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What Is Negativity Bias and How Can It Be Overcome?

When you read the news, do you find yourself drawn to the more depressing articles? As humans, we tend to be impacted much more by negative events than by positive ones.

This negativity bias can influence how we feel, think, and act, and can have some less-than-desirable effects on our psychological state. So what does it look like, and how can we overcome it? Read on to find out.

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This Article Contains:

What is negativity bias, 3 examples of negativity bias, how to overcome the bias, 3 useful tests, what are dominance and contagion, the bias in relationships, its role in anxiety, negativity bias in the workplace, 3 ted talks on the topic, a take-home message.

Negativity bias refers to our proclivity to “attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information” (Vaish, Grossmann, & Woodward, 2008, p. 383). We can think of it as an asymmetry in how we process negative and positive occurrences to understand our world, one in which “negative events elicit more rapid and more prominent responses than non-negative events” (Carretié, Mercado, Tapia, & Hinojosa., 2001, p. 75).

Among other things, it can explain why we often:

• Recall and think about insults more than compliments
• Respond more – emotionally and physically – to aversive stimuli
• Dwell on unpleasant or traumatic events more than pleasant ones
• Focus our attention more quickly on negative rather than positive information

Even when we experience numerous good events in one day, negativity bias can cause us to focus on the sole bad thing that occurred. It can lead us to ruminate on small things, worry over having made a bad impression, and linger on negative comments (Lupfer, Weeks, & Dupuis, 2000; Chen & Lurie, 2013; Wisco, Gilbert, & Marroquín, 2014).

Where does this bias come from? Can we learn to spot examples of negativity bias in real life? And how can we avoid falling into the trap of getting caught up by negative events?

Where does it come from?

Negativity bias is thought to be an adaptive evolutionary function (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1999; Vaish et al., 2008; Norman et al., 2011). Thousands of years ago, our ancestors were exposed to immediate environmental threats that we no longer need to worry about – predators, for example – and being more attentive to these negative stimuli played a useful role in survival.

These days, the bias may play a role in our early development. As Vaish et al. (2008, p. 18) point out, infants don’t have extensive life experience to draw on: “the earlier an organism learns that it should avoid those stimuli that its conspecifics find aversive, the better are its chances for survival.”

Negativity bias helps them avoid potentially harmful stimuli in the absence of learned information about ambiguous stimuli.

It’s hard to argue that a negative bias isn’t still helpful in some circumstances, but as we grow and society develops, this hardwired tendency is not as useful as it once was.

Several studies illustrate how this asymmetry affects our attention and cognitive processes on a day-to-day basis.

We respond more to negative stimuli

Ito, Larsen, Smith, and Cacioppo (1998) found that our brains respond more intensely to negative stimuli. The researchers presented photos to 33 participants and measured their brain’s electrical activity to study its responses.

Some were affectively neutral (an electrical outlet, a plate), some were considered positive pictures (people enjoying a rollercoaster), and some were deemed negative images (a gun pointed at the camera, a mutilated face).

Findings showed more event-related brain potentials (ERPs), or activity, when participants viewed negative, as opposed to positive images, leading the researchers to conclude that our evaluations are more strongly influenced by the former.

News coverage is predominantly negative

Around the world, negative news articles appear to dominate the media, but why are they so prevalent? One hypothesis is that due to negativity bias, negative coverage is more attention grabbing than positive coverage. This is a logical inference from the study results we just described (and many more), but is it actually the case?

Soroka, Fournier, and Nir (2019) looked into whether demand for negative information is a cross-national phenomenon. Examining people’s psychophysiological reactions to video news content in 17 countries, their results revealed that, globally, humans are more aroused by and attentive to negative news on average.

We think about negative events more

Have you ever been hung up on something terrible that happened earlier in the week, despite everything else going great? Our tendency to think more about negative events is another example of this bias in action. Larsen (2009) reviewed ample evidence to suggest that negative emotions last longer than positive ones, that we tend to spend more time thinking about negative events, and that we often reason about them more.

This is likely related to learning and memory processes. The more attention we give to a stimulus or experience, the higher the likelihood that we’ll commit it to memory (Ohira, Winton, & Oyama, 1998). Can you think of more examples of negativity bias in action?

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As we’ve seen, negativity bias is very much concerned with where we direct our attention. By directing more of our conscious attention toward the positive events and feelings we experience, we can begin to address the asymmetry of negativity bias.

And that requires practice. So, where do we start?

Self-awareness and challenging negative self-talk

By checking in with yourself throughout the day, you can start to recognize any thoughts that are running through your mind – both helpful and unhelpful ones. You can also look at your own behaviors too, for a better understanding of what’s serving you and what isn’t.

From here, you can start to tackle these head on, challenging them and replacing them with more useful ones. Albert Ellis’s (1957) ABC technique is one useful framework you can apply here. Once you become aware of your behavior or its consequences (B and C in the model, respectively), then you can work backward to think about what led to them (A for antecedents).

What were you thinking before experiencing anger, resentment, or frustration? Was it negativity bias in action, perhaps? And how can you replace those thoughts with more positive ones?

Mindfulness: Breathing, meditations, and more

Practicing mindfulness is one good way to become more attuned to your own emotions (Charoensukmongkol, 2014). Through guided meditations, reflection, and other mindfulness interventions, you can start to observe your feelings and thoughts more objectively.

Even more promising evidence comes from a 2011 study from Kiken and Shook, who found an increase in positive judgments and higher levels of optimism when participants practiced mindful breathing.

Compared to control groups, these participants performed better at tests where they were required to categorize positive stimuli, leading the researchers to suggest that mindfulness practice can have a significant positive impact on the bias (Kiken & Shook, 2011).

Cognitive restructuring

Negativity biases have been linked to numerous psychological disorders, such as depression and anxiety (Riskind, 1997). When you catch yourself taking a negative view of situations, it may help to practice cognitive restructuring by reframing the event or experience.

We have plenty of free PDF Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy worksheets that can help you to get a more objective view of situations and people so you can work toward overcoming your negativity bias.

Savor the positive moments

When you stop and take some time to drink in a positive experience, you’re savoring it and creating memories for the future (Bryant & Veroff, 2017). Building up your store of positive mental images and feelings can help you address the imbalance that negativity bias predisposes us to.

The next time you experience or create a positive moment, take a little longer than you usually would to enjoy it. Engage fully in the good sensations, happy thoughts, and pleasant emotions that you feel and make a note of what you enjoyed about it. When you go home, why not reflect on what just happened and turn the savoring skill into a habit?

3 Exercises for overcoming negativity bias

We’ve got a few great exercises and interventions in our blog and toolkit to help you start overcoming your negativity bias.

• This The What If Bias intervention can be used one-on-one settings. Its goal is to help you adapt your view of negative experiences or events by taking a more balanced and positive perspective on them. Instead of catastrophizing possible negative outcomes, positive outcomes are envisioned.
• ACT Defusion Metaphors is a worksheet applicable to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, where our habituated thought patterns are questioned. When a thought arises, it must be evaluated with this series of questions. It encourages separation from negative thinking and includes helpful illustrations of how we should see our negative thoughts.
• With this Fun Mindful Eating exercise, you can learn how to appreciate micro-moments of positivity in your life. Although this exercise is aimed at children, it is a great way to take a small step towards focusing on the positive. Savor the present moment, savor a meal and then take further steps toward addressing the positive–negative asymmetry we’ve been discussing.

Negativity bias can be studied using a variety of different subjective and psychophysiological tests. If you’re interested in researching the phenomenon further, here are a few approaches that have been used in peer-reviewed studies:

• The Future Events Scale is a subjective, 26-item measure of negativity bias that measures optimism and pessimism on two separate subscales (Anderson, 1990). To complete this test, subjects use an 11-point Likert scale to rate how likely or unlikely an event is to take place in the future, with +5 being extremely likely and -5 being extremely unlikely. The more pessimistic a subject’s score, the higher their negativity bias (Kiken & Shook, 2011).
• ERP measures are a psychophysiological way to study the bias, coupled with affective processing tasks (Ho, Sun, Ting, Chan, & Lee, 2015). Typically in such studies, participants are asked to sort or rate stimuli such as words or pictures according to their emotional valence; in the meantime, measures of their electrophysiological responses are made.
• The online WebNeuro battery also includes self-report items that can be used to assess an attributional bias toward expecting and perceiving negative results and events (Rowe et al., 2007; Williams et al., 2008). This and other negativity bias tests are discussed more thoroughly in Williams et al.’s 2009 study, which is mentioned below.

Rozin and Royzman (2001) conducted one of the best-known early studies on the phenomenon. In it, they unpack the concept and four ways in which it manifests:

• Negative potency describes the idea that positive and negative entities (e.g., events, things, or experiences) hold different importance to us, regardless of whether they are equal in size or emotionality.
• Steeper negative gradients refer to the phenomenon whereby the negativity of ‘bad’ events increases faster when they grow closer to us.
• Negativity dominance describes how “combinations of negative and positive entities yield evaluations that are more negative than the algebraic sum of individual subjective valences would predict” (Rozin & Royzman, p. 296).
• Negative differentiation refers to the notion that our conceptual representations of negative entities are more complex and stimulate a broader array of responses from us.

Imagine a day in which five good things happen to you, but then you step in a puddle and ruin your shoes. If you were to consider your day ruined – negativity bias – this would be an example of negativity dominance.

Contagion, on the other hand, refers to the idea that “negative events may have more penetrance or contagiousness than positive events” (Rozin & Royzman, 2001, p. 306). And the authors give some great examples; we won’t very willingly eat food that’s been even fleetingly touched by worms, for one.

You can read their influential paper here .

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We know that negativity bias impacts our impressions of other people, our decision-making, and our attention. As such, it can impact our relationships with others in several ways.

Among others:

• It can lead us to assume the worst about people we don’t yet know. Our beliefs and expectations can then influence our subsequent interactions with them (Glover, Pallais, & Pariente, 2017).
• By making pessimistic assumptions about how another person will react, we can also fall into the trap of letting our (unwarranted) attitudes impact our behaviors.
• As with the negative potency concept, the bias can lead us to interpret negative events as more important than positive ones. We can view someone’s slip-up as highly salient compared to their positive behaviors, leading us to ruminate over them to the detriment of our relationships.

Recognizing how the negativity bias works is the first step to overcoming its potential negative impacts on our relationships. Through self-awareness and excellent communication, we can start looking for the positive in our interactions and the people around us.

Being more sensitive to negative information can impact our neural circuitry, too.

Some of the effects of negative bias can include increased heart rates during fear perception and higher startle responses, both stress responses that are associated with anxiety (Williams et al., 2009). In this study, the authors also present evidence that self-reported negativity bias measures are correlated with depression and anxiety, suggesting that while the phenomenon may be evolutionary, it doesn’t come without its costs.

With this in mind, taking steps to overcome your negativity bias can be a positive move forward for your mental health and wellbeing. The exercises and tips we’ve shared above are a great place to start.

This bias can particularly impact us at work through its influence on decision-making and the impressions we form of others.

Decision-making

By focusing or over-emphasizing the potential negatives of a decision, research shows that we become more inclined to avoid risk (Kahneman & Tversky, 2013). When facing a choice with potential benefits and risks, therefore, we tend to consider the latter more – an excellent example of negative potency in action (Rozin & Royzman, 2001).

In a rapidly changing, volatile, and often ambiguous competitive environment, this can impact competitive advantage significantly.

From an organizational perspective, we can look at Kodak, once one of the world’s leading photographic film companies. By choosing to remain focused on its core ‘strength’ (photographic film) and not explore the growing digital photography trend, it lost its competitive position to rivals Sony, Canon, and Fujifilm before filing for bankruptcy in 2002 (Wilson, n.d.).

Interactions with others

We’ve already considered how impression formation impacts our relationships with others, and this holds true in the workplace as well. Effective collaboration, teamwork, and continued professional development all rely on our ability to get along with others and interact in a positive way to achieve shared goals.

By causing us to attend to and dwell on negative entities, negativity bias can make it harder for us to accept constructive feedback, encourage others, and build trust with coworkers.

Research suggests that we can start to tackle negativity bias in the workplace by upping the ratio of positive to negative comments that we give (Zenger & Folkman, 2013). To boost team performance and lead others more effectively, in other words, a good ratio to aim for is 5:1. Try it!

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Are you more of a video person? These TED talks are a super way to learn more about negativity bias and how you can overcome it. And if you can’t get enough, this article has 15 more positive psychology TED Talks .

1. Hardwiring happiness: Dr. Rick Hanson at TEDxMarin 2013

Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson is the well-known author of Buddha’s Brain , Just One Thing , and Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence , books that cover core positive psychology topics. He’s also a senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and a renowned researcher in the field.

In this TED talk, he discusses how we can overcome negativity bias by ‘taking in the good.’

2. A Simple Trick to Improve Positive Thinking

Professor Alison Ledgerwood is a social psychologist and behavioral scientist at UC Davis. Her publications include research into negativity and positivity biases, covering topics such as how we can ‘unstick’ ourselves from negative mindsets and frames and how we can switch our conceptualizations.

