An assumption has been made that perception of the other is controlled by sets of two levels-pertaining to meaning and to operations. Meaning sets determine actualization of operational sets-suppressing those which do not correspond to them. An experimental study is reported where senior schoolchildren asked to perceive pictures of familiar and strange teachers manifested influence of sets of both types: whenever meanings were actualized in the process of perceiving others they determined specificity of perception-particularly they subjugated the images being formed to themselves and distorted them irrespective of objective characteristics of the perceived personality. In cases when actualization of meaning sets did not take place perception was determined by operational sets of different degree of fixedness with the result that the image development process was heavily influenced by perception stereotypes.