David A. Kenny
December 24, 2001



In the Social Relations Model, a perception that a perceiver has of a target is separated into three components: perceiver, target, and relationship. The perceiver effect reflects how the person tends to see others; the target effect reflects how a person is seen in general by others; and the relationship effect reflects how a perceiver uniquely sees the target. These components are used to answer the nine basic questions of interpersonal perception.

The Social Relations Model was developed by Larry La Voie and myself and named after the interdisciplinary social science department at Harvard University that no longer exists. The model describes dyadic relationships when variables are measured on a continuous scale.


Round robin: Each person in the group rates or judges everyone else in the group. Most studies of interpersonal perception use this design.

Block: The group is divided into two subgroups, and each person rates everyone who is in the other subgroup.

If a each person is a member of one only dyad (e.g., married couples outside of places in Utah), then the Social Relations cannot be used.  However, sophisticated analyses of such designs are possible (see my Dyadic Analysis page).


Chapter 2 of Interpersonal Perception: A Social Relations Analysis (See the acknowledgments for more on the history of the model.)

To go to the page that describes the model in more detail.

To go to the page that describes the mathematics of the model in more detail.

To go to the page that contains a bibliography of Social Relations studies.

To go to the page that describes triadic perceptions.

Go to the next page.
Go to the interpersonal perception page.