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People's perception and understanding of each other. Perception and cognition of man by man

The perception of a person by a person is the process of getting to know each other in conditions of communication. The process itself represents a change in levels mental reflection, starting from sensations and ending with thinking. The process of perceiving a person by a person is nothing more than the level of mental reflection. True, its essence is somewhat complicated, as it is determined by social significance.

The process of perceiving a person by a person refers to social perception. It should be noted that this phenomenon more precisely defines the concept of “cognition of a person by a person,” since the leading role in the process of perception is played by thinking, which endows the subject with certain characteristics.

When perceiving a subject, a person always concentrates attention on phenomena that are especially significant for him, which are the components of appearance.

Interpretation of information in the perception of a person by a person

Thanks to sensations, a person receives a large amount of information about another person: smell, face (eye color, shape of nose and cheekbones), hair color and thickness, height, body features, manners, clothing, gait, etc. The list of perceived details can be endless. Thanks to the inclusion of thinking and imagination in the process of perception, we endow a person with a number of personal and professional qualities. The phenomenon of processing information and combining it into one image in socio-psychological science is called interpretation.

In psychology, four main methods of interpretation are considered:

Analytical method– the connection of each element of appearance with a certain psychological property. To a greater extent, the ratio of these properties is dictated social influence. Examples: tightly compressed lips are a sign of will; plump lips – sexuality; thin lips - anger, etc.
Emotional way– personal qualities are attributed to a person regardless of external data. The main criterion here becomes emotional component, which can be determined by the “like-dislike” ratio. With sympathy, a person is automatically endowed with positive qualities, and with antipathy, with negative qualities.
Perceptual-associative mode b - a variant of synthesis, when a person is attributed the qualities and properties of another person who is similar to him in appearance.
Social-associative method– a person is assigned to a certain social type based on the perception of appearance.

The choice of how to perceive another person is carried out unconsciously and depends on personal characteristics the person himself and the regulatory role of perception.

During the perception of a person by a person, a general image of another person is created and an emotional assessment is given. This is necessary for predicting the actions and behavior of another person and for planning one’s own course of action in relation to the subject.

Social perception has four main functions:

knowing yourself by comparing with another person;
cognition of the subject;
building joint activities;
creating emotional connections.

A number of features are observed in social perception:

1) a group of features is associated with the content side of perception:

attribution of properties (attribution);
attribution of causes of behavior (causal attribution);
the role of attitude at first impression.

2) a group of features is related to the mechanisms of cognition - the operational side:

the first impression effect - the opinion that is formed at the first perception turns out to be very stable;
novelty effect - new person endowed with special personal qualities and arouses strong interest;
halo effect - a person of a certain social status is endowed with a number of specific qualities corresponding to the status, even if these properties are not available;
the phenomenon of stereotyping is the endowment of a person with properties typical of his profession or nationality, which he may not have.

Social perception depends on emotional components and cannot be objective. The reason for this is errors in the mechanisms of perception.

When perceiving another person, we tend to erroneously attribute a number of properties to another person:

agreement with the opinions of friends and relatives - following the installation characteristics;
difference from the opinions of others - reluctance to follow attitudinal characteristics;
correspondence of characteristics to cause-and-effect relationships - an opinion about a person based on the results of his behavior;
motivational errors: determining one’s own biases when perceiving another person - endowing a person with special traits before the subject is perceived;
overestimation of personal factors with simultaneous underestimation of situational ones - failure to take into account situational influences;
false consent - “adjustment” to one’s own opinion;
errors of role behavior - endowing a person with qualities characteristic of the status he occupies.

Attitude is of great importance in creating the image of another person. It is the attitudinal component that plays the most important role in the formation of interpersonal relationships. So, for example, with all due respect to sports, it is necessary to state the importance of the mood before a team game.

Accuracy of perception and understanding by a given person social behavior other people in social psychology is defined by the term social perception.

In the process of interaction, people give out great amount information in the form of verbal and nonverbal cues that reveal goals in a given situation and their reactions to other people involved in the situation. Therefore, it is important to analyze signals accurately and understand them. Only if a person adequately perceives this information from other people can he make the adjustments to his own behavior that are necessary to obtain the desired result.

On the other hand, a person must be able not only to accurately perceive the reactions of others, but also to be accurate in assessing his own behavior.

Thus, it should be noted that in a communication situation, the one who is active in transforming the situation and himself is more successful and is more adequate in his response. Based on this, it is objectively necessary and important to consider the factors that interfere with the holistic formation of the image of a communication partner.

The first impression is considered one of the barriers that can contribute to the erroneous perception of a communication partner. Why? The first impression, in fact, is not always the first, since both visual and auditory memory influence the formation of the image. Consequently, it may be relatively adequate, consistent with character traits, or it may be erroneous.

The barrier of a negative attitude introduced into your experience by one of the people. Someone told you negative information about some person, and you develop a negative attitude towards a person about whom you yourself know little and have no experience of personal interaction with him. Such negative attitudes brought from outside, outside of your personal experience communication with a specific person and knowledge of his personality should be avoided.

New people with whom you will communicate over a period of time must be approached with a positive, optimistic hypothesis. Do not rely solely on the opinions of others when assessing a person.

Strive to thoroughly understand the person’s personality and correlate the information you receive with your personal impression. This will help you avoid interpersonal conflicts, which often arise precisely as a result of someone’s incorrectly formed negative attitude.

Barrier of “fear” of contact with a person. It happens that you need to come into direct contact with a person, but you feel somehow awkward. What to do in this case? There is only one way out. Try to calmly, without emotions, analyze what is holding you back in communication, and you will be convinced that these emotional layers are either subjective or of too secondary a nature (of course, if there are no fundamental specific disagreements). After such an analysis has been carried out, enter into a conversation, and then be sure to analyze whether everything in the conversation went well, and be sure to fix your attention on the fact that nothing terrible happened. Typically, such a barrier is typical for people who experience difficulties in communication associated with low level sociability.