Her TEDx talk A Simple Trick to Improve Positive Thinking is about how we can reframe the way we communicate to develop a more positive outlook. It’s full of practical tips about how to get rid of negative thought patterns.

3. Should You Trust Your First Impression?

University of Delaware psychology professor Peter Mende-Siedlecki has written a considerable deal of literature on negativity bias topics: social judgments, impression formation, and contextual sensitivity, to name a few.

Here, you can hear his talk about how we formulate impressions and the role that negativity bias plays (and doesn’t play) in these processes. It’s a good watch for anyone who wants to learn more about the judgments we make of others.

We all face rejection, sadness, fear, and unhappiness. When we find ourselves getting stuck on the negative aspects of our lives, however, it helps to be aware of why we might be doing so. We may be evolutionarily hard-wired to focus on negative things, but it’s possible to retrain our brains to adopt more positive frames of reference and boost our wellbeing.

Positive psychology is not about eliminating negative thoughts and emotions from our everyday experiences; it’s more concerned with how we handle them. With an understanding of negativity bias, we can start to interact with adverse events, trauma, and so forth more adaptively.

So, what helps you overcome negativity bias? Do you have any tips for your fellow readers? If so, please share them in the comments below.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free .

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• Bryant, F. B., & Veroff, J. (2017). Savoring: A new model of positive experience . Psychology Press.
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• Charoensukmongkol, P. (2014). Benefits of mindfulness meditation on emotional intelligence, general self-efficacy, and perceived stress: Evidence from Thailand. Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 16 , 171–192.
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• Glover, D., Pallais, A., & Pariente, W. (2017). Discrimination as a self-fulfilling prophecy: Evidence from French grocery stores. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 132 (3), 1219–1260.
• Ho, N. S., Sun, D., Ting, K. H., Chan, C. C., & Lee, T. (2015). Mindfulness trait predicts neurophysiological reactivity associated with negativity bias: An ERP study. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine , 2015 .
• Ito, T. A., Larsen, J. T., Smith, N. K., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1998). Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain: The negativity bias in evaluative categorizations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75 (4), 887–900.
• Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (2013). Choices, values, and frames. In L. C. MacLean & W. T. Ziemba (Eds.), Handbook of the fundamentals of financial decision making: Part I (pp. 269–278). World Scientific.
• Kiken, L. G., & Shook, N. J. (2011). Looking up: Mindfulness increases positive judgments and reduces negativity bias. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2 (4), 425–431.
• Larsen, R. (2009). The contributions of positive and negative affect on emotional well-being. Psihologijske Teme, 18 (2), 247–266.
• Lupfer, M. B., Weeks, M., & Dupuis, S. (2000). How pervasive is the negativity bias in judgments based on character appraisal? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26 (11), 1353–1366.
• Norman, G. J., Norris, C. J., Gollan, J., Ito, T. A., Hawkley, L. C., Larsen, J. T., … Berntson, G. G. (2011). Current emotion research in psychophysiology: The neurobiology of evaluative bivalence. Emotion Review, 3 (3), 349–359.
• Ohira, H., Winton, W. M., & Oyama, M. (1998). Effects of stimulus valence on recognition memory and endogenous eyeblinks: Further evidence for positive-negative asymmetry. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24 (9), 986–993.
• Riskind, J. H. (1997). Looming vulnerability to threat: A cognitive paradigm for anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 35 (8), 685–702.
• Rowe, D. L., Cooper, N. J., Liddell, B. J., Clark, C. R., Gordon, E., & Williams, L. M. (2007). Brain structure and function correlates of general and social cognition — Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, 6 (01), 35–74.
• Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5 (4), 296–320.
• Soroka, S., Fournier, P., & Nir, L. (2019). Cross-national evidence of a negativity bias in psychophysiological reactions to news. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116 (38), 18888–188892.
• Vaish, A., Grossmann, T., & Woodward, A. (2008). Not all emotions are created equal: the negativity bias in social-emotional development. Psychological Bulletin, 134 (3), 383–403.
• Wilson, P. (n.d.). Kodak – A lesson in risk aversion . BlueSteps. Retrieved from https://www.bluesteps.com/blog/kodak-lesson-risk-aversion
• Wisco, B. E., Gilbert, K. E., & Marroquín, B. (2014). Maladaptive processing of maladaptive content: Rumination as a mechanism linking cognitive biases to depressive symptoms. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 5 (3), 329–350.
• Williams, L. M., Whitford, T. J., Flynn, G., Wong, W., Liddell, B. J., Silverstein, S., … Gordon, E. (2008). General and social cognition in first-episode schizophrenia: identification of separable factors and prediction of functional outcome using the IntegNeuro test battery. Schizophrenia Research, 99 (1-3), 182–191.
• Williams, L. M., Gatt, J. M., Schofield, P. R., Olivieri, G., Peduto, A., & Gordon, E. (2009). ‘Negativity bias’ in risk for depression and anxiety: Brain–body fear circuitry correlates, 5-HTT-LPR, and early life stress. Neuroimage, 47 (3), 804–814.
• Zenger, J., & Folkman, J. (2013, March 15). The ideal praise-to-criticism ratio . Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2013/03/the-ideal-praise-to-criticism

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Negative thought behavior stimuli and how humans can or cannot comprehend such in news articles, political commentary and other online engagement is what is keeping us in a Divided States of America and causing increases in violence with many toward others. So sad and emotionally disturbing that we see war continuing on and on with male oligarchs. So having an understanding and awareness of such is an amazing positive gift. Thank you for this wonderful site and informative articles. Tend and Befriend is so much more positive than fight or flight behavior. Go Karmala (!!), we need a woman leader in politics finally to change the adversity that we now see in such. Keep surfing and go play outside was the best advice I ever received as a child, old ski bum, sailor, rock climber, nature is the most positive place to be in awe and all those amazing visionary people who created such in the name of positive stimuli.

Hereditary instincts are like hard wired into us for survival,don’t fight it but accept that you are human Afterall and let the feelings flow away like a bad storm does and know a brighter day is around the corner if you let it.

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How to Repair a Negative Perception of Your Work

Learning that others’ perception of you or your work doesn’t align with your own can feel destabilizing. But as difficult as it is to hear, learning how others view you can provide an opportunity for self-improvement and professional growth. Here are steps you can take to repair a negative perception of your work. Reflect on […]

Learning that others’ perception of you or your work doesn’t align with your own can feel destabilizing. But as difficult as it is to hear, learning how others view you can provide an opportunity for self-improvement and professional growth. Here are steps you can take to repair a negative perception of your work.

Source: This tip is adapted from “When You Think You’re Doing Good Work—But Others Don’t,” by Marlo Lyons

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Understanding biases and their impact on our perceptions.

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Has anyone ever accused you of being biased? What was your reaction? The typical reaction is “Biased? Not me!” If that was the case, I am sorry to burst your bubble, but everyone has multiple forms and dimensions of cognitive biases. In my decades of experience in running businesses and developing others, I have found that our personal biases get in the way of good results more than any other factor. Identifying your biases is a very important part of the self-awareness journey that leads us to be more emotionally intelligent human beings, as well as better business leaders.

Biases have been studied extensively in both psychology and behavioral economics. There is a lot of discussion over whether all biases are negative or if some can result in useful attitudes or behaviors.

Cognitive bias is a general term that many psychologists and other behavioral experts use to describe a systematic error in how people perceive others or their environment. Individuals, whether we are talking about our neighbors or coworkers, filter or perceive information based on their own past experiences. When an individual constructs their own subjective social reality based on their past perceptions and not on objective input, we classify their behavior as being cognitively biased.

The list of cognitive biases is evolving, with nearly 200 already classified.   It is beyond the scope of this article to help you understand all of these biases, but I will touch on the few that I often see affecting personal and business relationships.

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE):  FAE happens when we are too quick to label people or their actions. These labels are hard to erase and can lead to a tainted view of a situation. What gives rise to FAE is the assumption that what a person does reflects who they are. For example, if someone acts badly, we assume that they did so because they have bad character, but if we ourselves were in the same situation and acted the same way, then we did so because the tough position or environment we found ourselves in required us to act that way. This also often reflects how people perceive others' accomplishments and whether or not we think they deserve the rewards associated with their actions.

In organizations, people constantly falter due to FAE. There are several ways to avoid falling into this trap. For starters, assume positive intent on the part of the other person. People are not inherently evil or devious. Consider any external factors that might have caused the other person’s behavior, and think about how you might have dealt with those factors. If you still cannot figure it out, then ask the person, in a nonjudgmental way, about their behavior. After all, no one has better insight into what they were thinking than the person themselves.

Confirmation Bias:  Confirmation bias is one of the most commonly occurring judgment biases. This has been widely described as a tendency to search for validation and ways to reaffirm our preexisting beliefs or hypotheses . It is a trick our minds play to highlight small pieces of information that confirm what we already believe. Once you become aware of it, you will start to notice yourself doing it all the time. In order to overcome confirmation bias, especially when working with others in a workplace, you need to ask yourself at each step of the way if you are being as objective and unbiased as possible. It helps to mentally consider the opposite of your belief in search for the truth or try to prove yourself wrong. You can only discover the truth when you have considered all of the facts, including those that do not support your original belief.

Self-Serving Bias:  This process is when we perceive a situation or facts in a way that allows us to see ourselves and our actions in the most positive and advantageous light possible. This is something many of us do without even realizing. Think about it: We often give ourselves credit for good outcomes but do not blame ourselves for the bad ones. It does not mean that we have to take all the blame for bad outcomes, but we should be willing to explore our role in what happened and reflect on the external factors that might have influenced the outcome. The field of positive psychology advocates holding onto a positive self-image, and that absolutely works, as long as we are balanced in our view of objective facts. Like a lot of other biases, the antidote starts with honest reflection and self-awareness.

In talking with people about whether they are biased, I have often posed two simple questions: “Is it true?” and then “How do you know it’s true?”Almost every time the answer I get to the first question is a resounding yes. What follows in exploring the second question is where true learning starts to happen. After a healthy exploration of the objective facts, including the possible beliefs and environmental conditions affecting all involved, people begin to understand that they have subjectively created what they believe to be a reality.

Reducing biases is an important part of our personal and business lives, particularly with respect to judgment and decision making. Biased judgment and decision making exist in all domains, including every industry and our everyday lives. The only way you can change this is to become aware of it. The next time you are at odds with someone, ask yourself, “Is my belief true?” and “How do I know it is true?”

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How Your Perception Is Your Reality, According to Psychologists

"Perception molds, shapes, and influences our experience of our personal reality,” says  Linda Humphreys , PhD, a psychologist and life, relationship, and spirituality coach. “Perception is merely a lens or mindset from which we view people, events, and things.”

In other words, we believe what we perceive to be accurate, and we create our own realities based on those perceptions. And although our perceptions feel  very  real, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily factual.

• Kevin Gilliland, PsyD , licensed clinical psychologist and executive director of Innovation360
• Linda Humphreys, PhD , psychologist and relationship coach

Dr. Humphreys says that our past experiences greatly influence how we decode things. Certain people, things, and situations  can trigger you to interpret things  through a positive or negative lens based on those past experiences.

If you’re the type that leans more toward the glass-half-empty perspective, don’t worry. Although it does require some work, your perception is something you can change because we  choose  how we see things. That power is in your hands (er, mind).

Keep reading to learn more about the pros and cons of this way of thinking, how it impacts different areas of life, and what actionable steps you can take to change the way you view yourself, other people, and life in general.

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The pros and cons of negative perception

Your perceptions influence all areas of life. "The totality of your perceptions— regarding yourself, your life, life in general, others, and so on—creates and impacts your personal reality and ultimately your experience of life," Dr. Humphreys. "Specifically, your perceptions affect the quality of your experience of life." So, if you perceive things in a positive light, you’ll experience a happier existence.

Perception informs your relationships, too. “If you constantly perceive people (your boss, teacher, parent, sibling) as always being against you, you will most likely react in a defensive, combative, negatively reactive, and victim-like way,” Dr. Humphreys says. “This way of perceiving people can lead to experiencing intense levels of unhappiness, and both inner-personal and outer disturbances.” On the flip side, perceiving people through a positive lens leads to experiencing higher levels of joy and inner peace.

Furthermore,  Kevin Gilliland , PsyD, licensed clinical psychologist, mental health expert, and executive director of  Innovation 360  says, misperceiving certain situations, likely because of previous negative experiences you’ve endured, can also cause you to miss out on some fantastic things life has to offer, such as promotions at work or romantic relationships.

Fear also influences the way we view things, but that’s not always a bad thing. “If our perception is based on fear, then we may end up avoiding things that we misperceive as dangerous when in fact, they aren’t,” Dr. Gilliland says. “At the same time, our perception of a situation may keep us safe from harm.” To distinguish between the two, question how accurate your perceptions are or are not.

How to switch to a more positive perception of life

1. take personal responsibility.

Changing your perceptions requires that you, first and foremost, take responsibility for your past unconscious reactions, Dr. Humphreys says. It’s only then that you can begin to see people, events, things, and even yourself from a more neutral or positive perspective.

2. Have compassion for yourself and others

Shifting the way you view the world is no easy feat, so it’s essential to be patient and gentle with yourself. “Have compassion for yourself as you work [on] taking proactive steps towards perceiving your reality in a more conscious and empowered way,” Dr. Humphreys says.

