One Should Not Assume

PERCEPTION OF SELF & OTHERS While worrying about what people think about one's self and what is thought about others in return is a very complex exchange. It is an exchange where many to most of the people involved are feeling, reacting and jostling based on perceptions and thoughts that are entirely unfounded. This does not automatically mean that the thoughts or perceptions or wrong. However, it can absolutely mean that the thoughts are less than true.

With that in mind, people should be careful how they react because of this lack of knowledge. Eye contact and other reactions can, and sometimes should, guide actions and reactions. This can hold true even if the underlying assumptions are wrong. Indeed, safety is sometimes a concern. However, it is entirely too easy to take things too far or to start off on the wrong foot in the first place and this report shall discuss just how this can and does happen.

Perception of Self & Others The author of this report chose from a number of topics and ended up settling on perception of self and others. This is a topic that may not seem overly complex and detailed to others, but that is far from the truth. So much of how people perceive each other and themselves is based on perception and presumption and so much of that is based on facts and is, for the most part, completely wrong.

This is obviously interesting and perhaps unfortunate because so much of behavior and reactions to the same are based on that incorrect or at least incomplete information. While it is possible to overblow and get too deep in what others perceive and feel, there other ways in which the behavior is done very wrong that are different and apart from that. Analysis One major way in which perception of self or others is done wrong is when the self-perception is askew and out of phase with reality.

People usually have a decent to good perception of themselves and how they come off. Further, there are many people that perceive others in an improper way to begin with and thus what a person thinks about those perceptions of themselves from others should not be taken seriously. That phenomenon will be one of the other main points covered in this section. Anyhow, there is a danger in not being conscious about how one might come off to others, even with reasonable people.

Indeed, less than ten percent of communication is verbal and more than half is visual. The rest (about 38%) is vocal (Life Size, 2016). However, there are those that are entirely too ambivalent or ignorant about that and it shows in their reactions to people. There is a difference between being self-confident in what others think of them or even ambivalent about what others think. However, there are other situations where a person should care what others think and/or there is a completely wrong perception about the same.

For example, it is often noble for someone to make a decision even if there is resistance from others about that action. However, if the action is ethically, morally and/or legally dubious, the person about to engage in the action may want to take pause and think about why they are really doing the action and whether it is proper for them to do that in the first place. For example, a teenager might feel that going to school and graduating just really is not that important.

However, that is really not true and the outcome for that student, should that pattern continue, is not going to be good. Another, and more extreme, example would be parents who feel that their feelings of racism and stereotypes are justified and they exemplify and teach this to their kids.

Even if they care little (if at all) for the (justified) condemnation that will surely follow when people realize the values and lessons that are being taught, they are surely doing wrong as thinking and behaving based on bigotry and stereotypes is not correct or valid in any instance. Individuals may validate or manifest stereotypes. This can and often does lead to reinforcement of those negative perceptions (Wolf, 2012). Conversely, there tend to be a lot of problems with the perceptions of others.

The offenses involved can range from the innocent to the bigoted. As noted before, there is so much of what everyone thinks they know about everyone else that is just wrong. Most times, the presumptions are based on incomplete and/or incorrect information but the mistakes in these perceptions is typically not meant to harm or get it wrong. Even so, it is wrong a lot of the time and people need to be very careful about what they think they know about other people.

Further, there are so many ways that things can go wrong. Silence is a huge thing. When it comes to quiet people or those that remain silent in reaction to certain statements or events, people will fill in a lot of the blanks themselves and that is less than wise. Some may take offense to a lack of response but there could be a well-natured and good-intentioned reason for this.

Whether it be to avoid conflict, to ponder the situation or otherwise prevent an escalation (or creation) of tensions, the silence could be innocent. Further, there are people that are simply quiet by nature and these people are often designated the "quiet ones." This often translates into people thinking they are stuck up or perhaps even violent. Indeed, so many people that commit violence are tarred with the "quiet" label as if that is a transgression that has to be explained or righted for some reason.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being quiet by nature or quiet in the light of certain events or statements. It is true that being too reserved and shy can actually be a sign of social and mental dysfunction but that is wrong to assume for everyone and it is really not the case for most people. Conversely, there are people that speak and blab entirely too much and they would be wise to slow down and ponder the situation rather than run their mouth all of the time (Patel, 2015).

