How We See Ourselves and Others

Self-Concept: Who Do You Think You Are?

Your self-concept is your relatively stable perception of yourself - the beliefs, attitudes, and values you hold about who you are. It's not fixed; it develops and changes through social interaction throughout your life.

How Self-Concept Forms

• Reflected appraisals: We learn who we are through feedback from significant others. If important people treat us as capable, we tend to see ourselves as capable.
• Social comparison: We evaluate ourselves by comparing to others around us.
• Cultural influences: Our culture shapes what we value about ourselves.
• Self-observation: We watch our own behavior and draw conclusions.

Identity Management

We don't present the same "self" in every situation. Identity management involves strategically presenting aspects of ourselves appropriate to different contexts. This isn't being fake - it's normal social adaptation.

The Perception Process

Perception is how we make sense of the world around us. It happens in three stages:

1. Selection

We can't attend to everything, so we select certain stimuli to focus on. We tend to notice things that are:

• Intense or novel (loud sounds, unusual behavior)
• Personally relevant (hearing your name in a crowd)
• Repeated (recurring patterns)

2. Organization

Once we've selected stimuli, we organize them into meaningful patterns. We use:

• Schemas: Mental frameworks for organizing information
• Stereotypes: Generalizations about groups
• Scripts: Expected sequences of events

3. Interpretation

Finally, we assign meaning to what we've organized. This is heavily influenced by:

• Past experiences
• Cultural background
• Current emotional state
• Expectations and assumptions

Attribution Theory: Explaining Behavior

When we observe someone's behavior, we naturally try to explain why they acted that way. This is attribution - assigning causes to behavior.

Internal vs. External Attributions

• Internal attributions: The behavior is caused by the person's personality, character, or choices. ("She's late because she's irresponsible.")
• External attributions: The behavior is caused by the situation. ("She's late because of traffic.")

The Fundamental Attribution Error

We have a strong tendency to make internal attributions for others' behavior ("He failed because he's lazy") while making external attributions for our own ("I failed because the test was unfair"). This is the fundamental attribution error, and it causes countless misunderstandings.

Perception Checking

To avoid perception errors, we can use perception checking - a three-step process:

1. Describe the behavior you observed (without judgment)
2. Offer multiple interpretations of what it might mean
3. Ask for clarification to check your perception

Example: "I noticed you've been quiet during our meetings (behavior). I'm not sure if you're bored, disagreeing with something, or just thinking things through (interpretations). What's going on? (clarification)"

Perception checking helps us avoid jumping to conclusions and improves communication accuracy.