Mechanisms of social perception are the ways in which people interpret, understand and evaluate another person.

The mechanisms of social perception can be divided into two groups depending on the object of perception:

mechanisms interpersonal perception;
mechanisms intergroup perception.

The most common mechanisms of interpersonal perception are identification, empathy, decentration, social reflection, attraction, and causal attribution.

Identification. There are several interpretations of this concept.

By A. A. Bodalev, identification means a way of understanding another person through conscious or unconscious likening him to himself. This is the easiest way to understand another person. A. A. Rean believes that this is a person’s ability and ability to move away from his position, “come out of his shell” and look at the situation through the eyes of an interaction partner. On this occasion, there is an interesting statement by the well-known G. Ford: “My secret to success lies in the ability to understand the point of view of another person and look at things from both his and my points of view.”

Empathy- comprehension emotional state, penetration - feeling into the experiences of another person.

Decentration- the ability and ability of a person to move away from his position and look at the partner and at the interaction situation as if from the outside, through the eyes of an outside observer. Since this mechanism frees one from emotional bias, it turns out to be one of the most effective in the process of getting to know another person.

Social reflection- the individual’s understanding of how he is perceived by his communication partner. A. A. Bodalev (1996) notes that the intensity and completeness of the manifestation of communicative reflection directly depend on the subjective significance of the partner.

Attraction- a special form of perception and cognition of another person, based on the formation of a stable positive feeling towards him. Attraction as a mechanism of social perception is usually considered in three aspects: as a process of forming the attractiveness of another person; as a result of this process; as the quality of relationships. We can also distinguish three levels of attraction: sympathy, friendship and love. D. Myers (2011) describes the following factors that stimulate the manifestation of attraction: geographic proximity (neighborhood, studying in the same class, etc.); interaction and anticipation of interaction; simple presence in the field of view; physical attractiveness; similarity of worldview; good attitude to the subject of perception.

N.V. Kazarinova, V.N. Kunitsyna (2001) divide all factors that stimulate attraction into two groups:

external factors, i.e. existing before the communication process began, such as the need for affiliation (trust), the emotional state of communication partners, spatial proximity;
internal factors, arising in the process of interaction. This is the physical attractiveness of a communication partner, communication style, the factor of similarity between partners, the expression of a personal attitude towards a partner in the process of communication.

The mechanism of causal attribution associated with attributing reasons to both one’s behavior and the behavior of another person. Attribution research analyzes the “psychology common sense” through which a person explains everyday events. The phenomenon of attribution occurs when there is a lack of information about another person, which must be replaced by attribution (attribution).

In the process of interpersonal perception the nature of attribution depends on the following indicators:

on the degree of typicality or uniqueness of the action;
on the social desirability or undesirability of an action;
on whether the subject of perception is a participant in the event or its observer.

G. Kelly (Kelly, 1984) identified three types of attribution:

personal - the reason is attributed to the person who personally committed the act;
objective - the cause is attributed to the object to which the action is directed;
circumstantial - the reason for what happened is attributed to the circumstances, the current situation.

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Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution

Higher professional education

"Kovrov State Technological Academy

Named after V. A. Degtyarev"

Department of Management

The mechanism of interpersonal perception

Performer: student gr. MB-115

Makarov Sergey Sergeevich

Head: Muzafarov A.A.

Kovrov 2015

Introduction

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

There are many different interpretations of the fact that a person seeks a society of his own kind. In humans, the search for contacts with other people is associated with an emerging need for communication. Unlike animals, in humans the need for communication and contact is a completely independent internal stimulus, independent of other needs (food, clothing, and so on). It occurs in a person almost from birth and most clearly manifests itself at one and a half to two months. In the process of communication there must be mutual understanding between the participants in this process, therefore great importance has the fact of how a communication partner is perceived, in other words, the process of one person’s perception of another is an obligatory component of communication and can conditionally be called the perceptual side of communication.

Let's look at an example of how, in general, the process of perception by one person (observer) of another (observed) unfolds. In what we observe, only external signs are available to us, among which the most informative are appearance (physical qualities plus appearance) and behavior (actions performed and expressive reactions). Perceiving these qualities, the observer evaluates them in a certain way and makes some conclusions (often unconsciously) about the internal psychological properties of the communication partner. The sum of properties attributed to the observed, in turn, gives a person the opportunity to form a certain attitude towards him (this attitude is most often of an emotional nature and is located within the “like - dislike” continuum). The phenomena listed above are usually attributed to social perception.

Social perception is the process of perceiving so-called social objects, which means other people, social groups, large social communities. Thus, a person’s perception of a person belongs to the field of social perception, but does not exhaust it. If we talk about the problem of mutual understanding between communication partners, then the term “interpersonal perception” or interpersonal perception would be more appropriate. The perception of social objects has such numerous specific features that even the use of the word “perception” itself seems not entirely accurate, since a number of phenomena that take place during the formation of an idea about another person do not fit into the traditional definition of the perceptual process. In this case, the expression “cognition of another person” is used as a synonym for “perception of another person.”

This broader understanding of the term is due to the specific features of the perception of another person, which include not only the perception of the physical characteristics of the object, but also its behavioral characteristics, the formation of ideas about his intentions, thoughts, abilities, emotions, attitudes, and so on. The approach to the problems of perception associated with the so-called transactional psychology especially emphasizes the idea that the active participation of the subject of perception in a transaction involves taking into account the role of expectations, desires, intentions, and past experience of the subject as specific determinants of the perceptual situation.

In general, during interpersonal perception the following occurs: emotional assessment another, an attempt to understand the reasons for his actions and predict his behavior, building his own behavioral strategy.

There are four main functions of interpersonal perception:

self-knowledge

cognition of communication partner

organization of joint activities

establishing emotional relationships

The structure of interpersonal perception is usually described as three-component. It includes: the subject of interpersonal perception, the object of interpersonal perception and the process of interpersonal perception itself. In this regard, all research in the field of interpersonal perception can be divided into two groups. Research in the field of interpersonal perception is focused on the study of content (characteristics of the subject and object of perception, their properties, etc.) and procedural (analysis of the mechanisms and effects of perception) components. In the first case, attributions (attributions) to each other of various traits, reasons for behavior (causal attribution) of communication partners, the role of attitude in the formation of the first impression, and the like are examined. In the second - the mechanisms of cognition and various effects that arise when people perceive each other. For example, halo effects, novelty effects and primacy effects, as well as the phenomenon of stereotyping.

1. Content of interpersonal perception

Regarding the subject and object of interpersonal perception, traditional research has established more or less complete agreement in terms of what characteristics should be taken into account in studies of interpersonal perception. For the subject of perception, all characteristics are divided into two classes: physical and social. In its turn social characteristics include external (formal role characteristics and interpersonal role characteristics) and internal (system of personality dispositions, structure of motives, and so on). Accordingly, the same characteristics are recorded in the object of interpersonal perception.

The content of interpersonal perception depends on the characteristics of both the subject and the object of perception because they are included in a certain interaction, which has two sides: evaluating each other and changing some characteristics of each other due to the very fact of their presence. Interpretation of another person's behavior can be based on knowledge of the reasons for that behavior. But in everyday life, people do not always know the real reasons for another person’s behavior. Then, in conditions of a lack of information, they begin to attribute to each other both the reasons for behavior and some characteristics of the communities. The assumption that the specificity of human perception by a person lies in the inclusion of the moment of causal interpretation of the behavior of another person has led to the construction of a number of schemes that claim to reveal the mechanism of such interpretation. The set of theoretical constructs and experimental studies devoted to these issues is called the field of causal attribution.