Given the two points above, there is a third point that should really be taken to heart by all people. That point would be that irrespective of what is or is not experienced when it comes to others, individuals should be reacted to and dealt with on an individual basis and based on the individual actions of that time. Of course, there should be an adjustment to and recognizing of a pattern when one is noticed.

However, it should be based on tangible words and actions and not based on what is presumed to be true of the person. If a person is consistently late and has no good excuse, for example, then that really points to a potential problem with organization or something else related to a person. However, being late once can happen to anyone and presuming the same disorganization on that one event alone is not fair.

Further, things like tone and pitch of voice matter but one has to remember that not everyone recognizes this for what it is. A person can say the same cluster of works ten different ways and get ten different reactions. However, this does not mean that the reaction is valid because there is a chance that the person speaking the words is not entirely cognizant of how they come off.

People with mental illness are especially prone to this and the people that perceive them are all the more prone to get an improper reading. Asperger patients are a good example (Tartakovsky, 2016) Related to the third point is a fourth and much more important one in light of recent events and trends. The political and social spheres in the United States are extremely charged and borderline violent much of the time and perception of self and others is playing a huge part in that and then some.

Just as one obvious example, there are many black people that feel that the police are fundamentally against them in terms of their skin color or place in society. Indeed, when one looks at the statistics related to the incarceration or even just pulling over of blacks, a lot of that concern is valid. However, there are some people that see a black man pulled over and they might presume a lot of things.

They might presume that the black man is being profiled even if the black man did indeed commit an infraction. Indeed, it has been found that blacks are more than three times as likely to be searched during a traffic than white men. Similarly, males are more likely to be pulled over than women (BJS, 2016). The cop being racist would be a bad thing and that obviously should not feed into whether the black man is pulled over.

However, if the infraction is valid, then the black man being pulled over is valid. Further, there are some people (and this happens with all races) that react to cops pulling them over with contempt, defiance and other forms of attitude even if the reason for being pulled over is valid, such as a license plate being expired or something else that is not related to race at all. The police and people being pulled over is really just one manifestation of this.

The point and pattern that is being discussed is that some people are not honest with themselves and what they are doing, right or wrong, at any given time. Rather than take accountability for one's own actions or being honest about what is or is not going on in a given situation, some people make solutions or vilify others, at least when it comes to coming off to others, and this really just detracts from the reality of the situation.

Instead, people need to own up to what they do, own up to what they do not do and they should not be casting aspersions or even slandering people because they do not want to be held accountable from a moral or legal standpoint. People doing this wrong is a very major problem that exists in the United States and around the world. It touches all echelons of people and classes. Rich people do it, poor people do it, white people do it, black people do it and so forth.

Even worse, there are people like politicians and activists that actively exploit this. Many people talk about identity politics like it is a reality. For example, people will talk to (or about) black people like they are one unified group that all act and feel the same. While there are many things that are common to most people in a group, treating them as a monolithic unit is just wrong on so many levels.

People are people and those that think and behave otherwise, as it pertains to their own group or another, are really just missing the point in many ways (Brody, 2016). Yet another related point is the purported mob mentality. There are levels and different example of this but it is hard to miss when one sees it. Further, judging people of a larger group in one and distinct way is often not accurate.

Indeed, there are movements like Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party that are all commonly judged in a singular, and often incendiary, way by others. However, to suggest that those groups are monolithic with no differences or variations in thought is just wrong. For example, it is true that most people that are black vote Democrat. However, the number is only about 9 in 10 .. it is not across the board (Henry, 2016). Further, the media feeds into that inaccuracy with little to no apology.

For example, Occupy Wall Street probably has a few ultra-socialists or other people with extreme views in their midst. However, they have surely also had people with more moderate views that just want increased oversight of and consequences for people on Wall Street that knowingly or seemingly break legal or ethical rules. Other groups like the Tea Party are surely much the same way.

While there are surely people in that group that are unhealthily anti-government, there are surely others that just want less government in their lives, less government spending or something else along those lines. This still does not mean that everyone will agree with any of what their offering. However, the point is that looking at a group as a singular unit with no variations or iterations just is not accurate. Indeed, many people voted Barack Obama and George W. Bush into office for their respective four terms.

However, the individual reasons and perceptions that led to their votes being cast surely vary at least somewhat.