She also notes that the changes you make in your perception may even ruffle other people’s feathers, so express compassion for them, too. Your growth may be a catalyst for their growth as well.

3. Have a willingness to see things differently

Change of any kind, Dr. Humphreys says, requires willingness. Often people say they want to change, but they aren’t actually prepared to make said changes. So having a desire to see things differently is a vital component. This readiness, Dr. Gilliland adds, creates room for us to learn and create new perceptions.

4. Activate your pause button when triggered

Whenever you feel triggered by someone, something, or some situation, Dr. Humphreys suggests "hitting pause" and taking a moment to breathe and ground yourself into the present moment so you can choose how you will respond from a more empowered place.

And if a few deep breaths aren’t enough to help you shift, don’t be afraid to give yourself a grown-up time out. Dr. Humphreys recommends letting other people know that you need some time to process things, and you will address the issue at a later time.

5. Enlist support

We’re so accustomed to perceiving things a certain way that sometimes it’s difficult to see our blindspots and where perhaps we’re not looking at things in the most favorable light.

That’s why Dr. Gilliland suggests running your perceptions past someone else. Whether it’s a trusted friend or family member or a professional such as a psychologist, talk to someone who can help you see things from a different perspective that you might not have thought of before. “It’s the only way we improve our perceptions and reduce the number of mistakes we make,” he says.

6. Look for patterns

“We all have patterns,” says Dr. Gilliland of the way we perceive things. To spot those patterns, he recommends asking yourself if other independent, objective people would look at the same situation and come to the same assessment as you have.

This practice will cause you to think more critically and less emotionally, and open you up to notice things that you may have initially missed because you were caught up in your pattern.

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2.4 Improving Perception

Learning objectives.

• Discuss strategies for improving self-perception.
• Discuss strategies for improving perception of others.
• Employ perception checking to improve perception of self and others.

So far, we have learned about the perception process and how we perceive others and ourselves. Now we will turn to a discussion of how to improve our perception. Our self-perception can be improved by becoming aware of how schema, socializing forces, self-fulfilling prophecies, and negative patterns of thinking can distort our ability to describe and evaluate ourselves. How we perceive others can be improved by developing better listening and empathetic skills, becoming aware of stereotypes and prejudice, developing self-awareness through self-reflection, and engaging in perception checking.

Improving Self-Perception

Our self-perceptions can and do change. Recall that we have an overall self-concept and self-esteem that are relatively stable, and we also have context-specific self-perceptions. Context-specific self-perceptions vary depending on the person with whom we are interacting, our emotional state, and the subject matter being discussed. Becoming aware of the process of self-perception and the various components of our self-concept (which you have already started to do by studying this chapter) will help you understand and improve your self-perceptions.

Since self-concept and self-esteem are so subjective and personal, it would be inaccurate to say that someone’s self-concept is “right” or “wrong.” Instead, we can identify negative and positive aspects of self-perceptions as well as discuss common barriers to forming accurate and positive self-perceptions. We can also identify common patterns that people experience that interfere with their ability to monitor, understand, and change their self-perceptions. Changing your overall self-concept or self-esteem is not an easy task given that these are overall reflections on who we are and how we judge ourselves that are constructed over many interactions. A variety of life-changing events can relatively quickly alter our self-perceptions. Think of how your view of self changed when you moved from high school to college. Similarly, other people’s self-perceptions likely change when they enter into a committed relationship, have a child, make a geographic move, or start a new job.

Having a child can lead to a major change in a person’s self-concept.

Photophile – Father & Son 2055 – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Aside from experiencing life-changing events, we can make slower changes to our self-perceptions with concerted efforts aimed at becoming more competent communicators through self-monitoring and reflection. As you actively try to change your self-perceptions, do not be surprised if you encounter some resistance from significant others. When you change or improve your self-concept, your communication will also change, which may prompt other people to respond to you differently. Although you may have good reasons for changing certain aspects of your self-perception, others may become unsettled or confused by your changing behaviors and communication. Remember, people try to increase predictability and decrease uncertainty within personal relationships. For example, many students begin to take their college education more seriously during their junior and senior years. As these students begin to change their self-concept to include the role of “serious student preparing to graduate and enter the professional world,” they likely have friends that want to maintain the “semiserious student who doesn’t exert much consistent effort and prefers partying to studying” role that used to be a shared characteristic of both students’ self-concepts. As the first student’s behavior changes to accommodate this new aspect of his or her self-concept, it may upset the friend who was used to weeknights spent hanging out rather than studying. Let’s now discuss some suggestions to help avoid common barriers to accurate and positive self-perceptions and patterns of behavior that perpetuate negative self-perception cycles.

Avoid Reliance on Rigid Schema

As we learned earlier, schemata are sets of information based on cognitive and experiential knowledge that guide our interaction. We rely on schemata almost constantly to help us make sense of the world around us. Sometimes schemata become so familiar that we use them as scripts, which prompts mindless communication and can lead us to overlook new information that may need to be incorporated into the schema. So it’s important to remain mindful of new or contradictory information that may warrant revision of a schema. Being mindful is difficult, however, especially since we often unconsciously rely on schemata. Think about how when you’re driving a familiar route you sometimes fall under “highway hypnosis.” Despite all the advanced psychomotor skills needed to drive, such as braking, turning, and adjusting to other drivers, we can pull into a familiar driveway or parking lot having driven the whole way on autopilot. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. But have you slipped into autopilot on a familiar route only to remember that you are actually going somewhere else after you’ve already missed your turn? This example illustrates the importance of keeping our schemata flexible and avoiding mindless communication.

Be Critical of Socializing Forces

We learned earlier that family, friends, sociocultural norms, and the media are just some of the socializing forces that influence our thinking and therefore influence our self-perception. These powerful forces serve positive functions but can also set into motion negative patterns of self-perception. Two examples can illustrate the possibility for people to critique and resist socializing forces in order to improve their self-perception. The first deals with physical appearance and notions of health, and the second deals with cultural identities and discrimination.

We have already discussed how the media presents us with narrow and often unrealistic standards for attractiveness. Even though most of us know that these standards don’t represent what is normal or natural for the human body, we internalize these ideals, which results in various problems ranging from eating disorders, to depression, to poor self-esteem. A relatively overlooked but controversial and interesting movement that has emerged partially in response to these narrow representations of the body is the fat acceptance movement. The fat acceptance movement has been around for more than thirty years, but it has more recently gotten public attention due to celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Kirstie Alley, who after years of publicly struggling with weight issues have embraced a view that weight does not necessarily correspond to health. Many people have found inspiration in that message and have decided that being healthy and strong is more important than being thin (Katz, 2009). The “Healthy at Every Size” movement and the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance have challenged the narrative put out by the thirty-billion-dollar-a-year weight-loss industry that fat equals lazy, ugly, and unhealthy. [1] Conflicting scientific studies make it difficult to say conclusively how strong the correlation is between weight and health, but it seems clear that a view that promotes healthy living and positive self-esteem over unconditional dieting and a cult of thinness is worth exploring more given the potential public health implications of distorted body image and obesity.

The “Healthy at Every Size” movement strives to teach people that being thin doesn’t necessarily mean a person is healthy.

Pixabay – CC0 public domain.

Cultural influences related to identities and difference can also lead to distorted self-perceptions, especially for people who occupy marginalized or oppressed identities. While perception research has often been used to support the notion that individuals who are subjected to discrimination, like racial and ethnic minorities, are likely to have low self-esteem because they internalize negative societal views, this is not always the case (Armenta & Hunt, 2009). In fact, even some early perception research showed that minorities do not just passively accept the negative views society places on them. Instead, they actively try to maintain favorable self-perceptions in the face of discriminatory attitudes. Numerous studies have shown that people in groups that are the targets of discrimination may identify with their in-group more because of this threat, which may actually help them maintain psychological well-being. In short, they reject the negative evaluations of the out-group and find refuge and support in their identification with others who share their marginalized status.

Beware of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Self-fulfilling prophecies are thought and action patterns in which a person’s false belief triggers a behavior that makes the initial false belief actually or seemingly come true (Guyll et al., 2010). For example, let’s say a student’s biology lab instructor is a Chinese person who speaks English as a second language. The student falsely believes that the instructor will not be a good teacher because he speaks English with an accent. Because of this belief, the student doesn’t attend class regularly and doesn’t listen actively when she does attend. Because of these behaviors, the student fails the biology lab, which then reinforces her original belief that the instructor wasn’t a good teacher.

Although the concept of self-fulfilling prophecies was originally developed to be applied to social inequality and discrimination, it has since been applied in many other contexts, including interpersonal communication. This research has found that some people are chronically insecure, meaning they are very concerned about being accepted by others but constantly feel that other people will dislike them. This can manifest in relational insecurity, which is again based on feelings of inferiority resulting from social comparison with others perceived to be more secure and superior. Such people often end up reinforcing their belief that others will dislike them because of the behaviors triggered by their irrational belief. Take the following scenario as an example: An insecure person assumes that his date will not like him. During the date he doesn’t engage in much conversation, discloses negative information about himself, and exhibits anxious behaviors. Because of these behaviors, his date forms a negative impression and suggests they not see each other again, reinforcing his original belief that the date wouldn’t like him. The example shows how a pattern of thinking can lead to a pattern of behavior that reinforces the thinking, and so on. Luckily, experimental research shows that self-affirmation techniques can be successfully used to intervene in such self-fulfilling prophecies. Thinking positive thoughts and focusing on personality strengths can stop this negative cycle of thinking and has been shown to have positive effects on academic performance, weight loss, and interpersonal relationships (Stinston et al., 2011).

Create and Maintain Supporting Interpersonal Relationships

Aside from giving yourself affirming messages to help with self-perception, it is important to find interpersonal support. Although most people have at least some supportive relationships, many people also have people in their lives who range from negative to toxic. When people find themselves in negative relational cycles, whether it is with friends, family, or romantic partners, it is difficult to break out of those cycles. But we can all make choices to be around people that will help us be who we want to be and not be around people who hinder our self-progress. This notion can also be taken to the extreme, however. It would not be wise to surround yourself with people who only validate you and do not constructively challenge you, because this too could lead to distorted self-perceptions.

Beware of Distorted Patterns of Thinking and Acting

You already know from our discussion of attribution errors that we all have perceptual biases that distort our thinking. Many of these are common, and we often engage in distorted thinking without being conscious of it. Learning about some of the typical negative patterns of thinking and acting may help us acknowledge and intervene in them. One such pattern involves self-esteem and overcompensation.

Some people have speculated that men who have a midlife crisis may overcompensate for a perceived loss in status or power due to age by purchasing material things that make them appear more youthful.

Kevin Dooley – Midlife crisis car – CC BY 2.0.

People with low self-esteem may act in ways that overcompensate for their feelings of low self-worth and other insecurities. Whether it’s the businessman buying his midlife crisis Corvette, the “country boy” adding monster tires to his truck, or the community leader who wears several carats of diamonds everywhere she goes, people often turn to material possessions to try to boost self-esteem. While these purchases may make people feel better in the short term, they may have negative financial effects that can exacerbate negative self-perceptions and lead to interpersonal conflict. People also compensate for self-esteem with their relational choices. A person who is anxious about his career success may surround himself with people who he deems less successful than himself. In this case, being a big fish in a small pond helps some people feel better about themselves when they engage in social comparison.

People can also get into a negative thought and action cycle by setting unrealistic goals and consistently not meeting them. Similar to a self-fulfilling prophecy, people who set unrealistic goals can end up with negative feelings of self-efficacy, which as we learned earlier, can negatively affect self-esteem and self-concept. The goals we set should be challenging but progressive, meaning we work to meet a realistic goal, then increase our expectations and set another goal, and so on.

Some people develop low self-esteem because they lack accurate information about themselves, which may be intentional or unintentional. A person can intentionally try to maintain high self-esteem by ignoring or downplaying negative comments and beliefs and focusing on positive evaluations. While this can be a good thing, it can also lead to a distorted self-concept. There is a middle ground between beating yourself up or dwelling on the negative and ignoring potentially constructive feedback about weaknesses and missing opportunities to grow as a person. Conversely, people who have low self-esteem or negative self-concepts may discount or ignore positive feedback. To wrap up this section, I’d like to turn to one of my favorite shows and a great source for examples relevant to the perception process: American Idol .

I’ve always enjoyed showing clips from American Idol auditions in my class when I teach about self-perception. As you probably know, the season always starts with audition footage shot in various cities. The range of singing abilities, not to mention personalities, of those who show up for a chance to sing in front of the judges leads millions of viewers to keep tuning in. While it’s obvious that the producers let some people through who they know don’t have a chance at making it on the show, they also know that certain personalities make for good reality television viewing. I’ve often found myself wondering, “Do these people really think they can sing?” The answer is sometimes a very clear “Yes!” Sure, some are there just to make a spectacle and hopefully make it on TV, but there are many who actually believe they have singing abilities—even to the point that they challenge and discount the judges’ comments.

Some contestants on American Idol find it difficult to accept the constructive criticism they receive from the judges because they have distorted self-perceptions about their singing abilities.