Barrier of “expectations of misunderstanding.” You must enter into direct interaction with a person in business or personal communication, but you are concerned about the question: will your partner understand you correctly? Moreover, here they often assume that your partner must misunderstand you. They begin to predict the consequences of this misunderstanding, to anticipate discomfort, which, note, now in one’s own imagination appears as an inevitable reality, etc. What should be done in this
case? It is necessary to calmly and thoroughly analyze the content of the conversation you are planning and, if possible, eliminate from it those moments or emotional accents that may cause an inadequate interpretation of your intentions. After that, feel free to get in touch. Barrier of “incorrect stereotypes”. Often, organizing productive interaction with a person is hindered by an incorrect stereotype of perception of certain life phenomena, for example: “I will ask him for something, but he will definitely refuse.”
The “age” barrier is typical in the system of everyday communication. It occurs in a wide variety of areas human interaction: between adults and children (the adult does not understand how the child lives, which is the cause of many conflicts), between people of different generations. Remember how older people often condemn the behavior of young people, as if forgetting themselves at this age. And those who are younger get irritated and laugh, and as a result, complications arise in interpersonal relationships.

The age barrier in communication is dangerous in family relationships, and in the service interaction system. We
should know that such a barrier exists and take it into account when communicating with people.

A person's mood and behavior are largely determined by his inherent way of interpreting and explaining the world. A. T. Beck calls these constructs as negative cognitive models, or schemas. These schemes are like filters, “conceptual glasses” through which we see the world, select certain aspects of experienced events and interpret them in one way or another. Representatives of cognitivism (one of the directions in psychology) emphasize that a person does not have direct reactions to most situations, but his emotional reactions depend on how he perceives events. Ultimately, it is not events that excite, upset, irritate or anger us, but the way in which we interpret and make sense of them.
Consequently, it is logical to identify factors that contribute to the most objective formation of the image, and what is the basis for an adequate attitude towards a partner.

G. W. Allport described eight personal qualities necessary to be a good judge of people.

1) Experience. In order to understand people well, the first thing you need is maturity. This implies not only reaching a certain age (30 years or so), but also a rich store of experience in interacting with human nature in its most varied and intricate manifestations.

Youth sees people in the narrow perspective of its own limited experience, and when young people are forced to judge those whose lives differ significantly from their own, they often resort to immature and incongruous clichés such as “the old man is behind the times,” “the normal guy.” or "eccentric".

The experienced person already has a rich apperceptive chain of carefully tested interpretations for each of the countless human manifestations. Even if associations and inferences are not the only mental processes that help us understand other people, even if - as is possible - we need to pay tribute to theories of intuitive understanding, then intuitive understanding also requires strong experiential foundations.

2) Similarity. This is a requirement that the person who tries to judge people should be similar in nature to the person he wants to understand. Experimental studies have shown that those who more accurately assess a trait in another person are themselves highly likely to possess that trait. But the correlation here is not absolute, and things are not so simple: the fluidity of the imagination of one evaluator may be more valuable than the vast reserves of untapped experience of another.

3) Intelligence. Experimental research has time and time again confirmed the fact that there is some connection between high intelligence and the ability to accurately judge other people. Vernoy discovered that high intelligence especially characteristic of those who accurately evaluate themselves and strangers, but if evaluators are well acquainted with those they are evaluating, then experience can, to a certain extent,
replace exceptional intelligence. In general, however, good intelligence is necessary, and the reason is quite simple. Understanding people is largely a task of understanding the connections between past and present actions, between expressive behavior and internal properties, between cause and effect, and intelligence is the ability to establish these kinds of relationships.

4) Deep understanding of yourself. A proper understanding of our own antisocial tendencies, our own pretense and inconsistency, our own complex motives, usually keeps us from being too superficial and simple judgments about people. Blindness and error in understanding our own nature will automatically be transferred to our judgment of others. Compulsive neurosis or any other quirk not understood by ourselves will necessarily be superimposed as a projection or value judgment on our assessments of other people. In the practice of psychoanalysis, the need for preliminary knowledge of oneself has long been recognized. Before the analyst can untie other people's knots, he must untangle his own.

5) Difficulty. As a rule, people cannot deeply understand those who are more complex and subtle than themselves. A straightforward mind has no sympathy for the worries of a cultured and diversified mind... Two souls lived in Faust’s chest, and only one in his assistant Wagner; and it was Faust who was finally able to comprehend the meaning of human life.

6) Detachment. Experiments have shown that those who are good at understanding others are less sociable. They tend to be more introverted than extroverted, and the best evaluators tend to be mysterious and difficult to evaluate. On average, they do not place social values very high. Those who are preoccupied with social values do not have enough time to impartially study other people. They experience sympathy, pity, love or admiration and cannot distance themselves from these emotional relationships enough to gain an unbiased view.

7) Aesthetic inclinations. Aesthetic inclinations are often associated with less sociability. This quality stands above all others, especially if we take the most gifted connoisseurs of people... The aesthetic mind always tries to penetrate into the inherent harmony of an object, whether it is something as trivial as some ornament, or something as significant as a human being.

8) Social intelligence. This quality is not mandatory. Novelists or artists often do not have it. On the other hand, say, an interviewer must have such a “social gift”, since his function is more complex: he must listen calmly and at the same time probe, encourage frankness without ever seeming shocked, be friendly but restrained, patient and at the same time stimulating - and at the same time never showing boredom.

Such a delicate balance in behavior requires a high level of development of various qualities that ensure smoothness in relationships with people. In order to speak and act tactfully, it is necessary to predict the most likely reactions of another person. Therefore, social intelligence is associated with the ability to make quick, almost automatic, judgments about people. At the same time, social intelligence has more to do with behavior than with operating concepts: its product is social adaptation, not depth of understanding.

In human relationships, in understanding how an individual influences a group and a group influences an individual, people’s perception and understanding of each other is important. It is always present in human contacts and is as natural for them as the satisfaction of everyday organic needs. It is difficult to imagine a more diabolical punishment, wrote W. James, as if someone found himself in a society of people where no one would pay attention to him. If no one turned around when we appeared, did not answer our questions, if everyone who met us deliberately did not recognize us and treated us like inanimate objects, then we would be overcome by a certain kind of rage, powerless despair, from which we were the most severe bodily torments would be a relief, if only during these torments we would feel that, despite the hopelessness of our situation, we still have not fallen so low as to not deserve attention. This psychologically deep and vitally truthful statement by one of the best experts in practical human psychology and interpersonal relations very accurately captures not only the human need for people’s attention to themselves, but also in a certain way. It depends, not least of all, on how correctly people perceive and evaluate us.

What are the origins of man's understanding of man?

According to modern scientific ideas, there are quite a few such sources, and all of them are capable of providing us with not only true knowledge about people, but also misconceptions. Let's look at them.

