Every day we deal with several people, some of whom are well known and others who are not, and we have a concept formed about the personality of each of them, inferred through the interactions we had with these people, this leads us to create a series of social expectations about the behavior of others.
Social psychology has been very interested in the study of expectations, so we know that they are very related to the impressions we have of others, let’s talk first about our social perception.
- Human beings.
- When born without the resources to be independent.
- Need complex social relationships.
- Therefore.
- Our brain is prepared to perceive and evaluate our social environment.
- A very important part of controlling our relationships is how people make up our social environment.
- And that’s where social perception comes in.
A simple and interesting way to explain this phenomenon is Fiske’s model of social perception, according to this model, as soon as we meet a person, place them in a category and it will remain in this category, unless we delve defund into the relationship and discover something that invites us to change it.
Also, if we have that interest, we’ll see if that person’s behavior fits that category; if this does not happen, we will adapt or change the category until that person is categorized or conceptualized.
It is a very important process; without it, the task of managing our relationships would be much more complicated, but it is important to note that this is a quick and useful process, but not very precise, people have a complex personality in strong interaction with the context, which can hardly be included in categories. However, this small “mental shortcut” helps us to know how to treat the people around us.
As soon as we categoricize our social environment and form concepts for each of these people, we will begin to create expectations, but what exactly are the expectations?
Social expectations are ideas we have of how people in our social environment will behave in a given situation in the future. When we make an impression on a person, associated with the image we create, these expectations appear, it helps us imagine how they should behave and predict their behavior.
This behavior of creating expectations about our relationships has an adaptive function, it is quite easy to understand what it is: in an artificial environment, based on complex societies such as those in which we live most, predicting the behavior of others allows us to adapt. our behaviors, and thus benefit from social interactions. Although it’s not a specific process, being able to anticipate and make mistakes is sometimes better than not doing it or never doing it properly.
It is important to know that these social expectations or the behavior of others greatly affect our behavior, we do not treat all people in the same way and we do not treat the same person in the same way in different situations, this can be seen in many everyday situations. Situations.
In addition, we will try to make others live up to our expectations, either by indirectly forcing them or by changing our perception of what others are doing; In addition, this process not only goes in this direction: as we are also aware of the expectations that others have of us, we will adapt our behavior to satisfy the ideas of others.
Our lives are full of social expectations, both ours on others and those of others about us, in this sense, so that our relationships are comfortable, we tend to meet these expectations, because breaking with them can create a space of uncertainty and therefore anxiety. beware: it should be noted that this is not a specific process and that, therefore, these expectations will often not be met.
The error in assigning an expectation leads to three situations: (a) the person who receives the expectation changes their behavior to suit it, (b) the person who creates the expectation changes their perception to believe that they are adapting to their expectations and (c) the correlation between expectations and behavior is broken and it is assumed that it is a mistake.
While the first two options avoid social conflicts and initially manage to maintain any relationship, the truth is that they can also lead to big long-term problems, in fact, in the first option the person changes behavior to satisfy the other, leading the other person to create a misconception of what it actually looks like. And in the case of the second option, the person who creates the expectation is unconsciously wrong about what the other person looks like.
The third option is the one that causes the most anxiety, due to the lack of control over what happened, however, if the relationship overcomes or assumes this anxiety, a more stable relationship will arise, it is possible that in momentary relationships (for example, a neighbor), the first two options are the right ones, since there is no long-term relationship or a close relationship with them , however, it would be a great negligence to behave in this way with our deepest relationships.
Think now: how do you feel about your social expectations and how would you like to behave?