Understanding Perception: Unveiling the Factors That Influence It

The Meaning of Perception

Perceptions vary from person to person. Different people perceive different things about the same situation. But more than that, we assign different meanings to what we perceive. And the meanings might change for a certain person. One might change one's perspective or simply make things mean something else.

What Is Perception?

Perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. The word perception comes from the Latin perception-, percepio, meaning "receiving, collecting, and action of taking possession, apprehension with the mind or senses. Perception is our sensory experience of the world around us and involves both the recognition of environmental stimuli and actions in response to these stimuli. Through the perceptual process, we gain information about properties and elements of the environment that are critical to our survival. Perception not only creates our experience of the world around us; it allows us to act within our environment.

Perception includes the five senses;

touch,
sight,
taste
smell and
taste.

It also includes what is known as proprioception, a set of senses involving the ability to detect changes in body positions and movements. It also involves the cognitive processes required to process information, such as recognizing the face of a friend or detecting a familiar scent.

Why Perception is Important?

Because people’s behavior is based on their perception of what reality is, not on reality itself? The world that is perceived is the world that is behaviorally important.

Factors Affecting or influencing Perception

The Perceiver: When an individual looks at the target and attempts to interpreted what he / she sees. Such interpretation is heavily influenced by personal characteristics of the individual perceiver. The characteristics of perceiver include person’s needs. Past experience, habits, personality, values, attitudes etc. For example: – a negative attitude person interprets negative results and further makes negative perception.
The Perceived or target (object): Characteristics of the target, which has been, observed also affects the individual’s perception. The physical attributes, appearance and behavior of other persons in the situation also influences the perception. Physical attributes of the person means age, height, weight, gender etc. Loud people are easily noticeable in a group in comparison to the quite ones. Motion sound, size and other attributes of a target also affect the perception of an individual. Object which is perceived is not observed in isolation, the relationship of a target with its background also influences perception. Person, objects or events that are similar to each other also tend to be grouped together. Greater the similarity, the greater is the probability that we will tend to perceive them as a common group.
The Situation: The physical, social and organizational setting of the situation also influences individual’s perception. The situation in which we see objects or events is important. The element in the surrounding environment influences our perception. For example:- hearing a subordinate calling his / her boss by his / her name may be perceived quite differently when observed in an office as opposed to an evening social reception.

Perception

Fred Luthans has defined Perception as a complicated interaction of selection, organization and interpretation of stimuli. According to Luthans,

The perceptual process comprises of External environment

Confrontation
Registration
Interpretation
Feedback
Behavior
Consequence.

Perceptual Process Objects in the environment

Observation
Perceptual Selection
Perceptual

Organization

Interpretation
Response Perceptual Selectivity Perceptual selection is the process by which people filter out irrelevant or less significant information so that they can deal with the most important matters.

Perceptual Selection is determined by External Factors and Internal Factors

Internal factors affecting perception

Family background: A good family background cultivates good perception. A bad family background breeds bad perception. Thus, parents, brothers and sisters play an important role in forming perceptions in the early stages of life of every individual.
Educational background: educational background plays an important role in forming perceptions of people. Generally, people having a good educational background are more likely to have a more logical /rational perception as compared to those without such background. In this regard, teachers, class- mates and friends play an important role, which has an effect on perception.
Work experience: Work experience refers to the ‘on-the-job' life in the organisation. Every employee has to interact with 3 different levels, viz. superiors, colleagues and subordinates. All interactions at all these three levels affect perception through experience.
Social needs: Man is a social animal. Every individual has certain social needs in terms of a sense of belonging to a group. Satisfaction or dissatisfaction of these needs affects the perception of the individual. Individuals with fairly satisfied social needs have better perceptions than those with dissatisfied social needs.
Psychological needs: Every individual has certain psychological needs in terms of self-esteem, status, ego, recognition, appreciation, etc. Satisfaction or dissatisfaction of these needs also affects the perception of the individual.
Interests: The individual's interest in people/situations affects perception either favorably or otherwise. Generally, objects, situations or the people in whom the individual is interested create a positive perception.
Expectations: This is the greatest factor that affects one's perception. If expectations are fulfilled, the perception is favorable. If otherwise, it is distorted and not so favorable. Generally, people see what they expect to see.
Learning: Learning is a continuous process. The higher the learning, the better is the perception, because a learned person can look at the world from an enlightened point of view. Therefore, his perception is likely to be more positive than of one who is less learned. Moreover, people keep on modifying their perceptions of the world through the process of learning.
Values: Perception and value always go hand-in-hand. Good values result in good perception, while bad values result in bad perception. Of course, good and bad are relative terms and it all depends upon the individual's background as per the above factors.
Personality: Personality is the total result of an individual's perception, values and attitude. Personality and perception are mutually interdependent.

