2.4 Improving Perception

So far, we have learned about the perception process and how we perceive others and ourselves. Now we will turn to a discussion of how to improve our perception. Our self-perception can be enhanced by becoming aware of how schema, socializing forces, self-fulfilling prophecies, and harmful thinking patterns can distort our ability to describe and evaluate ourselves. How we perceive others can be improved by developing better listening and empathetic skills, becoming aware of stereotypes and prejudice, enhancing emotional intelligence by developing self-awareness through self-reflection, and engaging in perception checking.

Improving Self-Perception

Our self-perceptions can and do change. Recall that we have overall self-concept and self-esteem that are relatively stable, and we also have context-specific self-perceptions. Context-specific self-perceptions vary depending on the person we interact with, our emotional state, and the subject matter being discussed. Becoming aware of the process of self-perception and the various components of our self-concept will help you understand and improve your self-perceptions.

Since self-concept and self-esteem are so subjective and personal, it would be inaccurate to say that someone’s self-concept is “right” or “wrong.” Instead, we can identify negative and positive self-perceptions and discuss common barriers to forming accurate and positive self-perceptions. We can also identify common patterns people experience that interfere with their ability to monitor, understand, and change their self-perceptions. Changing your overall self-concept or self-esteem is not easy, given that these reflections on who we are and how we judge ourselves are constructed over many interactions. A variety of life-changing events can quite quickly alter our self-perceptions. Think of how your self-view changed from high school to a post-secondary educational institution. Similarly, other people’s self-perceptions likely change when they enter a committed relationship, have a child, move geographically, or start a new job.

Aside from experiencing life-changing events, we can make slower changes to our self-perceptions with concerted efforts to become more competent communicators through emotional intelligence (self-monitoring and reflection). As you actively try to change your self-perceptions, do not be surprised if you encounter some resistance from significant others. When you change or improve your self-concept, your communication will also change, which may prompt other people to respond to you differently. Although you may have good reasons for changing certain aspects of your self-perception, others may become unsettled or confused by your changing behaviours and communication. Remember, people try to increase predictability and decrease uncertainty within personal relationships. For example, many students begin to take their post-secondary education more seriously during the final years of their program. As these students begin to change their self-concept to include the role of “serious student preparing to graduate and enter the professional world,” they likely have friends who want to maintain the “semi-serious student who does not exert much consistent effort and prefers partying to studying” role that used to be a shared characteristic of both students’ self-concepts. As the first student’s behaviour changes to accommodate this new aspect of their self-concept, it may upset the friend used to weeknights spent hanging out rather than studying. Let us now discuss some suggestions to help avoid common barriers to accurate and positive self-perceptions and patterns of behaviour that perpetuate negative self-perception cycles.

Be Critical of Socializing Forces

We learned earlier that family, friends, sociocultural norms, and the media are some socializing forces that influence our thinking and, therefore, our self-perception. These powerful forces serve positive functions but can also set negative self-perception patterns into motion.

We have already discussed how the media presents us with narrow and often unrealistic beauty standards. Even though most of us know that these standards do not represent what is normal or natural for the human body, we internalize these ideals, which results in various problems ranging from eating disorders to depression to poor self-esteem.

Cultural influences related to identities and differences can also lead to distorted self-perceptions, especially for people who occupy marginalized or oppressed identities. While perception research has often been used to support the notion that individuals who are subjected to discrimination, such as members of racial and ethnic minority groups, are likely to have low self-esteem because they internalize negative societal views, this is not always the case (Armenta & Hunt, 2009; Mereish et al., 2016). Some minorities do not just passively accept the negative views society places on them. Instead, they try to maintain favourable self-perceptions in the face of discriminatory attitudes. People in groups that are the targets of discrimination may identify with their in-group more because of this threat, which may help them maintain psychological well-being. In short, they reject the negative evaluations of the out-group and find refuge and support in their identification with others who share their marginalized status.

