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Social perception (or interpersonal perception) is the study of how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people as sovereign personalities. Social perception refers to identifying and utilizing social cues to make judgments about social roles, rules, relationships, context, or the characteristics (e.g., trustworthiness) of others. This domain also includes social knowledge, which refers to one's knowledge of social roles, norms, and schemas surrounding social situations and interactions. People learn about others' feelings and emotions by picking up information they gather from physical appearance, verbal, and
nonverbal communication Nonverbal communication (NVC) is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, Posture (psychology), posture, and body language. It includes the use of social cues, kinesi ...
.
Facial expression A facial expression is one or more motions or positions of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. According to one set of controversial theories, these movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers. Facial expressions are a ...
s, tone of voice,
hand gesture A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each "hand ...
s, and
body position Human positions refer to the different physical configurations that the human body can take. There are several synonyms that refer to human positioning, often used interchangeably, but having specific nuances of meaning. *''Position'' is a gen ...
or movement are a few examples of ways people communicate without words. A real-world example of social perception is understanding that others disagree with what one said when one sees them roll their eyes. There are four main components of social perception:
observation Observation is the active acquisition of information from a primary source. In living beings, observation employs the senses. In science, observation can also involve the perception and recording of data via the use of scientific instruments. The ...
, 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. 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 Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily. It is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term 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 Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
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.


Background


Observation

The processes of social perception begin with observing persons, situations, and behaviors to gather evidence that supports an initial impression.


Persons – physical influence

Although society tries to train people not to judge others based on their physical traits, as social perceivers, we cannot help but be influenced by others' hair, skin color, height, weight, style of clothes, pitch in voice, etc., when making a first impression. People have the tendency to judge others by associating certain facial features with specific personality types. For example, studies indicate that people are perceived as stronger, more assertive, and competent if they have small eyes, low eyebrows, an angular chin, wrinkled skin, and a small forehead. People tend to associate baby-faced people with impotence and harmlessness.


Situations – context from prior experiences

are able to easily predict the sequences or results of an event based on the extent and depth of their past experiences with a similar event. The ability to anticipate the outcomes of a situation is also greatly influenced by an individual's cultural background because this inevitably shapes the types of experiences. Situational observations either lead humans to have preset notions about certain events or to explain the causes of human behaviors.


Behaviors – nonverbal communication

Nonverbal communication helps people express their emotions, attitudes, and personalities. The most dominant form of nonverbal communication is the use of facial expressions to channel different emotions. Greatly influenced by
Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
's research on facial expressions and book '' The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)'', it is believed that all humans, regardless of culture or race, encode and decode the six "primary" emotions, (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust), universally in the same way. To encode means to communicate nonverbal behavior, while to decode means to interpret the meaning or intention of the nonverbal behavior. Decoding sometimes is inaccurate due to affect blend, (a facial expression with two differently registered emotions), and/or
display rules Display rules are a social group or culture's informal norms that distinguish how one should express themselves. They can be described as culturally prescribed rules that people learn early on in their lives by interactions and socializations with ...
, (culturally dictated rules about which nonverbal behaviors are acceptable to display). Other nonverbal cues such as: body language, eye contact, and vocal intonations can affect social perception by allowing for
thin-slicing Thin-slicing is a term used in psychology and philosophy to describe the ability to find patterns in events based only on "thin slices", or narrow windows, of experience. The term refers to the process of making very quick inferences about the s ...
. Thin-slicing describes the ability to make quick judgements from finding consistencies in events based only on narrow frames of experience.


Attribution

With the observations drawn from persons, situations, and behavior, the next step is to make inferences that identify an individual's inner dispositions.


Attribution theories

A large component of social perception is attribution. Attribution is the use of information gathered through observation to help individuals understand and rationalize the causes of one's own and others' behaviors. Psychological research on attribution began with the work of
Fritz Heider Fritz Heider (19 February 1896 – 2 January 1988) was an Austrian psychologist whose work was related to the Gestalt school. In 1958 he published ''The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations'', which expanded upon his creations of balance theory a ...
in 1958, and was subsequently developed by others such as
Harold Kelley Harold Kelley (February 16, 1921 – January 29, 2003) was an American social psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His major contributions have been the development of interdependence theory ...
and
Bernard Weiner Bernard Weiner (born 1935) is an American social psychologist known for developing a form of attribution theory which seeks to explain the emotional and motivational entailments of academic success and failure. His contributions include linking ...
. People make attributions to understand the world around them in order to seek reasons for an individual's particular behavior. When people make attributions they are able to make judgments as to what was the cause or causes of a certain behavior. Attribution theory is the study of what systems and models people implement to make attributions about the behavior of others. It attempts to explain how we use information about the social environment to understand others' behavior. One common bias people exhibit in attribution is called the
fundamental attribution error In social psychology, fundamental attribution error (FAE), also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect, is the tendency for people to under-emphasize situational and environmental explanations for an individual's observed behavior whil ...
. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency for people to attribute others' actions or behaviors to internal traits as opposed to external circumstances. An example of how this may manifest in the real world as pointed out in research by Furnham and Gunter is how one's view of the justness of poverty may be affected by one's financial status: one who has not experienced poverty may see it as being more or less deserved than might someone who has been impoverished at some point. In this way, fundamental attribution error can be a barrier to empathizing with others, as one does not consider all the circumstances involved in the actions of others.


