Introduction
Social scientists have long studied and tried to understand the varying ways in which people behave and the reasons why they do so. There are many reasons why people commit suicide, and there are many reasons why people comply with or disobey orders. Governments and leaders in society have also tried to shape people’s behavior through laws and rules. There are also many groups and communities around the world that have their own perceptions of other groups of people. There have been creations of stereotypes even if not everyone falls into the created classifications. The basic premise of this paper is that people will continue to have changing perceptions of others, and will continue to evaluate them differently because of their own backgrounds. One’s own race, social class, community, age, economic background and status as well as other factors will contribute to the changing perceptions of human beings and how they behave in society.
Conclusion
While there have been established norms for reasons for behavior that were the results of studies of scientists and theorists, the understanding of behavior also comes from one’s own background. One may call these biases, but somehow a person’s perceptions of the other is truly shaped by his own experiences, background, race, age, and other factors. If one has grown up in a strictly White community, and knows a few Black individuals who are jobless and living below the poverty line, then he thinks that all or most African Americans are jobless and poor as well. There are hasty generalizations made because of these “biases”. The “globalization” of the world has also led to some cultures dominating and influencing others, but again, given a couple of decades, there may be other more dominating influences in the way people see other people, in the way they behave, and in the way they come to conclusions about their fellow man.