Be Aware of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Self-fulfilling prophecies are thought and action patterns in which a person’s false belief triggers a behaviour that makes the initial false belief actually or seemingly come true (Guyll et al., 2010). Suppose that you are treated incredibly encouragingly in one of your classes. Imagine that you have an instructor who continually “catches you doing something right” and praises you for your efforts and achievements. Would you likely do well in this class and perhaps take more advanced courses in this subject?

In a psychology experiment that has become famous through repeated trials, several public school teachers were told that specific students were expected to do quite well because of their intelligence (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). These students were identified as having unique potential that had not yet “bloomed.” The teachers did not know these “special potential” students were randomly selected. That’s right — they had no more special potential than other students.

Can you anticipate the outcome? As you may guess, the students lived up to their teachers’ level of expectation. Even though the teachers were supposed to give appropriate attention and encouragement to all students, they unconsciously communicated special encouragement verbally and nonverbally to the “special” potential students. And these students, who were no more gifted than their peers, showed significant improvement by the end of the school year.

In more recent studies, researchers have observed that the opposite effect can also happen; when students are seen as lacking potential, teachers tend to discourage them or, at a minimum, fail to give them adequate encouragement. As a result, the students do poorly (Schugurensky, 2009).

When people encourage you, it affects how you see yourself and your potential. Seek encouragement for your writing and speaking. Actively choose positive reinforcement as you develop your communication skills. You will make mistakes, but it is essential to learn from them. Remember that criticism should be constructive, with specific points you can address, correct, and improve.

The concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which someone’s behaviour matches and mirrors others’ expectations, is not new. While studying this interaction between expectations and performance, Rosenthal, a professor of social psychology at Harvard, observed four principles (Rosnow & Rosenthal, 1999):

1. We form certain expectations of people or events.
2. We communicate those expectations with various cues, verbal and nonverbal.
3. People respond to these cues by adjusting their behaviour to match expectations.
4. The outcome is that the original expectation becomes true.

Experimental research shows that self-affirmation techniques can successfully intervene in such self-fulfilling prophecies. Thinking positive thoughts and focusing on personality strengths can stop this negative cycle of thinking. It has also been shown to positively affect academic performance, weight loss, and interpersonal relationships (Stinson et al., 2011).

Create and Maintain Supportive Interpersonal Relationships

Aside from giving yourself affirming messages to help with self-perception, it is essential to find interpersonal support. Although most people have at least some supportive relationships, many also have people in their lives ranging from negative to toxic. It is difficult to break out of those cycles when you find yourself in negative relational cycles, whether with friends, family, or work colleagues. But we can all choose to be around people who will help us be who we want to be and not be around people who hinder our self-progress. This notion can also be taken to the extreme, however. It would not be wise to surround yourself with people who only validate you and do not constructively challenge you because this could lead to distorted self-perceptions.

Beware of Distorted Patterns of Thinking and Acting

You already know from our discussion of attribution errors that we all have perceptual biases that distort our thinking. Many of these are common, and we often engage in distorted thinking without consciousness. Learning about typical negative patterns of thinking and acting may help us acknowledge and intervene in them. One such pattern involves self-esteem and overcompensation.

People with low self-esteem may act in ways that overcompensate for their feelings of low self-worth and other insecurities. Whether it is the social worker buying a midlife crisis convertible, the community leader who wears several carats worth of diamonds, or the professor who wears the latest in fashion, people often turn to material possessions to boost self-esteem. While these purchases may make people feel better in the short term, they may have adverse financial effects that can exacerbate negative self-perceptions and lead to interpersonal conflict. People also compensate for self-esteem with their relational choices. A person anxious about their career success may surround themselves with people they deem less successful than they are. In this case, being a big fish in a small pond helps some people feel better about themselves when they engage in social comparison.

People can also get into a negative thought and action cycle by setting unrealistic goals and consistently not meeting them. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, people who set unrealistic goals can have negative feelings of self-efficacy, which, as we learned earlier, can negatively affect self-esteem and self-concept. The goals we set should be challenging but progressive, meaning we work to meet a realistic goal, then increase our expectations, set another goal, and so on.

