Social Perception

Social perception is a cognitive process of recognizing, interpreting, and responding to social signals — verbal and nonverbal cues — affecting how people behave towards others. Social perception leads to forming impressions and making quick judgments about others in social situations and interactions. For example, when someone rolls their eyes, it’s a social cue they disagree with what was said. Social perception is how people make internal attributions about why someone behaved a certain way — a process of verifying impressions by finding and producing knowledge through biases. Also see Social Psychology Theory