Two-step process of Attributions

Unlike conventional attribution theories, the two-step process of attribution suggests that people analyze others' behaviors first by automatically making an internal attribution and only then considering possible external attributions that may affect the initial inference. Heider's most valuable contribution to the topic of attribution is the
dichotomy A dichotomy is a partition of a whole (or a set) into two parts (subsets). In other words, this couple of parts must be * jointly exhaustive: everything must belong to one part or the other, and * mutually exclusive: nothing can belong simulta ...
: When attempting to decide why individuals behave a certain way, we can make either an internal or external attribution. Internal attribution, (also called
dispositional attribution Dispositional attribution ''(or internal attribution)'' is a phrase in personality psychology that refers to the tendency to assign responsibility for others' behaviors due to their inherent characteristics, such as their motives, beliefs or perso ...
or personal attribution), is the assumption that an individual is acting a certain way due to something about that individual, such as personality, character, or attitude. External attribution, also called
situational attribution Attribution is a term used in psychology which deals with how individuals perceive the causes of everyday experience, as being either external or internal. Models to explain this process are called attribution theory. Psychological research into a ...
, is the inference that an individual is acting a certain way due to the situation he or she is in; the assumption is that most individuals would respond in the same way in that similar situation. Essentially, people first assume that a person's behavior is due to his or her personality, and then attempt to modify this attribution by also factoring in the person's situation.


Jones's correspondent inference theory

According to Edward Jones and Keith Davis's
correspondent inference theory Correspondent inference theory is a psychological theory proposed by Edward E. Jones and Keith E. Davis (1965) that "systematically accounts for a perceiver's inferences about what an actor was trying to achieve by a particular action".Berkowit ...
, people learn about other individuals from behavior that is chosen freely, that is not anticipated, and that results in a small number of favorable outcomes. There are three factors that people use as a basis for their inferences: # An individual's degree of choice # The expectedness of the behavior # The intentions or motives behind the effects or consequences of the behavior


Kelley's covariation theory

According to American social psychologist
Harold Kelley Harold Kelley (February 16, 1921 – January 29, 2003) was an American social psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His major contributions have been the development of interdependence theory ...
, individuals make attributions by utilizing the
covariation principle In probability theory and statistics, covariance is a measure of the joint variability of two random variables. If the greater values of one variable mainly correspond with the greater values of the other variable, and the same holds for the l ...
. The covariation principle claims that people attribute behavior to the factors that are present when a certain behavior occurs and the factors that are absent when it does not occur. There are three types of covariation information that are particularly helpful: consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency. If a single individual and a large majority of individuals behave similarly in reaction to a specific stimulus, then the individual's behavior is attributed to the stimulus and is high in consensus. The individual's behavior due to this specific stimulus should be compared to the individual's behavior in reaction other stimuli within the same broader category. This helps judge whether the level of distinctiveness information is high, and thus attributed to the stimulus. Lastly, consistency information is used to see what happens to the behavior at another time when the individual and the stimulus both remain unchanged.


Integration

Unless a snap judgement is made from observing persons, situations, or behavior, people integrate the dispositions to form impressions.