Some people develop low self-esteem because they lack accurate information about themselves, which may be intentional or unintentional. A person can intentionally try to maintain high self-esteem by ignoring or downplaying negative comments and beliefs and focusing on positive evaluations. While this can be good, it can also lead to a distorted self-concept. There is a middle ground between beating yourself up or dwelling on the negative and ignoring potentially constructive feedback about weaknesses and missing opportunities to grow as a person. Conversely, people with low self-esteem or negative self-concepts may discount or ignore positive feedback.

Overcoming Barriers to Perceiving Others

Many barriers prevent us from perceiving others competently. While some are more difficult to overcome, they can all be addressed by raising awareness of the influences around us and committing to monitoring, reflecting on, and changing communication habits. Whether it is our listening skills, lack of empathy, or stereotypes and prejudice, various filters and blinders influence how we perceive and respond to others.

Develop Empathetic Listening Skills

Effective listening is complex, and most of us need to make a concerted effort to overcome common barriers to listening. Our fast-paced lives and cultural values that emphasize speaking over listening sometimes make listening a chore. But we should be aware of the power of listening to make someone else feel better and to open our perceptual field to new sources of information. Empathetic listening can also help us expand our self- and social awareness by learning from other people’s experiences and taking on different perspectives. Compassionate listening is challenging because it requires cognitive and emotional investment beyond learning a skill set.

By using nonverbal and verbal cues such as nodding and saying, “I see,” healthcare professionals can encourage patients to continue talking. Active or effective listening involves showing interest in what clients say, acknowledging that you’re listening and understanding, and engaging with them throughout the conversation. Healthcare professionals can offer general leads such as “What happened next?” to guide the conversation or propel it forward.

Beware of Stereotypes and Prejudice

“She’s an elitist,” “He’s arrogant,” or “People from X country are so lazy.” These statements reflect stereotypes or beliefs we develop about groups, which we then apply to individuals from that group. Stereotypes are schemata taken too far, as they reduce and ignore a person’s individuality and diversity within a larger group of people. Stereotypes can be based on cultural identities, physical appearance, behaviour, speech, beliefs, and values, among other things, and are often caused by a lack of information about the target person or group (Guyll et al., 2010). Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral, but all run the risk of lowering the quality of our communication.

Stereotypes can also lead to double standards that point to more significant cultural and social inequalities. There are many more words to describe a sexually active female than a male, and the terms used for females are disproportionately negative, while those used for males are more positive. Since stereotypes are generally based on a lack of information, we must take it upon ourselves to gain exposure to new information and people, which will likely require us to get out of our comfort zones. When we meet people, we should base our impressions on describable behaviour rather than inferred or secondhand information. When stereotypes negatively influence our overall feelings and attitudes about a person or group, prejudiced thinking results.

One of the primary responsibilities of a healthcare professional, for example, is to ensure the environment is culturally safe for everyone. This creates a safe space for clients to interact with healthcare professionals without judgment or discrimination, where the patient is free to express their cultural beliefs, values, and identity. This responsibility belongs to the individual healthcare professional and the larger healthcare organization.

Prejudice is negative feelings or attitudes toward people based on their identity. Prejudice can have individual or widespread adverse effects. At the personal level, a hiring manager may not hire a young man with a physical disability (even though that would be illegal if it were the only reason), which negatively affects that one man. However, if pervasive cultural thinking that people with physical disabilities are also mentally deficient leads hiring managers nationwide to make similar decisions, then prejudice has become a social injustice. In another example, when the disease we know today as HIV/AIDS started killing large numbers of people in the early 1980s, the response by some health and government officials was influenced by prejudice. Since the disease primarily affected gay men, Haitian immigrants, and drug users, it was prejudged to be a disease that affected only “deviants”. It therefore did not receive the same level of attention it would have otherwise. It took many years, investment of money, and education campaigns to help people realize that HIV and AIDS do not prejudge based on race or sexual orientation and can affect anyone.

Monitor Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence (or emotional quotient or EQ) is the ability to understand, use, and manage your emotions positively to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict. Regarding happiness and success, emotional intelligence matters as much as intellectual ability. Emotional intelligence helps you build stronger relationships, succeed at school and work, and achieve your career and personal goals. It can also help you connect with your feelings, turn intention into action, and make informed decisions about what matters most.

