Perceptions

Students compare their views of themselves to one another

Jordan Hammerberg, Staff Reporter|May 19, 2017

All Photos By Jordan Hammerberg

Senior Grace Schniers expresses her admiration for her boyfriend of three years, senior Chandler Hendrickson after the perceptions activity. In reviewing their answers for one another, Schniers said “I figured my [answers] would be pretty close to his and his would be really close to mine, because we pretty much are together all the time but it was still interesting to see the slightly different answers we had.”

Imagine two people cloud gazing. One person sees a sheep, while another sees an atomic explosion. No one is right or wrong, but rather their perceptions are simply different. People are the same way. Your view of yourself may be the polar opposite of the perception that your loved one has of you.

“We have a fairly stable view of ourselves,” said Bella DePaulo, professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara in Psychology Today. “We expect other people to see that same view immediately.”

Inspired by a video created by Dove, Uncaged illustrated the difference in perceptions people have of themselves versus the perceptions of those they love.

 

The Experiment:

We gave each of our two subjects a large pool of adjectives anywhere from “cowardly” and “insensitive” to “amazing” and “beautiful.” We asked them to choose words that described themselves before asking each to describe the person they are close with or in a romantic relationship with. After describing each other, each person got to see how the other would describe them.

“I thought about how people describe me. So it’s a ‘me’ but not from my point of view, I guess,” senior Chandler Hendrickson said. His comment comes in response to being asked to choose words from the word bank which he believed described himself the best. “My point of view of myself is how people describe me,” Hendrickson said.
Reviewing her partner’s description of herself, junior Savannah Luke smiles. Senior Thomas Johnson, when asked what he thought about while describing his girlfriend Savannah Luke, said, “It was really easy.” with a laugh. “I agree. I think about him a lot more than I think about myself, so I can see those qualities a lot easier,” Luke said.
Junior Logan Suojanen uses words such as “beautiful,” “kind,” “wonderful,” “amazing” and “intelligent” to describe his girlfriend junior Taylir Butterworth. Smiling, Taylir reviews the activity as “going well.” Logan Suojanen nods in agreement. “We learned more about each other and about ourselves,” Butterworth said.