Perception

Recently, due to my enrollment in an Interpersonal Perception course, I've been thinking a lot about our perceptions of others (and, of course, their perceptions of us) and how these perceptions are formed and mediated by our interactions. Of course, perception is a subject I would never venture to cover in one blog post, but I want to briefly address it.

One thing that particularly stands out to me is our tendency to seek hypothesis-confirming evidence. We do this with everything, really, but it's particularly salient in interpersonal contexts where we hold a certain expectancy of a person and, lo and behold, find that expectancy to be true. Others' actions turn out to appear consistent with our expectancies for a few reasons- instances that fit our hypotheses stand out and are better remembered than those that don't, and we also subconsciously elicit the reactions that we expect. For example, if we expect a person to be act in a certain way (even if this expectation is subconscious), we will treat them in a way that elicits the expected behavior. If the behavior is ambiguous, we'll interpret it in the way we choose. This is really disturbing if you think about how often this happens every day, and I'm seeing it increasingly in my interactions with friends. I'm trying to be more aware so that I don't do this so much, but I know it will happen inevitably. Hopefully, not so much.