Application of the Methods of Bisection and Equal Appearing Intervals to the Perception of Persons

Previous research by Stagner (7 ) , Rudin and Stagner ( 5 ) , and others (1, 3) suggests that same basic principles hold in perception of persons as in perception of stimuli relatively devoid of social connotations. Further demonstrations of validity of this proposition would strengthen position that one can make predictions concerning perception of persons from already-established principles of perception, and that familiar, tested methods can be used in dealing with relatively novel stimuli of persons. The work of Fiedler (2) and his group on assumed similarity phenomenon in interpersonal perception suggests that in perceiving others, observer (0) orders others on continua, e.g., nearness to himself, or between two extreme types of individuals, e.g., from the person I like best to the person I like least. The notion that people can perceive stimuli in terms of a continuum is not new; indeed, it has been used since earliest experimental work in psychophysics. A familiar example is determination of relationship between objective brightness of a series of lights as measured by a photoelectric cell, and their relative brightness as perceived by an 0. It therefore seems appropriate to apply psychophysical methods to those perceived continua of interpersonal perception. Before this can be done, however, we must briefly examine logical validity of such an attempt. A continuum, say, of perceived brightness differs from one of perceived liking in at least three important respects. First, physical stimuli can be standardized more readily than can social stimuli. The light bulb that emits 10 millilamberts for one photoelectric cell will do so for all similar ones. 0s will show high agreement as to brightness of light. Second, physical stimuli can be arranged to constitute a ratio scale with a zero point, while social stimuli cannot for all 0s. Complete darkness is complete darkness, and that's that; but it is impossible to assume that a given person is one most disliked by everyone. Finally, there is no demonstrated or obvious relationship between a physical dimension such as facial expression and a psychological dimension such as liking. These differences mean that we must speak of this study as one employing qzlasi-psychophysical methods, based on procedures that are parallel or analogous but not identical to those used in traditional psychophysical experiments. It should also be emphasized that study is primarily methodological and exploratory in nature. 'This paper was presented in substantially present form at September, 1958, meet