A cross-cultural study of social perception …
Date
1968
Author
Advisor
Dr. Norman Guttman, Chairman
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Abstract
Introduction: Wherever social relations or interpersonal relations are involved, social
perception runs as an undercurrent, either implicitly or explicitly. Perhaps the
primary importance of social perception derives from the assumption that overt forms
of social behavior are "steered" by the perception of social environment. Many problems
in interpersonal relations turn out to be in some measure the consequence of perceptual
distortion. Social perception, it may also be added, is closely related to one’s
perception of self. Under ordinary conditions, there are three major elements which
we will confront in a study of social perception. They are (a) the situation or context
in which the person to be judged is embedded, (b) the person who is apart from the
situation and (c) the perceiver himself. In the present study, the first two elements
are not of special interest. The main point of interest is the third element, the
perceiver who is shaped and sensitized by his or her particular cultural background.
We are interested in examining the "selective- tuning" on the part of the perceiver
in perceiving certain aspects of both the self and other people in preference to others.
The present study aims to analyze the consistent trends, termed here "self- styles,
" in individuals that influence them in perceiving others. It is assumed that these
self- styles are determined fairly well by societies and, therefore, it is proposed
to examine the variations of these self-style orientations in terms of culture. However,
it is difficult to isolate and assess the differential importance of personal and
social characteristics, although it is feasible. So, by "social perception" we refer
to the consistent tendency to look for certain attributes in the other as influenced
by self-concept.
Description
This thesis was digitized as part of a project begun in 2014 to increase the number
of Duke psychology theses available online. The digitization project was spearheaded
by Ciara Healy.
Type
Master's thesisDepartment
PsychologyPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13550Published Version (Please cite this version)
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