Beth – American Idol Experience 9258 – CC BY 2.0.

During the contestant’s tearful and/or angry postrejection interview, they are often shown standing with their family and friends, who are also surprised at the judges’ decision. These contestants could potentially avoid this emotional ending by following some of the previous tips. It’s good that they have supportive interpersonal relationships, but people’s parents and friends are a little biased in their feedback, which can lead to a skewed self-concept. These contestants could also set incremental goals. Singing at a local event or even at a karaoke bar might have helped them gain more accurate information about their abilities and led them to realize they didn’t have what it takes to be an “American idol.”

Overcoming Barriers to Perceiving Others

There are many barriers that prevent us from competently perceiving others. While some are more difficult to overcome than others, they can all be addressed by raising our awareness of the influences around us and committing to monitoring, reflecting on, and changing some of our communication habits. Whether it is our lazy listening skills, lack of empathy, or stereotypes and prejudice, various filters and blinders influence how we perceive and respond to others.

Develop Empathetic Listening Skills

As we will learn in Chapter 5 “Listening” , effective listening is not easy, and most of us do not make a concerted effort to overcome common barriers to listening. Our fast-paced lives and cultural values that emphasize speaking over listening sometimes make listening feel like a chore. But we shouldn’t underestimate the power of listening to make someone else feel better and to open our perceptual field to new sources of information. Empathetic listening can also help us expand our self- and social awareness by learning from other people’s experiences and taking on different perspectives. Empathetic listening is challenging because it requires cognitive and emotional investment that goes beyond the learning of a skill set.

I didn’t know what a lazy listener I was until I started teaching and realized how much time and effort teachers have to put into their jobs. Honestly, at first it was challenging to attentively listen to student issues, thoughts, and questions, but I immediately saw the value in it. To be a good teacher, I had to become a better listener. As a result, I also gained more empathy skills and became a lot more patient. A valuable lesson I learned during this time is best stated as follows: “Everyone’s biggest problem is his or her biggest problem.” If one person’s biggest problem is getting enough money together to buy a new cell phone and another person’s biggest problem is getting enough money together to get much needed medication, each of these people is likely experiencing a similar amount of stress. As an outsider, we might look at this example and think about how a cell phone isn’t necessary to live but the medication is. But everyone’s reality is his or her reality, and when you can concede that someone’s reality isn’t like yours and you are OK with that, then you have overcome a significant barrier to becoming more aware of the perception process.

I recently had a good student inform me that he was leaving school to pursue other things. He had given speeches about wildfire firefighting and beer brewing and was passionate about both of those things, but not school. As an academic and lover of and advocate for higher education, I wouldn’t have made that choice for myself or for him. But I am not him, and I can’t assume his perceptions are consistent with mine. I think he was surprised when I said, “I think you are a smart and capable adult, and this is your decision to make, and I respect that. School is not going anywhere, so it’ll be here when you’re ready to come back. In the meantime, I’d be happy to be a reference for any jobs you’re applying for. Just let me know.” I wanted to make it clear that I didn’t perceive him as irresponsible, immature, misguided, or uncommitted. He later told me that he appreciated my reaction that day.

Beware of Stereotypes and Prejudice

Stereotypes are sets of beliefs that we develop about groups, which we then apply to individuals from that group. Stereotypes are schemata that are taken too far, as they reduce and ignore a person’s individuality and the diversity present within a larger group of people. Stereotypes can be based on cultural identities, physical appearance, behavior, speech, beliefs, and values, among other things, and are often caused by a lack of information about the target person or group (Guyll et al., 2010). Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral, but all run the risk of lowering the quality of our communication.

While the negative effects of stereotypes are pretty straightforward in that they devalue people and prevent us from adapting and revising our schemata, positive stereotypes also have negative consequences. For example, the “model minority” stereotype has been applied to some Asian cultures in the United States. Seemingly positive stereotypes of Asian Americans as hardworking, intelligent, and willing to adapt to “mainstream” culture are not always received as positive and can lead some people within these communities to feel objectified, ignored, or overlooked.

Stereotypes can also lead to double standards that point to larger cultural and social inequalities. There are many more words to describe a sexually active female than a male, and the words used for females are disproportionately negative, while those used for males are more positive. Since stereotypes are generally based on a lack of information, we must take it upon ourselves to gain exposure to new kinds of information and people, which will likely require us to get out of our comfort zones. When we do meet people, we should base the impressions we make on describable behavior rather than inferred or secondhand information. When stereotypes negatively influence our overall feelings and attitudes about a person or group, prejudiced thinking results.

Prejudice surrounding the disease we now know as AIDS delayed government investment in researching its causes and developing treatments.

Sassy mom – AIDS Awareness – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Prejudice is negative feelings or attitudes toward people based on their identity or identities. Prejudice can have individual or widespread negative effects. At the individual level, a hiring manager may not hire a young man with a physical disability (even though that would be illegal if it were the only reason), which negatively affects that one man. However, if pervasive cultural thinking that people with physical disabilities are mentally deficient leads hiring managers all over the country to make similar decisions, then the prejudice has become a social injustice. In another example, when the disease we know today as AIDS started killing large numbers of people in the early 1980s, response by some health and government officials was influenced by prejudice. Since the disease was primarily affecting gay men, Haitian immigrants, and drug users, the disease was prejudged to be a disease that affected only “deviants” and therefore didn’t get the same level of attention it would have otherwise. It took many years, investment of much money, and education campaigns to help people realize that HIV and AIDS do not prejudge based on race or sexual orientation and can affect any human.

Engage in Self-Reflection

A good way to improve your perceptions and increase your communication competence in general is to engage in self-reflection. If a communication encounter doesn’t go well and you want to know why, your self-reflection will be much more useful if you are aware of and can recount your thoughts and actions.

Self-reflection can also help us increase our cultural awareness. Our thought process regarding culture is often “other focused,” meaning that the culture of the other person or group is what stands out in our perception. However, the old adage “know thyself” is appropriate, as we become more aware of our own culture by better understanding other cultures and perspectives. Developing cultural self-awareness often requires us to get out of our comfort zones. Listening to people who are different from us is a key component of developing self-knowledge. This may be uncomfortable, because our taken-for-granted or deeply held beliefs and values may become less certain when we see the multiple perspectives that exist.

We can also become more aware of how our self-concepts influence how we perceive others. We often hold other people to the standards we hold for ourselves or assume that their self-concept should be consistent with our own. For example, if you consider yourself a neat person and think that sloppiness in your personal appearance would show that you are unmotivated, rude, and lazy, then you are likely to think the same of a person you judge to have a sloppy appearance. So asking questions like “Is my impression based on how this person wants to be, or how I think this person should want to be?” can lead to enlightening moments of self-reflection. Asking questions in general about the perceptions you are making is an integral part of perception checking, which we will discuss next.

Checking Perception

Perception checking is a strategy to help us monitor our reactions to and perceptions about people and communication. There are some internal and external strategies we can use to engage in perception checking. In terms of internal strategies, review the various influences on perception that we have learned about in this chapter and always be willing to ask yourself, “What is influencing the perceptions I am making right now?” Even being aware of what influences are acting on our perceptions makes us more aware of what is happening in the perception process. In terms of external strategies, we can use other people to help verify our perceptions.

The cautionary adage “Things aren’t always as they appear” is useful when evaluating your own perceptions. Sometimes it’s a good idea to bounce your thoughts off someone, especially if the perceptions relate to some high-stakes situation. But not all situations allow us the chance to verify our perceptions. Preventable crimes have been committed because people who saw something suspicious didn’t report it even though they had a bad feeling about it. Of course, we have to walk a line between being reactionary and being too cautious, which is difficult to manage. We all know that we are ethically and sometimes legally required to report someone to the police who is harming himself or herself or others, but sometimes the circumstances are much more uncertain.

The Tony Award–winning play Doubt: A Parable and the Academy Award–winning movie based on it deal with the interplay of perception, doubt, and certainty. In the story, which is set in a Bronx, New York, Catholic school in 1964, a young priest with new ideas comes into the school, which is run by a traditional nun who, like many, is not fond of change. The older nun begins a campaign to get the young priest out of her school after becoming convinced that he has had an inappropriate relationship with one of the male students. No conclusive evidence is offered during the course of the story, and the audience is left, as are the characters in the story, to determine for themselves whether or not the priest is “guilty.” The younger priest doesn’t fit into the nun’s schema of how a priest should look and act. He has longer fingernails than other priests, he listens to secular music, and he takes three sugars in his tea. A series of perceptions like this lead the nun to certainty of the priest’s guilt, despite a lack of concrete evidence. Although this is a fictional example, it mirrors many high-profile cases of abuse that have been in the news in recent years. Hopefully we will not find ourselves in such an uncertain and dire position, but in these extreme cases and more mundane daily interactions, perception checking can be useful.

“Getting Competent”

Perception Checking

Perception checking helps us slow down perception and communication processes and allows us to have more control over both. Perception checking involves being able to describe what is happening in a given situation, provide multiple interpretations of events or behaviors, and ask yourself and others questions for clarification. Some of this process happens inside our heads, and some happens through interaction. Let’s take an interpersonal conflict as an example.

Stefano and Patrick are roommates. Stefano is in the living room playing a video game when he sees Patrick walk through the room with his suitcase and walk out the front door. Since Patrick didn’t say or wave good-bye, Stefano has to make sense of this encounter, and perception checking can help him do that. First, he needs to try to describe (not evaluate yet) what just happened. This can be done by asking yourself, “What is going on?” In this case, Patrick left without speaking or waving good-bye. Next, Stefano needs to think of some possible interpretations of what just happened. One interpretation could be that Patrick is mad about something (at him or someone else). Another could be that he was in a hurry and simply forgot, or that he didn’t want to interrupt the video game. In this step of perception checking, it is good to be aware of the attributions you are making. You might try to determine if you are overattributing internal or external causes. Lastly, you will want to verify and clarify. So Stefano might ask a mutual friend if she knows what might be bothering Patrick or going on in his life that made him leave so suddenly. Or he may also just want to call, text, or speak to Patrick. During this step, it’s important to be aware of punctuation. Even though Stefano has already been thinking about this incident, and is experiencing some conflict, Patrick may have no idea that his actions caused Stefano to worry. If Stefano texts and asks why he’s mad (which wouldn’t be a good idea because it’s an assumption) Patrick may become defensive, which could escalate the conflict. Stefano could just describe the behavior (without judging Patrick) and ask for clarification by saying, “When you left today you didn’t say bye or let me know where you were going. I just wanted to check to see if things are OK.”

The steps of perception checking as described in the previous scenario are as follows:

• Step 1: Describe the behavior or situation without evaluating or judging it.
• Step 2: Think of some possible interpretations of the behavior, being aware of attributions and other influences on the perception process.
• Step 3: Verify what happened and ask for clarification from the other person’s perspective. Be aware of punctuation, since the other person likely experienced the event differently than you.
• Getting integrated: Give an example of how perception checking might be useful to you in academic, professional, personal, and civic contexts.
• Which step of perception checking do you think is the most challenging and why?

Key Takeaways

• We can improve self-perception by avoiding reliance on rigid schemata, thinking critically about socializing institutions, intervening in self-fulfilling prophecies, finding supportive interpersonal networks, and becoming aware of cycles of thinking that distort our self-perception.
• We can improve our perceptions of others by developing empathetic listening skills, becoming aware of stereotypes and prejudice, and engaging in self-reflection.
• Perception checking is a strategy that allows us to monitor our perceptions of and reactions to others and communication.
• Which barrier(s) to self-perception do you think present the most challenge to you and why? What can you do to start to overcome these barriers?
• Which barrier(s) to perceiving others do you think present the most challenge to you and why? What can you do to start to overcome these barriers?
• Recount a recent communication encounter in which perception checking may have led to a more positive result. What could you have done differently?

Armenta, B. E. and Jennifer S. Hunt, “Responding to Societal Devaluation: Effects of Perceived Personal and Group Discrimination on the Ethnic Group Identification and Personal Self-Esteem of Latino/Latina Adolescents,” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 12, no. 1 (2009): 11–12.

Guyll, M., et al., “The Potential Roles of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, Stigma Consciousness, and Stereotype Threat in Linking Latino/a Ethnicity and Educational Outcomes,” Social Issues 66, no. 1 (2010): 116.

Katz, M., “Tossing Out the Diet and Embracing the Fat,” The New York Times , July 16, 2009, accessed June 6, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/health/nutrition/16skin.html .

Stinson, D. A., et al., “Rewriting the Self-Fulfililng Prophecy of Social Rejection: Self-Affirmation Improves Relational Security and Social Behavior up to 2 Months Later,” Psychological Science 20, no. 10 (2011): 2.

• “About Us,” NAAFA: the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, accessed June 6, 2012, http://www.naafaonline.com/dev2/about/index.html . ↵

Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Frequently asked questions

What is an everyday life example of perception bias.

A real-life example of perception bias is the false consensus effect . Because we spend most of our time with friends, family, and colleagues who share the same opinions or values we do, we are often misled to believe that the majority of people think or act in ways similar to us. This explains, for instance, why some people take office supplies home: they may genuinely feel that this behavior is more common than it really is.