Information integration theory

Norman H. Anderson Norman Henry Anderson (July 23, 1925 — August 29, 2022) was an American social psychologist and the founder of Information integration theory. Anderson was a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, where he ...
, an American social psychologist, developed the
information integration theory Information integration theory was proposed by Norman H. Anderson to describe and model how a person integrates information from a number of sources in order to make an overall judgment. The theory proposes three functions. The ''valuation ...
in 1981. The theory states that impressions are made from the perceiver's personal dispositions and a weighted average of the target individual's characteristics. The differences among perceivers are due to people using themselves as a standard, or frame of reference, when judging or evaluating others. People also tend to view their own skills and traits as favorable for others to also have. These impressions formed about others can also be influenced by the current, temporary mood of the perceiver. A concept called,
priming Priming may refer to: * Priming (agriculture), a form of seed planting preparation, in which seeds are soaked before planting * Priming (immunology), a process occurring when a specific antigen is presented to naive lymphocytes causing them to di ...
also affects a perceiver's impressions of others. Priming is the tendency for recently perceived or implemented concepts or words to come to mind easily and influence the understanding of the new information. Trait information also impacts people's impressions of others, and psychologist
Solomon Asch Solomon Eliot Asch (September 14, 1907 – February 20, 1996) was a Polish-American Gestalt psychologist and pioneer in social psychology. He created seminal pieces of work in impression formation, prestige suggestion, conformity, and many othe ...
was the first to discover that the existence of one trait tends to indicate the existence of other traits. Asch claimed that
central trait Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that examines personality and its variation among individuals. It aims to show how people are individually different due to psychological forces. Its areas of focus include: * construction of a ...
s exist that exert a strong effect on the perceiver's overall impressions. Lastly, the sequence in which a trait is realized can also influence the trait's impact. Research shows that there is a tendency for information presented at the beginning of a sequence to have a greater effect on impressions than information presented later on, a concept called
primacy effect Serial-position effect is the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst. The term was coined by Hermann Ebbinghaus through studies he performed on himself, and refers to the finding that r ...
.


Implicit personality theory

Implicit personality theory Implicit personality theory describes the specific patterns and biases an individual uses when forming impressions based on a limited amount of initial information about an unfamiliar person.Pedersen, D.M. (1965). The measurement of individual diffe ...
is a type of model people use to group various kinds of personality qualities together. Put in another way, implicit personality theories describe the way an observer uses the traits displayed by another person to form impressions about that other person. People pay attention to a variety of cues, including: visual, auditory, and verbal cues to predict and understand the personalities of others, in order to fill in the gap of the unknown information about a person, which assists with social interactions. Certain traits are seen as especially influential in the formation of an overall impression of an individual; these are called central traits. Other traits are less influential in impression formation, and are called peripheral traits. Which traits are central or peripheral is not fixed, but can vary based on context. For instance, saying that a person is warm versus cold may have a central impact on an individual's impression formation when paired with traits such as "industrious" and "determined", but have a more peripheral impact when paired with traits such as "shallow" or "vain". Kim and Rosenberg demonstrate that when forming impressions of others, individuals assess others on an evaluative dimension. Which is to say that, when asked to describe personality traits of others, individuals rate others on a "good-bad" dimension. People's implicit personality theories also include a number of other dimensions, such as a "strong-weak" dimension, an "active-passive" dimension, an "attractive-unattractive" dimension, etc. However, the evaluative "good-bad" dimension was the only one that universally appeared in people's descriptions of others, while the other dimensions appeared in many, but not all, people's assessments. Thus, the dimensions included in implicit personality theories on which others are rated vary from person to person, but the "good-bad" dimension appears to be part of all people's implicit personality theories.


Confirmation

After making and integrating attributions, individuals form impressions that are subject to
confirmation bias Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring ...
es and the threat of a
self-fulfilling prophecy A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's or group of persons' belief or expectation that said prediction would come true. This suggests that people's beliefs influence their actions. ...
.


Competence as social perceivers

It is true that people fall for the biases identified by social psychologists and for some biases that may have not yet been identified. Despite these misjudgments, there are four reasons that soundly demonstrate people's competence as social perceivers: # People can more accurately perceive social behaviors and interactions when they have a greater history of experiences with the other people. # People can make more circumscribed predictions of how other individuals will act when in their presence. # Social perception skills can be improved through learning the rules of probability and logic. # People can make more precise inferences about others when motivated by concerns for open-mindedness and accuracy.


Factors that influence social perception


Accuracy

The accuracy of social perception relates to the connection between judgments people make of others' psychological attributes, and the reality of those attributes with regards to the people being judged. There are three slightly varying approaches to interpreting accuracy the: pragmatic, constructivist, and realistic approaches. Empirical research suggests that social perception is mostly accurate, but the degree of accuracy is based on four major moderator variables. These moderators are attributes of the: judge, target, trait that is judged, and information on which the judgment is based. Th
Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM)
explains that these moderators are a result of the process for accurate judgment. The process of accurate personality judgment starts with the target revealing relevant information, which then must be available to a judge, who then identifies and uses it to form a final judgment.


= Difficulties in accuracy research

= While accurate social perception is important, it has also been rather neglected. It is difficult to provide a set list of criteria that can be checked-off as accuracy can be subjective in nature. In the past, there was an assumption that people's judgements were also considered erroneous and often mistaken. As such, many researchers have chosen to pursue other facets of research instead. It was not until these assumptions were proved incorrect through research and research methods became more sophisticated that genuine effort was put into analyzing accurate social perceptions.


