find someone that will leave you alone so that you may learn. You only look at the aspects that seem relevant to you to accomplish this goal. 3. In every situation, you evaluate people partly in terms of how you expect them to act in a situation. Whenever you are in a classroom, restroom, or restaurant you act in a certain way. Your behavior is governed by social norms. Social norms are the “rules” or expectations for appropriate behavior in a particular social situation. For example, you don’t sit next to someone on a bus if there are empty seats, and you don’t start up conversation in public restrooms with strangers. These rules aren’t in a book somewhere but if you don’t follow these social norms, it may cause the attention to be shifted and it may make someone feel uneasy. So when you are finding someone to set by in a classroom, you base your decision on what “people setting in a classroom waiting for the first day to start” should look like. 4. Your self-perception also influences how you perceive others and how you act on your perceptions. Where you decide to sit is also influenced by the way you perceive yourself. If you think of yourself as an organized person with great study skills, you are most likely going to sit next to the girl that has everything in nice little folders and is typing something into her pocket calendar, rather than sitting next to the guy who has papers flying out of all ends of his notebook. He seems to be looking for something and is getting very angry that he can’t find it. In combination, these four basic principals basically mean that person perception is not a one-way process in which we objectively survey other people and then logically evaluate their characteristics. Instead, the context of self-perception and the perceptions we have of others all interact. Each component plays an important role in the judgements we form of ot...
