One of the key distinctions Ichheiser (1949) makes is that between two different forms of interpretation of others and of the world that operate in perception: the individual and the collective. Individual forms of interpretation operate on the basis of the dispositions, attitudes, and experiences of a particular person, including things such as whether the individual tends to be trusting or suspicious of others.
Here, the differences between various types of perception rest mainly on the life experiences of the individual, so that those who tend to be suspicious—perceiving untrustworthy motives behind the actions of others—are disposed as such due to past relationships with others who have proven to be unreliable or dishonest. In contrast, collective forms of interpretation are commonly found in a culture, such as prejudices toward certain minority groups or the less powerful ones. In Western culture, a classic example would be how ambition is perceived differently in men and women: although a ruthlessly ambitious man may not be liked personally, he may receive shared admiration for his achievements, and many might want to emulate his success; however, overt ambition in a woman is viewed as inappropriate and unfeminine. Although exceptions to such views can always be found, these perceptions are held generally among a collective.
Other general types of personality misinterpretations that frequently occur include a tendency to overestimate the unity of personality, when, in fact, many
different characteristics or aspects of personality might come to the fore in various situations. For example, someone we may judge to be timid in normal circumstances might exhibit exceptional courage and bravery under extreme conditions. The statement “I never knew he/she had it in him/her” is indicative of such occasions when someone surprises us with their capabilities.
Similarly, referring to someone as a “dark horse” reflects our surprise upon wit- nessing a totally different character emerging in a situation different from that in which we normally see this individual. We are surprised when we see different sides to people because we normally fix their images in our minds and so overlook other aspects of them or their behavior that do not fit our preconceived notions. Indeed, the fixed image of a unified personality is what we take to be the person’s “real” self.
Another reason we overestimate the unity of personality is that we often encoun- ter others playing a particular role, and we take core elements of the role to be the unifying factors of a person. In such relationships, the role we ourselves play in a situation may also evoke or suppress aspects of the other’s personality, so that our own actions, attitudes, and expectations are dynamic factors interweaving with the actions of others and influencing their behavior. Yet, despite this, we are often unconscious of how our own behavior and tendencies to fix someone else’s image might influence that person’s behavior.
Related to this is a tendency of rigidity in our social perceptions, in which we stabilize the image of others over time, across their life histories. Here there is an interplay of image and reality that moves to the rhythm of the transformation of personality. Someone may say to us, “I’m looking in you for the person I used to know” or “Whatever happened to the boy I met?” or “What became of the girl you used to be?”—expressing that they are searching for the image they had first established (and then rigidified) in the person we have now become. Over time, all of us must adjust the images that we have had of others to the changes that have occurred in their personalities, and we also have to face the discrepancy between what others think we are with who we have become. All this stems from the proneness to attribute solidity to others’ personalities, attitudes, sentiments, and views that are not actually there. Instead, an ambiguity of different characteristics, tendencies, attitudes, sentiments, and views is always evident in all selves.
Stereotyping is another way of affixing the image of others and misperceiving them. Stereotypes are collective classifications operating in social perception and, as such, form the image of a person not as an individual but as a representative of the general social group to which they belong. For example, consider the numerous Muslims living in the West but experiencing increased prejudice and suspicion with the rise of militant Islamic groups in the Middle East and the perpetration of acts of terrorism across the world. Basically, despite the vast variations within the Muslim community, many Muslims have become victims of popular stereotypes associated with a small number of terrorists.
Another type of stereotyping includes our expectation that individuals will adhere to the characteristics we associate with the social roles that they hold. For example, professional people are more likely to be considered to be respectable and responsible members of the community, and if they prove themselves otherwise,
this often calls their professional competence into question, even though their behavior may have no bearing on their professional ability. For example, a teacher with gambling debts might be viewed as an unfit teacher, even if the gambling has not affected that person’s performance in the classroom.
Here we encounter a contradiction between our various roles and functions (each person belongs to different social groups and performs various functions) and between how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves. This is not to say that all stereotypes are merely illusions, not relating to anything real, such as the true characteristics of a person or members of a group. For example, teachers or doctors may actually assume an air of authority as they work their way into the responsibilities of their job; yet, at the same time, they may not view themselves as totally defined by their occupational role and, thus, may have ambivalent attitudes toward that role. Doctors may be highly critical of certain aspects of current medical practice, and teachers may be highly critical of the educational system. As Ichheiser (1949) notes, they are not just doctors and teachers but, at the same time, also “anti- doctors” and “anti-teachers” (p. 36). However, perceived through the lens of social stereotypes, the totality, complexity, and contradictory aspects of the personality are open to misperception.
Despite this tendency to misperceive, we lack an awareness of the limits of our insight into others, and this, in itself, is an additional source of misperception.
Although we desire to understand others and to be understood by them because we need to be able to anticipate and control those things that affect us and because we have an expressive desire to communicate, nevertheless things we do not “see” in others (e.g., their complexity and multiplicity) remain “invisible” to our insight.
We also tend to underestimate the role of the situation in terms of how we per- ceive others and their behavior. We tend to think that how people behave is deter- mined by the inner workings of their personality and that what we perceive is their
“real” self, when actually it is the situation that plays a key role both in what people do in certain circumstances and how we see them. Thus, we tend to ascribe indi- viduals’ success or failure to their own abilities (or lack thereof) and do not look at the structural factors in the social field that may have contributed to it, such as social opportunities and barriers, relations of interdependence between people and social networks, or material factors like wealth.
Ichheiser (1949) provides the example of unemployment, which we tend to attri- bute to an individual’s personal failure—a lack of aspiration, ambition, or personal deficits (e.g., skills or education)—when, in fact, it may be attributed far more to economic conditions that determine levels of employment and the availability of jobs within a society. In addition, market changes may render a person’s prior skills and experience redundant. In this way, although we are conscious of a person’s spatial situation, we are unconscious to the total situation of invisible structural fac- tors that has put the person in that position—largely due to the ideology of individu- alism that has dominated Western societies since the nineteenth century. Yet perhaps Ichheiser downplays the role of this ideology in all the forms of misperception and misinterpretation we have outlined so far. This ideology brings individuals, with their own “inner” characteristics and capacities, to the forefront, even when we are
misperceiving them through representations of a group or seeing our image of them as their real self, rather than the accumulation of past relationships. I elaborate on this in the next section.
For now, Ichheiser (1949) talks of one final style of misinterpretation that he calls the “mote-beam mechanism” (p. 52), which is akin to the projection of our own characteristics onto another person who does not actually possess those characteristics or, alternatively, characteristics we perceive in others but deny in ourselves. However, the main aspect of the mote-beam mechanism—and what distinguishes it from projection—is that we may correctly perceive characteristics belonging to another person or group, ones that we also possess or that belong to groups we are a member of, yet we think that we, as an individual or group, are free of the same characteristics. The example Ichheiser gives is seeing others as prejudiced but ignoring our own prejudices or those of our own group. For instance, we may correctly attribute racial prejudice to extreme right-wing groups and condemn it but then fail to perceive the more subtle, everyday forms of racism that exist all around us. Indeed, as Ichheiser points out, social scientists may study the prejudices of others but remain blind to their own prejudices or those of the social groups to which they belong.