When you look at a target, your interpretation of what you see is influenced by your personal characteristics—attitudes, personality, motives, interests, past experiences, and expectations. In some ways, we hear what we want to hear1 and see what we want to see—not because it’s the truth, but because it conforms to our thinking. For instance, research indicated that supervisors perceived employees who started work earlier in the day as more conscientious and therefore as higher performers; however, supervisors who were night owls themselves were less likely to make that erroneous assumption.2 Some perceptions created by attitudes like these can be counteracted by objective evaluation, but others can be insidious. Consider, for instance, observer perceptions of a recent shooting in New York. There were two eyewitnesses—one said a police officer chased and shot a fleeing man; the other said a handcuffed man lying on the ground was shot. Neither perceived the situation correctly: The man was actually attempting to attack a police officer with a hammer when he was shot by another officer.3

The characteristics of the target also affect what we perceive. Because we don’t look at targets in isolation, the relationship of a target to its background influences perception, as does our tendency to group close things and similar things together. We can perceive women, men, Whites, African Americans, Asians, or members of any other group that shares some surface characteristics (see Chapter 2) as alike in other, unrelated ways as well. Often, these assumptions are harmful, as when people who have criminal records are prejudged in the workplace as a result (whether or not it is known that they were wrongly arrested).4 Sometimes differences can work in our favor, though, such as when we are drawn to those that are different from what we expect. For instance, one study found that participants respected a professor wearing a T-shirt and sneakers in the classroom more than the same professor dressed traditionally. The professor stood out from the norm in the classroom setting and was therefore perceived as an individualist.5

Context matters too. The time at which we see an object or event can influence our attention, as can location, light, heat, or situational factors. For instance, at a club on Saturday night you may not notice someone “decked out.” Yet that same person so attired for your Monday morning management class would certainly catch your attention. Neither the perceiver nor the target has changed between Saturday night and Monday morning, but the situation is different.

People are usually not aware of the factors that influence their view of reality. In fact, people are not even that perceptive about their own abilities.6 Thankfully, awareness and objective measures can reduce our perceptual distortions. For instance, when people are asked to ponder specific aspects of their ability, they become more realistic in their self-perceptions.7 Let’s next consider how we make perceptions of others.