Frequently asked questions: Research bias

Perception bias is a problem because it prevents us from seeing situations or people objectively. Rather, our expectations, beliefs, or emotions interfere with how we interpret reality. This, in turn, can cause us to misjudge ourselves or others. For example, our prejudices can interfere with whether we perceive people’s faces as friendly or unfriendly.

The bandwagon effect is a type of cognitive bias . It describes the tendency of people to adopt behaviors or opinions simply because others are doing so, regardless of their own beliefs.

Belief bias and confirmation bias are both types of cognitive bias that impact our judgment and decision-making.

Confirmation bias relates to how we perceive and judge evidence. We tend to seek out and prefer information that supports our preexisting beliefs, ignoring any information that contradicts those beliefs.

Belief bias describes the tendency to judge an argument based on how plausible the conclusion seems to us, rather than how much evidence is provided to support it during the course of the argument.

The availability heuristic can influence our perception of risk in everyday life. One common example occurs when we are considering buying insurance. The sharp increase in purchases of flood insurance in the aftermath of flood events illustrates this phenomenon.

Witnessing such events, knowing someone who was personally affected, or extensive media coverage can make us more aware of floods (or make floods more “available” to us). This can change our risk perception, even though statistically there may not be a change in the probabilities of future flooding.

Heuristics are mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that help people reduce the time and effort required to make a decision. An example of a heuristic in psychology is the availability heuristic (or availability bias ). It involves relying on information that comes to mind quickly, (i.e., information that is available to us).

Although both are common types of cognitive bias , they refer to different ways of processing information.

• The availability bias (or availability heuristic ) refers to the tendency people have to rely on information that is easier to recall when faced with a decision.
• Confirmation bias is the tendency to selectively search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceived ideas.

In other words, the availability heuristic gives preference to information that is easy to recall, while confirmation bias gives preference to information that aligns with our existing beliefs. Even though they are different, they both cause us to focus on only a subset of information.

In survey research , such as political polling, the way questions are worded or the order in which answers are presented can influence how respondents answer the questions. This is called the framing effect .

For example, if voters are asked to select which of two candidates they plan to vote for, the order in which the candidates are listed affects the percentage of respondents selecting each candidate. Recognizing the potential for research bias , researchers typically rotate which major candidate is listed first and which is listed second.

The framing effect is often used in advertising to positively influence consumer choice.

One common type of frame is “ gain framing. ” This shows consumers how they are going to benefit from a product or service. For example, dental care product advertisements use gain framing to display the benefits of using their product: white teeth, healthy gums, fresh breath, etc.

Apart from the obvious benefits, ads using the framing effect often imply other benefits, such as how a better-looking smile makes one more attractive to potential dating partners.

Because of the framing effect , the way information is presented to us influences how attractive a proposition is.

Suppose you are considering joining a gym. A membership at $500 per year sounds like a considerable investment and might prevent you from signing up immediately. However, if they tell you it costs just $1.37 per day and emphasize that this is less than the cost of a cup of coffee, you might think it’s a great offer, even though in reality both offers cost you the same.

The opposite of implicit bias is explicit bias , or conscious bias. This refers to preferences, opinions, and attitudes of which people are generally consciously aware. In other words, explicit bias is expressed openly and deliberately.

The opposite of optimism bias is pessimism bias. Optimism bias occurs when we overestimate our chances of experiencing positive events in our lives, while pessimism bias occurs when we overestimate our chance of experiencing negative events.

For example, pessimism bias could cause someone to think they are going to fail an exam, even though they are well prepared and usually get good grades.

A positive illusion is a form of self-deception under which people have inflated, favorable attitudes about themselves or others close to them.

The most common positive illusions involve:

• Exaggerating one’s positive traits
• Overestimating one’s degree of control in life
• Harboring overly optimistic beliefs about future events (also called optimism bias ).

The planning fallacy refers to people’s tendency to underestimate the resources needed to complete a future task, despite knowing that previous tasks have also taken longer than planned.

For example, people generally tend to underestimate the cost and time needed for construction projects. The planning fallacy occurs due to people’s tendency to overestimate the chances that positive events, such as a shortened timeline, will happen to them. This phenomenon is called optimism bias .

Myside bias is a type of cognitive bias where individuals process information in a way that favors their prior beliefs and attitudes. It occurs when people search for, interpret, and recall information that confirms their opinions, and refute opinions different from their own—such as selecting news sources that agree with one’s political affiliation, while ignoring any opposing arguments from other sources.

Myside bias is closely related to confirmation bias . Although some researchers use the terms interchangeably, others use myside bias to refer to the tendency of processing information that supports one’s own position.

Cognitive bias is an umbrella term used to describe the different ways in which our beliefs and experiences impact our judgment and decision making. These preconceptions are “mental shortcuts” that help us speed up how we process and make sense of new information.

However, this tendency may lead us to misunderstand events, facts, or other people. Cognitive bias can be a source of research bias .

Some common types of cognitive bias are:

• Anchoring bias
• Framing effect
• Actor–observer bias
• Availability heuristic
• Belief bias
• Confirmation bias
• The halo effect
• The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon

Selective perception is the unconscious process by which people screen, select, and notice objects in their environment. During this process, information tends to be selectively perceived in ways that align with existing attitudes, beliefs, and goals.

Although this allows us to concentrate only on the information that is relevant for us at present, it can also lead to perception bias . For example, while driving, if you become hyper-focused on reaching your exit on a highway, your brain may filter visual stimuli so that you can only focus on things you need to notice in order to exit the highway. However, this can also cause you to miss other things happening around you on the road.

Correspondence bias and fundamental attribution error were often seen as interchangeable in the past. However, researchers have recently proposed that there is a subtle difference between the two.

• Correspondence bias refers to the fact that behavior is often viewed as a reflection of a person’s character. In other words, we believe that a person’s behavior reflects stable internal qualities, even though it was actually caused by the situation. The fundamental attribution error refers to the idea that people fundamentally ignore or underestimate situational influences on others’ behavior.
• Although people often commit the fundamental attribution error, they do not necessarily fall for correspondence bias at the same time. Only when we take the fundamental attribution error one step further and judge a person’s character from their actions do we display correspondence bias.

Correspondence bias is a problem because it can cause us to make incorrect judgments about other people’s behaviors. This can lead to misunderstandings that can negatively affect our relationship with them. When we overlook the situation and jump to conclusions about an individual’s character, it is also easier to justify reacting to them aggressively.

In a wider social context, if we ignore the situational factors that might have pushed someone to behave a certain way, we may also ignore systemic factors, like discrimination. For example, some people attribute poverty and unemployment to individuals rather than to social conditions.

A real-life example of correspondence bias is how we think about people who cut in line. For example, you are waiting in line at the airport and someone cuts in front of you at the security checkpoint. Because of correspondence bias, your immediate reaction is to feel annoyed and think that the person must be entitled and rude. In reality, this person may never cut into lines and they are doing this only because they are about to miss their plane, which they are taking to visit a sick family member.

The opposite of normalcy bias is overreaction or worst-case scenario bias . This happens when people exaggerate the likelihood of negative outcomes or consequences when faced with a threat warning. In other words, people jump to the worst possible conclusion, no matter how improbable it is. For instance panic-buying of toilet paper, face masks, and food in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak are examples of overreaction.

Normalcy bias and optimism bias are closely related as they both influence our risk perception. However, they are two separate phenomena.

• Normalcy bias denotes our tendency to minimize or ignore threat warnings and to believe that nothing can seriously disrupt our everyday life.
• Optimism bias , on the other hand, denotes the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of positive events and underestimate the likelihood of negative events.

Although normalcy bias and optimism bias are distinct types of bias, they may reinforce each other. For instance, an individual who receives a hurricane alert may underestimate how serious it is (normalcy bias) and may also think that even if the hurricane affects their area, nothing bad will happen to them personally (optimism bias).

Normality bias (or normalcy bias ) is the tendency to underestimate the likelihood or impact of a potential hazard, based on the belief that things will continue as they have in the past. For example, you hear a sudden noise and think it must be fireworks. However, in reality it’s a gunshot. Instead of finding a safe spot, you go about your business because your brain “normalizes” the noise.

Vividness bias is important because it can affect our decisions and negotiations. It causes us to assign more weight to vivid information, like a perception of prestige, rather than other factors that, upon greater reflection, are more important to us. As a result, we get distracted and lose sight of our goals and priorities.

A real-life example of vividness bias can often be observed in the outcome of business negotiations. Price is usually the most vivid information, while other aspects, such the complexity of implementation, or the time needed to complete the project, might be ignored.

The vividness effect in communication is the persuasive impact that vivid information is thought to have on opinions and behaviors. In other words, information that is vivid, concrete, dramatic, etc., is more likely to capture our attention and sway us into believing or doing one thing rather than another. On the contrary, information that is dull or abstract is not so effective. The vividness effect relates to the vividness bias .

Attribution is a term describing the inferences people make when trying to explain the causes of certain events, the behavior of others, or their own behavior. Because these inferences are based not only on objective facts but also on our mental state, emotions, and past experiences, attributions can be distorted and lead to bias.

An example of such bias is hostile attribution bias , or the tendency to attribute negative intentions to others, especially when their intentions are unclear.

To measure hostile attribution bias , studies typically present participants with a hypothetical situation in which an individual is provoked by a peer whose behavior is purposely ambiguous. Participants are then asked to indicate the intent of the peer. This can be done through videos, pictures, audio, vignettes, or staged interactions (with actors).

Two important considerations when choosing the format are ecological validity (i.e., the extent to which the results are generalizable to a real-life setting) and social desirability bias (i.e., participants may not have wanted to report hostile attributions).

A funnel plot shows the relation between a study’s effect size and its precision. It is a scatter plot of the treatment effects estimated from individual studies (horizontal axis) against sample size (vertical axis).

Asymmetry in the funnel plot, measured using regression analysis , is an indication of publication bias . In the absence of bias, results from small studies will scatter widely at the bottom of the graph, with the spread narrowing among larger studies.

The idea here is that small studies are more likely to remain unpublished if their results are nonsignificant or unfavorable, whereas larger studies get published regardless. This leads to asymmetry in the funnel plot.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search, interpret, and recall information in a way that aligns with our pre-existing values, opinions, or beliefs. It refers to the ability to recollect information best when it amplifies what we already believe. Relatedly, we tend to forget information that contradicts our opinions.

Although selective recall is a component of confirmation bias, it should not be confused with recall bias.

On the other hand, recall bias refers to the differences in the ability between study participants to recall past events when self-reporting is used. This difference in accuracy or completeness of recollection is not related to beliefs or opinions. Rather, recall bias relates to other factors, such as the length of the recall period, age, and the characteristics of the disease under investigation.

Placebos are used in medical research for new medication or therapies, called clinical trials. In these trials some people are given a placebo, while others are given the new medication being tested.

The purpose is to determine how effective the new medication is: if it benefits people beyond a predefined threshold as compared to the placebo, it’s considered effective and not the result of a placebo effect .

Although there is no definite answer to what causes the placebo effect , researchers propose a number of explanations such as the power of suggestion, doctor-patient interaction, classical conditioning, etc.

Common types of selection bias are:

• Sampling bias or ascertainment bias
• Attrition bias
• Volunteer or self-selection bias
• Survivorship bias
• Nonresponse bias
• Undercoverage bias

Response bias is a general term used to describe a number of different conditions or factors that cue respondents to provide inaccurate or false answers during surveys or interviews. These factors range from the interviewer’s perceived social position or appearance to the the phrasing of questions in surveys.

Nonresponse bias occurs when the people who complete a survey are different from those who did not, in ways that are relevant to the research topic. Nonresponse can happen because people are either not willing or not able to participate.

Observer bias occurs when the researcher’s assumptions, views, or preconceptions influence what they see and record in a study, while actor–observer bias refers to situations where respondents attribute internal factors (e.g., bad character) to justify other’s behavior and external factors (difficult circumstances) to justify the same behavior in themselves.

Research bias affects the validity and reliability of your research findings , leading to false conclusions and a misinterpretation of the truth. This can have serious implications in areas like medical research where, for example, a new form of treatment may be evaluated.

Stratified and cluster sampling may look similar, but bear in mind that groups created in cluster sampling are heterogeneous , so the individual characteristics in the cluster vary. In contrast, groups created in stratified sampling are homogeneous , as units share characteristics.

Relatedly, in cluster sampling you randomly select entire groups and include all units of each group in your sample. However, in stratified sampling, you select some units of all groups and include them in your sample. In this way, both methods can ensure that your sample is representative of the target population .

When your population is large in size, geographically dispersed, or difficult to contact, it’s necessary to use a sampling method .

This allows you to gather information from a smaller part of the population (i.e., the sample) and make accurate statements by using statistical analysis. A few sampling methods include simple random sampling , convenience sampling , and snowball sampling .

Social desirability bias is a type of response bias that occurs when survey respondents provide answers according to society’s expectations, rather than their own beliefs or experiences.

It is especially likely to occur in self-report questionnaires , as well as in any type of behavioral research, particularly if the participants know they’re being observed. This research bias can distort your results, leading to over-reporting of socially desirable behaviors or attitudes and under-reporting of socially undesirable behaviors or attitudes.

