These are the tricks our consciousness does with us. When receiving information from the outside world, we tend to label people and events with mental labels – "heuristics". And as a result, the process of mental processing fails. How to avoid social perception errors?
Distortions in social perception sometimes make it difficult to correctly evaluate people and events
1. Retrospective Distortion
"I knew it", "I thought so" – You must have said it a thousand times since it happened. After events have occurred, we believe that we foresaw or could have foreseen their outcome in advance. This is the retrospective distortion or "hindsight effect".
For example, if a person has been deceived, they will most likely be thinking "I foresaw this", although in fact it is unlikely that they really foresaw anything.
Many events that happen to us are actually unexpected for us. And after their onset, it seems easy for us to find their causes. An illusion is created that before the event it was impossible not to make a correct forecast – because the prerequisites are so obvious!
If you have been struggling with a problem for a long time and found the answer, most likely the solution will seem obvious and simple to you. And if you offer to solve the same puzzle to your friend, you will be sincerely perplexed: "what can you puzzle over there, it's still so simple!".
Hindsight effect often causes people to rely too much on their own predictions and "psychic" premonitions, forgetting that in half the cases they were not justified. This phenomenon of social perception also explains your self-criticism due to the mistakes that "could have been foreseen." Don't torture yourself.
Remember, what seems obvious now was not so clear a day or an hour before now.
2. Presence heuristic
This phenomenon makes us overestimate the likelihood of a certain negative event in our lives – a plane crash, infection with some kind of disease, a meteorite fall, etc. – due to the fact that the event is often mentioned in the media. For example, we see Ebola on the news all the time. This contributes to the fact that we exaggerate our chances of contracting this disease.
3. The "actor and observer" effect
This is one of the major distortions in social psychology. Its scientific name – "the fundamental fallacy of causal attribution". Simply put, this is a common tendency for all people: to explain their own mistakes - the peculiarities of the situation, and the troubles that happen to others – negative qualities of their personality.
Consider a typical accident. If you – participant, then you are likely to overestimate the impact of the situation: technical problems, weather conditions, the behavior of other drivers, etc. If you observe an accident from the side, you will say something like “yes, he (or she) just doesn’t know how to drive a car! ".
Being inside the situation and outside it, people see events differently. Therefore, do not rush to speak dismissively of the beggar "he is to blame." You don't know what happened in his life and what brought him to this place.
4. Illusory Correlation
Illusory correlation – it is a mental phenomenon common to all people. If two independent events coincide in time, we tend to believe that there is a connection between them: one event is the cause or effect of the other.
A vivid illustration of this phenomenon is human superstition. We sincerely believe that the reason for the unsuccessful presentation at the meeting – our return home for gloves. And we lose sight of the fact that we were insufficiently prepared for the questions the day before.
National prejudices, stereotypical ideas about different groups of people and many pseudo-sciences are based on the same phenomenon.
5. Barnum effect
Named after the American showman Phineas Barnum, who claimed that "I have something for every dupe," this effect explains the accuracy with which fortune tellers or horoscopes describe our personality and our future. People tend to accept general, vague, and banal statements about their personality traits when they are told that the data is individual and obtained through scientific research or magical means.
In the late 1950s, the American psychologist R. Stagner experimentally proved the existence of this phenomenon of social perception. He distributed personality questionnaires to 68 volunteers, and then, allegedly, on the basis of the data obtained, compiled the psychological characteristics of each of the participants.
The subjects highly rated the accuracy of their psychological portraits: the average score was 4.76 points out of 5. In fact, the text given to the participants under the guise of individual psychological characteristics was the same for everyone and consisted of 13 common phrases taken from astrological horoscopes.
6. Player error
This is a misconception that the likelihood of a desired variation of a random event occurring is influenced by previous random outcomes of that event.
For example, if black has fallen three times on a roulette table, the player will most likely bet on red, as he believes that now it will be red rather than black. People lost a lot of money, relying on this "logic". In fact, every outcome – independent, and in each individual case the probability of falling red or black is exactly the same.
Pause for a moment and analyze the situation before you act.
Distortions in social perception – psychological phenomena common to all people. But you, knowing about their existence, can avoid falling into these traps. Try to keep track of the moments when your perception may be distorted.
Source estet-portal.com
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