UNIT-3

Perception
Perception
Perception
Perception
Write a story.
Perception

 The process by which an

individual selects, organizes,
and interprets stimuli into a
meaningful and coherent picture
of the world
 How we see the world around us
Perception
 Concept:
 Perception is another most important aspect of life of
organization. Many problems of the organization and
that of its members may be traced to the distortion
in perception. Perception means the ability to
perceive i.e. understanding or knowledge, mental
grasp of qualities by means of senses or awareness.

 Communication is influenced by one’s perception of

individual. When we communicate with someone,
the language we used, the tone of the language and
gesture we make portray an individual’s character
and a kind of relationship he wants to develop
Perception
 We see an object but it is understood differently by different
people. It is perception. Perception is vividly defined by
experts. Some of the definitions are given below which make
the meaning of perception clear.

 Slephen P. Robbins — “A process by which individuals

organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to
give meaning to their environment.”

 B. Von Haller Gilmer — “Perception is the process of

becoming aware of situations, of adding meaningful
associations to sensations.”

 Udai Prateek — “The process of receiving, selecting,

organising, interpreting, checking and reacting to sensory
stimuli or data.”
Process of Perception
The perceptual process is a sequence of
steps that begins with stimuli in the
environment and ends with our
interpretation of those stimuli. This
process is typically unconscious and
happens hundreds of thousands of times
a day. An unconscious process is simply
one that happens without awareness or
intention. When you open your eyes, you
do not need to tell your brain to interpret
the light falling onto your retinas from
the object in front of you as “computer”
because this has happened
unconsciously. When you step out into a
chilly night, your brain does not need to
be told “cold” because the stimuli trigger
the processes and categories
automatically.
Process of Perception

.
Selection

Organization

Interpretation
Aspects of Perception

.
Selection

Organization

Interpretation
Perceptual Selection
 The world around us is filled with an infinite
number of stimuli that we might attend to, but our
brains do not have the resources to pay attention
to everything. Thus, the first step of perception is
the (usually unconscious, but sometimes
intentional) decision of what to attend to.
Depending on the environment, and depending on
us as individuals, we might focus on a familiar
stimulus or something new. When we attend to
one specific thing in our environment—whether it
is a smell, a feeling, a sound, or something else
entirely—it becomes the attended stimulus
 What do you see in Which white circle is
this picture? How would you describe these
larger? potato chips?

Perceptual Selectivity
Though people are exposed to several stimuli , they tend to select only a few at a given point of
time, this is perceptual selectivity. Selectivity in Perception which stimuli get selected depends on
two major factors :-

1) Consumers previous experience as it affects their expectations.

2) Their motives at that time for one’s needs, desire & interest etc.
 Factors Influencing Perceptual Selectivity

External Attention Factors Internal Set Factors

 Intensity
 Learning
 Size
 Contrast  Expectations
 Repetition  Motivation
 Motion
 Personality
 Novelty and
 familiarity
 External Attention Factors

Intensity

According to the intensity principle of attention, the intensity of an

external stimulus determines its probability of being perceived.

Example:
Light Colour Bright Colour
External Attention
Factor
 External Attention Factors

Size:
A larger object is more likely to be noticed than a smaller object.

Example:
Which you can read fast?

God is great God is great

 Continued ….
Contrast: According to the principles of contrast, the stimuli that contradict most with the
background or the expectations of people receive maximum attention.

Example: Which white square is smaller?

Continued ….
Motion:
People gives more attention to moving objects than the stationery
objects.

Repetition Novelty and Familiarity:

The more number of New objects in a
familiar situation or
times a stimulus is
familiar objects in a
repeated, the more it is likely
new situation draw the
to be noticed perceiver’s attention.
 Internal Set Factors
Learning
Learning by itself plays a major role in developing the
perceptual set.
Example:

Hilly
Terrain
Ahead
Motivation
The primary motives:
Hunger and Thirst
The secondary motives:
The need for power, The need for affiliation and The need for
achievement.

Expectations
People see what they want to see.

Personality
Personality of a person influence perception.
Perceptual Selection
 Stimuli get selected on two factors:-
People previous experience affects their
expectation
 Motives at the time

Nature of the stimulus

 Nature of the product, physical attributes

 CONTRAST – Difference creates more

attention towards the ad.
Perceptual Selection

1) Expectations:-
 People see what they want to see, based on
previous experience, familiarity and preconditioned
set of expectations.

2) Motives
 People perceive the things they need and want –
Stronger the need – Greater tendency to ignore
unrelated things.