The observer-expectancy effect occurs when researchers influence the results of their own study through interactions with participants.

Researchers’ own beliefs and expectations about the study results may unintentionally influence participants through demand characteristics .

The observer-expectancy effect is often used synonymously with the Pygmalion or Rosenthal effect .

You can use several tactics to minimize observer bias .

• Use masking (blinding) to hide the purpose of your study from all observers.
• Triangulate your data with different data collection methods or sources.
• Use multiple observers and ensure interrater reliability.
• Train your observers to make sure data is consistently recorded between them.
• Standardize your observation procedures to make sure they are structured and clear.

It’s impossible to completely avoid observer bias in studies where data collection is done or recorded manually, but you can take steps to reduce this type of bias in your research .

Observer bias occurs when a researcher’s expectations, opinions, or prejudices influence what they perceive or record in a study. It usually affects studies when observers are aware of the research aims or hypotheses. This type of research bias is also called detection bias or ascertainment bias .

If you have a small amount of attrition bias , you can use some statistical methods to try to make up for it.

Multiple imputation involves using simulations to replace the missing data with likely values. Alternatively, you can use sample weighting to make up for the uneven balance of participants in your sample.

To avoid attrition , applying some of these measures can help you reduce participant dropout by making it easy and appealing for participants to stay.

• Provide compensation (e.g., cash or gift cards) for attending every session
• Minimize the number of follow-ups as much as possible
• Make all follow-ups brief, flexible, and convenient for participants
• Send participants routine reminders to schedule follow-ups
• Recruit more participants than you need for your sample (oversample)
• Maintain detailed contact information so you can get in touch with participants even if they move

Attrition bias can skew your sample so that your final sample differs significantly from your original sample. Your sample is biased because some groups from your population are underrepresented.

With a biased final sample, you may not be able to generalize your findings to the original population that you sampled from, so your external validity is compromised.

Attrition bias is a threat to internal validity . In experiments, differential rates of attrition between treatment and control groups can skew results.

This bias can affect the relationship between your independent and dependent variables . It can make variables appear to be correlated when they are not, or vice versa .

Some attrition is normal and to be expected in research. However, the type of attrition is important because systematic bias can distort your findings. Attrition bias can lead to inaccurate results because it affects internal and/or external validity .

Attrition bias is the selective dropout of some participants who systematically differ from those who remain in the study.

Some groups of participants may leave because of bad experiences, unwanted side effects, or inadequate incentives for participation, among other reasons. Attrition is also called subject mortality, but it doesn’t always refer to participants dying!

Demand characteristics are aspects of experiments that may give away the research purpose to participants. Social desirability bias is when participants automatically try to respond in ways that make them seem likeable in a study, even if it means misrepresenting how they truly feel.

Participants may use demand characteristics to infer social norms or experimenter expectancies and act in socially desirable ways, so you should try to control for demand characteristics wherever possible.

You can control demand characteristics by taking a few precautions in your research design and materials.

Use these measures:

• Deception: Hide the purpose of the study from participants
• Between-groups design : Give each participant only one independent variable treatment
• Double-blind design : Conceal the assignment of groups from participants and yourself
• Implicit measures: Use indirect or hidden measurements for your variables

Demand characteristics are a type of extraneous variable that can affect the outcomes of the study. They can invalidate studies by providing an alternative explanation for the results.

These cues may nudge participants to consciously or unconsciously change their responses, and they pose a threat to both internal and external validity . You can’t be sure that your independent variable manipulation worked, or that your findings can be applied to other people or settings.

In research, demand characteristics are cues that might indicate the aim of a study to participants. These cues can lead to participants changing their behaviors or responses based on what they think the research is about.

Demand characteristics are common problems in psychology experiments and other social science studies because they can cause a bias in your research findings .

Using careful research design and sampling procedures can help you avoid sampling bias . Oversampling can be used to correct undercoverage bias .

Some common types of sampling bias include self-selection bias , nonresponse bias , undercoverage bias , survivorship bias , pre-screening or advertising bias, and healthy user bias.

Sampling bias occurs when some members of a population are systematically more likely to be selected in a sample than others.

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Stereotypes are sets of ideas, beliefs and/or perceptions about specific groups of people. Popular culture influences our attitudes and perspectives and can reinforce or counter cultural and ethnic stereotypes. We unconsciously assimilate messages about social identity, such as, race, gender, and sexuality (MacFarlane et al.,2016) Developing an understanding of how this works is crucial in our steps and efforts towards inclusion.

Stereotypes promote negative connotations of certain groups of people. In turn, this may have severe and/or negative consequences for the individuals and groups who are being stereotyped. Mass media and popular culture both reflect and represent those cultural messages.

Stereotypes can present negative images of people and groups, but they can also be harmful when they present positive ones. For example, idealized Western standards or expectations of beauty can affect the views that many people, including people living with disabilities, have of themselves. When we see these idealized images, we judge others as well as ourselves. The negative effects of this stereotyping leads to objectification, disempowerment, discrimination and the dehumanization of those with disabilities. It is important that as educators, we help our students learn how to critically examine the attitudes and biases that exist in the popular culture they consume.

One key element in the process of perception is that we connect what we are seeing to our pre-existing ideas of the world. These ideas, combined form a schema. A schema consists of the mental structures or frameworks that we use to organize knowledge and guide our cognitive processes and behavior. (Michalak, 2020) Schemas can perpetuate stereotypes and make it challenging for us to absorb new information and to add to our existing knowledge structures. In addition, schemas influence “what we pay attention to, they allow us to think quickly and change how we interpret incoming information.” (Cherry, 2019)

For example, a child may develop a schema of a frog at a young age, and when encountering a lizard, the initial reaction may be that the lizard is a frog. The child may not have yet developed their schema of a lizard, along with its features. A new and adapted schema will form once the child can apply new information and modify their existing schemas to fit into new ones. Schemas can change through processes of assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation happens when “new information is incorporated into pre-existing schemas” and accommodation refers to when “existing schemas might be altered, or new schemas might be formed” as new information is learnt and obtained and new experiences take place. (Cherry, 2019)

In  Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory , a schema is both the category of knowledge as well as the process of acquiring that knowledge.” (Cherry, 2019) Piaget’s theory refers to the development of one’s thought processes and how those processes influence understanding of the world one interacts with and lives in. These schemas continue to change and develop throughout one’s gaining of understanding and knowledge.

Gender schemas or an individual’s ideas of gender are influenced by parents, family, culture, friends, and media. Schemas influence our attitudes, perceptions, and/or beliefs about what gender-appropriate behavior might consist of. These attitudes can limit the potential of individuals and society in general. Constructs of gender are complex as they continue to evolve and change as do our perceptions.

From an inclusive lens, it is important to be,”watching carefully for pervasive deficit thinking towards marginalized students,” (Minero, 2020) and the dangers of perpetuating negative stereotypes. Deficit thinking focuses extensively on students’ shortcomings and can reinforce stigma, or negative beliefs educators may have about their students. Stigma relates to the disapproval of and/or the discrimination against people who share certain characteristics. Holding prejudicial beliefs about individuals and groups influences our perception and interpretation of new information, experiences, and information.

Implicit bias, “refers to attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions and decisions in an unconscious manner. These biases are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or intentional control”. (Kirwan Institute, 2015). Implicit biases or associations shape our interactions with others. ”In addition to early life experience, media and news programming are often-cited origins of these implicit associations.” (Kirwan Institute, 2015) Many of these messages are transmitted by social media, news sources and television which all in all, are an immense part of individuals lives in the 21st century. It is essential that we raise awareness of these implicit biases and that we help our students think critically about the media they are interacting with.

Biases that are left without acknowledgement or challenge, can affect the expectations people have of others and their capabilities, more specifically in this case, educators. Without addressing implicit biases, the dangers of single stories have been present in Western and Eurocentric literature, focusing on ‘difference,’ and deficits and overlooks stories in favour of one, central story. The representation of disability in visual media and pop culture, all contribute to the formation of identity.

Implicit bias, stereotyping and deficit mindsets lead to inequity and undermine the inclusiveness of our classrooms. We need to understand the role we play in supporting our students to be actively engaged in shaping their identity and to see themselves as capable learners who can achieve their potential.  When we can see students as individuals “by focusing on their personal characteristics beyond their group membership & take others’ perspectives in order to better understand their experiences”, a better education for all can be achieved. (MacFarlane et al., 2016)

Negative stereotypes curtail an individual’s chance and opportunity to bring the best version of themselves to the table. It can prevent our students from actively and proactively carefully developing towards the highest academic achievement and success. Therefore, authentic, diverse and balanced representations of our identities (social, cultural, and emotional), where we can see ourselves reflected in positive and diverse ways, is a needed step towards inclusion. Through critical and conscious discourse and the exchange of personal opinions and experiences, individuals can significantly add to an all-inclusive space for talking about disability. As a last note, through the transformation and expansion of knowledge, individuals can continue to acknowledge their biases and their effects, hold those in their surroundings accountable to continually become aware, critical thinkers and conscious observers of the world they interact with and live in.

Key Takeaways

• Our attitudes, thoughts, perceptions and behaviors are influenced by  representations in mass media, including literature, theater, music and other forms of representations.
• Unconscious, implicit biases are developed throughout the course of our life and may result in distorted and deficit views of ourselves and others.
• When certain stories or pieces of information don’t fit in with our available mental frames and structures, we struggle to include new information into our ways of thinking. (Crenshaw, 2016) Schemas that have developed at young ages can be rigid and take years to change.
• Through critical thought and proactive action, we can establish inclusive, respectful and calm learning that support students’ intersecting identities.
• One step towards inclusion is for us to move away from the more generic, mainstream or generally accepted representation by transforming and expanding our knowledge structures.

Inclusive Perspectives in Primary Education Copyright © 2021 by room305 and Inclusive Education Class 2020-2021 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Hacking: Positive and Negative Perception Essay

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Introduction

Problem statement, methodology, literature review, expected outcomes and limitations, reference list, research questions.

Is hacking an internationally accepted concept? Can hacking be positive for security systems of different corporations and how? How the global community can encourage hackers to cooperate in improvement of security systems? What are the main goals of hackers when they break security systems of international corporations? What are potential threats of hacking if it is performed by competitors/enemies/terrorists?

Working thesis

The possible advantage of cooperating with hackers for security systems mangers of international organizations and governmental organizations is the probability to recruit them and use their knowledge to empower different organizations to improve their security systems to prevent vulnerability of these systems and possible leakage of information with regard to the threat of terrorist attack.

The problem concerning hacking exists since the late twentieth century but now it is based on the lack of knowledge and skills in professional system engineers who work for international corporations and governmental organizations.

As such, investigation should include assessment of the technological basis of the organizations and their knowledge management and recruitment strategies opposed to advanced level of hackers who crack security systems all over the world. Besides, possible cooperation of hackers with terrorists and other organizations and people that impose potential threat on security systems of the countries should be excluded by recruiting hackers by government agencies and international corporations.

Rationale for Study

The reason for conducting the research is the emerging number of technological innovations that increase the possibility for security system invasions and the hypothetical ideas of recruiting hackers so that they work for privately own and governmental organizations. In this respect, hackers can be hired on legal basis to cooperate with security system managers to improve the measures adapted to these systems.

Method of inquiry

The method for the research includes analysis of secondary sources as the research questions are not aimed at evaluating the possibility for cooperation and percentage of hackers that may agree to work for government. Besides, assessment of research questions is planned to be performed with the help of previous researches conducted on the concept of hacking and their motivations and ethical issues.

Previous research

The previous researches concerned the development of hacking in different periods, namely, 1980s and 1990s when this was perceived in different ways by the community, non-governmental and governmental organizations. In other word, different authors attempted to label hackers as crackers or advocate for the positive influence of hacking as it contributes positively to analysis of gaps in security systems of different organizations.

The resources reviewed for this research proposal include articles from scholarly journals and conference proceedings. For instance, Roberts and Webber (2002) elaborate on the ethical issues and importance of practical experimentation in analyzing vulnerability systems.

So, this study advocates the hackers’ activity while the report by Stockwell (2008) is aimed at dwelling on the role of hackers in society with regard to the propaganda of democratic ideas and beliefs and the nature of hacking and their ethos for knowledge and desire to examine their skills.

It is expected to review the sources available on the issue of hacking in terms of positive and negative perception of this social phenomenon. The limitation includes inability to demonstrate cooperation of hackers with government in practice due to theoretical nature of the research.

Roberts, P., & Webber, J. (2002). Virtuous hackers: Developing ethical sensitivity in a community of practice. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 9 (2), 172-177.

Stockwell, S. (2008). We’re all hackers now: Doing global democracy. Proceedings of the CreateWorld08 Conference , 7-10 December, 21-20. Web.

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Tackling negative thinking in the classroom

By Jessica Minahan | Oct 30, 2023 | Feature Article

Helping anxious students change their negative thinking patterns can reduce stress and improve their engagement. 