2. The role of attitude in the perception of a person by a person

G. Byrne spoke about the important role of attitudes as factors determining interpersonal perception and attraction. He differentiates attitudes into important and secondary, which makes it possible to determine the hierarchy of personal qualities that more or less determine interpersonal attraction. Using the “dummy” influence procedure personal characteristics(presented by questionnaires completed in a specific way by the experimenter), he found that similarity in attitudes increased feelings of sympathy for imaginary strangers. Moreover, sympathy manifests itself to a greater extent when similarity is detected in important qualities, and difference in secondary ones. Thus, each person not only evaluates his own qualities and the qualities of other people as positive and negative, but also as important, significant and secondary.

Of great importance when people perceive each other are not only the similar attitudes of each of the participants, but also the presence of an attitude in the subject of perception regarding what is perceived. They have especially great weight when forming the first impression of a stranger. M. Rothbart and P. Birrell were asked to evaluate the facial expression of the person depicted in the photograph, and half of the people were previously told that he was the leader of the Gestapo, guilty of barbaric medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners, and the other - that he was the leader of the underground anti-Nazi movement, whose courage saved the lives of thousands of people. Those who belonged to the first half of the respondents intuitively assessed him as a cruel person, and found facial features that confirmed this opinion. Others said they saw a kind and warm-hearted man in the photo. Similar experiments were carried out by Russian psychologist A.A. Bodalev. He showed a photograph of the same person to two groups of students. But first the first group was informed that the man in the photograph presented was an inveterate criminal, and the second group was informed that he was a prominent scientist. Each group was asked to create a verbal portrait of the person photographed. In the first case, the corresponding characteristics were obtained: deep-set eyes indicated hidden anger. A prominent chin is about the determination to go to the end in a crime and so on. Accordingly, in the second group, the same deep-set eyes spoke of the depth of thought, and the chin spoke of willpower in overcoming difficulties on the path of knowledge. One of the difficulties associated with attitudes in interpersonal perception is that many of our attitudes are determined by prejudices about certain phenomena or people that are too difficult to discuss rationally.

It must be said that prejudices are different from stereotypes. If a stereotype is a generalization held by members of one group about another, then prejudice also involves judgments in terms of “bad” or “good” that we make about people without even knowing them or the motives of their actions.

The formation of prejudices is associated with a person’s need to determine his position in relation to other people (especially in terms of superiority). It should be noted that of all the information about the group of people we are interested in, we tend to take into account only that which is consistent with our expectations. Thanks to this, we can strengthen our delusions on the basis of only individual episodes. For example, if for every 10 drivers who drive carelessly, there is at least one woman, then this automatically “confirms” the prejudice that women cannot drive.

3. Mechanisms and effects of interpersonal perception

perception interpersonal attitude prejudice

The study of perception shows that it is possible to identify a number of universal psychological mechanisms that ensure the very process of perceiving another person and allowing the transition from externally perceived to assessment, attitude and forecast.

The mechanisms of interpersonal perception include the following mechanisms:

- knowledge and understanding of each other by people (identification, empathy);

- self-knowledge (reflection);

- formation of an emotional attitude towards a person (attraction).

Identification, empathy and reflection in the process of interpersonal perception.

In the process of communication, a person gets to know himself through understanding another person, realizing the assessment of himself by this other and comparing himself with him. The process includes two people, each of whom is an active subject, and in reality, a kind of “double” process is carried out simultaneously - mutual perception and cognition (therefore, the very opposition of subject and object here is not entirely correct). When building a strategy for the interaction of two people who are in the conditions of this mutual knowledge, each of the partners has to take into account not only their own needs, motives, attitudes, but also the needs, motives, and attitudes of the other. All this leads to the fact that at the level of each individual act of mutual cognition by two people of each other, such aspects of this process as identification and reflection can be identified.

There is a large body of research on each of these aspects of the interpersonal perception process. Naturally, identification is understood here not in its meaning as it was originally interpreted in the system of psychoanalysis. In the context of the study of interpersonal perception, identification refers to the simple empirical fact, established in a number of experiments, that the simplest way understanding another person is likening yourself to him. This, of course, is not the only way, but in real communication with each other, people often use this method: a proposal about the internal state of a communication partner is built on the basis of an attempt to put oneself in his place. A close connection has been established between identification and another phenomenon similar in content - empathy.

Empathy is also a special way of understanding another person. Only here we mean not so much a rational understanding of the problems of another person, but rather the desire to respond emotionally to his problems. At the same time, the emotions and feelings of the subject of empathy are not identical to those experienced by the person who is the object of empathy. That is, if I show empathy for another person, I simply understand his feelings and line of behavior, but I can build my own in a completely different way. This is the difference between empathy and identification, in which a person completely identifies himself with a communication partner and, accordingly, experiences the same feelings as him and behaves like him.

Regardless of which of these two variants of understanding is being studied (and each of them has its own tradition of study), another question requires its solution: how in each case will the “other” perceive me, understand the line of my behavior. Our interaction will depend on this. In other words, the interaction process is complicated by the phenomenon of reflection. IN social psychology Reflection is understood as the acting individual’s awareness of how he is perceived by his communication partner. This is no longer just knowledge and understanding of another, but also knowledge of how this other understands me.

Effects of interpersonal perception.

Among the effects of interpersonal perception, three have been most studied: the halo effect (halo effect), the effect of novelty and primacy, and the effect, or phenomenon, of stereotyping.

The essence of the halo effect is the formation of a specific attitude towards the observed through the directed attribution of certain qualities to him: information received about a person is categorized in a certain way, namely, superimposed on the image that was created in advance. This pre-existing image plays the role of a “halo” that prevents one from seeing the actual features and manifestations of the object of perception.

The halo effect manifests itself when forming a first impression of a person in that a general favorable impression leads to positive evaluations of unknown qualities of the perceived person and, conversely, a general unfavorable impression contributes to the predominance of negative evaluations (when it comes to a positive revaluation of qualities, this effect is also called the “Polyanna effect”) ”, and when it comes to a negative assessment - a “devilish” effect). Experimental studies have found that the halo effect is most pronounced when the perceiver has minimal information about the object of perception, as well as when judgments concern moral qualities. This tendency to darken certain characteristics and highlight others plays the role of a kind of halo in the person’s perception of a person.

Closely related to this effect are the effects of “primacy” (or “order”) and “novelty”. Both of them concern the significance of a certain order of presentation of information about a person in order to form an idea about him. In situations where a stranger is perceived, the primacy effect prevails. It lies in the fact that when information about this person is contradictory after the first meeting, the information that was received earlier is perceived as more significant and has a greater impact on the overall impression of the person. The opposite of the primacy effect is the novelty effect, which consists in the fact that the latter, that is, newer information, turns out to be more significant, operates in situations of perception of the familiar

person.

The projection effect is also known, when we tend to attribute our own merits to a pleasant interlocutor, and our own shortcomings to an unpleasant interlocutor, that is, we most clearly identify in others exactly those traits that are clearly represented in us. Another effect, the mean error effect, is the tendency to soften judgments of another's salient features toward the mean.

In a broader sense, all these effects can be considered as manifestations of a special process that accompanies the perception of a person by a person, namely the process of stereotyping.

The phenomenon of stereotyping in interpersonal perception.

Our perception of other people depends on how we classify them - teenagers, women, teachers, blacks, homosexuals, politicians and so on. Just as the perception of individual objects or events with similar features allows us to form concepts, so we usually classify people according to their membership in a particular group, socio-economic class, or their physical characteristics(gender, age, skin color, etc.).

However, these two types of categorization are significantly different, since the latter deals with social reality and the infinite variety of types of people that make up society. The stereotypes created in this way often give us too conventional and simplified ideas about other people. The term “social stereotype” was first introduced by W. Lippmann in 1922, and for him this term contained a negative connotation associated with the falsity and inaccuracy of the ideas used by propaganda. In a broader sense, a stereotype is a certain stable image of a phenomenon or person, which is used as a known “abbreviation” when interacting with this phenomenon. Stereotypes in communication, which arise, in particular, when people get to know each other, have both a specific origin and a specific meaning. As a rule, a stereotype arises on the basis of fairly limited past experience, as a result of the desire to draw some conclusions in conditions of limited information. Very often, a stereotype arises regarding a person’s group affiliation, for example, his belonging to some profession. Then the pronounced traits of representatives of this profession encountered in the past apply to all representatives of this profession. Here there is a tendency to extract meaning from previous experience, to draw conclusions based on similarities with this previous experience, regardless of its limitations.

