Social perception is the ability of an individual to judge or evaluate people or events happening in the surrounding.

It is simply how we perceive a person and make a judgement about that person. For instance, we meet a person while traveling in a train, he behaves very politely towards us, and we make a judgement in our mind that the person is quite nice. Similarly, we see a person behaving very cold-heartedly or angrily towards us, we may make a judgement that the person is rude. This is how we perceive others by observing their behaviors.

The perception of others may not always be accurate because it is a subjective perception and may be based on factors such as our own needs and interests. For instance, we may perceive a person to be very good because he behaves good towards us, but that person may in fact treat others very badly.

In addition to our personal needs and interest, there are many other factors that may influence the way an individual perceives another individual, such as cultural norms and values, situational factors, stereotypes, perceiver’s relationship to the person, perceiver’s emotional state, religious affiliations, political affiliations, preconceived attitudes and so on. For example, due to in-group bias, an individual may perceive people of their own group (e.g., cultural, or religious) positively but may perceive the people of the out-group negatively.

Psychologists study the phenomenon of social misperception to understand the factors which lead to differences in individuals and groups. The factors noted earlier generally explain the causes of social misperception leading to differences in individuals and groups.

People hold a set of values and beliefs which they use as a yardstick to perceive others. For instance, a person perceives others positively if they are consistent with his values and beliefs. Similarly, he may perceive others negatively if they are inconsistent with his values and beliefs. Every culture has its own norms and values which are right in that very culture but maybe wrong in any other culture. This is why people may perceive others positively who are from their own culture and share similar norms and values but may perceive people negatively who are from different cultures. The becomes a cause of cultural bias leading to differences among groups having different cultures.

This also applies at lower levels such as family differences, and rural-urban differences. For instance, people from urban and rural areas may misperceive one another depending on slight differences in the cultural environment in urban and rural areas. Similarly, different families may have slightly different preferences and choices. As family serves a major role in the socialization of a person. People from one family may perceive people from other families negatively or differently if they do not share similar preferences and choices.

Other important factors are an individual’s unique experiences, preconceived evaluation or stereotypes, and prior knowledge of something. For instance, an individual had a bad experience with a person from a specific group or community, he forms a negative attitude towards people from that very group or community. Due to his such negative preconceived evaluation, he may perceive every member of that group or community negatively, though the fact is that every group may have some bad people but not all the people in the group are generally bad.     

The factors, discussed above, are the main factors that determines how an individual may generally perceive others. However, there are also some factors which may vary from scenario to scenario where an individual perceives another person, and thus, they may influence social perception based on the underlying scenario, as discussed below.

Situational factors are the factors present in the situation (where one person perceive another) which influence social perception. Every situation can have certain factors which can influence the way we perceive others. For instance, a student is sitting in a classroom but is not listening to the lecture attentively and is just looking here and there, because he is worried and thinking about her mother who is ill and admitted in a hospital. The teacher may perceive him as a student who is not interested in his studies because the teacher is not aware of situational or contextual factors (that the student’s mother is ill and admitted in hospital and he is worried about her mother’s health) which makes the student behave differently than the way he is supposed to behave.

The emotional state of the perceiver is another factor influencing social perception. If an individual is in good mood, he is more likely to perceive another person positively. Similarly, if a person is sad and depressed, he is likely to perceive another person negatively. In a happy mood, people generally ignore the little mistakes of others but when people are depressed, they may be annoyed even by very little mistakes of others and may make a negative judgement of them.

A person, who has high status (e.g., on high position job, good educational background etc.) is generally perceived to be competent, responsible, and intelligent. On the other hand, people having low statuses (e.g., not on the job or on lower position job, lower educational attainment) are generally perceived to be less-competent and less-intelligent. In reality, these factors may not necessarily determine how good or bad a person and competent or incompetent a person is. However, these factors sometimes do influence the way people generally form a positive or negative attitude towards a person.

Relationship means whether the person is related (e.g., one’s family members, friends, teachers etc.) person or a non-related person (e.g., someone stranger). People, who are close to the person and known to the person, are trustworthy and reliable for the person and are thus perceived positively. Since strangers are unknown and the factor of reliability is relatively smaller, they may be perceived differently. 

An individual may behave in a negative way, but his intention may be good. Similarly, an individual may behave in a positive way, but his intention may be bad. Therefore, the way the perceiver interprets the intention of the person may influence his perception of that person. If the perceiver interprets the intention of the person correctly, it will lead to the correct perception of that person. Likewise, wrong interpretation of the intention of the person will lead to the wrong perception.

Let’s explain this with an easy example: suppose some kids are playing cricket. If a kid gets hit by the ball thrown by another kid. If the father sees that his kid is hit by the ball, he may perceive the other kid (who threw the ball) as a naughty kid. However, if the father knows that his kid was hit by the ball accidentally (rather than the other kid deliberately threw the ball at his kid), this may change his perception about the other kid (who threw the ball).