Interpersonal perception is an area of research in

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 ...

which examines the beliefs that interacting people have about each other. This area differs from

social cognition Social cognition is a sub-topic of various branches of psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interacti ...

and person perception by being interpersonal rather than intrapersonal, and thus requiring the interaction of at least two actual people. There are three stages of the perception process including selection, organization, and interpretation.

Phenomena studied

*accuracy – the correctness of A's beliefs about B *self-other agreement – whether A's beliefs about B matches B's beliefs about themself *similarity – whether A's and B's beliefs match * projection/assumed similarity – whether A's beliefs about B match A's beliefs about themself *reciprocity – the similarity of A's and B's beliefs about each other *meta-accuracy – whether A knows how others see them *assumed projection – whether A thinks others see them as they see them These variables cannot be assessed in studies that ask people to form beliefs about fictitious targets.

Research

Although interest in this area has grown rapidly with the publication of

Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Timothy Gladwell (born 3 September 1963) is an English-born Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1996. He has published seven books: '' The Tipping Point: How Little ...

's 2005 book ''Blink'' and Nalini Ambady's "thin-slices" research, the discipline is still very young, having only been formally defined by David Kenny in 1994. The sparsity of research, in particular on the accuracy of first-impressions, means that social psychologists know a lot about what people think about others, but far less about whether they are right. Many attribute this to a criticism that Lee Cronbach wrote in 1955 about how impression accuracy was calculated, which resulted in a 30-year hiatus in research. During that time, psychologists focused on consensus (whether A and B agree in their beliefs about C) rather than accuracy, although Kenny has argued that consensus is neither necessary nor sufficient for accuracy. Today, the use of

correlation In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistic ...

s instead of discrepancy scores to measure accuracy and the development of the Big Five model of personality have overcome Cronbach's criticisms and led to a wave of new research . People more accurately perceive

extraversion The traits of extraversion (also spelled extroversion Retrieved 2018-02-21.) and introversion are a central dimension in some human personality theories. The terms ''introversion'' and ''extraversion'' were introduced into psychology by Carl J ...

and

conscientiousness Conscientiousness is the personality trait of being careful, or diligent. Conscientiousness implies a desire to do a task well, and to take obligations to others seriously. Conscientious people tend to be efficient and organized as opposed to ...

in strangers than they do the other personality domains. A 5-second interaction tells you as much as 15 minutes on these domains, and video tells you more than audio alone. Viewing peoples' personal websites or "online profiles" (as on MySpace,

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

, or a dating website) can make people as knowledgeable about their conscientiousness and

open-mindedness Open-mindedness is receptiveness to new ideas. Open-mindedness relates to the way in which people approach the views and knowledge of others." Jason Baehr defines an open-minded person as one who "characteristically moves beyond or temporarily sets ...

as their long-term friends. The question of whether social-networking sites lead to accurate first-impressions has inspired Sam Gosling of the University of Texas at Austin and David Evans formerly of Classmates.com to launch an ambitious project to measure the accuracy of first-impressions worldwide (YouJustGetMe.com).

References

External links

YouJustGetMe.com
, a project that attempts to measure the accuracy of first impressions {{Psychology *