Stereotypes are rarely the product of our personal experience. Most often, we acquire them from the group to which we belong, especially from people with already established stereotypes (parents, teachers), as well as from the media, which usually give us a simplified idea of those groups of people about whom we have no more information. no information.

The phenomenon of stereotyping in itself is neither bad nor good. Stereotyping in the process of people getting to know each other can lead to two different consequences. On the one hand, to a certain simplification of the process of knowing another person. In this case, the stereotype does not necessarily carry an evaluative load: there is no “shift” in a person’s perception towards his emotional acceptance or non-acceptance. What remains is simply a simplified approach, which, although it does not contribute to the accuracy of constructing the image of another, is nevertheless necessary, since it significantly shortens the process of cognition. It is especially easy and effective to rely on stereotypes when there is a lack of time, fatigue, emotional excitement, or too young an age, when a person has not yet learned to distinguish between diversity. In other words, the process of stereotyping performs an objectively necessary function, allowing one to quickly, simply and reliably simplify the social environment of an individual. This process can be compared to a coarse tuning device in such optical instruments, like a microscope or telescope, along with which there is also a fine-tuning device, the analogue of which in the sphere of interpersonal perception is such subtle and flexible mechanisms as identification, empathy, and socio-psychological reflection. In the second case, stereotyping leads to prejudice. If a judgment is based on limited past experience, and the experience was negative, any new perception of a member of the same group is colored by a negative attitude. The emergence of such prejudices has been documented in numerous experimental studies, but naturally, they are especially influential not in laboratory experiments, but in real life when they can cause harm to people's communication and relationships. Ethnic stereotypes are especially common - images of typical representatives of a certain nation, which are endowed with fixed appearance and character traits.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to say a few words about the role of communication itself in human life.

Communication is a complex process of interaction between people, consisting of the exchange of information, as well as the perception and understanding of each other by partners. The subjects of communication are living beings, people. In principle, communication is characteristic of any living beings, but only at the human level does the process of communication become conscious, connected by verbal and non-verbal acts. The person transmitting information is called a communicator, and the person receiving it is called a recipient. Without communication, it is impossible to understand and analyze the process of personal development of an individual; it is impossible to trace the patterns of all social development.

Communication is extremely diverse in its forms and types. We can talk about direct and indirect communication, direct and indirect. In this case, direct communication is understood as natural face-to-face contact using verbal (speech) and non-verbal means (gestures, facial expressions, pantomime). Direct communication is historically the first form of communication between people with each other; on its basis, and at later stages of the development of civilization, different kinds mediated communication. Indirect communication can be considered as incomplete psychological contact through written or technical devices, making it difficult or time-consuming to obtain feedback between participants in communication.

In communication, people manifest, reveal to themselves and others their psychological qualities. But these qualities not only manifest themselves through communication, they arise and are formed in it. Communicating with other people, a person assimilates universal human experience, historically established social norms, values, knowledge and methods of activity, and is formed as a person and individuality. Communication is the most important factor in human mental development. In the most general form, we can define communication as a universal reality in which mental processes and human behavior arise and exist throughout life.

In communication, all aspects of human relationships are revealed and realized - both interpersonal and social. Without communication it is simply unthinkable human society. Communication appears in it as a way of cementing individuals and at the same time as a way of developing these individuals themselves.

Bibliography

1. Alavidze T.A. Social psychology in modern world. - M., 2002.

2. Andreeva G.M. Social Psychology. - M., 1997.

3. Aronson E. Social psychology. - M., 2002.

4. Belinskaya E.P., Tikhomandritskaya O.A. Social Psychology

5. Personality: Tutorial. - M.: Aspect Press, 2002.

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7. Kunitsyna V.P., Kulagina N.V., Pogolypa V.M. Interpersonal

8. communication: Textbook for universities. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2002.

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The concept of interpersonal perception.

Interpersonal perception(synonym - social perception) is a complex process:

a) perception of external signs of other people;

b) subsequent correlation of the results obtained with their actual personal characteristics;

c) interpretation and prediction on this basis of their possible actions and behavior.

In social perception as a whole, there is always an assessment of other people and the formation of an attitude towards them in emotional and behavioral terms, as a result of which the construction of their own strategy of activity is carried out.

There are usually four main functions interpersonal perception:

Self-knowledge, which is the initial basis for assessing other people;

Knowledge of interaction partners, which makes it possible to navigate the social environment;

Establishing emotional relationships, ensuring the choice of the most reliable or preferred partners;

Organization of joint activities based on mutual understanding, allowing to achieve the greatest success.

In the course of social perception, images and ideas about oneself and partners are formed, which have their own characteristics. - Firstly, their content structure corresponds to the diversity of human properties. It necessarily contains components of external appearance that are firmly associated with the characteristic psychological traits of his personality. For example: “smart eyes”, “strong-willed chin”, “kind smile”, etc. This is not accidental, since the person who knows him paves the way to the inner world of his partner through behavioral signals about the state and characteristics of what he perceives. The constitutional features of external appearance and the originality of its design with clothing and cosmetics play the role of standards and stereotypes for the socio-psychological interpretation of personality.

Secondly, another feature of these images is that mutual knowledge is aimed primarily at understanding those qualities of the partner that are most significant at the moment for the participants in the interaction. Therefore, in the image-idea of a partner, the dominant qualities of his personality are necessarily highlighted.

Standards and stereotypes of mutual knowledge are formed through communication with a person’s immediate environment in those communities with which he is connected in life. First of all, this is a family and ethnic group, which take advantage of the cultural and historical specifics of people’s activities and behavior. Along with these patterns of behavior, a person learns political-economic, social-age, emotional-aesthetic, professional and other standards and stereotypes of human knowledge by man.

The practical purpose of mutual representations of partners lies in the fact that understanding the psychological appearance of an individual is the initial information for determining the tactics of one’s behavior in relation to the participants in the interaction. This means that standards and stereotypes of mutual knowledge perform the function of regulating people’s communication. A positive and negative image of a partner reinforces an attitude of the same direction, removing or erecting psychological barriers between them. The discrepancies between mutual ideas and the partners’ self-esteem conceal the causes of psychological conflicts of a cognitive nature, which from time to time develop into conflictual relationships between interacting people.

From the immediate image of a partner, a person, in the process of social perception, rises to knowledge about a person in general and returns to self-esteem. By making these circles of mutual knowledge, he clarifies information about himself and the place he can occupy in society.

A number of psychological effects. Among them are the effects of novelty, primacy, and halo.

The effect of novelty when people perceive each other is that in relation to a familiar person, the latter turns out to be the most significant, i.e. more new information about it. And in relation to a stranger, the first information is more significant.

The primacy effect is that the probability of recalling the first few elements of homogeneous material is higher than the middle ones (the larger the presented material and the higher the rate of its presentation, the fewer the first elements are recalled);

2) knowledge and understanding of each other by people (identification, empathy, attraction);

3) self-knowledge (reflection) in the process of communication;

4) predicting the behavior of an interaction partner (causal attribution).

The perception of other people is greatly influenced by the process of stereotyping. Under social stereotype refers to a stable image or idea of any phenomena or people, characteristic of representatives of a particular social group.

A stereotype is an “abbreviated”, simplified and value-laden idea of reality that functions in the public consciousness. It arises in the consciousness of a member of a given social group as a result of the repeatedly repeated connection of certain symbols with a certain category of phenomena, as well as on the basis of perception not associated with direct experience: “We are told about the world around us before we see and evaluate it.”

