Person Perception
The way we perceive people is largely affected by how much we know about them. For those people are close to us, we already have an idea of who they are. For those who we are meeting for the first time, we are formulating what we know of them based on prior experiences in either dealing with someone like them or someone within that same position. Our behavior is a direct result of our intended goals in meeting people as well (Taylor, Peplau, & Sears, 2006). We can infer several things about people we know and people we do not know based on where and how we meet them.
This past week I made a trip to Wal-Mart to return an item I had purchased previously. The person in the Customer Service area, I have never met before and probably would not see again. At least, not any time soon. This was only my third trip to this particular store since I moved to this area. I was returning a foot freezer I had purchased a week earlier. Returning such an item garnered many stares. I imagine that people do not tend to return large items often or even by many large items like that from that store. As I approached the Customer Service counter, the young lady looked bewildered. It was apparent that she did not know what she should do. I explained to her that the freezer never gets cold and that I wanted to exchange it. She seemed nervous. She grabbed a box cutter and asked me what was wrong with it. I paused and explained to her again that the freezer does not work as expected. She cut open the top of the box and looked at the top of the freezer. I do not believe she knew what she was looking for. She looked, then she went back to the counter to figure out what to do next. She refunded the money to me and had me to sign a receipt. I thanked her and left to purchase another freezer. The attributions I made with regards to her was situational.
This interaction differs greatly from when I met my protégé. When we first met, she was replacing another employee at my job. I was her senior concerning the work we were doing. She stayed off to herself and did not interact with many people unless she really needed to. She always asked plenty of questions. She was the only person around my age who worked there. Every now and then, I would go to her desk and explain some work or casually speak to her. Sometimes I would invite her to go out to grab gelato with me when things were getting stressful around the office. She was very apprehensive about spending too much time interacting with her co-workers. This is more of dispositional attributions that I was making with regards to he. I was able to notice what her religious beliefs were and I was able to understand why she was the way she was. This allowed me to reach out to her and communicate with her. From speaking with her, I gathered that she was very naïve about the opposite sex and she would ask me questions all of the time about men and trying to understand the guys she was dating.
In my experience with the Wal-Mart employee, I formed a quick impression of her based on the way she handled my inquiry. I interacted with her based on my understanding of her role schema (Taylor, Peplau, & Sears, 2006). She was a customer service representative. There are certain things that one would expect from her such as being able to process the return of items purchased in the store. I was able to deduce that she was nervous and did not really know what to do based on the looks on her face, how she stumbled with her words, and fidgeted papers. With my protégé, her behavior was the thing that gave away what her religious beliefs may be. I understood that from my wife being raised with the same belief and upbringing. However, if I were wrong, my categorization of her may have led to social judgments about her that are consistent with category-based stereotypes (Taylor, Peplau, & Sears, 2006). My perception on her being shy was due to her not being very talkative and not interacting with many people.
In conclusion, the items that I was picked up on may or may not have been correct about the people. They may be a result of my own perception and biases of both the Wal-Mart worker and my protégé. I am probably more correct in my view about my protégé based on our conversations that we have had since then about when we first met. However, I may never understand what was going on through the Wal-Mart Customer Service worker. The views I formed about her were based on what I observed and how I interacted with her was based on my schemas of previous experiences of returning items to the store. Although schemas can help us process information quicker, they can also be unreliable in understanding the people and things around you (Taylor, Peplau, & Sears, 2006).