Social Episodes and Person Perception: The Fluctuating Structure of an Academic Group

Summary The effects of different social episodes on interpersonal perception were studied in a well-established academic group consisting of male and female faculty members, research students, and staff. Group members (N = 16) were asked to rate one another on a number of personality dimensions in each of four social episodes commonly occurring in their social milieu. The relevance of the rating scales used for each of the episodes was previously established in a pilot study. Interpersonal judgments were analyzed by (a) a multidimensional scaling technique, and (b) by subsequent discriminant analyses of the group spaces. Results indicated that (a) the traits used were different in the four episodes, (b) the number of dimensions used varied with the episode, (c) the status of group members was differentially relevant in different episodes, and (d) status groups differed in their perceptions of the group structure in each of the four episodes. The importance of situational variables in social perception was discussed, and the role of different social episodes in defining and structuring our view of the social world was considered.