7. Perception

• Perception


  The process of organizing and interpreting information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events
• Perception


  • The study of perception is concerned with identifying the process through which we interpret and organize sensory information to produce our conscious experience of objects and object relationship
  • Perception is the process of receiving information about and making sense of the world around us. It involves deciding which information to notice, how to categorize this information and how to interpret it within the framework of existing knowledge
  • A process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment
• Sensation


  An individual's ability to detect stimuli in the immediate environment
• The Perceptual Process


  1. Receiving Stimuli (External & Internal)

  2. Selecting Stimuli

  3. Organizing

  4. Interpreting
• The Perceptual Process


  • Perceptual inputs: Stimuli may be in the form of objects, events or people
  • Perceptual mechanism: It involves three elements viz. selection of stimuli, organization of stimuli and interpretation of stimuli
  • Perceptual outputs: attitudes, opinions, beliefs or impression
• Factors Influencing Perception


  • Factors in the perceiver: Attitudes, Motives, Interests, Experience, Expectations
  • Factors in the Target: Novelty, Motion, Sounds, Size, Background, Proximity, Similarity
  • Factors in the situation: Time, Work Setting, Social Setting
• External Factors In Perceptual Selectivity


  • Size influences what catches our attention
  • Repetition: When something is repeated, we are more likely to notice it
  • Intensity: The stronger a stimulus is, the more likely we are to notice it
  • Familiarity: Things or situations we already know catch our attention
  • Novelty: Doing something new or different grabs our attention
  • Contrast: When someone looks different from others, it grabs attention
  • Motion: Moving things get more attention than still ones
• Internal Factors In Perceptual Selectivity


  • Self-concept, Personality, Beliefs, Expectations, Inner needs
  • Response disposition: a person's tendency to perceive familiar stimuli rather than unfamiliar ones
  • Response salience: preconceived ideas which are not determined by the familiarity of the situations but by the person's mental makeup
  • Perceptual defense: the filtering out of those elements which are expected to create conflict or threatening situation in people
• Perceptual Organization


  • Figure-Ground: Focusing on one or two things while other things are in the background
  • Grouping: Putting many things into categories based on how similar or close they are to each other
  • Simplification: Focusing on the important information and ignoring the rest
  • Close-up: Filling in missing parts with own ideas to make sense of information
• Selective Attention


  The cognitive process of focusing on specific aspects of sensory information while ignoring or filtering out others
• "WE DON'T SEE THINGS AS THEY ARE, WE SEE THINGS AS WE ARE."