A Set-Theoretical Model of Person Perception

A set-theoretical structural model of person perception is presented in which self and other people that the individual knows are partitioned into person classes and the attributes that are perceived to describe self and others are partitioned into attribute classes. A novel feature of the model is that superset-subset relationships among person classes and among attribute classes are explicitly represented. The model was tested empirically by fitting it to free-response descriptions of self and others made by 14 college students, using HICLAS, a computer algorithm for the model. It was found that persons in superordinate classes and in classes with many elements were in general perceived by the subjects to be the most significant and important persons in their lives. These persons included self, nuclear and extended family, lovers and friends. Persons in subordinate classes that contained few elements were generally perceived as the least significant/important persons and included disliked and/or superficially known people. It was also found that the set theoretical analysis provided a significantly better account of the data than did hierarchical clustering.