One of the mechanisms by which people perceive and understand each other is called implicit theory of personality. It represents a person’s idea of how character traits, appearance and behavior are interconnected in people. The implicit theory of personality develops in individual experience of communicating with people and becomes a fairly stable structure that determines a person’s perception of a person. Using it, the individual, based on appearance a person judges his possible personality traits, probable actions and is pre-tuned to certain forms of behavior in relation to the corresponding person. The implicit personality theory shapes a person’s attitude towards people who have certain appearance features. It also allows, on the basis of limited information about another, to judge what is inherent in him. For example, if the structure of the implicit theory of personality includes the knowledge that courage as a personality trait is usually combined with decency, then an individual with this knowledge will automatically consider all courageous people to be decent (in fact, the connection between these personality traits may be accidental) .

The process of forming an implicit theory of personality in a person can be imagined as follows. When meeting different people in life, a person stores in his memory impressions about them, which mainly relate to external data, actions and character traits. Many life observations, overlapping each other, form in the mind something like a Galton photograph: in the long-term memory from meetings with these people only the most general and stable remains. It is this that forms the triple structure that underlies the implicit personality theory of the relationship between a person’s character, behavior and appearance. Subsequently contacting people who outwardly remind the individual of those about whom impressions are left in his memory, he unconsciously begins to attribute to these people those character traits that are part of the established structure of the implicit theory of personality. If correct, the implicit theory of personality facilitates the rapid formation of an accurate image of another person, even in the absence of sufficient information about him. This is the positive socio-psychological role of the phenomenon we are discussing. However, if the implicit theory of personality is incorrect, and this often happens, then this can lead to the construction of an erroneous a priori (presumed) image of another person, giving rise to an incorrect attitude towards him and, as a result, a negative response on his part. Since all this usually happens on a subconscious level, uncontrollable and uncontrollable mutual antipathies can arise between people. It is the distorted implicit theory of personality that is a common cause of various kinds of racial, national, social, religious and other prejudices.

The next fact that definitely affects the correctness of people’s perception and understanding of each other is primacy effect. Its essence is that the first impression of a person, the first personal information received about him by the perceiver, can have a stronger and more stable influence on the formation of his image. Sometimes the corresponding phenomenon found in the sphere of people’s perception and evaluation of each other is called halo effect.

If, for example, the first impression of another person, due to the prevailing circumstances, turns out to be positive, then on its basis a positive image of this person is subsequently formed, which becomes a kind of filter (halo), allowing into the consciousness of the perceiver only that information about what is perceived that is consistent with the first impression (the laws of cognitive dissonance are triggered). If, on the contrary, the first impression for some reason turns out to be negative, then only that information about what is perceived that is predominantly negative enters the consciousness of the perceiver. This happens, at least in the early stages of interpersonal communication between these people. Since the circumstances of the meeting of these people can be very different, randomly depending on the situation, mood, condition of these people and much more, their first impression of each other can be (and most often turns out to be) wrong.

But often the halo effect occurs when the first impression or first personal information about a person turns out to be correct. Then he begins to play in interpersonal relationships positive role, promotes quick and effective pre-tuning of people in communicating with each other.

Logically related to the primacy effect is its opposite effect of novelty. It concerns not the first, but the last impression received about a person. The information that is stored last in memory is also capable of having a stronger influence on subsequent perceptions and assessments of a given person than the previous one (with the exception of the very first impression). An individual can reflect on the latest information about another person, calmly consider and weigh it. They seem to replace, temporarily displace from memory what was previously known about this person and at the current moment in time comes to the fore.

Both of the phenomena we have considered - the primacy effect (halo) and the affect of novelty - owe their emergence, in particular, to the already known law of long-term memory, according to which what was best remembered is what happened at the beginning and at the end.

Much attention in studies of people’s perception of each other has been given to finding out what the process of interpersonal cognition itself is, what the perceiver first of all pays attention to when assessing what is perceived, and in what sequence he “reads” information about it. It turned out that when perceiving a new person, an individual pays main attention to such features of his appearance that are the most informative from the point of view of the psychological characteristics of what he perceives. This is a facial expression, hand movements. In a person's face, the perceiver's attention is primarily attracted to the eyes and lips, and in the hands - to the fingers. They, apparently, carry the greatest information about the psychology and state of a person in this moment time. First, the general attitude of the perceived person to the perceiver is usually assessed, then a hypothesis is built and tested about the person’s personality and, if confirmed, the necessary information is extracted from long-term memory about how it is appropriate to behave in relation to this person. Psychologists, in addition, tried to find out which of the states of the perceived person are assessed by the perceiver better and in what sequence. Here are the results of one such experiment. It used excerpts from literary works to determine the nature of perceived emotional states. They expressed three groups of speaker states: emotionally positive, indifferent and emotionally negative. It turned out that quite often, from 30 to 50% of cases, people make mistakes in precise definition emotional state speaker. Positive emotions are assessed more correctly than others, and negative emotions are assessed worst of all (more than 50% of errors).

Of the positive emotional states, joy is perceived and assessed more correctly than others; admiration is somewhat worse. In the group of indifferent emotional states, the state of surprise was identified more accurately than others, and indifference was somewhat worse. Among the negative emotions, resentment, melancholy and anger were equally poorly perceived.

Significant interindividual differences were found in the accuracy of identification individual species emotional states of a person. It turned out that these differences are associated with culture, nationality, profession, and some other factors. They also relate to the age and gender of a person, his psychological state at the time of perception.

Except individual differences, determined by the above reasons, there are typical forms of perception and understanding of a person by a person. Among them the following stand out:

1. Analytical. IN in this case every informative element of a person’s appearance, for example his hands, eyes, shape of lips, chin, color and shape of hair, etc., is associated with the presence of a certain personality trait. ABOUT psychological characteristics a person is judged on the basis of a preliminary decomposition of his appearance into elements (analysis of external appearance), and then they are used to judge his individual personality qualities. This type of perception is characteristic of artists and doctors, who, by the nature of their profession, often have to study the external appearance of a person (artists - to recreate it on canvas, doctors - for the purpose of more accurate medical diagnosis).