Many stereotypes arise spontaneously due to the inevitable need to save attention in the process of assimilating the experience of other people and previous generations, experience fixed in the form of habitual ideas. The phenomenon of stereotyping is a characteristic feature of a person’s processing of external influences. It is closely related to a person’s desire to “sort out” the information he receives, to “sort it out into sections” in his consciousness.

Naturally, such sorting requires certain criteria. At the level of ordinary consciousness, the most characteristic, striking, “lying” features of an object, phenomenon, etc., became such criteria. Human consciousness invariably strives to simplify these criteria in order to expand the scope of categories into which as many phenomena as possible can be accommodated. In general, it is human nature to look for what is common in different things, to “summarize” knowledge, to generalize.

One-sidedness in the selection of traits for a certain stereotype is determined by the interests of a particular social group. For each group, a socio-psychological stereotype represents a generalization of its experience in relation to socially significant objects, processes, phenomena, types of people, etc.

Stereotypes help reinforce traditions and habits. In this regard, they act as a means of protecting the mental world of the individual and as a means of self-affirmation. In other words, stereotypes are a fortress that guards our own traditions, and under its cover we can feel safe in the position we occupy.

Stereotypes influence the formation of new experience: they fill a fresh vision with old images and are superimposed on the world that we resurrect in our memory.

Stereotypes are predominantly inaccurate images of reality: they can be based on “mistake,” the habit of mistaking bias for truth.

The stereotype is unambiguous: it divides the world into only two categories - “familiar” and “unfamiliar”. “Familiar” becomes synonymous with “good,” and “unfamiliar” becomes synonymous with “bad.” Stereotypes distinguish objects in such a way that the slightly familiar is seen as very familiar, and the slightly familiar is perceived as hostile. Consequently, a stereotype carries an evaluative element.

The evaluative element appears in the form of an attitude, in the form of an emotional relationship to the phenomenon. Moreover, expressing the feelings of an individual, his system of values, a stereotype always correlates them with group feelings and values. And finally, the stereotype is most common when characterizing representatives of various social groups, primarily national and ethnic ones.

The best known are ethnic stereotypes - images of typical representatives of certain nations, which are endowed with fixed appearance and character traits (for example, stereotypical ideas about the stiffness and thinness of the British, the frivolity of the French, the eccentricity of Italians, the coldness of Germans).

For a person who has internalized the stereotypes of his group, they serve the function of simplifying and shortening the process of perceiving another person. Stereotypes are a “rough tuning” tool that allows a person to “save” psychological resources. They have their own “permitted” sphere of social application. For example, stereotypes are actively used when assessing a person’s group nationality or professional affiliation.

Empathy - This is emotional empathy for another person. It manifests itself in the form of one person’s response to another’s experience. Through emotional response, people perceive the inner state of others. Empathy is based on the ability to correctly imagine what is happening inside another person, what he is experiencing, and how he evaluates the world around him. It is almost always interpreted not only as an active assessment by the subject of the experiences and feelings of the cognizing person, but also certainly as a positive attitude towards the partner.

As a phenomenon of interpersonal perception, empathy directly regulates relationships between people and determines a person’s moral qualities. In the process of empathic interaction, a system of values is formed, which subsequently determines the individual’s behavior in relation to other people.

The severity of empathy and its form (sympathy, empathy) depend both on the natural characteristics of the individual, for example talent, and on the conditions of upbringing, a person’s life activity, and his emotional experience. Empathy arises and is formed in interaction, in communication. This process is based on the mechanism of conscious or unconscious identification. The latter, in turn, is the result of a more fundamental human characteristic - the ability to compare oneself, one’s personality, behavior, state with the personality, behavior, state of other people.

When analyzing empathy, Western psychologists especially highlight two points.

1. A positive attitude towards another means recognizing the personality of this person in his integrity. At the same time, such an attitude does not exclude the subject’s negative reaction to what his communication partner is experiencing and feeling at the moment.

2. While experiencing empathy towards another, the subject can remain emotionally neutral: live for some time as if in the world of the experiences and feelings of another, without formulating either positive or negative judgments about him.

However, experiments conducted by Russian scientists on the understanding of a person by a person have proven that subjects always, to one degree or another, show an emotional attitude towards the person being assessed. And this is not surprising. The results of research in our country confirm the proposition about the inherent unity of consciousness and experience in the human psyche: the reflection of reality is always refracted through an affective attitude towards it.

The emotional form of empathy, as a rule, arises from the direct perception of the experiences of another person and in a situation of his disadvantage is experienced as pity, sadness, and compassion.

Empathic experience can be with any sign of the subject’s emotional state (positive - joy, satisfaction; negative - sadness, dissatisfaction). It is quite logical that when experiencing satisfaction and joy, a person does not need an emotional or effective response as much as when he experiences trouble. Cognitive empathy of other people, especially emotional and behavioral empathy, allows him to cope with difficult experiences.

The closer the connections between people (e.g., friends, spouses), the greater the empathy that is possible between them. Moreover, the form also depends on the type of interpersonal relationships. If cognitive and emotional empathy is possible in all types of relationships, even between strangers, then behavioral, effective empathy is characteristic of close people. Naturally, effective empathy is characteristic of a humane person in general, but in close relationships it is most obvious.

Empathy is a socially positive quality of a person; it is supported by social norms of life, but can have an individual, selective nature, when they respond to the experience of not any other person, but only a significant one. In this regard, it becomes completely natural that in the presence of interpersonal attractiveness one can expect a greater amount of empathy in all three of its forms.

Attraction as a mechanism of interpersonal perception, it is the cognition of another person based on the formation of a stable positive feeling towards him. In this case, understanding the interaction partner arises due to the emergence of attachment to him, a friendly or deeper intimate-personal relationship.

All other things being equal, people more easily accept the position of the person towards whom they have an emotionally positive attitude. This happens as follows. Any signal that comes to a person through his senses can disappear without a trace, or it can survive depending on its significance and emotional charge. An emotionally significant signal, “bypassing” consciousness, remains in the realm of the unconscious. In this case, a person, assessing his attitude towards other people, says that he does not know why he treats one way and not another.

Therefore, if in the process of communication you send signals to your partner in such a way that: firstly, the signal is emotionally significant; secondly, its meaning was positive; thirdly, so that this signal is not realized, the partner will claim that the communication was pleasant, and the interlocutor will be a person who is attractive to him.

This is practically how attraction is formed. But we must keep in mind that the methods of forming attraction are not intended to convince or prove something, but only to win over a partner.

Reflection is a mechanism of self-knowledge in the process of interpersonal perception, which is based on a person’s ability to imagine how he is perceived by his partner. This is not just knowledge or understanding of a partner, but knowledge of how a partner understands me, a kind of double process of mirror relationships with each other.

Reflection is a rather complex phenomenon that involves complex relationships between phenomena, which is reflected in their classification (Table 2).

Causal attribution(the desire to find out the reasons for the subject’s behavior) is a mechanism for interpreting the actions and feelings of another person.

Research shows that each person has his own “favorite” causal schemes, i.e. common explanations for other people's behavior:

1) people with personal attribution in any situation tend to find the culprit of what happened and attribute the cause of what happened to a specific person;

2) in the case of an addiction to circumstantial attribution, people tend to blame circumstances first of all, without bothering to look for a specific culprit;

3) with stimulus attribution, a person sees the cause of what happened in the object to which the action was directed (the vase fell because it did not stand well), or in the victim himself (it is his own fault that he got hit by a car) (Bityanova M.R., 2001 ).

table 2

When studying the process of causal attribution, various patterns were identified. For example, people most often attribute the reason for success to themselves, and failure - to circumstances. The nature of the attribution also depends on the extent of the person’s participation in the event under discussion. The assessment will be different in cases where he was a participant (accomplice) or an observer. The general pattern is that as the significance of the incident increases, subjects tend to move from circumstantial and stimulus attribution to personal attribution (i.e., look for the cause of the incident in the conscious actions of the individual).

