Factors that Further Affect the Accuracy of Perceptions

Although they sometimes do, people usually do not purposely try to create their own version of an event that differs from their partners’ version. (To create pur­posely a version of conflict that is at odds with your partners’ version is a form of “crazy-making”.) Instead, various selectivity errors, recall, and other factors affect the accuracy of their perceptions.

Paul Simon once wrote, “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” (The Boxer). This claim has been validated in hundreds of studies on atti­tude structure and consistency (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). One common percep­tual bias, perceptual accentuation, refers to how people select only the information that supports their beliefs and overlook information that contradicts those ideas.

Because conflict parties bring different ideas about the cause of the conflict, other events that have affected the conflict and different meanings for various behaviors, they notice different messages, both verbal and nonverbal (Sillars et al., 2000). During conflict, these differences become even more pronounced as each person identifies information that supports his/her version of events and overlooks infor­mation that might challenge that version.

A common tendency in perception is to perceive someone who disagrees with us as biased and to perceive ourselves as objective. Our behavior then influ­ences that person to see us as biased. This perception causes us to become more competitive, action that moves us toward conflict rather than toward resolution. People make quick, immediate assessments of their partners’ bias and then decide whether to escalate the conflict (Kennedy & Pronin, 2008). Pronin (2007) refers to this problem as a bias blind spot, which interferes with self-awareness and con­tributes to conflict intensity.

Perceptual errors are also affected by mental shortcuts that people take, or “heuristics.” Two common inferential heuristics that people take concern the availablity heuristic and the salience heuristic (Nisbett & Ross, 1980).

attend more to information that concerns them, which is often local. Accord­ingly, people interpret the other person’s messages largely as a function of what they themselves want. We elaborate on the goal-related nature of conflict in Chapter 11.

The information people notice and how they process that information is also affected by their level of satisfaction with the relationship they have with the other person in the conflict. Sillars (1985, 2000) found that incompatible couples were more likely than happy couples to distort information and to hold incongruent perceptions. These differences usually reflect their existing ideas about the other person and/or about the relationship. So people in less happy relationships will notice more negative behaviors while overlooking most of the positive ones. In contrast, people in happy relationships notice more positive behaviors and over­look most of the negative ones.

Familiarity can create a false sense of confidence in accuracy. People assume that, because they know the other person so well, they can explain and predict what their partner is experiencing (Sillars, 1998). They also assume that people they are close to agree with them and share their attitudes (Sillars, Smith, & Koerner, 2010). They then extend that certainty into areas in which they might not know the other as well; as a result, they trust the accuracy of their perceptions before they have solid reason to do so (Sillars, 1985).

This certainty motivates people not to question the accuracy of their percep­tions; they simply assume their perceptions are right. They fail to notice the ambiguity present in many situations and simply draw conclusions based on faulty inferences rather than facts. Communication is inherently ambiguous and can also be strategically ambiguous, even in very close relationships. Either way, peo­ple receive an unclear message and usually decide its meaning. The ambiguity increases the chance for selectivity of information, so people have an incomplete understanding of an event or person. But they are blithely unaware of this prob­lem and proceed to interpret situations such as conflict as if they have a factual and accurate understanding of the event and the other person (Sillars, 1998).

Accurate or not, perceptions are persistent little blighters. Even when people discover new information that challenges their perception, they can stretch their perceptions to include that new information (“I know he helped you with your work, but that only shows how manipulative he is”). Also, negative and abstract perceptions stand up well because they are more difficult to clarify than concrete ones (e.g., perceiving someone as manipulative is validated in both good and bad behaviors). The more concrete perceptions relate to instrumental ideas while the more abstract ones relate to companionate issues (Sillars et al., 1990). For example, who does certain chores around the house provides a relatively clear view than whether your partner shows affection. Although people want to make concrete inferences from a conflict, “given the need to keep pace with interaction these inferences are snap judgments that go unquestioned” (Sillars et al., 2000, p. 483). Accordingly, perceptions related to more abstract concerns will remain ambiguous and untested. People then carry these perceptions into future interactions, where they form the basis for our perceptions of the next conflict, adding an additional layer for potential misunderstanding of the causes and misconduct of conflict.