2. Emotional. Here, certain personality qualities are attributed to a person on the basis of an emotional attitude towards him, and the personal assessment of what is perceived is determined by the previously discussed mechanisms of the primacy effect of the novelty effect. This type of interpersonal perception is often found in children, especially adolescents, as well as in females, emotionally excitable individuals and in some people with a figurative type of memory and thinking.

Perceptual-associative. It is characterized by the use of judgments by analogy when perceiving a person. Signs of his external appearance and behavioral reactions evoke in the memory of the perceiver the image of another person, outwardly somewhat similar to the perceived one. Thanks to the implicit theory of personality, the image of the perceived person is hypothetically completed and formed, and those traits that are characteristic of the implicit theory of personality of the perceiver are attributed to it. This type of interpersonal perception can often be found among older people, among those who have a fairly large and rich professional and life experience of communicating with different people, for example, among actors who often have to reproduce psychology and behavior different people. In a similar way, when perceiving and evaluating other people, those who often have to evaluate another person as an individual in conditions of a lack of information and time act: teachers, doctors, managers.

Social-associative. In this case, perception and evaluation are carried out on the basis of established social stereotypes, i.e. on the basis of attributing the perceived person to a certain social type. As a result, the perceived person is assigned qualities of the type to which he was classified. People of different professions, social status, worldview, etc. can act as basic social types. This type of perception is characteristic, for example, of managers and politicians, philosophers and sociologists.

In order to correctly perceive and evaluate a person, it is necessary to carefully observe his behavior in those situations where he reveals himself most and most comprehensively as a person. These situations must meet the following basic requirements:

A. To be those in which a person’s behavior is aimed at achieving goals that correspond to his most important life motives and needs.

B. These situations must be associated with overcoming serious obstacles to achieving the desired goal. Among these obstacles should be, among other things, people whose interests do not completely coincide with the interests of the person in question.

C. The corresponding situations must include three main spheres of human activity: learning, communication and work, since in each of them significant and different aspects of the personality are manifested.

Observations of a person for the purpose of assessing him as an individual must be carried out according to a specific plan. In order to obtain the information about a person’s personality necessary for generalization, it is advisable when communicating with him and in the process of observing him to pay special attention to what he says, how he speaks, and how he reacts to the actions and actions of other people.

If this is possible, then you need to use the judgments and opinions of other people about the perceived person, since any individual opinion is always, to one degree or another, subjective, one-sided. We are not able to constantly be close to another person, continuously observe his behavior. Most often, we meet a person sporadically, observing him in a limited range of social situations, for example at school, in the family, among friends, on vacation, etc. Consequently, we are able to correctly perceive and evaluate in a person only those traits that are revealed quite fully under these conditions. We may not know the rest simply for the reason that we did not have the favorable opportunity to observe this person in other social situations. People around us could have received this opportunity, so their opinion in this case can serve as a good addition to our own perception.

There are some factors that make it difficult to correctly perceive and evaluate people. The main ones are:

1. Inability to distinguish communication situations based on such characteristics as:

a) the goals and objectives of communication between people in a given situation,

b) their intentions and motives,

c) forms of behavior suitable for achieving goals,

d) the state of affairs and well-being of people at the time of observation.

The presence of predetermined attitudes, assessments, and beliefs that the observer has long before the process of perceiving and evaluating another person actually begins. Such attitudes usually manifest themselves in judgments like “What is there to look at and evaluate? I already know...”

The presence of already formed stereotypes, according to which the observed people are assigned to a certain category in advance and an attitude is formed that directs attention to the search for traits associated with it. For example: “All boys are rude,” “All girls are insincere.”

The desire to make premature conclusions about the personality of the person being assessed before comprehensive and reliable information has been received about him. Some people, for example, have a “ready” judgment about a person immediately after meeting or seeing him for the first time.

Lack of desire and habit of listening to the opinions of other people in personality assessments, the desire to rely only on one’s own impression of a person, to defend it.

Lack of changes in people's perceptions and assessments that occur due to natural reasons with time. This refers to the case when once expressed a judgment and opinion about a person does not change, despite the fact that new information about him accumulates.

Importance For a deeper understanding of how people perceive and evaluate each other, the phenomenon of causal attribution has been widely studied in social psychology. The processes of causal attribution are subject to the following patterns that influence people’s understanding of each other:

Those events that are often repeated and accompany the observed phenomenon, preceding it or appearing simultaneously, are usually considered as its possible causes.

If the act that we want to explain is unusual and was preceded by some unique event, we are inclined to consider this to be the main reason for the committed act.

An incorrect explanation of people's actions occurs when there are many different, equally probable possibilities for their interpretation and the person offering his explanation is free to choose the option that suits him personally. In practice, such a choice is often determined by the attitude of a person to the person whose action is to be explained.

IN In human relationships, in understanding how an individual influences a group and a group influences an individual, people’s perception and understanding of each other is important. It is always present in human contacts and is as natural for them as the satisfaction of everyday organic needs. It is difficult to imagine a more diabolical punishment, wrote W. James, as if someone found himself in a society of people where no one would pay attention to him. If no one turned around when we appeared, did not answer our questions, if everyone when meeting us, he deliberately did not recognize us and treated us as if we were inanimate objects, then we would be overcome by a certain kind of rage, powerless despair, from which the most severe bodily torments would be a relief, if only during these torments we felt that despite all the hopelessness Our position, we still have not fallen so low as not to deserve attention.

This psychologically deep and vitally truthful statement by one of the best experts in practical human psychology and interpersonal relations very accurately captures not only the human need for people’s attention to themselves, but also in a certain way. It's not the least

depends on how correctly people perceive and evaluate us.

What are the origins of man's understanding of man?

According to modern scientific ideas, there are many such sources, and all of them are capable of providing us not only with true knowledge about people, but also with misconceptions. Let's look at them.

One of the mechanisms by which people perceive and understand each other is called implicit theory of personality. It represents a person’s idea of how character traits, appearance and behavior are interconnected in people. The implicit theory of personality develops in individual experience of communicating with people and becomes a fairly stable structure that determines a person’s perception of a person. Using it, the individual, based on the external appearance of a person, judges his possible personality traits, probable actions, and is pre-adjusted in advance to certain forms of behavior in relation to the corresponding person. The implicit personality theory shapes a person’s attitude towards people who have certain appearance features. It also allows, on the basis of limited information about another, to judge what is inherent in him. For example, if the structure of the implicit theory of personality includes the knowledge that courage as a personality trait is usually combined with decency, then an individual with this knowledge will automatically consider all courageous people to be decent (in fact, the connection between these personality traits may be accidental) .

