Individual Behaviour - Perception

PERCEPTION

The process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environments is known as perception.

Nature of Perception:

• Perception is the intellectual process
• Perception is the basic cognitive or psychological process
• Perception becomes a subjective process and different people may perceive the same event differently

Perceptual process:

Perceptual inputs  ---> Perceptual throughput ----> Perceptual outputs

Stimuli -----> Receiving, Selecting, Organizing, Interpreting ----->  Actions

Perceptual Organisation:

• Grouping: The perceiver groups the various stimuli on the basis of their similarity or proximity
• Closure: When faced with incomplete information, people fill up the gaps themselves to make the information meaningful based on the past experience past data or facts
• Figure-Ground Principle: The tendency to keep certain phenomena in focus and others in background

Factors influencing perception:

1.       Characteristics of the perceiver:

a.      Familiarity with target

b.      Attitudes

c.       Mood

d.      Self Concept

e.      Cognitive structure

2.      Characteristics of the target:

a.      Physical appearance

b.      Verbal communication

c.       Non verbal cues

d.      Intentions

3.      Characteristics of Situation:

a.      Context of interaction

b.      Strength of situational cues

Barriers to perception:

Selective Perception: The process of selecting information that supports for individual viewpoints while discounting information that threatens viewpoints

Stereotype: A generalization about a group of people

First impression error: The tendency to form lasting opinions about an individual based on initial perceptions

Projection: Overestimating the number of people who share our own beliefs, values and behavior

The Self-fulfilling Prophecies – Pygmalion effect: The situation in which our expectations about people affect our interaction with them in such a way that our expectations are fulfilled

Halo effect: The tendency to draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of single characteristic

Contrast effect: Evaluation of a person’s characteristics that is affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics

Self-serving bias: The tendency for individuals to attribute their own success to internal factors and put the blame for failures on external factors

Impression Management: The process by which individuals try to control the impressions others have of them

Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behavior of others

Horn effect: The tendency to evaluate an individual completely on the basis of a negative quality or feature perceived

Response Disposition: It refers to a person’s tendency to perceive familiar stimuli rather than unfamiliar ones

Response Salience:  It is the set of disposition which are determined not by familiarity of the stimulus situations, but by the person’s own cognitive predispositions

Perceptual Defence: It refers to the screening of those elements which create conflict and threatening situation in people