Person PerceptionThe mental processes we use to form judgments and draw conclusions about the characteristics and motivations of other people are called person perception. If you break it down, a person is a human being, and perception is the process of integrating, organizing, and interpreting sensations. This, in short, means that person perception is the cues we draw on to judge another person. It's forming impressions about someone without knowing them first. Person perception is an active and subjective process that always occurs in an interpersonal context. Every interpersonal context has three key components; are as follows:1. The characteristics of the individuals you are trying to "size".2. Your characteristics as a perceiver.3. The specific situation in which the process occurs. Each component influences the conclusions you reach about other people. As a psychological process, person perception follows some basic principles. All principals will be illustrated with a classroom scenario.1. Your reactions to others are determined by your perception of them, not who they really are. You treat others based on how you perceive them to be. For example, when you enter class on the first day of school, you almost immediately begin to form judgments about everyone. There are three seats left and you quickly decide not to sit next to the big, burly man with a frowning expression and the ugly little man who talks to himself. Why, because you perceived them as potentially threatening, but the truth perhaps is that the man with the frowning look is a florist who is very tired and is coming home too late. As for the other guy, he might be talking into a tape recorder… in the middle of a sheet of paper… the current study explored projection in close relationships of cohabiting partners. In one study, structural equation modeling revealed significant components of projection when spouses reported their partners' depressive symptoms. In another study the same analysis was expanded to include spouses' reports of a variety of their partners' actual states, attitudes, and behaviors. It was shown that the degree of projection increased as the magnitude of the correlation between spouses' self-views increased. A cognitive process that explains this finding is proposed, along with a view of projection as a heuristic device rather than a bias. I believe this is true and I think we should continue to study person perception. It's very interesting for me to read how and why we choose to be friends with different people.