If correct, the implicit theory of personality facilitates the rapid formation of an accurate image of another person, even in the absence of sufficient information about him. This is the positive socio-psychological role of the phenomenon we are discussing. However, if the implicit theory of personality is incorrect, and this often happens, then this can lead to the construction of an erroneous a priori (presumed) image of another person, giving rise to an incorrect attitude towards him and, as a result, a negative response on his part. Since all this usually happens on a subconscious level, uncontrollable and uncontrollable mutual antipathies can arise between people. It is the distorted implicit theory of personality that is a common cause of various kinds of racial, national, social, religious and other prejudices.

But often the halo effect occurs when the first impression or first personal information about a person turns out to be correct. Then it begins to play a positive role in interpersonal relationships and contributes to the quick and effective pre-tuning of people in communicating with each other.

Logically related to the primacy effect is its opposite effect of novelty. It concerns not the first, but the last impression received about a person. The information that is stored last in memory is also capable of having a stronger influence on subsequent perceptions and assessments of a given person than the previous one (with the exception of the very first impression). An individual can reflect on the latest information about another person, calmly consider and weigh it. They seem to replace, temporarily displace from memory what was previously known about a given person and at the current moment in time comes to the fore.

Psychologists, in addition, tried to find out which of the states of the perceived person are assessed by the perceiver.

which is better and in what order. Here are the results of one of these experiments 1. It used excerpts from literary works to determine the nature of perceived emotional states. They expressed three groups of speaker states: emotionally positive, indifferent and emotionally negative. It turned out that quite often, from 30 to 50% of cases, people make mistakes in accurately determining the emotional state of the speaker. Positive emotions are assessed more correctly than others, and negative emotions are assessed worst of all (more than 50% of errors).

Significant interindividual differences were found in the correctness of determining certain types of human emotional states. It turned out that these differences are associated with culture, nationality, profession, and some other factors. They also relate to the age and gender of a person, his psychological state at the time of perception.

In addition to individual differences determined by the above reasons, there are typical forms of perception and understanding of a person by a person. Among them the following stand out:

1. Analytical. In this case, each informative element of a person’s appearance, for example, his hands, eyes, shape of lips, chin, color and shape of hair, etc., is associated with the presence of a certain personality trait. The psychological characteristics of a person are judged on the basis of a preliminary decomposition of his appearance into elements (analysis of external appearance), and then they are used to judge the individual qualities of his personality. This type of perception is characteristic of artists and doctors, who, by the nature of their profession, often have to study the external appearance of a person (artists - to recreate it on canvas, doctors - for the purpose of more accurate medical diagnosis).

■See:: Borisova A.A. Perception of a person’s emotional state based on the intonation pattern of speech // Questions of psychology. - 1989. - No. 1.

2. Emotional. Here, certain personality qualities are attributed to a person on the basis of an emotional attitude towards him, and the personal assessment of what is perceived is determined by the previously discussed mechanisms of the primacy effect, the effect of novelty. This type of interpersonal perception is often found in children, especially adolescents, as well as in females, emotionally excitable individuals and in some people with a figurative type of memory and thinking.

3. Perceptual-associative. It is characterized by the use of judgments by analogy when perceiving a person. Signs of his external appearance and behavioral reactions evoke in the memory of the perceiver the image of another person, outwardly somewhat similar to the perceived one. Thanks to the implicit theory of personality, the image of the perceived person is hypothetically completed and formed, and those traits that are characteristic of the implicit theory of personality of the perceiver are attributed to it. This type of interpersonal perception can often be found among older people, among those who have a fairly large and rich professional and life experience of communicating with different people, for example, among actors who often have to reproduce the psychology and behavior of various people. In a similar way, when perceiving and evaluating other people, those who often have to evaluate another person as an individual in conditions of a lack of information and time act: teachers, doctors, managers.

4. Social-associative. In this case, perception and evaluation are carried out on the basis of existing social stereotypes, i.e. on the basis of attributing the perceived person to a certain social type. As a result, the perceived person is assigned qualities of the type to which he was classified. People of different professions, social status, worldview, etc. can act as basic social types. This type of perception is characteristic, for example, of managers and politicians, philosophers and sociologists.

A. To be those in which a person’s behavior is aimed at achieving goals that correspond to his most important life motives and needs.

If this is possible, then you need to use the judgments and opinions of other people about the perceived person, since any individual opinion is always, to one degree or another, subjective, one-sided. We are not able to constantly be close to another person, continuously observe his behavior. Most often, we meet a person sporadically, observing him in a limited range of social situations, for example at school, in the family, among friends, on vacation, etc. Consequently, we are able to correctly perceive and evaluate in a person only those traits that are revealed quite fully under these conditions. We may not know the rest simply because we did not have the opportunity to observe this person in other social situations. People around us could have received this opportunity, so their opinion in this case can serve as a good addition to our own perception.

There are some factors that make it difficult to correctly perceive and evaluate people. The main ones are:

1. Inability to distinguish communication situations based on such characteristics as:

a) the goals and objectives of communication between people in a given situation,

b) their intentions and motives,

c) forms of behavior suitable for achieving goals,

d) the state of affairs and well-being of people at the time of observation.

2. The presence of predetermined attitudes, assessments, and beliefs that the observer has long before the process of perceiving and evaluating another person actually begins. Such attitudes usually manifest themselves in judgments like “What is there to look at and evaluate? I already know...”

3. The presence of already formed stereotypes, according to which the observed people are assigned to a certain category in advance and an attitude is formed that directs attention to the search for traits associated with it. For example: “All boys are rude,” “All girls are insincere.”

4. The desire to make premature conclusions about the personality of the person being assessed before comprehensive and reliable information has been received about him. Some people, for example, have a “ready” judgment about a person immediately after meeting or seeing him for the first time.

5. Lack of desire and habit of listening to the opinions of other people in personality assessments, the desire to rely only on one’s own impression of a person, to defend it.

6. Lack of changes in people's perceptions and assessments that occur for natural reasons over time. This refers to the case when once expressed a judgment and opinion about a person does not change, despite the fact that new information about him accumulates.