2.1 Reflection, identification, empathy

The study of perception shows that it is possible to identify a number of universal psychological mechanisms that ensure the very process of perception and evaluation of another person and allow the transition from externally perceived to assessment, attitude and forecast.

The mechanisms of interpersonal perception include:

1) self-knowledge (reflection) in the process of communication;

2) knowledge and understanding of each other by people (identification, empathy, attraction, stereotyping);

3) predicting the behavior of a communication partner (causal attribution).

Since a person always enters into communication as a person, he is perceived by another person - a communication partner - also as a person. Based on the external side of behavior, we seem to “read” another person, decipher the meaning of his external data. The impressions that arise in this case play an important regulatory role in the communication process. Firstly, because by cognizing another, the cognizing individual himself is formed. Secondly, because the success of organizing coordinated actions with him depends on the degree of accuracy of “reading” another person.

The idea of another person is closely related to the level of one’s own self-awareness. This connection is twofold: on the one hand, the wealth of ideas about oneself determines the richness of ideas about another person, on the other hand, the more fully the other person is revealed (in more and deeper characteristics), the more complete the idea of oneself becomes . “The personality becomes for itself what it is in itself through what it is for others.” As we have seen, Mead also expressed a similar idea when he introduced the image of the “generalized other” into his analysis of interaction.

If we apply this reasoning to a specific situation of communication, then we can say that the idea of oneself through the idea of another is necessarily formed provided that this “other” is not given in the abstract, but within the framework of a fairly broad social activity that includes interaction with him. An individual “correlates” himself with another not in general, but primarily by refracting this correlation in the development of joint decisions. In the course of knowing another person, several processes are simultaneously carried out: an emotional assessment of this other, and an attempt to understand the structure of his actions, and a strategy for changing his behavior based on this, and building a strategy for one’s own behavior.

However, at least two people are involved in these processes, and each of them is an active subject. Consequently, comparison of oneself with another is carried out, as it were, from two sides: each of the partners likens itself to the other. This means that when building an interaction strategy, everyone has to take into account not only the needs, motives, and attitudes of the other, but also how this other understands my needs, motives, and attitudes. All this leads to the fact that the analysis of awareness of oneself through another includes two sides: identification and reflection. Each of these concepts requires special discussion,

The term "identification", literally meaning identifying oneself with another, expresses the established empirical fact that one of the simplest ways of understanding another person is to liken oneself to him. This, of course, is not the only way, but in real interaction situations people often use this technique when an assumption about the partner’s internal state is based on an attempt to put themselves in his place. In this regard, identification acts as one of the mechanisms of cognition and understanding of another person.

There are many experimental studies of the process of identification and elucidation of its role in the communication process. In particular, a close connection has been established between identification and another phenomenon that is similar in content - empathy.

Descriptively, empathy is also defined as a special way of understanding another person. Only here we do not mean a rational understanding of the problems of another person, but rather the desire to respond emotionally to his problems. Empathy is opposed to understanding in the strict sense of the word, a term used in in this case only metaphorically: empathy is affective “understanding.” Its emotional nature is manifested precisely in the fact that the situation of another person, a communication partner, is not so much “thought through” as “felt.” The mechanism of empathy is in certain respects similar to the mechanism of identification: both there and here there is the ability to put oneself in the place of another, to look at things from his point of view. However, seeing things from someone else's point of view does not necessarily mean identifying with that person. If I identify myself with someone, this means that I build my behavior the way this “other” builds it. If I show empathy towards him, I simply take into account his line of behavior (I treat it sympathetically), but I can build my own in a completely different way. In both cases, there will be “taking into account” the behavior of the other person, but the result of our joint actions will be different: it is one thing to understand a communication partner, taking his position, acting from it, another thing is to understand him, taking into account his point of view, even sympathizing with it,” but acting in his own way.

However, both cases require solving one more question: how will the “other” be, i.e. communication partner, understand me. Our interaction will depend on this. In other words, the process of understanding each other is complicated by the phenomenon of reflection. In contrast to the philosophical use of the term, in social psychology reflection is understood as the awareness by the acting individual of how he is perceived by his communication partner. This is no longer just knowledge or understanding of the other, but knowledge of how the other understands me, a kind of double process of mirror reflections of each other, “deep, consistent mutual reflection, the content of which is the reproduction of the inner world of the interaction partner, and in this inner world, in turn, reflects the inner world of the first researcher.”

The tradition of studying reflection in social psychology is quite old. Even at the end of the last century, J. Holmes, describing the situation of dyadic communication between two people, argued that in reality there are at least six people in this situation. Subsequently, T. Newcome and C. Cooley complicated the situation to eight people. In principle, of course, one can assume as many reflections as desired, but in practice experimental studies are usually limited to recording two stages of this process. G. Gibsch and M. Vorverg reproduce the proposed models of reflection in general form. They designate the participants in the interaction process as A and B. Then the general model of the formation of a reflexive structure in a situation of dyadic interaction can be presented as follows: There are two partners A and B. Communication A ٱ B is established between them and feedback about B’s reaction to A, BA . In addition, A and B have an idea of themselves, A" and B", as well as an idea of \u200b\u200bthe "other"; A has an idea of B - B" and B has an idea of A - A". Interaction in the communicative process is carried out like this: A speaks as A, addressing B." B reacts as B" to A". How close all this turns out to be to the real A and B still needs to be investigated, because neither A nor B knows that there are A's, B's, A's and B's that do not coincide with objective reality, while between A and A' and there are no communication channels between B and B. It is clear that the success of communication will be maximum with a minimum gap in the lines

A - A" - A" and B - B" - B"

The significance of this coincidence can easily be illustrated by the interaction of a speaker with an audience. If the speaker (A) has the wrong idea about himself (A"), about the listeners (B") and, most importantly, about how the listeners perceive him (A"), then his mutual understanding with the audience will be excluded and, therefore, interaction too Bringing the entire complex of these ideas closer to each other is a complex process that requires special efforts. One of the means here is a kind of socio-psychological training aimed at increasing perceptual competence.

The construction of models of the type considered above plays an important role. A number of studies attempt to analyze the reflexive structures of a group united by a single joint activity. Then the very scheme of emerging reflections relates not only to dyadic interaction, but to the general activity of the group and the interpersonal relationships mediated by it.

2.2 Attraction and stereotyping

Attraction (from Latin attrahere - to attract, attract) is a special form of perception of one person by another, based on the formation of a stable emotionally positive feeling towards him.

People not only perceive each other, but form certain relationships towards each other. Based on the assessments made, a diverse range of feelings is born - from rejection of this or that person to sympathy, even love for him. The area of research related to identifying the mechanisms of formation of various emotional attitudes towards a perceived person is called attraction research. Attraction is also the process of forming the attractiveness of a person for the perceiver and the product of this process, that is, a certain quality of attitude. Attraction can also be considered as a special type of social attitude toward another person, in which the emotional component predominates, when this “other” is assessed primarily in affective categories.

The inclusion of attraction in the process of interpersonal perception reveals with particular clarity the fact that communication is always the realization of certain relationships (both social and interpersonal). Attraction is associated primarily with this second type of relationship realized in communication.

Empirical studies of attraction are mainly devoted to elucidating those factors that lead to the emergence of positive emotional relationships between people. In particular, the question of the role of similarity of characteristics of the subject and object of perception in the process of formation of attraction, the role of “ecological” characteristics of the communication process (proximity of communication partners, frequency of meetings, etc.) is being studied. Many studies have revealed a connection between attraction and a special type of interaction that develops between partners, for example, under conditions of “helping” behavior.

Various levels of attraction are identified: sympathy, friendship, love.

Friendship is a type of stable, individually selective interpersonal relationships, characterized by mutual attachment of their participants, strengthening of affiliation processes (the desire to be in society, here with a friend, friends), mutual expectations of reciprocal feelings and preference.

Sympathy (from the Greek Sympatheia - attraction, internal disposition) is a stable, approving emotional attitude of a person towards other people, their groups or social phenomena, manifested in friendliness, goodwill, admiration, encouraging communication, attention, help, etc.

