AP® Psychology · Unit 4 · Topic 4.1
Person Perception and Social Comparison
Person perception is how we form judgments of others and ourselves, often shaped less by facts than by repetition, expectations, and who we happen to compare ourselves to.
Liking isn't always earned by merit. The mere exposure effect shows that simply encountering something repeatedly makes us like it more, even if our first reaction was negative. A song, a face, a brand name — familiarity itself breeds comfort, separate from any real change in the thing itself. This matters for person perception because it means our judgments of people can shift just from seeing them around more, with no new information at all.
Our expectations about people can also create the very behavior we expected, a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a teacher is told a student is gifted, the teacher may give that student more attention and encouragement; the student, sensing this, engages more and performs better — confirming a belief that was never based on real evidence to begin with. The expectation caused the outcome rather than predicting it.
How satisfied we feel depends heavily on who we measure ourselves against, not just on our actual circumstances. Upward social comparison, looking at people who seem better off, tends to drag satisfaction down. Downward social comparison, looking at people worse off, tends to boost it. This is why satisfaction can swing wildly even when nothing in a person's actual life has changed: only the comparison group shifted. A raise can feel like a loss if everyone nearby got a bigger one, and a modest salary can feel generous if nearby others have less.
Key terms
- Mere exposure effect
- The tendency to like a stimulus more simply from repeated exposure to it, regardless of initial reaction.
- Self-fulfilling prophecy
- An expectation that leads a person to act in ways that cause the expected outcome to occur.
- Upward social comparison
- Comparing oneself to someone perceived as better off, which tends to lower satisfaction.
- Downward social comparison
- Comparing oneself to someone perceived as worse off, which tends to raise satisfaction.
- Person perception
- The mental processes we use to form impressions and judgments about other people.
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow does the mere exposure effect raise liking with repeated contact?
- How it worksWalk me through a self-fulfilling prophecy creating the behavior it expected.
- How it worksHow do upward and downward social comparison move satisfaction in opposite directions?
- Going furtherWhat happens to satisfaction when the comparison group changes but the salary does not?
Check yourself
End of topic.