The phenomenon of causal attribution, widely studied in social psychology, is important for a deeper understanding of how people perceive and evaluate each other. The processes of causal attribution are subject to the following patterns that influence people’s understanding of each other:

1. Those events that are often repeated and accompany the observed phenomenon, preceding it or appearing simultaneously, are usually considered as its possible causes.

2. If the act that we want to explain is unusual and was preceded by some unique event, then we are inclined to consider it the main reason for the committed act.

3. An incorrect explanation of people’s actions occurs when there are many different, equally probable possibilities for their interpretation and the person offering his explanation is free to choose the option that suits him personally. In practice, such a choice is often determined by the attitude of the person evaluating the person whose action is to be explained.

PERSONAL WELL-BEING IN A GROUP

The well-being of an individual in a group is understood as the general psychological condition, the emotional and moral mood that dominates her as a result of her long stay in this group. In order to more accurately determine the well-being of the majority of individuals in a group, psychology uses the concept psychological climate. We have already touched on it before, but now we will look at it in a little more detail.

With the help of this concept, the moral and emotional aspects of the system of human relations that have developed in a group are designated. The psychological climate includes the totality moral standards and the values that guide group members in their relationships to the cause that unites them and to each other. The psychological climate essentially characterizes the prevailing emotional mood in the group.

In addition to general phenomena associated with the psychological climate, the group is integrally described by the influence that it, as a whole, has on the individual. On his part, this influence primarily appears in the form of an emotional and moral attitude (well-being, mood, etc.).

Analyzing the dynamics of relationships in various microgroups - dyads and triads - in the previous chapter (§ 3), we noted that small groups different levels developments influence people’s relationships in different ways, as if turning them towards the business and towards each other, either positive or negative, or leaving them indifferent. This means that the psychological climate that has developed in a group can actualize either the best or the worst qualities of a person’s personality.

Let's consider the impact a group can have on the emotional well-being of its members, in particular in relieving interpersonal bias and anxiety.

Almost always we perceive and evaluate people under the influence of a certain attitude. This attitude can be constant and changeable, depending on the circumstances and characteristics of the perceived people. Being stable and little connected with the personalities of the people being assessed, such an attitude can take the form of prejudice and give rise to a biased attitude towards the person. He, in turn, rightly believing that he is being treated with prejudice, responds in kind. This is how difficult, conflictual relationships develop, from which

It can be difficult to find a way out, since the parties involved do not see themselves as the primary source of the conflict situation.

The cause of conflict between people, most often encountered in practice, is the dishonest, unfair, unkind, dishonest attitude of one person towards another. The way to remove prejudice is, in turn, to overcome interpersonal mistrust and inspire people to trust each other.

There are several ways to remove bias in group relationships:

1. Creating situations in which people will perceive each other as equal in status. This can be done, for example, using role-playing games such as socio-psychological training.

2. Development of each group member’s ability to correctly perceive and evaluate people, skills and interpersonal communication skills.

3. Stimulating and encouraging direct interpersonal contacts of people who distrust each other.

4. Enriching the individual experience of a prejudiced person by observing the attitudes of other people towards those towards whom he feels a sense of prejudice (meaning people whose opinions he values).

In the last few decades, much attention in connection with emotional and motivational issues of regulation of human behavior in small groups has been attracted by the anxiety that arises among individuals in a group (situational anxiety). The phenomenon of anxiety arises in a group when there are emotionally unfavorable, suspicious relationships associated with distrust of each other and alienation. The main way to relieve such anxiety is the same one that is used to prevent and resolve conflicts: increasing openness and mutual trust among group members.

Let's take a closer look at intragroup conflict situations. First, let's imagine the types of such conflicts (Fig. 83). The first one from the top in the picture from interpersonal conflicts is called conflict of hopelessness for the reason that there is no satisfactory way out of it for the individuals involved. The relationships between people in this case are not

compatible, opposite: one of the group members has a negative attitude towards the other, and the other has a positive attitude, and if neither one nor the other wants to change their attitude, then their relationship will constantly be in a state of incompatibility. Psychologically, this conflict can be experienced more acutely by those members of the couple who, experiencing a positive attitude towards their partner, receives negative attitude. This type of conflict can be resolved in only one way: a complete severance of relations between the conflicting parties.

The second type of interpersonal conflict is uncertainty conflict, since with an uncertain (positive or negative) attitude of one of the partners towards the other, he does not meet with an equally unambiguous attitude towards himself, either positive or negative.

Rice. 83. Types of interpersonal intragroup conflicts

nogo. Due to this circumstance, the relationship between people involved in a given psychological situation may remain unclear for a long time, since one whose attitude towards another is positive may assume the same attitude towards himself on the part of his partner, and one whose attitude is negative can also count on a positive attitude towards oneself and, due to this circumstance, maintain one’s relationship with another.

The third type of interpersonal conflict is characterized by the fact that the same person evokes both positive and negative attitudes toward himself. Any movement aimed at getting closer to him stops pretty soon, since getting closer causes an increasing desire to break off the relationship with this person. Here, one individual, experiencing an ambivalent (contradictory, dual) feeling towards another, simultaneously strives for him and fears him. As a result, he stops somewhere halfway to his partner, while at the same time maintaining a certain psychological distance that balances the oppositely directed forces of desire and avoidance. Schematically, this kind of conflict psychological situation is presented “in Fig. 84.

The last of the abnormal relationships, which, being primarily personal, can also appear in the sphere of interpersonal group relations, is frustration. In psychology, frustration is understood as a state of emotional and psychological disorder associated with the experience of failure to achieve a goal and the futility of efforts. Frustration is accompanied by disappointment, irritation, anxiety, and sometimes despair; it negatively affects relationships between people if at least one of them is in a state of frustration. In group relationships, frustration often contributes to the emergence of interpersonal conflicts.

U different people the reaction to frustration may vary. This reaction can take the form of apathy, aggressiveness, regression (temporary decrease in the level of rationality and intellectual organization of behavior). Aggressive actions as a reaction to frustration often arise when a person’s internal tension, generated by a strong unsatisfied desire, seeks external release and finds its point of application in another person who is frustrated.

Rice. 84. Hypothetical curves expressing the desire of one person for another, who is both dangerous and attractive to him. The solid curve is the strength of the desire to get closer to the object; dotted line - move away from him. X is the point where the desires to move closer and further away are balanced. This is where a person finds himself in a state of conflict.

the target is perceived as the reason for his failure. Here is one example of the effect of frustration on the behavior of children in a group, taken from a study conducted in the early 40s by the famous social psychologist K. Lewin together with R. Barker and T. Dembo.

