First Impression

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The truth behind guessing other’s thoughts and feelings is enhanced by the need to anticipate others’ needs and desires through interactions. The ability and skills of correctly determining what somebody is thinking at a particular time disregards the background, but depends on the accuracy of interpersonal perception. Difference in accurate perceptions among people is therefore an important factor when discussing impression formation. Research reports indicate that women are more empathically accurate than men. However, this paper seeks to discuss and uncover the social and interpersonal elements that help in predicting accurate empathic accuracy.

According to Laurent and Hodges (2008), the difference in interpersonal judgment in terms of predicting what others think can be well explained by the roles associated to each gender. More than a number of reasons, the study of others begins with self-study since self- monitoring is positively related to accuracy of empathic judgment. Laurent and Hodges are convinced that women are more empathically accurate than men since women have higher levels of femininity and are often stereotyped as very expressive, communal and interdependently oriented than men. In this case, the roles played by women in the society are consistent with the wellbeing of others. The feeling of compassion for another person, characteristic of women, is a direct component of impression formation. To accurately have an impression of one’s thoughts, familiarity with issues of contention is very vital. The communal orientation is one of the strong identities of women occasioned by their roles in the society, thereby giving them great links for accurate empathic prediction.

Chan, et al. proposes that gender is a factor in interpersonal perception, normally associated with performance of tasks across different domains which to great extent systematically determine other’s impressive personality. They argue that interpersonal perception of the first impression is consistent with accuracy of empathetic prediction. Their research found out that female perceiver’s first impressions are more accurate than that of male perceivers. Despite the fact that the difference in the ability to discern and understand the unique personality characteristics of others is very minimal between men and women, averagely, females have greater normative accuracy and formed first impressions of others to perceive their personality traits and characteristics. This corresponds more strongly compared to the ability of men to perceive other’s personal traits and characteristics. Therefore, gender is strongly associated with interpersonal sensitivity, whereby females demonstrate higher degree of interpersonal sensitivity than men. The determining factor in this case is the accuracy of the first impression of personality. However, there is little or no difference in distinctive accuracy of perceiving the difference in a person from a normal person.

to Huma (2010), the ability of forming first impression of a particular person between men and women to make judgment of their personality characteristics is the main highlight. The society has created common differences in gender and this has led to specific roles of men and women. However, despite the roles, people still have unique abilities, particularly of mental judgment of others normalcy. These unique traits make some people, of particular gender, to have some abilities to perform tasks better than others. Impression accuracy is an ability associated with women that explain their cognitive strength of empathy. Huma (2010) acknowledges that a photograph experiment to judge perception accuracy between men and women found out that men and women were accurate in recognizing the depicted emotions. However though, female could distinguish all the facial expression in the photograph, men on the other hand having problems of distinguishing anger and fear. In this particular case, it comes out clearly that first point accurate judgment using facial impressions is very difficult for most men compared to women counterparts.

The above three articles have common points about gender differences particularly in mental judgments or state of others in the society. They all support the fact that women have strong ability of accurate empathy of others compared to the male counterparts. They also agree that roles associated with women in the society give them an upper hand for accurate empathy since these roles makes them communal, social, and interdependently oriented.

Some of the assertions of the three articles are however not true, particularly considering the modern society. The logical truth about the modern world, with the modern civilizations, women plays far more different roles than they played in the ancient times. Women can stand dependently and have all the privileges that were accorded to men in the ancient times, for instance authority among others, which distract them from the supposedly communal roles. More than that, with the equity stance of women in the current society, the ability of empathetic judgment of others may be shared among men and women. It is therefore true that comparing the ancient times and the modern times, the re-definition of the roles played by the men and women in the society cannot be the soul measurement of the reason why women are more empathically accurate than men. Moreover, cognitive power is unique characteristic, which can either be naturally acquired or artificially acquired. It may therefore depend on the level of education and interests particularly in the field of psychology of the mind that can substantiate the differences in the level of one’s empathic accuracy.

References

Laurent, M.S. and Hodges,D.S. (2008). Gender Roles and Empathic Accuracy: The Roles of Communion in Reading Minds. Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, USA.

Huma, B. (2010).Gender Differences in Impression Formation. Journal of comparative research in anthropology and sociology. University of Bucharest, Romania. Vol 1(1): 57-72