Teachers often feel overwhelmed and underprepared to meet the increasing mental health and behavioral needs of their students in the post-pandemic classroom. It is no wonder as anxiety, which has historically been the most prevalent mental health disability, affecting up to 31.9% students in the United States, was compounded by the pandemic (Benton, Boyd, & Njoroge, 2021; Merikangas et al., 2010; Racine et al., 2021; Salari et al., 2020). However, few teachers receive any training in their teacher preparation programs in mental health and behavioral best practices (Ginsburg et al., 2019). By and large, teachers are left on their own to learn about the effects of anxiety on learning and behavior and to figure out how to address it in the moment.

Given that such a large percentage of students currently are suffering from anxiety, it is no longer realistic to send every struggling student to the care of the counselor or the psychologist. Teachers can learn targeted and easy-to-implement strategies to reduce the negative impact of anxiety on students, leading to improvements in their social-emotional, behavioral, and academic functioning (Ginsburg et al., 2019; Zee & Koomen, 2016).

Negative thinking impacts learning and behavior

Anxiety is characterized by rumination and negative or distracting thoughts (Kertz, Stevens, & Klein, 2017; Vytal et al., 2012) and is related to diminished performance across a wide range of school-related tasks (Moran, 2016). Negative thinking patterns — such as all-or-nothing thinking (“I don’t understand fractions. I stink at math!”) and catastrophic thinking (“If I fail my spelling test, I will never get into college!”) — can become intrusive and ongoing, taking a toll on a student’s mood, attention to tasks, working memory, and academic and behavioral performance (Putwain, Connors, & Symes, 2010; Vytal et al., 2012). Further, persistent negative thoughts and inaccurate perception often lead to unproductive behaviors such as avoidance, defiance, and disengagement (Leahy, 2002; Mahoney et al., 2016). However, most teachers have no formal training in how to help foster more accurate thoughts and perceptions in students, so this underlying cause of disengagement or other problematic behavior largely goes unaddressed, resulting in ongoing negative behavior patterns.

We’ve all known students who will shut down as soon as you give them an assignment. Negative and inaccurate thoughts and perceptions are a huge culprit in why the student can’t engage.

For example, we’ve all known students who will shut down as soon as you give them an assignment. Negative and inaccurate thoughts and perceptions are a huge culprit in why the student can’t engage. In fact, when students are anxious, they often misperceive a task in three ways: 1) their ability, 2) the difficulty of the task, and 3) the amount of time the task will take. If a student is thinking “I can’t do this” or “this is too hard,” or perceives that “this is going to take forever,” they may struggle to even begin a writing assignment. Typical classroom strategies, such as offering a graphic organizer, may not help these students because they don’t address the cause of the disengagement. Negative thoughts and inaccurate perception, which can be observed and measured (Berle et al., 2011; Mahoney et al., 2016), are largely contributing to commonplace problematic classroom situations. Yet, supporting students to think more accurately and positively is an educational blind spot and is often overlooked as a means to improve students’ engagement and foster appropriate behavior.

Skill-building is key

Most teachers are sympathetic by nature, but their intuitive efforts to help anxious students are often ineffective in changing students’ thoughts and perceptions. Typically, for example, teachers may use incentives to encourage them (“Come on, buddy, if you get this done now, then you won’t have so much homework!” or “Recess is in 10 minutes. Let’s finish this so you can go outside”). On occasion, this may get the student to re-engage. However, this sort of encouragement does not teach students how to silence the internal chatter of negative thinking, and they are  likely to shut down again the next time they receive a similar assignment.

Clearly, thought-changing and skill-building strategies would be more useful over the long term, leading to more skills and less problematic behavior as the school year progresses. The fact is that teachers come face-to-face with students’ anxieties every day; they are in a position to provide support, in addition to outside therapists and school counselors; and they can do so effectively if they understand certain basic principles and strategies. Eight easy-to-implement strategies are particularly helpful and allow students to think more accurately.

Changing student perspective

When students are anxious, it impairs their ability to accurately perceive other’s thoughts and feelings (Kuru et al., 2018). For example, if you had a large coffee stain on your shirt you might misperceive that anyone glancing in your direction is thinking about you and thinking negatively. This distortion in perspective-taking can lead to negative misperception of an event or interaction, such as “all my classmates think I am stupid because I said the wrong answer” and can lead to avoidant or inappropriate social interactions.

Additionally, anxious students are more prone to negativity bias, which means they overly focus on the small negative aspects of an event (Kuru et al., 2018). Imagine checking in with a student at 3 p.m. to ask how the day went, and she says, “Horrible!” However, she seems highly engaged and upbeat most of the time, and it’s hard to believe that her entire day was horrible. It’s more likely that she’s focusing so intently on the few negative moments she experienced that they eclipse everything else that occurred during the day, including many moments that were positive and others that were more or less neutral.

1. Reframe with specifics

When a student says her day was horrible, ask her to explain exactly what happened to make it such a bad day. She may describe a significant disappointment (“I failed my math test” or “I had a fight with my best friend”) or something more serious, in which case the teacher should validate her feelings (“I’m sorry that happened”) and walk the student to the counselor’s office for a check-in. The counselor may then contact the parent.

However, she may describe events that sound trivial (“I spilled my water bottle in homeroom, and I couldn’t open my locker”), which suggests that negative thinking has led her to blow those mishaps out of proportion. In that case, keep in mind that those events were significant to her, and be careful not to minimize her feelings. But also try to suggest a factual lens through which she can look at what happened: “It sounds like the first few minutes of the day were frustrating. How did the other six hours go?” In another instance, if the student says, “the teacher hated my essay,” you can use facts to support a more accurate view. “Looks like she made three corrections on the first paragraph and only positive comments on the remaining five pages.”

The point here is to interrupt a negative thinking pattern (in this case, an all-or-nothing pattern, in which a couple of disappointing incidents have colored the entire day as “horrible”) by framing the events in a way that changes and limits their scale. It’s a strategy that the student can easily learn to use on her own, giving her a way to take a more balanced — and not so emotionally fraught and stressful — view of her experiences (Jordan, McGladdery, & Dyer, 2014).

2. Reframe with visuals

Again, without minimizing the student’s experience or devaluing her feelings, and after talking through the events and hearing out the student’s account, you can point to the two small slices and say, “I’m sorry those two upsetting things happened today. It looks like the rest of the day went well” (gesturing to the remaining majority of the circle). The student can see for herself that the rest of the circle remains unmarked, visually representing the fact that most of the day went well.

3. Make accurate information noticeable

In addition to reframing negative events, you may be able to get the student to change their perception of the story using a strategy called narration (Minahan & Rappaport, 2012). For example, imagine you have a student who tends to be anxious about fitting in at recess and often dwells on the negative moments (such as the one minute he spent looking for somebody to play with) rather than the positives (such as the 15 minutes he spent playing, once he found a game to join). This will lead to a negatively biased memory of events: “I had no one to play with today at recess.” Balancing his hyperfocus from negative events to a more accurate account can be as simple as walking past and saying, “Wow, it looks like you two have been playing for 10 minutes straight.”

Think of it as narrating a movie as you watch it: You’re not looking to converse with the student but, rather, to articulate the accurate facts of the situation so that the student notices and encodes the positive information, too. Later in the day, he’ll think back on recess with more accuracy  and remember the good as well (“I played with Nathan!”) rather than just dwell on the bad (“I couldn’t find anybody to play with”).

Be proactive

If students start the day or begin an assignment with a negative perception of their own ability, the time the task will take, or the difficulty of the task, they may never be able to initiate a task and focus on their work. But teachers can take proactive steps to check for anxiety and head off negative perceptions and thoughts before they lead to disengagement and avoidance.

4. Conduct regular check-ins

A formal check-in and check-out sheet can give you a quick read on how everybody’s feeling, while encouraging students to tell you right away if they’d like to talk about anything that’s bothering them. This gives you the opportunity to schedule a few minutes early on to touch base with the student, which may prevent them from ruminating on negative thoughts throughout the day.

5. Give assignments that appear doable

The way in which you introduce and assign an academic task can do a lot to ward off anxieties and negative thoughts. For example, let’s say that your syllabus requires students to complete a complex social studies project, design and conduct a scientific experiment, or write an extended essay. If you simply ask a student to “get started,” he may become paralyzed by anxiety, focusing on the whole large assignment: “I have to write seven pages.” But he’s likely to be much less overwhelmed if you ask him to tackle a discrete, manageable part of the larger project.

By finding ways to reframe the initiation of a task into smaller (less intimidating) pieces, you can avoid triggering the negative thoughts that may cause students to shut down before they even begin. This can be as simple as telling the class, “As a first step in writing our essays, let’s see how far you get in 10 minutes, and then we’ll stop.” Or you can ask students to set a target for themselves — e.g., they can commit to writing a specific number of words before putting down their pencil and taking a deep breath. And here, too, it can be helpful to provide a visual. For instance, instead of showing an exemplar essay, you can post a document with only the first two sentences of an essay on the board paired with the direction “let’s get started,” giving students a concrete reminder that beginning a writing project is a small doable step, and shifting them away from an overwhelming focus of the whole length of the project.

Disprove negative perceptions with evidence

Another effective way to help students reduce their negative thinking about an assignment is to show them empirical evidence that contradicts their anxious perceptions (Minahan & Schultz, 2014). For example, students will often say, “I stink at writing,” even if they’re quite competent and struggle with just a couple of skills, such as writing a good opening line or coming up with vivid examples. But it can be simple to gather and present them with data showing that their perceptions are inaccurate and helping them recognize their own pattern of all-or-nothing thinking. (For examples of the tools described below, see Minahan, 2014.)

6. Ask students to monitor their own progress

One useful way to show students evidence of their own competence and disprove all or nothing thoughts (e.g., “I stink at all writing”) is to ask them to monitor their own work. For example, if students will be writing an essay, give them a three-column self-monitoring chart to follow that includes a column listing various parts of the writing process to be completed (e.g., coming up with an idea, outlining the piece, writing an introduction, proofreading) and a middle column listing strategies that might help them if they struggle with any of these steps (e.g., looking at pictures in a magazine to get an idea for writing, looking back at a previously written paper to see how it’s organized). When students finish writing the essay, ask them to look at their chart and put check marks in the third column next to the strategies they actually needed to use. Typically, students will check strategies in no more than one or two parts of writing. You can then point out that they don’t struggle with all parts of writing – they just needed strategies for one part (coming up with the idea), leading to more accurate self-perception.

Over time, this self-monitoring will help them understand that only some parts of the writing process tend to be challenging for them, and they can begin to replace anxious, all-or-nothing thoughts like “I stink at writing” with more specific (and manageable) ones like “I am a good writer but I often have trouble coming up with an idea.”

7. Ask students to rate their expectations and recollections

If you have particular students (or a whole class) who seem anxious about an assignment (i.e., once asked to start a task they immediately raise their hand and ask to go to the bathroom), ask them to begin by rating (on a scale of 1-5) how difficult they expect it to be. After they complete the assignment, ask them to rate it again on the same piece of paper in a second column so they can see the comparison. Repeat this without commenting or judging so there are five or more comparative “before/after” scores in one place.

Most students will give the assignment a lower difficulty rating after the assignment is over as they are no longer anxious, showing that it wasn’t as hard as they thought it would be. Once there are five or six examples of discrepant before and after ratings on a sheet, point out that there is a difference in their before and after ratings. Help them internalize the lesson by asking them to explain why they rate assignments as less difficult in retrospect, then promote a discussion about how anxiety impacts accurate thinking. Ideally, the next time the student becomes anxious about an assignment (shutting down, complaining it is difficult, or asking to go to the bathroom), you can show them the previous rating sheet, reminding them that their overwhelmed thoughts are not accurate.

This strategy can be also done with the whole class. You could ask the class to rate the difficulty of a test packet, and then when they have completed it, ask them to rate it again. You can normalize this concept by asking kids if their number went down and why that might be — answers may include “My first thought is not accurate” or “I shouldn’t listen to my first thought.”

8. Ask students to rate the parts of a task

Another way to disprove negative thoughts through rating is to give students a long list of discrete tasks that go into completing a stress-inducing activity — for writing an essay, for example, this might include sharpening a pencil, coming up with an idea, using punctuation, spelling words correctly, writing an introduction, and so on. Then have the student sort the small tasks into one of three columns based on their feelings about each part of the process: “I don’t like it,” “OK,” or “I like it.” The greater the number of tasks you put on the list, the more items students are likely to rate “OK” and “I like it.” (See Figure 1 for an example.)

The next time a student says, “I hate writing,” take out the sheet and encourage her to restate her comment: “Actually, you like most aspects of writing (while pointing to the long list of items in the “like” or “OK” columns), but you don’t like spelling and thinking of an idea. Let’s review your strategies for those.” Over time, she may change her language to a more accurate statement such as, “I’m a good writer, but I have trouble with spelling.” Once she has a more accurate view of her own ability, she’ll be more likely to engage in the task because “writing” itself is no longer vilified.

This approach can also be used with the whole class and in a variety of subjects. For example, in the beginning of the school year, a middle school teacher can have students list out many parts of doing math (e.g., order of operations, addition, multiplication) and sort them into the “I like it,” “OK,” and “I don’t like it” columns. Later in the year, before introducing an algebra unit (where students’ anticipatory anxiety may be high), the teacher can have students refer to their self-rating sheets: “If you like order of operations, multiplication, or addition, you are going to like algebra, because that’s all it is!”