Love is a high degree of emotionally positive attitude that distinguishes an object from others and places it at the center of the subject’s life needs and interests.

Theoretical data do not allow us to say that a satisfactory theory of attraction has already been created. In domestic social psychology, studies devoted to attraction are few.

The process of stereotyping. The term “social stereotype” was first introduced by W. Lippmann in 1922, and for him this term contained a negative connotation associated with the falsity and inaccuracy of the ideas used by propaganda. In a broader sense of the word, a stereotype is a certain stable image of a phenomenon or person, which is used as a well-known “abbreviation” when interacting with this phenomenon. Stereotypes in communication, which arise, in particular, when people get to know each other, have both a specific origin and a specific meaning.

A social stereotype is understood as a stable image or idea about any phenomena or people, characteristic of representatives of a particular social group. The best known are ethnic stereotypes - images of typical representatives of certain nations, which are endowed with fixed appearance and character traits (for example, stereotypical ideas about the stiffness and thinness of the British, the frivolity of the French, the eccentricity of Italians).

Stereotypes are an integral element of everyday consciousness. No person is able to independently and creatively respond to all situations encountered in life. A stereotype, which accumulates a certain standardized collective experience and is instilled in an individual in the process of learning and communicating with others, helps him navigate life and in a certain way directs his behavior. A stereotype can be true or false. It can evoke both positive and negative emotions. Its essence is that it expresses the attitude, the attitude of a given social group towards a certain phenomenon. Thus, images of a priest, merchant or worker from folk tales clearly express the attitude of workers towards these social types. Naturally, hostile classes have completely different stereotypes of the same phenomenon.

For a person who has internalized the stereotypes of his group, they serve the function of simplifying and shortening the process of perceiving another person. Stereotypes are a “rough tuning” tool that allows a person to “save” psychological resources. They have their own “permitted” sphere of social application (for example, stereotypes are actively used when assessing a person’s group nationality or professional affiliation).

As a rule, a stereotype arises on the basis of fairly limited past experience, as a result of the desire to draw conclusions on the basis of limited information. Very often, a stereotype arises regarding a person’s group affiliation, for example, his belonging to a certain profession. Then the pronounced professional traits of representatives of this profession encountered in the past are considered as traits inherent in every representative of this profession (“all teachers are edifying,” “all accountants are pedants,” etc.). Here there is a tendency to “extract meaning” from previous experience, to draw conclusions based on similarities with this previous experience, without being embarrassed by its limitations.

Stereotyping in the process of people getting to know each other can lead to two different consequences:

A. To a certain simplification of the process of knowing another person. In this case, the stereotype does not necessarily carry an evaluative load: in the perception of another person there is no “shift” towards his emotional acceptance or non-acceptance. What remains is simply a simplified approach, which, although it does not contribute to the accuracy of constructing the image of another, often forces it to be replaced with a cliche, is, nevertheless, in some sense necessary, because it helps to shorten the process of cognition.

B. To the emergence of prejudice. If a judgment is based on limited past experience, and this experience was negative, any new perception of a representative of the same group is colored by hostility.

One of the varieties of stereotypes is a pedagogical stereotype of a teacher’s perception of his students, which is based on the process of forming a model of an ideal student in his mind. This is the kind of student who confirms the successful role of the teacher, making his work enjoyable: ready to cooperate, striving for knowledge, disciplined. It is important that the expectations formed by teachers in relation to the child actually determine his real achievements. The child's self-perception is formed under the influence of such expectations. For example, studies have shown that children with names that the teacher likes have more positive internal attitudes towards themselves compared to children whose names are not accepted by the teacher. The name can also influence the teacher’s expectations regarding the child’s academic success.

2. 3 Causal attribution.

Causal attribution (English attribute - to attribute, to endow) - the subject’s interpretation of his perception of the reasons and motives of the behavior of other people, obtained on the basis of direct observation, analysis of performance results, and other things by attributing to an individual, a group of people properties, characteristics that were not included in the field of perception and, as it were, they are conjecturing.

Each of the participants in the interaction, assessing the other, strives to build a certain system of interpretation of his behavior, in particular its reasons. In everyday life, people often do not know the real reasons for another person’s behavior or do not know them enough. In conditions of a lack of information, they begin to attribute to each other both the reasons for behavior and sometimes the patterns of behavior themselves or some more General characteristics. Attribution is carried out either on the basis of the similarity of the behavior of the perceived person with some other model that existed in the past experience of the subject of perception, or on the basis of an analysis of one’s own motives assumed in a similar situation (in this case, the identification mechanism may operate). But, one way or another, a whole system of methods for such attribution (attribution) arises. Thus, the interpretation of one’s own and others’ behavior through attribution (reasons, motives, feelings, etc.) is an integral part of interpersonal perception and cognition.

A special branch of social psychology, called causal attribution, analyzes precisely these processes (F. Heider, G. Kelly, E. Jones, K. Davis, D. Kennose, R. Nisbet, L. Strickland). If at first the study of attribution was only about attributing reasons for the behavior of another person, then later methods of attributing a wider class of characteristics began to be studied: intentions, feelings, personality traits. The phenomenon of attribution itself arises when a person has a deficit of information about another person: it is necessary to replace it with the process of attribution.

The measure and degree of attribution in the process of interpersonal perception depends on two indicators, namely on the degree:

uniqueness or typicality of an act (this refers to the fact that typical behavior is behavior prescribed by role models, and therefore it is easier to interpret unambiguously; on the contrary, unique behavior allows for many different interpretations and, therefore, gives scope for attributing its causes and characteristics);

its social desirability or undesirability (socially “desirable” is understood as behavior that corresponds to social and cultural norms and therefore is relatively easily and unambiguously explained, however, when such norms are violated, the range of possible explanations expands significantly).

The structure of the causal attribution process

The following aspects of interest to attribution researchers are highlighted: characteristics of the subject of perception (observer), characteristics of the object and the situation of perception.

An interesting attempt to construct a theory of causal attribution belongs to G. Kelly. He showed how a person searches for reasons to explain the behavior of another person. In general, the answer sounds like this: every person has some a priori causal ideas and causal expectations.

A causal scheme is a kind of general concept of a given person about the possible interactions of various causes, about what actions, in principle, these causes produce. It is built on three principles:

The principle of devaluation when the role main reason events are underestimated due to overestimation of other reasons;

The principle of amplification, when the role of a specific cause in an event is exaggerated;

The principle of systematic distortion, when there are constant deviations from the rules of formal logic when explaining the causes of people's behavior.

In other words, every person has a system of causality schemes, and every time the search for reasons that explain “other people’s” behavior, one way or another, fits into one of these existing schemes. The repertoire of causal schemas that each personality possesses is quite extensive. The question is which causal scheme will work in each particular case.

In experiments, it was found that different people demonstrate predominantly completely different types of attribution, that is, different degrees of “correctness” of the attributed reasons. In order to determine the degree of this correctness, three categories are introduced: 1) similarity - agreement with the opinions of other people; 2) differences – differences from the opinions of other people; 3) correspondence - constancy of the action of the cause in time and space.

The exact relationships have been established in which specific combinations of manifestations of each of the three criteria should give a personal, stimulus or circumstantial attribution. In one of the experiments, a special “key” was proposed, with which the test subjects’ answers should be compared each time: if the answer coincides with the optimum given in the “key,” then the reason was assigned correctly; if a discrepancy is observed, it is possible to establish what kind of “shifts” are characteristic of each person in the choice of the reasons predominantly attributed to them. Comparisons of the test subjects' responses with the proposed standards helped to establish at the experimental level the truth that people do not always attribute a cause “correctly,” even from the point of view of very simplified criteria.

G. Kelly revealed that depending on whether the subject of perception himself is a participant in an event or an observer, he can preferentially choose one of three types of attribution:

personal attribution, when the reason is attributed personally to the person committing the act;

object attribution, when the cause is attributed to the object to which the action is directed;

circumstantial attribution, when the cause of what is happening is attributed to circumstances.

