What are the main errors in person perception?

Answer 1

I am currently a freshman in college and we just went over this topic in my critical thinking class. This is everything we went over:

Types of Errors in Thinking

Errors of Perception:

• Mine is better thinking - this often occurs in matters that are important to us such as our race, religion, ethnic group, social class, political party, or philosophy of life. We value kinship with those who are similar.
• Selective perception - attending to those points/ arguments with which you agree.
• Gullibility and skepticism - the error of believing everything or doubting everything.
• Bias toward the majority or the minority - following our affections, identifying with the majority or with the underdog.
• Pretending to know - believing what we have pretended.
• Bias for or against change - conservatives have never met a new idea that they liked and liberals have never met a new idea that they didn't like.
• Either/or thinking - taking only extreme positions on an issue when other positions are possible.

Errors of Judgement:

• Double standard - using one standard of judgment for our own ideas and another for those of others.
• Irrelevant criterion - not defining appropriate criteria for an action.
• Overgeneralizing or stereotyping - generalizations need a reasonable number of subjects to be acceptable.
• Hasty conclusions - drawn without enough evidence.
• Unwarranted assumptions - ideas taken for granted without appropriate basis.
• Failure to make a distinction - subtle differences may make a large difference in evaluation a situation or idea.
• Oversimplification - omits essential information and ignores complexity.
• Errors of Reaction:
• Explaining away - discrediting contrary opinions without consideration.
• Shifting the burden of proof - demanding to have contrary proof provided rather than offering support for one's own opinion.
• Attacking the person - bringing in unconnected allegations to cover own weakness in argument.
• Straw man - pretending someone has said something that she has not and then denouncing her for saying it. Twisting words to imply what is not meant.

Errors can Multiply

The desire to be knowledgeable may lead to the pretense of knowledge which results in errors of perception which pave the way for errors of judgment. These may force us to commit errors of reaction to save face.