Four attributes commonly define emotional intelligence:

• Self-management/self-regulation: You can control impulsive feelings and behaviours, manage your emotions in healthy ways, take the initiative, follow through on commitments, and adapt to changing circumstances.
• Self-awareness:  You recognize your emotions and how they affect your thoughts and behaviour. You know your strengths and opportunities for growth and have self-confidence.
• Social awareness: You have empathy. You can understand other people’s emotions, needs, and concerns, pick up on emotional cues, feel comfortable socially, and recognize the power dynamics in a group or organization.
• Relationship management: You can develop and maintain good relationships, communicate clearly, inspire and influence others, work well in a team, and manage conflict.

Why is Emotional Intelligence so Important?

As we know, the most intelligent people are sometimes the most successful or fulfilled in life. You probably know academically brilliant people who are socially inept and unsuccessful at work or in their relationships. There needs to be more than intellectual ability or intelligence quotient (IQ) to succeed. Your IQ can help you get into college, but your EQ will help you find professional success. IQ and EQ exist in tandem and are most effective when they build off one another.

Emotional intelligence affects:

• Your performance at school or work. High emotional intelligence can help you navigate the social complexities of the workplace, lead and motivate others, and excel in your career. When gauging important job candidates, many companies now rate emotional intelligence as important as technical ability and employ EQ testing before hiring.
• Your physical health. If you cannot manage your emotions, you are probably not managing your stress. This can lead to serious health problems. Uncontrolled stress raises blood pressure, suppresses the immune system, increases the risk of heart attack and stroke, contributes to infertility, and speeds up aging (Jiménez-Picón, 2021). The first step to improving emotional intelligence is to learn how to manage stress.
• Your mental health. Uncontrolled emotions and stress can also impact your mental health, making you vulnerable to anxiety and depression. You may struggle to form strong relationships if you cannot understand, get comfortable with, or manage your emotions. This can leave you lonely and isolated and further exacerbate mental health problems.
• Your relationships. By understanding your emotions and how to control them, you can better express and understand how others feel. This allows you to communicate more effectively and forge stronger relationships at work and in your personal life.
• Your social intelligence. Being in tune with your emotions serves a social purpose, connecting you to others and the world around you. Social intelligence enables you to recognize friends from foes, measure another person’s interest in you, reduce stress, balance your nervous system through social communication, and feel loved and happy.

Building Emotional Intelligence: Four Key Skills to Increasing Your EQ

The skills that encompass emotional intelligence can be learned at any time. However, it is important to remember that there is a difference between simply learning about EQ and applying that knowledge to your life. Just because you know you should do something does not mean you will — especially when you become overwhelmed by stress, which can override your best intentions. To permanently change behaviour in ways that stand up under pressure, you must learn how to overcome anxiety in the moment and your relationships to remain emotionally aware.

Activity: Check Your Understanding

Test your Emotional Intelligence

Engage in Self-Reflection

An excellent way to improve your perceptions and increase your communication competence, in general, is to engage in self-reflection. If a communication encounter does not go well and you want to know why, self-reflection will be much more helpful if you are aware of and can recount your thoughts and actions.

Self-reflection can also help us increase our cultural awareness. Our thought process regarding culture is often “other-focused,” meaning that the culture of the other person or group is what stands out in our perception. However, the adage “know thyself” is appropriate, as we become more aware of our culture by better understanding other cultures and perspectives. Developing cultural self-awareness often requires us to get out of our comfort zones. Listening to people different from us is a critical component of developing self-knowledge. This may be uncomfortable because our taken-for-granted or deeply held beliefs and values may become less confident when we see multiple perspectives.

We can also become more aware of how our self-concept influences how we perceive others. We often hold other people to the standards we have for ourselves or assume that their self-concept should be consistent with ours. For example, suppose you consider yourself neat and think that sloppiness in your appearance would show that you are unmotivated, rude, and lazy. In that case, you will likely feel the same of a person you judge to have a sloppy appearance. So asking questions like “Is my impression based on how this person wants to be, or how I think this person should want to be?” can lead to enlightening moments of self-reflection. Asking questions in general about the perceptions you are making is an integral part of perception checking, which we will discuss next.