The experiment in question was conducted with children preschool age within a few days. On the first day, the children were given the opportunity to play in a room with different toys, all of which were inappropriate.

lectures. For example, there was a table without chairs, a telephone receiver - without a telephone set, a boat - without water, etc. Despite the incompleteness of the toys, all the children played enthusiastically, easily replacing the missing objects with others or imaginary ones.

On the second day of the experiment, the situation changed. When the children entered the room where they had played with enthusiasm yesterday, their eyes opened to the next room, which had previously been closed on the first day of the experiment. This room now contained the same toys that the children had played with yesterday, but complete sets, as well as others, even more attractive. However, it was impossible to get them, since the new room was separated from the old one by an insurmountable barrier - a wire mesh.

The behavior of children under these conditions has changed dramatically. If earlier they played with enthusiasm and communicated with each other, now their group has broken up and they seem to have withdrawn into themselves, stopped communicating and being friends. At the same time, they lost the desire and ability to play. They are no longer attracted to incomplete toys. Many of the children participating in the experiment began to behave aggressively towards these toys: throwing them, breaking them. In the presence of adults, children were capricious. One child, not paying attention to others and adults, lay down on the floor and, doing nothing, defiantly looked at the ceiling; another, approaching the net, began to tug at it with his little hands; the third was senselessly, without interest, going through old toys, throwing them from place to place.

Often, the object of venting the aggressiveness of a frustrated person is other members of his group, who irritate him and are not able to fight back. This aggressive behavior is called “displaced”, since the object of the act of aggression is not the frustrator, but someone else who happens to be nearby.

Aggressive reactions generated by frustration may be directed not only at intragroup, but also at intergroup relations. They can manifest themselves in interethnic, interstate relations, in relationships between different social groups. Acts of this kind are often observed during periods of social, political and economic depression, mass dissatisfaction of people with living conditions. In such conditions, people belonging to

telling others social groups, different nationality and religion.

If, due to the prevailing circumstances, aggression was taken out on some object, or after a significant period of time, the internal psychological tension caused by it subsided by itself, then the next typical psychological reaction What follows aggression is apathy. The speed of its occurrence after aggression and its depth can be individually different and manifest differently in different social groups.

Topics and questions for discussion at seminars T eat a 1. The positive impact of the group on the individual.

1. The duality of the group’s influence on the individual.

2. The main factors of the positive influence of the group on the individual.

3. The group as a source of positive role models.

4. The group as a carrier of spiritual values, knowledge, skills and abilities.

5. The group as a factor contributing to the growth of an individual’s self-awareness.

6. Group as a means of obtaining positive emotional reinforcement.

There are many factors that influence other people's perceptions and understanding. Among them: age, gender, profession, individual personality characteristics, such as “I” - the image and level of self-acceptance.

It is a widely held belief that the older a person is, the better he understands others. This opinion, however, is experimental study not confirmed. Research also has not confirmed that women are more insightful than men. True, in the latter case the issue has not yet been fully clarified.

I think that a number of features associated with individual traits and personality traits are more important than gender and age. Important role plays, for example, the image of “I” and self-esteem - they seem to be the psychological foundation on which they are based various factors that affect relationships with people. I mean those thoughts, assessments, judgments and beliefs about oneself that are related, as it were, to those external, visible manifestations of personality that a person can calmly talk about. I also mean the assessments that a person makes of his own characteristics, hidden from others, but accessible to himself, and those sensations that he is not fully aware of, but which bother and excite him. Often, it is these elements of the “I” image that a person wants to get rid of, repress, or completely forget, that become a source of difficulties and problems in the perception and understanding of the people around him.

I do not mean pathological disorders perceptions associated with mental illness. The soul of each of us has its own special nooks and crannies that we do not want and do not like to look into; Each of us has poorly realized reasons for more or less anxiety - reasons that will not disappear if we try not to think about them or forget them. Most often, these are various internal conflicts that have not yet been resolved. These may be conflicts related to some desires that cannot be satisfied and are assessed negatively. We try to overcome these desires, but to no avail, and when they once again declare themselves “in full voice,” we experience anxiety and fear. That is why the perception of similar desires and related experiences in other people may be significantly impaired. Often the existence " dark spots“in the soul is explained by the presence of some feelings in a person that he does not want or cannot admit to himself. These are not necessarily so-called negative feelings; people sometimes do not recognize tenderness, cordiality, emotion, etc. in themselves.

Similar internal conflicts and unresolved problems take away attention and energy that could be directed to a more complete and comprehensive knowledge and understanding of other people. This is the meaning of the often used expression “a person who is too focused on himself.” This usually means that such a person is burdened with conflicts, problems, issues that constantly require care and attention on his part. If this state drags on, then we can assume that the way a person wants to solve his problems is unsuccessful and, in order to cope with his own difficulties, he does not perceive and understand himself clearly enough. Naturally, this condition interferes with the adequate perception of the people with whom he communicates, but it is impossible to overcome this obstacle only by “effort of will,” as some suggest. It is clear that self-knowledge, as a way of searching for the causes from which internal problems arise and ways to resolve them, requires serious effort, time, certain skills and help from other people.

Awareness of your own limitations and difficulties in understanding others can be very useful in this direction. Awareness of typical and purely individual characteristics, which at times interfere with the process of perception and cognition of people and distort it, allows us to get closer to understanding the world around us. Knowing these features, it is easier to make appropriate amendments to your ideas, and it is easier to avoid inaccuracies and mistakes. Anyone who claims, without a moment’s doubt, that everything is fine with him, that he “perceives everything as it really is,” is unlikely to be able to make much progress in understanding other people. A sober look at oneself is a very difficult matter, and self-analysis is not limited to intellectual activity. You can be a highly educated and fairly intelligent person, but have very limited opportunities for self-analysis.

One of the most serious obstacles to adequate and deep self-knowledge is the system psychological protection"I". Most often, it is a set of unconscious means developed by each of us in order to ensure the security of our personality in the face of a real or imagined threat. The effectiveness of these means is based mainly on the fact that with their help the subject alters the picture of the external or inner reality what incentives evoking feelings anxiety or fear are repressed. Each of us uses such “defensive” distortions when perceiving ourselves and other people, as if forgetting some information, not noticing something, exaggerating or minimizing something, attributing our traits to others, and vice versa, etc.