= Testing

= TASIT (The Awareness of Social Inference Test) is an audiovisual test that In the past for the clinical assessment of social perception. The test is based upon several critical components of social perception that are crucial for social competence using complex, dynamic, visual, and auditory cues to assess these critical components. The test assesses the ability to identify emotions, a skill that is impaired in many clinical conditions. It also assesses the ability to judge what a speaker may be thinking or what their intentions are for the other person in the conversation, also referred to as
theory of mind In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them (that is, surmising what is happening in their mind). This includes the knowledge that others' mental states may be different fro ...
. Lastly, the test was developed to assess the ability to differentiate between literal and non-literal conversational remarks. The test is divided into three parts to measure; emotion, social inference – minimal, and social inference enriched. The test is composed of scenes, or vignettes, and those being assessed are asked to identify the emotions, a, feelings, beliefs, intentions, and meanings of the interactions. They are also assessed on more complex interactions to assess ability to interpret sarcasm. The results of this testing assess the level of social perception of an individual. TASIT has adequate psychometric properties as a clinical test of social perception. It is not overly prone to practice effects and is reliable for repeat administrations. Performance on TASIT is affected by information processing speed, working memory, new learning and executive functioning, but the uniquely social material that comprises the stimuli for TASIT provides useful insights into the particular difficulties people with clinical conditions experience when interpreting complex social phenomena.


Inaccuracy/distortions/

fallacies A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning, or "wrong moves," in the construction of an argument which may appear stronger than it really is if the fallacy is not spotted. The term in the Western intellectual tradition was intr ...


=Bias

= People are prone to numerous types of
confirmation bias Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring ...
es—tendencies to construe, find, and formulate information in ways that prove existing opinions. Preconceived prejudices, stereotypes, and discrimination otherwise known as social biases can contribute towards these tendencies. People are also subject to exhibiting
belief perseverance Belief perseverance (also known as conceptual conservatism) is maintaining a belief despite new information that firmly contradicts it. Such beliefs may even be strengthened when others attempt to present evidence debunking them, a phenomenon kn ...
, the tendency to hold false convictions even after they have been disproved.


Self

*
Availability heuristic The availability heuristic, also known as availability bias, is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. This heuristic, operating on the ...
– Tendency to place more importance and reliance on more immediate memories when evaluating specific topics, methods, concepts, or decisions. It is a mental shortcut that operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, then it must at least be as important as alternatives that are less easily recalled. *
Dunning–Kruger effect The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge. Some researchers also include in th ...
 – An effect by which test takers fail to understand their poor performance because they suffer a double fault: A.) Shortfall of knowledge prevents them from producing correct responses & B.) Shortfall of knowledge prevents them from recognizing their lesser responses when compared to those of others. * Overconfidence bias – When one's confidence in their ability is greater than their actual ability. *
Egocentric bias Egocentric bias is the tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective and/or have a higher opinion of oneself than reality. It appears to be the result of the psychological need to satisfy one's ego and to be advantageous for memory consolid ...
 – The tendency to rely too heavily on one's own judgements and abilities, stemming partially from the need to satisfy one's ego. *
Defensive attribution hypothesis The defensive attribution hypothesis (or ''bias'', ''theory'', or simply ''defensive attribution'') is a social psychological term where an observer attributes the causes for a mishap to minimize their fear of being a victim or a cause in a similar ...
 – Tendency of people to attribute more blame to the perpetrator of an accident as the consequences become more severe. However, if people perceive that they are more similar to the perpetrator characteristically or circumstantially, they rate the perpetrator as less culpable for the accident as the severity of consequences increase. If people perceive themselves as less similar, they rate the perpetrator as more culpable. *
Forer effect The Barnum effect, also called the Forer effect or, less commonly, the Barnum–Forer effect, is a common psychological phenomenon whereby individuals give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored ...
(Barnum effect) – Placing high belief in a general, vague description thinking it was meant specifically for an individual. For instance, people interpret horoscopes as applying to their specific situation, when in actuality the horoscope was written to apply to a wide range of people's experiences. *
Counterfactual thinking Counterfactual thinking is a concept in psychology that involves the human tendency to create possible alternatives to life events that have already occurred; something that is contrary to what actually happened. Counterfactual thinking is, as it ...
– Tendency to think up alternative events or outcomes that might have happened, but did not. *
Belief perseverance Belief perseverance (also known as conceptual conservatism) is maintaining a belief despite new information that firmly contradicts it. Such beliefs may even be strengthened when others attempt to present evidence debunking them, a phenomenon kn ...
– Tendency to continue to maintain one's beliefs despite firm contradictory information. *
Self-fulfilling prophecy A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's or group of persons' belief or expectation that said prediction would come true. This suggests that people's beliefs influence their actions. ...
– Method by which an individual's expectations about other individuals or themselves eventually cause actions in ways that confirm those expectations. * Correspondence bias – Tendency to draw inferences about a person's characteristics from behaviors that could be explained by the situation alone.


