On Perceptions of Others

Welcome back, and thank you for reading Writtle. My little writing blog.

In 2017 the Last Jedi, the eighth Star Wars episode, was released. It had a mixed reception, but a majority blamed any hatred on one character. Rose, whose sister dies at the beginning of the film, was not what fans were expecting. Expectations were not brought to the theater concerning new arrivals, and those expectations confused Rose’s purpose in the movie. So, when she caused a plot twist, people doubted and hated the reasoning for Rose doing what she did. The misunderstanding of Rose’s purpose prevented us from enjoying her character arch, and on many occasions hurt the actress who played her, who eventually abandoned social media.

The ability to perceive the Truth is affecting our understanding of people. Just like our misunderstanding of a fictional person, we can misunderstand people in the day-to-day. It doesn’t take a lot of time being alive to realize that we are in an age of gross information, which is hard to separate into truth and falsehood. I want to talk about perceptions and touch on why our differences cause bad perceptions concerning people unlike ourselves (of other cultures, upbringings, or ethnicities.)

According to Aristotle there are Four Causes to a thing’s nature. Now this is applicable immediately to inanimate things. What it is made up of (Material Cause,) what form or structure it is made into (Formal Cause,) what it was made by (Efficient Cause,) and why it was made (Final Cause.) To understand these is to understand a thing’s observable nature, its phenomenal reality. But the ability to perceive the outward doesn’t always extend so far inward.

For example, in the 1930s share croppers in the South were at the bottom of the labor ladder. And according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union was started by seven black and eleven white sharecroppers. Their purposes were aligned; they wanted a better set of conditions applying to their careers. It became one of the earliest civil-rights movements. It was less about their race and more about what they did, but it altogether shows us that race is not the absolute difference causing misunderstanding. Their outward similarities bound together their inward selves.

Doing a recent journal critique for my psychology class, I chose an article (Brewer M.B., 1999) on the science of prejudice. These are the elements of thought I had concerning the contents of the article:

1. The goal of the article is to clarify the difference between the roles of in-group love and out-group hate in prejudice.

2. In-group love and out-group hate are commonly seen as two sides of one coin, but they are separable phenomena.

3. There were several theories that evolved into the thinking presented in the article. They then did a survey of 200+ plus college students to see what 5 things they held as key to their identity. The outcome was a positive view of the identifying factors rather than a negative one towards others. They did not see their “identities as competing or mutually exclusive.”

4. It was an observational study.

5. In-group love is psychologically primary and non-causal of out-group hate.

6. The effects of in-group love and maintaining positive relations with the in-group don’t cause out-group hate. They can generate behaviors that may trigger out-group hate due to distrust of those outside their close-knit circle of trust.

It is plain that what is known is more easily understood, but the unknown can be easily misconstrued and torn away from what is reality. A study of “How Racial Perceptions Affect Communication in a Conflict” in 2014, by Tanner Riley, says, “Though a person’s perceptions of a race can be created by his or her previous contact with that race or be affected by stereotypes of that race, that perception alone is not the only factor to the chosen behaviors in a conflict…Much of what causes problems in the resolution of conflict is a cultural orientation towards conflict and conflict negotiation itself (Stadler, 2013).” The makings of a people, of a community, of a culture help define the key differences between people.

When we adapt the Causes to people we find this. Without understanding a person’s experiences; without understanding what the structure of how they reason the world to be; without understanding who raised the person and what ideals they hold; without knowing what the person considers to be their purpose in life, how can we ever hope to understand them at all? Anything else is a jump of assumptions and stereotype and previous experience when something new is before you.

Perception is not Truth, but it can be if we strive to know one another more.

Thank you for reading, and you are always welcome back every Wednesday.

Bibliography

Aristotle's Four Causes.

Brewer, M. B. (1999). The psychology of prejudice: Ingroup love or outgroup hate?. Journal of social issues, 55, 429-444. Retrieved from https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.197.4614&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

Cobb, W. H. (2021, September 27). Southern Tenant Farmers' Union. Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Retrieved from https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/southern-tenant-farmers-union-35/.

Riley, T. (2014, April). Do racial perceptions affect communication in conflict? Do Racial Perceptions Affect Communication in Conflict? Retrieved from https://pilotscholars.up.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1089&context=cst_studpubs.