ABSTRACT
Certain contemporary writers such as McLeod (1960) maintain that we perceive people's inner states — their intentions, feelings, motives and dispositions or personal qualities — in the same way as we perceive the physical world. To others this would seem to be a misuse of the word perception, since clearly an elaborate process of analysis, inference and evaluation is involved in the former, over and above the reception of cues from the people we observe. Unlike the visual perception of objects, there appears to be little direct connection between the shape or form of the cues and the observer's awareness; or, as Ichheiser puts it, there is a lack of ‘natural harmony’ between the person's expressions and the interpreter's impressions. Indeed as often as not the expressions are a mask for very different feelings, as when we thank someone for an unwanted birthday gift, or are being interviewed for a job. Yet, to some extent at least, the observer can penetrate through this mask.
