Social Perception

Introduction The following will be discussing whether or not social perceptions are often accurate. A short overview of two articles where opposing views relating to the question will be examined and appropriate examples will be made. Lastly the authors’ personal opinion will be expressed, this opinion states that social perceptions are accurate to each individual as our realities all differ, thus our perceptions are individualistic. Social perceptions are commonly used to assist one in making judgments about situations, people or inanimate objects. In order to define perception consciousness it is imperative that its’ drives be identified. In Ross and Nisbett’s (1991) article as well as in Funders (1987) article, controversial views were

Furthermore, Funder (1987) pointed out, reasoning of social behaviours are merely due to relating social perceptions. Funder (1987) believed social psychology had misplaced their emphasis on error and bias. Social psychology’s knowledge regarding bias and error mainly came from experiments whose initial purpose was to evaluate social perceptual processes, unfortunately these studies did not assess the outcomes’ accuracy of such processes. Funder (1987) linked social cognitive experiments regarding bias, illusions and errors done in the lab with visual research on theses aspects, also done in the laboratory. Examiners opted for controlled visual illusions in order to review visual processing dynamics as they were never of the assumption that these illusions could yield different results in real life situations. Funder (1987) further stated this to be the most applicable explanation of human judgement. In addition, funder (1987) regarded accuracy as an issue of content rather than process. Ross and Nisbett (1991) have been documented in saying that our social perceptions are inaccurate. These two scholars are of the belief that the inaccuracy of social perceptions are of a result of dispositionalism, as people make inaccurate assumptions about others behaviour based on past experiences and personality traits, neglecting the power of situation

In my opinion and in my own experience perception is different for all individuals as everyone’s reality is different due to their upbringing or current situation the way they see the world differs. The example of Oprah can once again be used as a journalist working for the Time Magazine might regard Oprah and influential and a true model for women while a paparazzi might regard Oprah as a snob who rarely does anything worth mentioning. This example shows the social perceptions of these two people, they are not at all inaccurate as they are true to them, they are individualistic and might be inaccurate to the next person, but the next person does not live within the same