“We See Things Not as They Are, but as We Are”: Social Identity, Self-Categorization, and Perception

We welcome the opportunity to engage with Y. Jenny Xiao, G eraldine Coppin, and Jay J. Van Bavels (this issue) thought provoking work that seeks to further research interest and debate across domains that have rarely crossed paths before yet clearly should. For the perception audience, the authors show that social identity shapes the way we see the world. For the social psychology audience, the message is that we have overlooked perception as an area of inquiry. For the discipline as a whole, the article makes a compelling case for a model that integrates social psychology, cognition, and perception in a way that no longer carves the mind at false joints (Xiao et al., this issue, p. 256). The message of the article is in line with the 1950s New Look movement (Bruner, 1957), where the perceiver is transformed from a passive recording instrument of rather complex design (Bruner & Goodman, 1947, p. 33) to being active in the environment. New Look represents a shift to a more perceiver-centered approach, where the perceivers needs, motivations, and expectations are considered fundamental to perception. What is attended to, what is apprehended, and what meaning is attributed to it are affected by perceiver factors