Reflection is a mental process of thinking, feeling, and learning by thinking about what happened in the past, how things might be different if we/they had made other choices, what is happening now, and what could happen in the future (Rolfe et al., 2020). The reflective practice focuses on doing, building, generating, and disseminating professional knowledge (Rolfe et al., 2020).  This occurs when healthcare professionals pay critical attention to the practical values and theories which inform everyday actions by examining their practice reflectively and reflexively.

Reflective practice can be essential in practice-based professional learning settings where people learn from their professional experiences rather than solely from formal training and knowledge transfer. It may be the most important personal and professional development and improvement source. It is also a meaningful way to bring together theory and practice; through reflection, a person can see and label forms of thought and theory within the context of their work (McBrien, 2007). A person who reflects throughout their practice is not just looking back on past actions and events but is taking a conscious look at emotions, experiences, actions, and responses and using that information to add to their existing knowledge base and reach a higher level of understanding (Paterson & Chapman, 2013).

Checking Perception

Perception checking is a strategy to help us monitor our reactions to and perceptions about people and communications. We can use some internal and external strategies to engage in perception checking. In terms of internal strategies, review the various influences on the perception we have learned about in this chapter and always be willing to ask yourself, “What is influencing the perceptions I am making right now?” Even being aware of the influences acting on our perceptions makes us more aware of what is happening in the perception process. Regarding external strategies, we can use other people to help verify our perceptions.

The cautionary adage “Things are not always as they appear” is applicable when evaluating your perceptions. Sometimes it is a good idea to bounce your thoughts off someone, especially if the perceptions relate to a high-stakes situation. For example, preventable crimes have been committed because people who saw something suspicious did not report it even though they had a bad feeling about it. But not all situations allow us the chance to verify our perceptions. Of course, we must walk a line between being reactionary and being too cautious, which is challenging to manage. We all know that we are ethically and sometimes legally required to report someone to the police who is harming themselves or others, but sometimes the circumstances are much more uncertain.

What can you do when you have a situation with a friend, coworker, family member, or another person in an interpersonal communication situation when you are uncertain about what is happening or want to double-check your interpretation before assuming that situation? A perception-checking statement is one helpful strategy you can use. It involves three steps, described below. Once you understand the basic principle behind the strategy, you can modify it to fit your personality and communication style better.

1. Describe the behaviour you observed.
2. Offer two or more possible interpretations of that behaviour.
3. Seek clarification about the interpretations.

The first step is the most important one because it is the step we often forget when confronting someone about a problem or concern we have. We tend to start with our interpretation so the listener is not sure where that interpretation is coming from. If you have ever had someone say to you, “Are you mad at me?” and you have no idea why they think that, it is because they forgot the first step of the perception checking statement. If they had said, “You have not called me in days. Are you mad at me?” then you would have known what prompted their question. So the first step is to describe what is happening or happened that prompted you to bring your concerns to the listener. In the second step, rather than offering one definitive interpretation, you are using cognitive complexity to offer more than one interpretation. This serves a couple of functions. It lets the listener know that you’re not sure of what’s going on and are interested in hearing their perspective. It also helps you, as the speaker, stay open-minded and care for the other person.

The third step is simply passing the conversation to the other person. A request for clarification could be as simple as ending the perception-checking statement with, “What’s up?” or “What’s happening?”

Although the perception-checking statement is arguably an appropriate communication method, that does not mean you will be effective. If the other person is unwilling to speak to you or is not ready yet to talk about the situation, they may not respond in a way that promotes a conversation. But at least you have done your part by communicating your concerns clearly, specifically, and respectfully. If nothing else, you have hopefully opened the door for the conversation to continue later. Of course, that is assuming you have used it well. It is entirely possible to say you are using a perception-checking statement while being insincere. For example, if you said to someone, “You have not called me in a while. Are you avoiding me or just being rude? What’s up?” it is unlikely you will get a very positive response since at least one of the interpretations offered is rather aggressive, more likely to provoke an argument than a conversation.

