M3 Oral Presentation: Barriers to Perception

The speaker talks about a situation where they made an inaccurate assumption about their best friend. They didn't like the people their friend hung out with and heard negative rumors about him. They realized they stereotyped him and only focused on the negative aspects. To avoid this in the future, they suggest getting to know someone before judging them and being more adaptable. These strategies helped them become closer with their friend. The situation in which I made an inaccurate assumption about somebody else was actually meeting my best friend. He was friends with, I was friends with his sister before I was friends with him. We both went to the same school and his sister was older than him, he's actually my age. Some of the reasons why we weren't friends was because I didn't like who he was friends with. He was hanging around people that I didn't want to involve myself with. I didn't know much about him, I've only heard rumors and not so great things about him. Two barriers to accurate interpersonal perceptions that contribute to our friendship were reasons because I stereotyped him. I allowed what other people said about him persuade me into how I felt about him and that caused me to never give him the opportunity or try to become friends with him. Another reason is because I only focused on the negative. I only paid attention to things and flaws that I did not like about him or things that he did that I wouldn't do and I realized if you only look at the bad in anybody, chances are you will not like them. Two strategies for improving interpersonal perception to help avoid this similar problem in the future would be to become knowledgeable, get to know somebody before you are going to judge them or hold an opinion over them. Maybe even try meeting one on one with them. Get to know them away from others, some people tend to act different around certain people so if you are just with that person, that's how they'll act and that's who they really are. The second reason or second way you can avoid this in the future is to become more adaptable. Try doing new things, learning new things. Once I started hanging out with him, I started to like what he did, I started to enjoy being around him, enjoy his presence and that forced me to want to be around him more and as time grew on, we became closer and closer so for the future, I would recommend both of those things because those both helped me a lot. From that point on, that was a good friend of mine and this advice and these tips really helped me a lot.