It was found that the observer more often uses personal attribution, and the participant is more inclined to explain what is happening by circumstances. This feature is clearly manifested when attributing reasons for success and failure: the participant in the action “blames” the failure primarily on the circumstances, while the observer “blames” the failure primarily on the performer himself. The general pattern is that, as the event becomes more significant, subjects tend to move from circumstantial and objective attribution to personal attribution (that is, to look for the cause of what happened in the conscious actions of a particular person). If we use the concept of figure and ground (Gestalt psychology), then the attribution process can be explained by what comes into the observer’s field of vision as a figure. Thus, in one experiment, subjects watched a video recording of a suspect giving testimony during interrogation. If they saw only the suspect, they perceived the confession as true. If a detective also came into view, then the subjects (observers) were inclined to believe that the suspect was forced to confess.

In addition to errors that arise due to the different position of the subject of perception, a number of fairly typical attribution errors have been identified. G. Kelly summarized them as follows:

1st class – motivational errors, including various types of “defense” [predilections, asymmetry of positive and negative results (success to oneself, failure to circumstances)];

Class 2 – fundamental errors, including cases of overestimation of personal factors and underestimation of situational ones.

More specifically, fundamental errors manifest themselves in errors:

“false agreement” (when a “normal” interpretation is considered to be one that coincides with “my” opinion and is adjusted to it);

associated with unequal opportunities for role behavior (when in certain roles it is “easier” to demonstrate one’s own positive qualities, and interpretation is carried out by appealing to them);

arising due to greater confidence in specific facts than in general judgments, due to the ease of constructing false correlations, etc.

In order to justify the identification of this particular type of error, it is necessary to analyze the causality patterns that a person possesses. In offering descriptions of these schemes, G. Kelly puts forward four principles: covariation, discounting, amplification and systematic distortion. The first of these principles (covariation) operates when there is one cause, the other three when there are many causes.

The essence of the covariance principle is that an effect is attributed to the cause with which it is covariant in time (coincident in time). It should be remembered that we are always talking not about what the actual cause of an event is, but only about what reason a certain “naive” ordinary person actually attributes to an event or action. In other words, the reasons put forward in everyday psychology are explored here. This is clearly demonstrated in the analysis of the following three principles named by Kelly.

If there is more than one reason, then the person is guided when interpreting:

Or the principle of amplification, when priority is given to a cause that encounters an obstacle: it is “strengthened” in the consciousness of the perceiver by the very fact of the presence of such an obstacle;

Or the principle of depreciation, when, in the presence of competing reasons, one of the reasons is disavowed by the very fact of the presence of alternatives;

Or the principle of systematic distortion, when in a special case of judgments about people the factors of the situation are underestimated and, on the contrary, the factors of personal characteristics are overestimated.

The process of attribution, determined by the characteristics of the subject of perception, is also manifested in the fact that some people tend, to a greater extent, to fix physical features in the process of interpersonal perception, and then the “sphere” of attribution is significantly reduced. Others perceive primarily the psychological characteristics of others, and in this case a special “space” opens up for attribution.

The dependence of the attributed characteristics on the previous assessment of the objects of perception was also revealed. In one of the experiments, assessments of two groups of children given by the subject of perception were recorded. One group was made up of “favorite” children, and the other – from “unloved” children. Although the “favorite” (in this case, more attractive) children intentionally made mistakes in performing the task, and the “unfavorite” children performed it correctly, the perceiver, nevertheless, attributed positive ratings to the “favorite” ones, and negative ones to the “unloved” ones.

This corresponds to the idea of F. Heider, who said that people generally tend to reason in this way: “a bad person has bad traits,” “a good person has good traits,” etc. Therefore, attribution of causes of behavior and characteristics is carried out according to the same model: “bad” people are always assigned bad actions, and “good” people are always assigned good actions. Along with this, theories of causal attribution pay attention to the idea of contrasting ideas, when negative traits are attributed to a “bad” person, and the perceiver evaluates himself by contrast as the bearer of the most positive traits.

The concept of “social perception” is integrative. The mechanisms of social perception include a number of phenomena: from knowing oneself in the process of communication, trying to understand the state, mood of the interlocutor, putting oneself in his place to forming an impression of the perceived person on the basis of developed stereotypes, attributing reasons and motives to his behavior, as well as developing one’s own behavior strategies.

The impressions that arise in this case play an important regulatory role in the communication process. Firstly, because by cognizing another, the cognizing individual himself is formed. Secondly, because the success of organizing coordinated actions with him depends on the degree of accuracy of “reading” another person.

The idea of another person is closely related to the level of one’s own self-awareness. This connection is twofold: on the one hand, the wealth of ideas about oneself determines the richness of ideas about another person, on the other hand, the more fully the other person is revealed (in more and deeper characteristics), the more complete the idea of oneself becomes . “Personality becomes for itself what it is in itself, through what it is for others.”

A similar idea was expressed by Mead, who introduced the image of the “generalized other” into his analysis of interaction.

This means that when building an interaction strategy, everyone has to take into account not only the needs, motives, and attitudes of the other, but also how this other understands our needs, motives, and attitudes. All this leads to the fact that the analysis of awareness of oneself through another includes two sides: identification and reflection.

Descriptively, empathy is also defined as a special way of understanding another person. Empathy is usually understood as understanding the emotional states of another person in the form of empathy, penetration into his subjective world. Some level of empathy is professional required quality for all specialists whose work is directly related to people.

The term “empathy” first appeared in the English dictionary in 1912 and was close to the concept of “sympathy.” The term was first used by Lipps in 1885 in connection with the psychological theory of the effects of art. One of the earliest definitions of empathy can be found in the work of S. Freud “Wit and its relation to the unconscious”: “We take into account mental condition patient, we put ourselves in this state and try to understand it, comparing it with our own.”

There is a wide range of expressions of empathy. At one extreme is the position of complete immersion in the world of feelings of the communication partner. This means not just knowledge of a person’s emotional state, but specifically the experience of his feelings, empathy. This kind of empathy is called affective or emotional. The other pole is the position of a more abstract, objective understanding of the experiences of a communication partner without significant emotional involvement in them. In this regard, the following levels of empathy are distinguished: empathy (when a person experiences emotions completely identical to those observed), sympathy (an emotional response, an urge to help another), sympathy (a warm, friendly attitude towards other people).

The mechanism of empathy includes the ability to put oneself in the place of another, to look at things from their point of view, but this does not necessarily mean identification with this other person. With empathy, the partner’s line of behavior is taken into account, the subject treats him with sympathy, but interpersonal relationships they build with him based on the strategy of their line of behavior.

Only here we do not mean a rational understanding of the problems of another person, but rather the desire to respond emotionally to his problems. Empathy is opposed to understanding in the strict sense of the word; the term is used in this case only metaphorically: empathy is affective “understanding.” Its emotional nature is manifested precisely in the fact that the situation of another person, a communication partner, is not so much “thought through” as “felt.”

Empathic understanding is not the result of intellectual effort. Many experts consider empathy innate property, which is genetically determined. An individual's life experiences can only strengthen or weaken it. Empathy depends on the accessibility and richness of life experience, accuracy of perception, and the ability to tune in while listening to the interlocutor, on the same emotional wavelength as him.

Various training methods help to increase empathic abilities (subject to their innate presence), develop the ability to more effectively use empathy in personal and professional communication.

The process of understanding each other is complicated by the phenomenon of reflection. In contrast to the philosophical use of the term, in social psychology reflection is understood as the awareness by the acting individual of how he is perceived by his communication partner. This is no longer just knowledge or understanding of the other, but knowledge of how the other understands me, a kind of double process of mirror reflections of each other, “deep, consistent mutual reflection, the content of which is the reproduction of the inner world of the interaction partner, and in this inner world, in turn, reflects the inner world of the first researcher.”