External factors affecting perception

Familiarity: Familiarity with the other person/object/situation helps positive perception. Otherwise, it is negative or distorted, for example, a good friend in a large group is noticed first, a known person is given preference for appointments. This means that those individuals who are more familiar with each other have better perceptions about each other than those who are not.
Status: Generally, people with high status are perceived with respect/ reverence and therefore listened to. On the contrary, people without any substantial status in society are not perceived favorably. A president, prime minister, a governor, a minister, a manager, an actor/actress, a social worker, a doctor, an advocate, a judge, a Nobel laureate etc. are better placed due to their high status. Status in the organisation/society affects the perception of the individual.
Appearance: ‘Your face is your fortune'. Appearance matters in developing a perception. Many times, a handsome man or a beautiful woman with a smile is given preference over others due to positive perception. Your first impression depends upon your appearance viz., how you are dressed; how you talk/walk and whether your body language sends positive signals or negative signals.
Intensity: The intensity of an individual/object/situation relates to the force with which it approaches you e.g., a person speaking loudly with emotionally charged words, an object coming at a very high speed towards you, an accident on the road, a very bright light glaring at you, a very loud noise of an explosion, a strong odor, etc. attract attention and affect perception. In other words, the intensity of the stimulus determines the attention and the perception of the individual.
Size: The size of the stimulus (person or object) affects perception. For example, a very fat person arriving at a party or a very thin and lean patient in a hospital, bigger machines, larger pictures, a full-page advertisement, etc. Attract attention and affect perception.
Contrast: A contrast between the person/object and the background affects perception, for example, a black spot on a white paper, dark shirt and white pant, tall husband and short wife, very fair woman with a very dark man, black and white, fat and lean, bold and normal v/s italic and underlined, etc.
Motion: A moving person/object is noticed rather than a stationary one. More particularly, a person or object moving at a very high speed is noticed quickly in perception. The objects that are moving or changing attract more than those which are stationary, for example, flashing neon signs, are more attractive than the no flashing ones.
Repetition: This principle states that a stimulus that is repeated gets more attention than the one that appears only once. The messages that are repeated frequently are perceived better than those that are given only once, for example, repetitive failures in one subject, successive victories at Wimbledon, headline news of riots, arson and killings, frequent failures of a particular machine, repeated absence of an employee, frequent job changes, constant rejection of jobs for quality, consistent losses in business, repetitive failure of a particular product in the market, etc.
Novelty: An unusual sight is always noticed and perceived more quickly than a usual or routine matter, for example, a trapeze, a clown in a circus doing acrobatics, an elephant riding a bicycle in the circus, a tiger walking in the middle of the street in a city, a dog obeying the master's instructions, a parrot picking an envelope for the astrologer, monkeys doing acrobatics at the command of their master, a cobra dancing on a tune of the flute, etc. Sometimes, monotony brings boredom and overconfidence that result in the lowering of efficiency. A change in the job design, job content improves the perception of the job thereby improving efficiency.

