Perception

Perception

• Perception is the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information to give meaning to the environment.
• Behavior is based on perceived reality, not necessarily objective reality.
• Accurate perceptions lead to more effective actions.
• Perception and judgment are important in various contexts such as employee evaluations, interviews, and company image.

Factors Influencing Perception

• The Perceiver: Attitudes, motives, interests, experiences, and expectations shape perception.
• The Target: Novelty, motion, sounds, size, background, proximity, and similarity of the target influence perception.
• The Situation: Time, work setting, and social setting impact interpretation. Context affects how we perceive things.

Gestalt Principles

• Perception tends to create whole and meaningful patterns.
• "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
• Principles of gestalt include similarity, proximity, closure, good figure-ground.

Implicit Personality Theory

• This is a set of assumptions used to describe, compare, and understand people, often unconsciously.
• It involves associating particular personality traits (e.g., warmth and generosity, coldness and seriousness, intelligence and forehead height).

Attribution Theory

• Explains how we interpret behavior.
• We try to decide if behavior is caused by internal factors (personality, effort) or external factors (environment, circumstances).
• Internal forces: personal characteristics
• External forces: situational factors

Distorted Attributions

• Fundamental Attribution Error: Overestimating internal factors and underestimating external factors when judging others' behavior.
• Self-Serving Bias: Attributing successes to internal factors and failures to external factors.

Perceptual Errors

• Confirmation Bias: Seeking and interpreting information that confirms existing beliefs.
• Perceptual Defense: Discounting or ignoring information that challenges existing attitudes.
• Automatic Vigilance: Quickly attending to negative social information.
• Halo Effect: Forming an overall impression of a person based on a single trait (positive or negative).
• Contrast Effect: Evaluation of a person is affected by comparisons with others recently encountered.
• Stereotyping: Judging someone based on group membership.
• Conformity: Group or social pressure can influence perception.
• Selective Perception: People selectively interpret what they see based on their interests, backgrounds, experiences, and attitudes.

Impression Management

• Individuals use processes to influence how others perceive them.
• This might be seen in job applications, career strategies, and marketing situations.