Abstract:

The article discusses the features of social perception among students and teachers and emotional and personal well-being as its determinant. Students and teachers are social groups that are at the forefront of modern science and education. Not only the psychological climate of the educational organization, but also the results of the diverse cooperative activities of the subjects of the educational process directly depend on the adequacy and positiveness of their perception of other people. So, the search for predictors of social perception in the educational environment is actual. The phenomenon of "social perception" includes a person’s perception of himself, other people and groups. This study examines one aspect of social perception – the person’s perception of other people.
The objective of the research is to study the influence of emotional and personal well-being of university teachers and students on their perception of other people. Emotional and personal well-being (EPW) is understood as an integral existential experience of a state of harmony between the inner and outer world, which occurs during a person's life, activity and communication.
Methodology. We used the methods “Self-assessment of Emotional and Personal Well-Being (SEPWB)” (Karapetyan, Glotova, 2017) and the variant of the semantic differential technique (SD), where the descriptors were personal qualities. According to these descriptors the respondents evaluated people from close environment (the object SD “surrounding people”) and those who are not related to it (the object SD “all people”). The sample of the study contained of 132 university teachers and 656 students.
The results of the study and the analysis led to the conclusion that students tend to have higher estimates of their emotional and personal well-being (compared to teachers) and consider themselves more lucky, as well as more competent. In addition, among students the emotional and personal components of well-being are more balanced, so they are more likely to experience a state of harmony between the external and internal world. It is proved, that the students’ manifestations of social perception are stable in relation to their emotional and personal well-being, which does not affect their perception of other people. At the same time, the emotional and personal well-being of university teachers is a predictor of their social perception and determines their attitude to other people. The received data display the manifestation of the phenomena of ingroup favoritism in both parts of the sample (“surrounding people” are evaluated significantly more positively than “all people”) and ingroup stereotyping (“all people” are evaluated more homogeniously, but “surrounding people” - more differentiated). These phenomena indicate that the group identity in both samples (teachers and students) is formed.
Thus, we come to the conclusion that it is the student part of the sample that, regardless of the state of emotional and personal well-being, positively assesses other people. The obtained data can be used in the organization of psychological support of the educational process in order to harmonize the internal state of its participants and optimize the interaction between them.

Keywords:

Social perception, emotional and personal well-being, university teachers, students.