The process of perception

Confrontation with the Stimulus: The individual comes face to face with another individual or group or situation or problem.
Registration: The individual registers the stimulus and its gravity.
Observation: The individual uses his/her sensory tools to observe the stimuli (e.g., sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, etc.).
Perceptual selection: The individual selects the data e.g., status, appearance, familiarity, size, intensity, contrast, repetition, motion, novelty, etc.
Perceptual organisation: It is a process through which the incoming information is organized and patterned in a systematic manner e.g., figures ground principle, relevancy principle, role of the central nervous system, etc.
Perceptual grouping: It is a process through which certain aspects of the data are screened/filtered e.g., continuity, closure, similarity, proximity, constancy, context, defense, implicit personality, self-fulfilling prophecy, Pollyanna-Nietze effect, etc.
Interpretation: The individual tries to understand the real meaning of the situation and to interpret it for the effects. E.g., perceptual errors, perceptual defense, characteristics of the perceiver/perceived, attribution, stereotyping, halo effect, projection, contrast effect, first impression, impression management, etc.
Evaluation and feedback: The individual evaluates the strengths and weaknesses in a situation and gives a quick feedback to the sensory and motor mechanisms for the next step.
Response: The individual gives the response in terms of a reaction, which can be positive, negative or neutral. Depending upon the mutual interaction between the stimulus and the individual, the reaction of the individual to the stimuli can be: behavior, covert feelings emotions, attitudes, motivation, expectations, etc.

Perceptual Organization

Figure-ground: Perceived objects stand out as separable from their general background. In the context of organizations, a company may import a new technology in order to compete in the globalized economy. Here import of a new technology is a figure and global competitive environment is the background. The employees will immediately notice the installation of new technology whereas the global competitive environment is not visible by naked eyes.
Perceptual grouping: There is a general tendency among individuals to group several stimuli together into a recognizable pattern. There are certain underlying uniformities in grouping. When simple constellations of stimuli are presented to people, they tend to group them together by closure, continuity, proximity, and similarity.
Continuity: An individual tend to perceive continuous lines/patterns. This leads to inflexible thinking on the part of organizational members (both managers and employees). Thus, only the obvious, continuous patterns or relationships are perceived. For example, a new design for some production process or product may be limited to obvious flows or continuous lines/patterns. New innovative ideas or designs may not be perceived.
Similarity: The greater the similarity of stimuli, the greater is the tendency to perceive them as a common group. Similarity is conceptually related to proximity but in most cases stronger than proximity. In an organization, all employees who wear blue collars may be perceived as a common group, when in reality, each employee is a unique individual. This might also lead to perceptual error termed as stereotyping.
Perceptual Constancy: There are two issues. While objective reality of stimuli remains unchanged, people’s subjective reality also remains constant. That is, the individual is likely to give meaning to stimuli in the same way whenever exposed to them unless and until objective reality has been revealed more broadly by way of undoing the perceptual errors. For example, a manager in the company who believes that female employees are poor performers would continue to have the same perception until and unless the latter prove that they are better than their male colleagues.
Perceptual Context: It gives meaning and value to simple stimuli in the environment. The organizational culture and structure provide the primary context in which workers and managers perceive things. Thus, a verbal order, an e-mail message, a new policy, a suggestion, a raised eyebrow, a pat on the back takes on special meaning and value when placed in the context of work organization.

Perceptual Errors

Similarity error: People are predisposed towards those having similar traits, socio-economic-cultural background.
Contrast error: People tend to compare among the available resources and thus arrive at a conclusion that might be far from the objective reality.
Race or gender or age bias: People’s perception may be tempered by their prejudices vis-à-vis race, gender, and age.
First impression error: People may hold a long-term view about a person or thing based on first impression.
Perceptual defense: People tend to defend the way they perceive things. Once established, a person’s way of viewing the world may become highly resistant to change. Sometimes, perceptual defense may have negative consequences. This perceptual error can result in manager’s inability to perceive the need to be creative in solving problems. As a result, the individual simply proceeds as in the past even in the face of evidence that business as usual is not accomplishing anything worthwhile.
Stereotyping: It is the belief that all members of a specific groups share similar traits and behavior. Most often, a person is put into a stereotype because the perceiver knows only the overall category to which the person belongs. However, because each individual is unique, the real traits of the person are generally quite different from those that stereotype would suggest.
Halo effect: Under halo effect, a person is perceived on the basis of a single trait. It generally occurs during performance appraisal where the supervisor rates an employee on the basis of only one trait e.g. intelligence, punctuality, cooperativeness appearance etc.
Projection: It is the tendency of seeing one’s own traits in others. Thus, individuals project their own feelings, personality characteristics attitudes, or motives onto others. Projection may be especially strong for undesirable traits that the perceivers possess but fail to recognize in themselves. People whose personality traits include stinginess, obstinacy, and disorderliness tend to rate others higher on these traits than do people who do not have these traits.