Self-Beliefs and Social Perception: Making an Evidence-Based Emotional Regulation Program

Abstract

Social relationships and being seen favourably by others is a crucial human need. Therefore, it is no surprise that many individuals worry about things like “Do other people like me?”, “How do I make sure I come across to other people the way I want them to see me?”.  To get answers to these questions, we are constantly looking for and evaluating signs that would tell us what other people think of us, defined as “mind perception” [1]. When we perceive that others think of us negatively, or differently than we wish they would, can cause significantly negative emotions and discourage us from pursuing relationships.

Most people believe that their perception of others’ thoughts are accurate and true, that they perceive reality accurately—known as naive realism [2]. However, in reality, our perceptions of what others think about us may be inaccurate and are influenced by self-perception. One powerful example is the “scar experiment” [3], where researchers applied a realistic-looking scar on participants’ faces with makeup, then had them interact with strangers. In reality, the scar was secretly removed before the interaction, but participants still reported strangers reacting negatively to their appearance.

This project aims to collect scientifically based evidence demonstrating that our “mind perception” is influenced by self-beliefs. Other psychological concepts explored include the spotlight effect, emotional reasoning, and self-fulfilling prophecies.

These insights will form the foundation of a counselling program focused on emotional regulation to help individuals overcome negative emotions from social perception. Therefore, a supplementary part of this project reviews the methodologies used in existing studies that examine how self-beliefs shape social perception. These include experimental manipulations of self-esteem, neuroimaging of social evaluation, self-report trait measures, and daily experience sampling. This methodological review, combined with an analysis of related counselling interventions, informs the design of the counseling program.

References

[1] D. R. Ames and M. F. Mason, “Mind perception,” in The SAGE Handbook of Social Cognition, S. T. Fiske and N. Macrae, Eds. London: SAGE Publications, 2012, pp. 115–137.

[2] L. Ross and A. Ward, “Naive realism in everyday life: Implications for social conflict and misunderstanding,” in Values and Knowledge, T. Brown, E. S. Reed, & E. Turiel, Eds. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996, pp. 103–135.

[3] R. E. Kleck and A. Strenta, “Perceptions of the impact of negatively valued physical characteristics on social interaction,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 39, no. 5, pp. 861–873, 1980.