Social perception

Social perception is that sub-area of social cognition that describes the perception of social information, i.e. its filtering, encoding and interpretation and the influencing of these processes by conspecifics.

Social perception is the ability to construct socially relevant percepts from the data stream of stimuli and to give them meaning in order to arrive at an understanding of the other individuals, groups, the self and one's own role in a group .

Social influences on perception are divided into normative and informative influences. Influences are normative that are based on the desire to observe the rules, norms and taboos of a group. The participants in Asch's conformity experiment adapted their perceptions more and more to those of the others and retained these convictions even when the others were no longer present. Influences that are based on a lack of personal knowledge are informative . The participants in Sherif's experiment with the autokinetic effect adapted their perceptions more and more to those of the others, since they themselves did not have any information.

All of these processes usually remain unconscious.

See also

• Attractiveness research
• Hypothesis theory of social perception
• Nonverbal communication

literature

• E. Aronson , TD Wilson, RM Akert: Social Psychology . Pearson study. 6th edition 2008. ISBN 978-3-8273-7359-5 , pp. 89-123
• CF Graumann : Social perception: The motivation of perception in recent American studies . In: Journal for Experimental and Applied Psychology. 1956
• ER Smith, DM Mackie: Social Psychology . Psychology Press, 2nd Edition 2000, ISBN 0-86377-587-X , pp. 59-245
• M. Sherif (1935). A study of some social factors in perception . Archives of Psychology, 27 (187)