People, getting to know each other, are not limited to obtaining information through observation. They strive to find out the reasons for the behavior of communication partners and clarify their personal qualities. But since information about a person obtained as a result of observation is most often insufficient for reliable conclusions, the observer begins to attribute probabilistic causes of behavior and characterological personality traits to the communication partner. This causal interpretation of the behavior of the observed individual can significantly influence the observer himself.

Thus, causal attribution is understood as the subject’s interpretation of the interpersonal perception of the reasons and motives of other people’s behavior, obtained on the basis of direct observation, analysis of performance results, and other things by attributing to an individual, a group of people properties, characteristics that did not fall into the field of perception and are, as it were, conjectured by him .

In conditions of a lack of information, they begin to attribute to each other both the reasons for behavior and sometimes the patterns of behavior themselves or some more general characteristics. Attribution is carried out either on the basis of the similarity of the behavior of the perceived person with some other model that existed in the past experience of the subject of perception, or on the basis of an analysis of one’s own motives assumed in a similar situation. But, one way or another, a whole system of methods for such attribution (attribution) arises. Thus, the interpretation of one’s own and others’ behavior through attribution (reasons, motives, feelings, etc.) is an integral part of interpersonal perception and cognition.

The measure and degree of attribution in the process of interpersonal perception depends on two indicators, namely on the degree:

1. uniqueness or typicality of an act (this refers to the fact that typical behavior is behavior prescribed by role models, and therefore it is easier to interpret unambiguously; on the contrary, unique behavior allows for many different interpretations and, therefore, gives scope for attributing its causes and characteristics );

2. its social desirability or undesirability (socially “desirable” is understood as behavior that corresponds to social and cultural norms and therefore is relatively easily and unambiguously explained, however, when such norms are violated, the range of possible explanations expands significantly).

1 principle of devaluation, when the role of the main cause of an event is underestimated due to the overestimation of other causes;

2 principle of amplification, when the role of a specific cause in an event is exaggerated;

3 the principle of systematic distortion, when there are constant deviations from the rules of formal logic when explaining the causes of people's behavior.

G. Kelly revealed that depending on whether the subject of perception himself is a participant in an event or an observer, he can preferentially choose one of three types of attribution:

1 personal attribution, when the reason is attributed personally to the person committing the act;

2 object attribution, when the cause is attributed to the object to which the action is directed;

3 circumstantial attribution, when the cause of an event is attributed to circumstances.

The general pattern is that, as the event becomes more significant, subjects tend to move from circumstantial and objective attribution to personal attribution (that is, to look for the cause of what happened in the conscious actions of a particular person).

Based on a study of problems associated with causal attribution, researchers have concluded that attributional processes constitute the main content of interpersonal perception. It is significant that some people tend to fixate physical traits to a greater extent in the process of interpersonal perception (in this case, the scope of “attribution” is significantly reduced), others perceive predominantly the psychological character traits of others. In the latter case, a wide scope for attribution opens up.

In particular, the physical appearance of a person is understood as a set of visually perceived data that characterizes his appearance. The determining factors in the appearance are its elements. An element of appearance is any part of a person’s external appearance identified during the process of observation (study). These are individual anatomical organs (head, arm, etc.), and entire areas of the body (chest, back), and individual parts of the whole (forehead, eyes, lips, and so on).

Signs of physical appearance characterize the external structure of the human body, its parts and covers; determine gender, age, height, physique. Particular attention, naturally, is paid to a person’s face, as it most individualizes the personality in its visual perception.

Appearance design usually means the following: makeup, hairstyle, clothes, shoes, hats, shoes, and so on.

Expressive behavior is understood as “widespread peripheral changes that cover the entire organism during emotions; capturing the system of muscles of the face, the whole body, they manifest themselves in the so-called expressive movements, expressed in facial expressions (expressive movements of the face), pantomime (expressive movements of the whole body) and “vocal facial expressions” (expression of emotions in the intonation and timbre of the voice).”

Back in the forties of our century, the outstanding Soviet psychologist S.L. Rubinstein provided answers to many questions about the psychology of expressive behavior. The natural and the social, the natural and the historical, in expressive behavior, as elsewhere in man, form one indivisible unity. This is not just an external empty accompaniment of emotions, but an external form of existence and manifestation. Expressive movements in the external reveal the internal, creating the image of the character. Expressive movements not only express an already formed experience, but can also shape it themselves. Social fixation of the forms and meanings of expressive behavior creates the possibility of conventional expressive movements. Expressive movements to a certain extent replace speech; they are a means of communication and influence.

Expressed by S.L. Rubinstein's provisions on the nature, content and functions of expressive behavior are concretely developed in modern research by both Soviet and foreign authors.

This function of expressive movements, such as creating an “image of a character,” is of particular importance in the context of social perception. Here, complex psychological formations, dynamically expressed in the behavior and appearance of a person, are considered as a signal complex that informs another person about the mental processes and states of his communication partner. Each complex simultaneously performs both informational and regulatory functions. In other words, expression as an indicator, signal, influence, regulator of activity (including communication) acts as a single whole. Expressive movements are considered as carriers of independent messages in their cognitive and expressive functions. Due to their characteristic function of a symptom (expression), an indicator of the internal state of a living being (this is noted in a number of definitions of expressive movements and is the subject of study in the field of the emotional sphere of personality, pathopsychology, psychodiagnostics), in a communication situation they are at the same time a sign of a higher level, they carry out communicative function and direct the actions of partners.

So, expressive movements perform informative and regulatory functions in the process of communication and are a kind of language of communication.

Methods of exchanging glances during a conversation, organizing visual contact in each individual case - the time of fixation of the gaze on the partner, the frequency of fixation - are widely used in the study of the so-called atmosphere of intimacy in interpersonal communication, the mutual attitudes of communicating persons.

Body movements, hand gestures, and facial expressions are also classified as paralinguistic phenomena.

It is known that numerous characteristics of a person’s voice create his image, contribute to the recognition of his states, and the identification of mental individuality. The main load in the process of perceiving a person’s vocal changes falls on the acoustic system of communicating partners. Thus, the nonverbal behavior of a person is multifunctional.

In general, the study of social perception shows that it is possible to identify a number of universal psychological mechanisms, such as empathy, “social reflection” and causal attribution, which provide the very process of perception and evaluation of another person and allow the transition from externally perceived to evaluation, attitude and forecast .

Among the elements of appearance that are of great importance in how people perceive each other, it is customary to highlight the following: physical appearance, appearance and expressive behavior.

Structural typology of interpersonal perception. The essence and main characteristics of interpersonal perception

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Introduction

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

In general, during interpersonal perception the following occurs: emotional assessment another, an attempt to understand the reasons for his actions and predict his behavior, building his own behavioral strategy.

There are four main functions of interpersonal perception:

self-knowledge

cognition of communication partner

organization of joint activities

establishing emotional relationships

1. Content of interpersonal perception

2. The role of attitude in the perception of a person by a person

3. Mechanisms and effects of interpersonal perception

perception interpersonal attitude prejudice

The study of perception shows that it is possible to identify a number of universal psychological mechanisms that ensure the very process of perceiving another person and allowing the transition from externally perceived to assessment, attitude and forecast.

The mechanisms of interpersonal perception include the following mechanisms:

- knowledge and understanding of each other by people (identification, empathy);

- self-knowledge (reflection);

- formation of an emotional attitude towards a person (attraction).

Identification, empathy and reflection in the process of interpersonal perception.

Effects of interpersonal perception.

Among the effects of interpersonal perception, three have been most studied: the halo effect (halo effect), the effect of novelty and primacy, and the effect, or phenomenon, of stereotyping.

person.

In a broader sense, all these effects can be considered as manifestations of a special process that accompanies the perception of a person by a person, namely the process of stereotyping.

The phenomenon of stereotyping in interpersonal perception.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to say a few words about the role of communication itself in human life.

Bibliography

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