Person perceptions: The good, the bad, and the ugly

I've always thought of myself as a pretty good judge of character, someone who is fair and objective when forming opinions of people. But I may be thinking too highly of myself…

After reading this chapter I am now aware of how easily influenced my perceptions are. I definitely have fallen captive to the trait negativity bias, the confirmation bias, and played into the halo effect.

Trait negativity bias is the concept that negative traits tend to outweigh the positive ones (Rozin & Royzman, 2001; Skowronski & Carlston, 1989). I like to think of myself as a positive person, however, I definitely weigh negative traits stronger than positive ones. Quite a few of my fiancés friends are SUPER immature guys. While they are lots of fun, have great senses of humor, and have a contagious zest for life, they will first and foremost always be the most immature group of people I know. Their defining quality in my eyes is their level of maturity, which is lacking. However, I could be maintaining this idea about them based on the confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the predisposition we have to look for and interpret information that supports our existing beliefs (Woodward, 2006). Since I hold the belief that these guys are immature, it could be possible that I only focus on the situations where they are acting immature and choose to disregard information that would indicate otherwise. Maybe now that they have graduated from college I should give them a second chance, or at least a chance to prove me wrong…

Occasionally I find myself playing into the halo effect as well. The halo effect is where we tend to see a person having a single positive trait and therefore attribute all positive traits to them, and the same with negative traits (Cooper, 1981). It’s kind of make-it-or-break-it. What is strange is that I don’t always fall into this “trap.” I think I rely on the halo effect when I don’t know somebody or have really strong feeling/opinions about someone. For example, this past fall I met a girl who rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. She really didn’t do anything to me, she wasn’t out rightly rude or anything that I remember, but still to this day I do not like her. We have, maybe, interacted twice with each other and that’s it. From her appearance to our few interactions, I can’t find one positive thing to say about her.

With all that said, I do still believe that I am a pretty good judge of character (who may struggle with a little belief perseverance as well) J

Cooper, W. H. (1981). Ubiquitous halo. Psychological Bulletin, 90, 218-224.

Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 296-320.

Skowronski, J. J., & Carlston, D. E. (1989). Negativity and extremity biases in impression formation: A review of explanations. Psychological Bulletin, 105, 131-142.

Woodward, B. (2006). State of denial: Bush at war, Part III. New York: Simon & Schuster.