Person perception

Social perception (or person perception) is the study of how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people as sovereign personalities. People learn about others' feelings and emotions by picking up information they gather from physical appearance, verbal, and nonverbal communication. Facial expressions, tone of voice, hand gestures, and body position or movement are just a few examples of ways people communicate without words. A real-world example of social perception would be understanding that others disagree with what one said when one sees them roll their eyes. There are four main components of social perception: observation, attribution, integration, and confirmation.

Observations serve as the raw data of social perception—an interplay of three sources: persons, situations, and behavior. These sources are used as evidence in supporting a person's impression or inference about others. Another important factor to understand when talking about social perception is attribution. Attribution is expressing an individual's personality as the source or cause of their behavior during an event or situation. In order to fully understand the impact of personal or situational attributions, social perceivers must integrate all available information into a unified impression. To finally confirm these impressions, people try to understand, find, and create information in the form of various biases. Most importantly, social perception is shaped by an individual's current motivations, emotions, and cognitive load capacity. Cognitive load is the complete amount of mental effort utilized in the working memory. All of this combined determines how people attribute certain traits and how those traits are interpreted.

The fascination and research for social perception date back to the late 1800s when social psychology was first being discovered. As more and more research on social perception is done, the realization of its significance in understanding and predicting our social world continues to grow. This overview article aims to inform readers about the processes of social perception along with brief descriptions to relevant and related theories.

The processes of social perception begin with observing: persons, situations, and/or behaviors in order to gather evidence in support of an initial impression.

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