The Perception and Judgment of Rapport

• Published in: The Essential Brunswik
• Main Authors: Gillis, John S., Bernieri, Frank
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY Oxford University Press 20-09-2001
• Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; History of Science and Technology; Social Psychology; environment; qualitatively; competitive; cooperativeness; perceive
• ISBN: 9780195130133; 0195130138
• DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195130133.003.0032

A central premise of social judgment theory is that the perceptual processes that allow us to respond to, and interact with, our social environment are not qualitatively different from those we employ for our physical environment. Judging the level of sexual receptivity in a potential mate, or the level of hostile or competitive intent in a coworker, is based on the same cognitive process as judging the correct distance between two stones that we plan to hop on in order to cross a fast-flowing stream. Humans must perceive, identify, and react to emotions, personality traits, social structure (e.g., status, kinship), and social relations (e.g., love, rapport, and competitiveness versus cooperativeness) that constitute their social environment just as they must perceive and react to the physical objects making up their natural environment. Failure to do so effectively, in fact, is associated with psychopathology and naladjustment. This chapter describes a program of re search the general objective of which is to de scribe how people judge elements of their social ecology. We focus on a single social construct, that of rapport, to simplify our discussion, but we maintain that our approach is generalizable to the myriad other psychological constructs we deal with regularly.