Teachers can take many small steps, using fairly simple classroom strategies, to help students tackle their negative thinking patterns that may otherwise go unaddressed.

Small steps can make a big difference

As the number of students with anxiety increases, every anxious student ideally would receive coordinated and ongoing support from a whole team of adults, including mental health providers, school counselors, teachers, and family members. However, even on their own, teachers can take many small steps, using fairly simple classroom strategies, to help students tackle their negative thinking patterns that may otherwise go unaddressed. The more teachers can do to help anxious students learn to recognize and reduce their negative thoughts, the more likely they are to see those students reduce their unproductive, avoidant, and defiant behaviors, allowing them to develop a more positive self-concept and engage in academic, social, and extracurricular activities to the best of their abilities.

Benton, T.D., Boyd, R.C., & Njoroge, W.F. (2021). Addressing the global crisis of child and adolescent mental health. JAMA Pediatrics, 175 (11), 1108-1110.

Berle, D., Starcevic, V., Moses, K., Hannan, A., Milicevic, D., & Sammut, P. (2011). Preliminary validation of an ultra brief version of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 18 (4), 339-346.

Ginsburg, G.S., Pella, J.E., Piselli, K., & Chan, G. (2019). Teacher Anxiety Program for Elementary Students (TAPES): Intervention development and proposed randomized controlled trial. Trials, 20 (1), 1-16.

Jordan, J., McGladdery, G., & Dyer, K. (2014). Dyslexia in higher education: Implications for maths anxiety, statistics anxiety and psychological well-being. Dyslexia, 20 (3), 225-240.

Kertz, S.J., Stevens, K.T., & Klein, K.P. (2017). The association between attention control, anxiety, and depression: The indirect effects of repetitive negative thinking and mood recovery. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping: An International Journal, 30 (4), 456-468.

Kuru, E., Safak, Y., Özdemir, İ., Tulacı, R.G., Özdel, K., Özkula, N.G., & Örsel, S. (2018). Cognitive distortions in patients with social anxiety disorder: Comparison of a clinical group and healthy controls. The European Journal of Psychiatry, 32 (2), 97-104.

Leahy, R.L. (2002). Improving homework compliance in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58 (5), 499-511.

Mahoney, A.E.J., Hobbs, M.J., Newby, J.M., Williams, A.D., Sunderland, M., & Andrews, G. (2016). The Worry Behaviors Inventory: Assessing the behavioral avoidance associated with generalized anxiety disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 203 , 256-264.

Merikangas, K.R., He, J.-P., Burnstein, M., Swanson, S., Avenevoli, S., Cui, L., . . . & Swendsden, J. (2010). Lifetime prevalence of mental disorders in US adolescents: Results from the national comorbidity study-adolescent supplement (NCS-A). Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 49 (10), 980-989.

Minahan, J. (2014). The behavior code companion: Strategies, tools, and interventions for supporting students with anxiety-related or oppositional behaviors . Harvard Education Press.

Minahan, J. & Rappaport, N. (2012). The behavior code: A practical guide to understanding and teaching the most challenging studen ts. Harvard Education Press.

Minahan, J. & Schultz, J. (2014). Interventions can salve unseen anxiety barriers. Phi Delta Kappan, 96 (4), 46-50.

Moran, T.P. (2016). Anxiety and working memory capacity: A meta-analysis and narrative review. Psychological Bulletin, 142 (8), 831-864.

Putwain, D.W., Connors, L., & Symes, W. (2010). Do cognitive distortions mediate the test anxiety-examination performance relationship? Educational Psychology, 30 (1), 11-26.

Racine, N., McArthur, B.A., Cooke, J.E., Eirich, R., Zhu, J., & Madigan, S. (2021). Global prevalence of depressive and anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents during COVID-19: A meta-analysis. JAMA Pediatrics, 175 (11), 1142-1150.

Salari, N., Hosseinian-Far, A., Jalali, R., Vaisi-Raygani, A., Rasoulpoor, S., Mohammadi, M., . . . & Khaledi-Paveh, B. (2020). Prevalence of stress, anxiety, depression among the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Globalization and Health , 16.

Vytal, K., Cornwell, B., Arkin, N., & Grillon, C. (2012). Describing the interplay between anxiety and cognition: From impaired performance under low cognitive load to reduced anxiety under high load. Psychophysiology, 49 (6), 842-852.

Zee, M., & Koomen, H.M. (2016). Teacher self-efficacy and its effects on classroom processes, student academic adjustment, and teacher well-being: A synthesis of 40 years of research. Review of Educational Research, 86 (4), 981-1015.

This article appears in the November 2023 issue of Kappan , Vol. 105, No. 3, p. 24-30.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jessica Minahan

Jessica Minahan is a licensed and board-certified behavior analyst, special educator, and consultant to schools internationally. She is the co-author of The Behavior Code: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students and author of The Behavior Code Companion: Strategies, Tools, and Interventions for Supporting Students with Anxiety-Related or Oppositional Behaviors.

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Negative Impact of Social Media on Students

Home » Blog » Negative Impact of Social Media on Students

• September 1, 2024
• Mike Carter, LCDC
• Mental Health , Parent Information

Table of Contents

With teenage mental health problems on the rise over the past decade, it’s normal for parents to wonder if social media is partly to blame. Although social media can be a helpful tool to connect socially, be creative and learn new information, it’s also a way for teens to escape from reality. For teens, communication has become less face to face, and more via digital interactions through Instagram posts, Snapchats and Tik Tok videos. 

There is growing awareness of the negative effects of social media on the developing teenage brain . Social media can impact self-esteem, identity development, anxiety and more. 

In 2023, the US surgeon general even released an advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health , where he states there is growing research that social media is causing harm to teen mental health. 

The Impact of Social Media on Teens 

Teenagers are now growing up in a new world of technology , with easier access than ever to smartphones and social media platforms. Social media can keep teens connected and act as a place where they can express themselves. However, it also comes with negative effects and can lead to mental health problems such as depression, anxiety or eating disorders. 

The teenage brain is in a sensitive stage. Parts of the frontal lobe are still developing. This plays a role in reward-processing, focus, and impulse control. Frequent social media use is associated with changes in this region making teens more sensitive to social rewards, heightened emotional reactivity and difficulty concentrating. 

Teens are also going through their formative years of identity development as they explore their self-worth and independence. If their social media is constantly flooded with posts that do not reflect reality such as seeing edited photos or famous influencers, this can skew their perception of themselves and the world around them.  

When Does Social Media Become A Problem? 

Social media is not inherently bad. Some teens use it to talk with their friends, make creative videos, learn new hobbies and stay up to date with trends. However, it becomes a problem when it starts to impact their daily functioning. Some signs in their teens for parents to recognize when social media has become a problem include: 

• Acting distressed after spending time online 
• Constantly checking their phones 
• Low self-esteem or negative self body image 
• Sleep deprivation
• Disordered eating 
• Significant shifts in mood 
• Sudden decrease in school performance 
• Isolation from friends and family 
• Secretive behavior or refusing to talk about their online interactions 

Negative Effects of Social Media on High School Students 

Social media plays a particularly important role in the lives of high school students with 95% of teens ages 13-17 reporting using social media. And a third say they use it “constantly”. Interacting and socializing with their peers is a normal part of being in high school. Social media has made this more possible than ever. Teens can easily communicate through a variety of platforms and get immediate responses, feedback and instant messages. 

Research has found that excessive social media use can cause similar chemical responses in the brain as are caused by substance abuse. Frequent use of social media releases dopamine, the chemical in the brain associated with pleasure, reward processing and forming habits. 

Similar to drugs, as the use of social media increases, the more engagement a user craves. This begins a reward cycle that can be hard to break without intervention from parents. 

This constant stimulation of social media can make it harder for highschoolers to concentrate and learn, leading to a decline in academic performance. 

Social Media Use in Teens: A Guide For Parents 

Although any teen has the potential to develop a problem with social media, there are a few risk factors that may heighten the risk: 

• Increased stress 
• An impulsive personality 

If you are concerned your teen is spending too much time on social media and it is impacting their health, there are some ways to set healthy boundaries, while still respecting your teen’s privacy and independence. Some limits that a parent could consider include:

• Set time limits on your teen’s smartphone use 
• Use parental settings on social media platforms to set restrictions
• Speak to your teen about the negative impact of social media 
• Provide your teen with context that not everything they see on social media reflects reality    
• Restrict screen time 1-2 hours before bedtime 
• Have them turn off notifications so they are not constantly checking their phones 
• Set times as a family where you go “phone-free” to model healthy habits 

When To Seek Professional Help 

If you identify warning signs of a mental health problem in your teen, reach out for professional support to help find the best plan of treatment. 

At Clearfork Academy our team of compassionate, licensed therapists understands the complex nature of teens. Reach out to our Admissions team to learn more. 

  Social Media and Youth Mental Health . The U.S. Surgeon General Advisory.

Mike grew up on a dairy farm in Parker County, Texas. At the age of 59, he went back to college and graduated 41 years after his first graduation from Weatherford College. God placed on his heart at that time the passion to begin to help others as they walked from addictions, alcoholism, and abuse of substances. He is a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor and in the past few years he has worn many hats, from intake and assessment, group counseling, individual and family counseling, intensive outpatient and now he is working with clients, therapist, and families on discharge planning and aftercare. He also coordinates our Alumni Outreach Program.

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Factors That Affect Our Perception of Someone

How we form perceptions of somone.

• Social Categorization
• Potential Pitfalls

Implicit Personality Theories

Whenever we form a perception of someone, a number of processes allow us to make quick decisions that help us navigate our social worlds. Person perception is a term used in social psychology to describe the mental processes that we use to form impressions of other people. This includes not just how we form these impressions, but the different conclusions we make about other people based on our impressions.

Consider how often you make this kind of judgment every day. When you meet with a new co-worker, you begin to develop an initial impression of this person. When you visit the grocery store after work, you form an impression of the cashier, even though you know very little about them.

At a Glance

Various factors, including the situation, past experiences, and societal expectations can influence our perception of someone. Person perception allows us to make snap judgments and decisions but can lead to biased or stereotyped perceptions of others.

Let's take a closer look at how person perception works and its impact on our daily interactions.

Obviously, person perception is a very subjective process that can be affected by many variables. Factors that can influence the impressions you form of other people include:

• The characteristics of the person you are observing
• The context of the situation
• Your own personal traits
• Your past experiences

Social Norms and Role Expectations

People often form impressions of others very quickly, with only minimal information. We frequently base our impressions on the roles and social norms we expect from people.

For example, you might form an impression of a city bus driver based on how you would anticipate a person in that role to behave, considering individual personality characteristics only after you have formed this initial impression.

Physical Cues

Physical cues can also play an important role. If you see a woman dressed in a professional-looking suit, you might immediately assume that she works in a formal setting, perhaps at a law firm or bank.

The salience of the information we perceive is also important. Generally, we tend to focus on the most obvious points rather than noting background information.

The more novel or obvious a factor is, the more likely we are to focus on it. If you see a woman dressed in a tailored suit with her hair styled in a bright pink mohawk, you are likely to pay more attention to her unusual hairstyle than her sensible business attire.

How Social Categorization Affects Your Perception of Someone

One of the mental shortcuts we use in person perception is social categorization. In this process, we mentally categorize people into different groups based on common characteristics.

Sometimes, this process occurs consciously, but for the most part, social categorizations happen automatically and unconsciously. The most common social categories are age, gender, occupation, and race.

Pitfalls of Social Categorization

As with many mental shortcuts, social categorization has positive and negative aspects. On the plus side, social categorization allows you to make rapid judgments. Realistically, you simply do not have time to get to know every person you come into contact with.

Social categorization allows you to make decisions and establish expectations of how people will behave quickly, allowing you to focus on other things. Unfortunately, this can also lead to errors, as well as to stereotyping or even prejudice .

Imagine that you are getting on a bus. There are only two seats available. One is next to a petite, elderly woman; the other is next to a burly, grim-faced man. Based on your immediate impression, you sit next to the elderly woman, who, unfortunately, turns out to be quite skilled at picking pockets.

Because of social categorization, you immediately judged the woman as harmless and the man as threatening, leading to the loss of your wallet. While social categorization can be useful at times, it can also lead to these kinds of misjudgments.

An implicit personality theory is a collection of beliefs and assumptions about how certain traits are linked to other characteristics and behaviors. Once we know something about a cardinal trait or a primary trait that makes up the core of a person's personality, we assume that the person also exhibits other traits commonly linked to that key characteristic.

For example, if you observe that a new co-worker is very happy , you might immediately assume that they are also friendly, kind, and generous. As with social categorization, implicit personality theories help people make judgments quickly but can also contribute to stereotyping and errors.

What This Means For You

There are many factors that affect our perceptions of someone, including the situation, individual characteristics, our personality traits, and our past experiences. Two common tactics that can influence how we perceive others include social categorization and our own implicit personality theories.

Becoming more aware of how these processes work and their shortcomings can help ensure that you make accurate (and fair) assessments of others.

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."