 People who are obese see ads related to gyms and

diet.
Perceptual Selection
Process of Perception

.
Selection

Organization

Interpretation
Perceptual Organization
 Organization
 Once we have chosen to attend to a stimulus in the
environment (consciously or unconsciously, though
usually the latter), the choice sets off a series of
reactions in our brain. This neural process starts with
the activation of our sensory receptors (touch, taste,
smell, sight, and hearing). The receptors transduce
the input energy into neural activity, which is
transmitted to our brains, where we construct a
mental representation of the stimulus (or, in most
cases, the multiple related stimuli) called a
percept. An ambiguous stimulus may be translated
into multiple percepts, experienced randomly, one at
a time, in what is called “multistable perception.”
Perceptual Organization

 People see everything as a whole.

Gestalt Psychology
 Figure and Ground
 Grouping
 Closure
Figure and Ground

 Peopletend to organize
perceptions into figure-and-
ground relationships.
 The ground is usually hazy.
Proximity

 Itmeans nearness or closeness of

information may be perceived as a
whole. It should be noted here that
proximity is different than similarity.
Closure

 People have a need for closure

and organize perceptions to
form a complete picture.
 Will often fill in missing pieces
 Incomplete messages
remembered more than
complete
Closure
Process of Perception

.
Selection

Organization

Interpretation
Interpretation

 Interpretation

 After we have attended to a stimulus, and our brains have

received and organized the information, we interpret it in a
way that makes sense using our existing information about
the world. Interpretation simply means that we take the
information that we have sensed and organized and turn it
into something that we can categorize. For instance, in the
Rubin’s Vase illusion mentioned earlier, some individuals will
interpret the sensory information as “vase,” while some will
interpret it as “faces.” This happens unconsciously thousands
of times a day. By putting different stimuli into categories, we
can better understand and react to the world around us.
Perception
Distortion
Meaning
• Perceptual distortions are incorrect understanding or
abnormal interpretation of a perceptual experience. A
perceptual distortion occurs when a persons responses to
stimuli varies from how it is commonly perceived. Perceptual
distortion can relate to either sensory or psychological
disorders, medication or drugs, or physical damage to the
brain or sensory organ.
Perceptual Distortion Types
Personality

Mental Set

Attribution

HALO Effect

Stereotype

First Impression
Personality

• Personality of the perceiver greatly influence the perception

of other persons.
• Personality influence perception because of 2 reason
• First, the perceiver tries to project his personality attributes in
others, known as projection.
• Second, the perceiver tries to fit his attitude, beliefs, expectation
to reality known as process of self-fulfilling.
 Mental Set

• Mental set is the tendency on has to react in a certain way to a

given situation.
• In organization setting, people have tendency to perceive about
others on the basis of this mental set which cause
misperception.
• For ex. Suppose you are a contestant in a track meet and are
positioning yourself in your starting blocks as you hear the
preparatory command, get ready, get set when you hear the
command, Go you take off at once since you are already set and
ready to this command.
Attribution
• Attribution is the process by which we make sense of our
environment through our perception of our causality.
• Why is that person so successful? Why did that project fail? If
we understand the causes of success, failure and conflicts , we
may be able to adjust our behavior and other factors
accordingly.
Cont..
• Attribution is simply the process of attaching or attributing
causes or reason to the actions and events we see. Causality is
usually described in terms of internal causality and external
causality.
• For ex. We may explain a particular individuals success or
promotion with reference to his/her superior skills and
knowledge (internal causality) or with reference to luck,
'friends in high places’ and coincidence (external causality).
HALO Effect
• The term halo effect was used by the
psychologist Edward Thorndike in
1920.
• A HALO Effect is a judgment based on
a single striking characteristics such as
an aspects of dress, speech, posture,
or nationality. HALO Effect can be
negative as well as positive.
• For ex. It is a natural human response
on a meeting a stranger, to make
judgment about the kind of person
they are and whether we will like
them or not.
Stereotyping

Stereotyping occurs when the perceiver judges or perceives a

person on the basis of characteristics of the group to which he
belongs.
• The person is not perceived as an individual with specific set
of his characteristics but on the basis of his group
characteristics.
• For ex. There are some stereotyping at the international level
like; Japanese are industrious, Italian are quick tempered
American are materialistic and ambitious.
Stereotypes
First Impression
• It is very common that people evaluate
others on the basis of first impression.
• The evaluation based on first impression
may be correct if it is based on adequate
and significant evidence.
• However, since first impression evaluation
is not based on adequate information, it
may not be true reflection of peoples
being perceived.
• This can be corrected by more frequent
interaction, though erasing of first
impression evaluation is not that easy.
:

Thank you
