effects is detrimental to the intermediate information, and the second is the causal effect. The proximate effect is temporary unless the last received information is completely integrated.

In daily life, people want to make a good impression on the first date, because the first impression is generally considered very important. Social psychologist A. Ruschens conducted the following experiment: He wrote two short essays describing the daily activities of a boy. In the first passage he is described as an extrovert, and in another passage he is described as an introvert. Rushes combined the two essays, in order: first paragraph, then second paragraph, or second paragraph, then first paragraph. Participants were asked to assess the boy's trait type after reading. The results confirm the primary cause effect. When paragraph 1 came first, the subject rated the boy as an extrovert. When paragraph 2 came first, the subject rated the boy as an introvert. However, if some other activity is inserted between the two descriptions, the more recent information has a greater effect, and the causal effect appears. Suppose you met someone at a party last month, and the impression on you was not good, but you met him again this week, but this time the impression on you is good, then your impression of him May be good. If you put all the information about them together, the recency effect may disappear.

There are several explanations for this order effect: one interpretation is the assimilation theory, which considers that the original impression formed by the first received information constitutes core knowledge, and other subsequent information is integrated into this core knowledge; Attention-based, it is believed that previously received information receives more attention, while later information is easily ignored, or at least processed less. ^[3]

Information integration theory

It is believed that people assign two parameters to each piece of information they process: weight and value. Right is an individual's subjective belief in the authenticity of information, that is, the credibility of the information. Value is an individual's subjective evaluation of information, from extreme positive to extreme negative. The combination of power and value determines the relative importance that an individual gives to a piece of information. This importance can be expressed mathematically as:

Interpersonal perception

Interpersonal perception

The formula shows that the importance of a piece of information is equal to the product of the weight and value of the information.

Impression formation is often the result of the combined action of multiple types of information. The two representatives of information integration theory have put forward different views on how people integrate this variety of information. Anderson advocates averaging, and M. Fishbein advocates addition. The addition method considers that the formation of the impression is the result of the addition of various information, which is expressed as a mathematical formula as follows:

Interpersonal perception

The formula states that impression formation is the sum of the importance of various messages.

According to the averaging method, impression formation is the average value of various information, which is expressed by mathematical formula as follows:

The formula shows that impression formation is the average of the importance of various pieces of information.

According to the addition method and the average method, the results obtained are sometimes consistent and sometimes inconsistent. Anderson's later experiments proved that the two methods are suitable for different situations. For example, comparing A and B, A has two highly positive traits, each with +4 points, and B has 4 highly positive traits, each with +4 points. Based on the addition method, A gets +8 points and B gets +16 points. The impression of B is better than the impression of A. It turns out that this is the case. According to the average method, A and B each get +4 points. The impression is the same. This example is conducive to the addition method. But if A has two highly positive traits, each with +4 points, B has 4 positive traits, two of which are highly positive traits, each with +4 points, and the other two are medium positive traits, each with +2 points Then, based on the addition method, A gets +8 points and B gets +12 points. The impression of B should be better than the impression of A. However, it turns out that, coupled with two moderately positive traits, the impression is not strengthened, but weakened. This situation is good for the average method, because according to the average method, A gets +4 points and B gets +3 points, that is,

(4 + 4 + 2 + 2) ÷ 4 = 3.

Role-setting

The experiments of the Soviet psychologist AA Budalev illustrate the role of settling (see Settling).