On John Stamos and Self Perception

I wrote a long introduction but deleted it in an attempt to curb my long-winded story telling style.

I met my ex-boyfriend, John Stamos* on swim team when I was fifteen. I was an awkward and introverted child who remained incapable of positive social interactions and felt very uncomfortable being around boys in a swimsuit. Therefore, when he approached me and tried to talk, I gave him a cold stare and walked away without speaking. This impression lay the ground for an unfortunately hilarious conformation bias that existed for the first two years of our relationship. Conformation biases exist when people form an initial impression and then construe events and actions in a way that supports their initial impression, regardless of how complete or accurate this impression may be.

I am the awkward one in the back being extremely uneasy around people,
if you needed confirmation on how socially anxious/awkward I was/am.

A couple years after that initial interaction we reconnected and began dating. We came from very different social circles and there was an inordinate amount of his friends that I was forced to meet in a short period of time. I was still fairly social inept and painfully reserved, so was often very withdrawn around these new people. I strongly self-identified as a shy individual, and considered my behaviour to be very much in line with (and easily explained by) this characteristic. Unfortunately, when John Stamos saw my stilted and painful interactions he, having a painfully cold first interaction with me, attributed my actions to me being prideful. Rather than seeing me failing to find words and warm body language as the result of my terror of being around a strange group of friends, he saw me refusing to participate and interact with his friends as a function of my presupposed prideful nature. It did not take long before we realized that we had two very different interpretations for my actions.

Throughout the course of our relationship, there was a constant debate over whether my actions were motivated by introversion or pride. John Stamos was always quick to find events and interactions that supported his hypothesis, a pattern that could be explained by the trait negativity bias: a tendency for people to notice, remember, and support negative attributes about others more often than positive attributes (Rozin & Royzman, 2001; Skowronski & Carlston 1989). Now that he had identified a negative trait about my personality, it was ever-present to him in ways that positive traits he recognized were not.

Troubled by my pride and his mullet both.

I, on the other hand, was continually affronted by the notion that I could be prideful, because that jeopardized my self-constructed implicit personality theory. As studied by Bruner & Tagiuri (1954) people tend to have a network of overlapping and complimentary assumptions when conceptualizing one's personality; that is, if someone is recognized to be helpful they are also assumed to possess related traits such as gratefulness, friendliness, and charitable. By considering the inclusion of the "prideful" trait into my self-concept, I was forced to consider that I also possessed many other traits I associated with a prideful person (was I selfish? conceited? MALEVOLENT, EVEN???).

I suppose the benefits of long-term relationships include having ample time to overcome these biases and stumbling blocks one faces when confronting impressions and perceptions of individuals in the relationship. Luckily, after both of us fighting blindly to maintain our conformation biases by interpreting my actions in vastly different manners, we were able to realize that my behaviours were driven by both shyness and pride. Either way, it would have definitely been beneficial to understand these biases and stumbling blocks we face in perceptions of self and others before having to confront them in real life.

catscatscatscatscats!

*Not actually John Stamos.


Bruner, J. S., & Tagiui, R. (1954). The perception of people. The handbook of social psychology, 1(2), 634-654.

Rozin, P. & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality & Social Psychology Review, 5, 296–320.

Skowronski, J. J., & Carlston, D. E. (1989). Negativity and extremity biases in impression formation: A review of explanations. Psychological Bulletin, 105, 131–142.