Group

*
Status quo bias Status quo bias is an emotional bias; a preference for the maintenance of one's current or previous state of affairs, or a preference to not undertake any action to change this current or previous state. The current baseline (or status quo) is take ...
 – Tendency to favor current or certain circumstances because they are familiar. Any changes to these circumstances are perceived as a loss. *
Ingroup bias In-group favoritism, sometimes known as in-group–out-group bias, in-group bias, intergroup bias, or in-group preference, is a pattern of favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, ...
 – Tendency to favor one's own group members and their actions over those of outsiders. *
Stereotyping In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
 – Attributing traits to people based on certain traits of the group they are perceived to belong to. *
Ensemble Coding Ensemble coding, also known as ensemble perception or summary representation, is a theory in cognitive neuroscience about the internal representation of groups of objects in the human mind. Ensemble coding proposes that such information is recorde ...
—also known as ensemble perception or summary representation, is the ability to see the average or variance of a group of objects. There is extensive amounts of information available to the
visual system The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sight (the a ...
.


Interaction

*
Halo effect The halo effect (sometimes called the halo error) is the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, brand, or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings in other areas. Halo effect is “the name given to t ...
 – Tendency for the observed overall impression of an individual to affect the observers feelings and thoughts about other attributes or traits of the individual. *
False-consensus effect In psychology, the false consensus effect, also known as consensus bias, is a pervasive cognitive bias that causes people to “see their own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances”. In o ...
– Tendency for people to overestimate the magnitude to which people share their behaviors, opinions, and attributes. * Base-rate fallacy – Tendency to prefer specific information over
Base rate In probability and statistics, the base rate (also known as prior probabilities) is the class of probabilities unconditional on "featural evidence" (likelihoods). For example, if 1% of the population were medical professionals, and remaining 9 ...
or generic information. *
Social projection In social psychology, social projection is the psychological process through which an individual expects behaviors or attitudes of others to be similar to their own. Social projection occurs between individuals as well as across ingroup and outgr ...
– Tendency for individuals to believe others are similar to themselves. *
Psychological projection Psychological projection is the process of misinterpreting what is "inside" as coming from "outside". It forms the basis of empathy by the projection of personal experiences to understand someone else's subjective world. In its malignant forms, i ...
 – A defense mechanism people unconsciously use to grapple with challenging feelings or emotions by attributing them to others. This incorporates
Blame shifting Blame is the act of censuring, holding responsible, or making negative statements about an individual or group that their actions or inaction are socially or morally irresponsible, the opposite of praise. When someone is morally responsible for d ...
. * Actor-Observer bias – Tendency of those acting in a situation to blame their actions on the situation, while those observing have the tendency to place the blame on the actors.


See also

*
Conformity Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms, politics or being like-minded. Norms are implicit, specific rules, shared by a group of individuals, that guide their interactions with others. People often choo ...
*
Framing (social sciences) In the social sciences, framing comprises a set of concepts and theoretical perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies organize, perceive, and communicate about reality. Framing can manifest in thought or interpersonal communicati ...
*
Group dynamics Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group (''intra''group dynamics), or between social groups ( ''inter''group dynamics). The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision- ...
*
Interpersonal attraction Interpersonal attraction as a part of social psychology is the study of the attraction between people which leads to the development of platonic or romantic relationships. It is distinct from perceptions such as physical attractiveness, and invo ...
* Interpersonal perception *
Joint attention Joint attention or shared attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. It is achieved when one individual alerts another to an object by means of eye-gazing, pointing or other verbal or non-verbal indications. An individual gaze ...
*
Nonverbal communication Nonverbal communication (NVC) is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, Posture (psychology), posture, and body language. It includes the use of social cues, kinesi ...
*
Persuasion Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for Social influence, influence. Persuasion can influence a person's Belief, beliefs, Attitude (psychology), attitudes, Intention, intentions, Motivation, motivations, or Behavior, behaviours. ...
*
Prejudice Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...


References

{{Mental processes Perception Interpersonal relationships Cognitive biases ru:Восприятие#Социальное восприятие