If you find the perception-checking statement a bit cumbersome or clunky, remember that you can modify it if you keep the important pieces. For example, instead of saying, “You have not called me in a while; I am wondering if you have been sick, busy with work, or annoyed with me. What’s happening?” you could simply say, “We have not spoken in a while, is everything okay?” In the first version, all three steps of the perception-checking statement are included, but it is a bit long and awkward. In the second version, we still have the first step as we described the behaviour — a lack of communication. But rather than offering multiple interpretations and then requesting clarification, we combined the two into one overall possible interpretation — wondering if everything is okay, which also serves as a request to clarify.

Watch: Perception Checking

View this video about perception checking. Think about a time when you may have been in a similar situation. How did it make you feel? Could perception checking have helped? When could perception checking be utilized in a healthcare setting?

Video Transcript (see Appendix B 2.4)

References

Armenta, B. E., & Hunt, J. S. (2009). Responding to societal devaluation: Effects of perceived personal and group discrimination on the ethnic group identification and personal self-esteem of Latino/Latina adolescents. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 12(1), 11–12. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1177/1368430208098775

Guyll, M., Madon, S., Prieto, L., & Scherr, K. C. (2010). The potential roles of self-fulfilling prophecies, stigma consciousness, and stereotype threat in linking Latino/a ethnicity and educational outcomes. Social Issues, 66(1), 116. 113–130. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2009.01636.x

Jiménez-Picón, N., Romero-Martín, M., Ponce-Blandón, J. A., Ramirez-Baena, L., Palomo-Lara, J. C., & Gómez-Salgado, J. (2021). The relationship between mindfulness and emotional intelligence as a protective factor for healthcare professionals: Systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(10), 5491. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18105491

McBrien, B. (2007). Learning from practice – reflections on a critical incident. Accident and Emergency Nursing, 15(3), 128–133.

Mereish, E. H., N’cho, H. S., Green, C. E., Jernigan, M. M., & Helms, J. E. (2016). Discrimination and depressive symptoms among Black American men: Moderated-mediation effects of ethnicity and self-esteem. Behavioral Medicine, 42(3), 190–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/08964289.2016.1150804

Paterson, C., & Chapman, J. (August 2013). Enhancing skills of critical reflection to evidence learning in professional practice. Physical Therapy in Sport, 14(3), 133–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ptsp.2013.03.004

Rolfe, G., Jasper, M., & Freshwater, D. (2020). Critical reflection in practice: Generating knowledge for care (2nd ed.). Red Globe Press.

Schugurensky, D. (2009). The school experience of Latin American youth in Canada: The three dimensions of the 40%. OISE/University of Toronto

Segal, J., Smith, M., Robinson, L., & Shubin, J. (2019). Improving emotional intelligence (EQ).  HelpGuide. https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/emotional-intelligence-eq.htm

Stinson, D. A., Logel, C., Sheperd, S., & Zanna, M. P. (2011). Rewriting the self-fulfilling prophecy of social rejection: Self-affirmation improves relational security and social behaviour up to 2 months later. Psychological Science, 20(10), 1145–1149. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611417725 

Image Attributions

Figure 2.4.1. Father & Son 2055 by Lumiere2005. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Figure 2.4.2. [Untitled] by PublicDomainPictures. Licensed under Pixabay.

Figure 2.4.3. American Idol Experience 9258 by Beth. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Media Attribution

The Barton Blueprint for Emotional Intelligence. (2021, July 3). How to perception check. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiPreTRuWDw

Attribution Statement

Content adapted, with editorial changes, from:

Capriola, D. (2020). Foundations For Success. University of the Virgin Islands.

Open Resources for Nursing. (2021). Nursing fundamentals. https://wtcs.pressbooks.pub/nursingfundamentals/

University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. (2013). Communication in the real world [Adapted]. https://open.lib.umn.edu/communication/

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.