INTERPERSONAL PERCEPTION

We are not Cameras or Tape Recorders, we do not take in with our eyes, exactly what is out there. We constantly respond to cues and that have meaning for us. We see that we want or need to see to depend ourselves or to advance our aims. We do not see people as they are, we see them for what they mean to us. Consider how we understand the world we live in, and particularly those parts of it concerning ourselves and our relations with other people. First of all, we organise the world according to concepts or categories. We say that things are warm or cold; good or b ad; simple or complex. Each of these concepts may be considered a dimension along which we can place events in the world, some closer to one and of the dimension some closer to the other. Any time we consider the qualities of ourselves, other persons or events in the inanimate world, we have to use these concepts to do it. We are dependent for our understanding of the world on the concepts and categories we have for organising our experiences. If we have to invent one or we cannot respond to the event in an orgasnised fashion. How, for example, would a person explain his own and others behaviour without the concepts of love and hate? Consider how much behaviour would simple puzzle or confuse him or, perhaps just go on by without really being perceived at all for lack of this one dimension. Most of us have developed our own set of concepts that we use to interpret others behaviour. These concepts preferences are often related to our motivation. People with high affiliation, motivation, for example, may tend to see the world in terms of love and hate, acceptance and rejection. They may be relatively, in sensitive to issues of leadership or excellence. Thus an administrator who is overly sensitive to whether or not his subordinates are friendly may, as a result, be in a poor position to judge other important aspects of his subordinates performance. The ability to develop differentiated perceptions of others is related to leadership effectiveness. Fielder has reported some research where he could be able to differentiate among their followers on a variety of dimentions. For example, whereas the captain of a losing basketball team tends to distinguish among his players only in terms of their overall ability the captain of a winning team tends to be aware of who dribbles well, who passes well, who shoots well, who plays well under pressure, and so on. In other words, effective managers seem to have a large number of concepts in their conceptual schemes and tend to perceive difference among their subordinates along these dimensions. Concepts do not exist in isolation; they are connected to one another by a network of relationships. Taken together the concepts we use to understand a situation, plus the relationships among the concepts, are called a conceptual system. For example, we may say, people who are warm and friendly are usually trusting, and hence, they are often

deceived by others. Here, we have a conceptual system linking the c concepts friendliness. Warmth, trust in others and proneness to deception. Because concepts are linked to one another, the location of an event in one concept usually indicates where the event is located in each of a whole network of concepts. Thus it is almost impossible to take in a small but of information about a characteristic of a person or event without a host of implications about other characteristics. Images and stereotypes operate this way. When we discover, that a person is a Negro, or a Union Leader, a Social Scientist or a wife, the information on these concepts immediately calls up an entire net work of exceptions about other characteristics of the person. In the case of stereotypes, These expectations may even be so strong that we do not check to find but whether or conceptual system worked accurately this time, but may even go to the other extreme or ignoring or distorting information that does not fit the conceptual system so that the system may remain quite unaffected by contradictory experiences. These concepts (or sets of dimentions) , in other words, enable us to organize the multiple of experiences we have each day. Without them we would be in a continuous state of chaos and so to this extent they are functional and necessary parts of the human personality. The fact that we are so dependent on our conceptual system means that we are very hesitant to accept any information that does not fit into it. To protect ourselves from these disconfirming experiences , we have at our disposal a host of perceptual defense. These defense act like a screen or filter, blocking out that which we do not want to see and letting through that which we wish to see. The closer we get to conceptual systems that are concerned without self-perceptions (self-image) and our relationships with important others, the more , likely we are to call upon these defensive screens. Another important point about the process of interpersonal perception is that normal social interaction is basically conservation social norms operate to preserve existing interaction patterns and perceptions. Socialogist Erving Goffoan had described the tendency of people to preserve the face that others present to them when someone acts out of character social pressures are mobilised to force him back in his role. In social situations we tend to act in such a way that we maintain our own self image and the self-image we see others presenting. We resist telling someone that he has egg on his chain because we assume that this is not part of the image he wants to present and we do not want him to loss face and be embarrassed. This conservative interaction norm tends to decrease the accuracy of interpersonal perception by relinquishing opportunities to test the accuracy of our perceptions of others. The norm tends to decrease the accuracy of interpersonal perception by relinquishing opportunities to test the accuracy of our perceptions of others. The norm dictates that we cannot frankly tell others our impressions of them if these impressions differ from the fact they are presenting. If someone presents himself as a leader it is hard to tell him you do not feel

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like following. Thus, we are denied information about others true thoughts and feelings by the face we present. A theoretical conceptualization of this process we can be depicted in the following manner, called the Johari Window named after Joe Luft and Harry in rahm.

KNOWN TO SELF KNOWN TO OTHERS NOT KNOWN TO OTHERS Open Area : OPEN AREA HIDDEN AREA

NOT KNOWN TO SELF BLIND AREA UNKNOWN AREA

This cell includes all the factors upon which I had others have mutually shared perceptions, i.e. people see me the way I see myself (e.g. I feel confident and people see me as confident). Unknown Area: In this cell are factors that I do not see in myself nor do others see in me. Hidden Area : In this cell are factors that I see in myself but that I hide from others (e.g. I feel insecure but I strive to project the image of a very secure person) i.e. people see a false me and I must always be on guard not to let them see the real me. Blind Area : In this cell are factors that others people perceived in me but I do not see in myself (e.g. others see my anxiety reducing by effectiveness but I do not see or will not admit to myself that I am anxious, i.e. people knows certain things about me but they don t tell me (even your best friends wont tell you). To move from the hidden to the open area requires a sufficient level of trust and phychological safety to enable me to share myself perceptions with another. To move from the blind to the open area requires that people given me feedball as to how they see me. The conditions of trust and psychological safety are again critical so that people will risk telling me and also I will not react defensively to what they say. It is only as we move from the hidden and blind areas into the open area that true sharing of perceptions and understanding between people can develop.

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