This often helps us cope with everyday difficulties, avoid painful encounters with reality, and so on.

So, a girl suffering from being abandoned by her lover will try with all her might to forget about him, to erase from her memory the image of this charming, cheerful and carefree person. However, if she fails to achieve this, then every time she meets carefree men of attractive appearance, she will consider them insidious and unreliable.

She will try to stay away from anyone who reminds her of her lost lover, and prefer those who are completely different from him - gloomy, uptight people. However, over time, when the past is forgotten, she will suddenly clearly understand what was obvious from the very beginning: her new chosen one does not have a sense of humor, is a gloomy and gloomy person, does not like to joke and joke, and it turns out to be very difficult to endure all this, because she herself loves to laugh and have fun.

Another person, who harbors a grudge against someone close to him and is no longer aware of his feelings, begins to imagine that this other is hostile towards him. Attributing his own own feelings, he seems to be convinced that he is right. In fact, the reasons for his anger are completely different, but he does not want to acknowledge them, feeling that they reduce the value of his “I”. Various means psychological self-defense in the face of unpleasant or threatening information about us and the world around us makes our life easier, but forces us to pay dearly for it. The price we pay is an inadequate, distorted or incomplete perception and understanding of reality.

Among the many factors influencing people’s perception and cognition, deep-rooted stereotypes of thinking, assessments and actions based on dogmatic attitudes play a special role. Since dogmatism manifests itself in our everyday communication quite often, we should dwell on this phenomenon in more detail. To do this, we will use the provisions of the outstanding Polish psychologist Andrzej Malewski, who worked a lot on this problem.

Dogmatism usually coexists with such psychological phenomena as hostility towards members of other groups, the desire for a clearly structured hierarchy of power and influence, the need for conformity and submission to authorities recognized in a particular group, distrust of people, reluctance to analyze oneself, the tendency to attribute blame for certain misdeeds not for oneself, but for others, a willingness to severely punish the guilty, a tendency to see the world in black and white. If all these qualities are inherent in one person, we can talk about an authoritarian personality.

Dogmatism primarily manifests itself in how others are perceived and understood. We can list several forms of manifestation of dogmatism:

The various judgments and beliefs of the dogmatist are not interconnected, but, on the contrary, are isolated from each other. Due to this circumstance, he holds contradictory views; for example, while condemning the use of brute force in general, he may recognize and even approve of violence in specific situations or, on the contrary, proclaiming that he believes in man and his capabilities, at the same time assert that man is by nature weak and needs constant control from outside.
Dogmatists tend to exaggerate the differences and downplay the similarities between positions that they believe to be true and those that seem to them to be false. For example, they may argue that there is nothing in common between Catholicism and other religions, or they may believe that raising children in an atmosphere of trust and safety has nothing to do with strengthening their sense of responsibility and conscientiousness, but does just the opposite.
One and the same person can know a lot and in detail about some things that he approves and accepts, and know very little and completely inaccurately about something that he does not like. For example, they know people who, due to their characteristics, received a negative assessment from such subjects very superficially. Dogmatists do not want to learn something that they have a negative attitude towards.
People or views that a dogmatist does not accept seem similar to each other, even if in reality there is a fundamental difference between them. They are suspicious and hostile towards those whose points of view differ from theirs.
The world and the relationships in which dogmatists enter into with others seem to them to be a source of real or potential threat.

The signs of a dogmatic position listed above can be expressed with to varying degrees intensity. Researchers argue that dogmatism is often a consequence of a sense of external threat, from which the dogmatist seeks protection in blind submission to authorities who preach irrational and at the same time simplified views and assessments.

We should not forget, however, that protest and rebellion against certain authorities does not mean complete absence dogmatism, because it can get along well with a willingness to obey and follow the authority of others in everything. Sometimes an entire group can act as such an authority, and if its members are dogmatic, intolerant and hostile towards everyone who is not part of the same group, anyone who wants to join such a company will inevitably also become a dogmatist.

Another manifestation of dogmatism in relation to others is the inability to differentiate truly valuable information from dubious information, supported by the prestige of the person who conveyed it. For a dogmatist, it is more important who conveyed the information than whether it is objective, reliable and logical. The value of information is determined by the status and position of the person who is the source of this information.

Since dogmatism of thinking is expressed in the presence of ingrained stereotypes, difficulties in perception and assimilation new information, it is clear that it prevents a deep and diverse understanding of others and contributes to the consolidation of simplified schemes of perception and evaluation. In addition, dogmatists have difficulty enriching their life experience with new information. Such people are reluctant to agree to introduce innovations in the nature of their relationships with others, or to make any changes in their lifestyle.

However, it is still possible, if desired, to overcome the limitations of a dogmatic attitude, to make it more flexible, if, on the one hand, we provide people or groups who are characterized by such qualities with greater independence, and on the other, provide them with a sense of psychological safety. The likelihood of such changes may especially increase if they are initiated by truly authoritative people who enjoy recognition and respect not due to their status or position on the hierarchical ladder, but for the real value of their thoughts and the true meaning of their actions.

In my reflections on the perception and understanding of others, I have repeatedly recalled the role of certain schemas and stereotypes in influencing the process of social perception. In most cases, I have said that these schemes distort or limit the nature of perception. However, it is important not to forget that the various stereotypes and categories that we use when communicating with others carry a double burden. On the one hand, they can cause oversimplification and even distortion of perception, and on the other hand, they help us organize the information that we constantly receive from the outside. We use certain categories to better differentiate important information from less important ones, in order to quickly understand the essence of what we perceive, so that with the help of our past experience we can know others more deeply and better.

Thanks to such schemes, we can sometimes, based on subtle signs, draw very serious conclusions about complex and important phenomena occurring within others. Therefore, it is extremely useful to constantly take care of increasing and enriching your repertoire of schemes and categories that serve for the perception and knowledge of others and yourself. If the repertoire of such means is rich and varied and we know how to use them flexibly, then it is easy for us to extract maximum benefit of their advantages and minimize their disadvantages. Otherwise, we may find ourselves at the mercy of stereotypes formed on the basis of a limited number of categories and schemas.

However, on final result the perception and cognition of others is influenced not only by factors that are in one way or another related to the characteristics of the subject of perception, but also by the characteristics of the perceived individuals and communication situations.