Perception Intro

PERCEPTION
Dr.Komal Nagrani_AGBS_HYD
WHAT IS PERCEPTION?
• Perception is the process of receiving, selecting, organizing,
interpreting, checking and reacting to sensory stimuli or data.
• Cognition and cognitive process precede perception.
• Cognition is the act of knowing an item of information.
• Cognitive process is a complex one as it
involves the collection of information from
many sources and through different
sensory organs.
• Perception is not necessarily just what one

sees with his own eyes or what one listens
with his own ears.
DEFINITION &NATURE OF PERCEPTION -
 Perception is the selection and organisation of

environmental stimuli to provide meaningful experiences
for the perceiver .
 “ A process of receiving,selecting,organising,interpreting,
checking and reacting to sensory stimuli or data”.
 There is a lot of difference between the
perceptual world and the real world.
 Perception is a complex cognition

process,giving a unique interpretation of
the world , which may be very much
different from reality at times.
FACTORS INFLUENCING PERCEPTION. -
The understanding of what a person interprets when looking
at the object or target being perceived will be influenced by the
personal traits of the individual who perceives this.
Attitude influences a person’s perception.
Unsatisfied needs or motives influence an individual’s

perception strongly.
The perceptual process can also be
influenced by one’s interests.
One’s experience in the past can also

narrow down one’s focus. And newness
or novelty influences perception.
Expectations also influence an
individual’s perception.
TARGETS OF PERCEPTION. -
What one sees and perceives will generally depend on

how one separates the figure from its general
background.
At times even physical and time proximity makes one

put together objects or targets even when they are
unrelated.
 At times people have the tendency to
perceive people, objects or events that’s
are similar to each other also as being
grouped together.
HALO EFFECT
 The Halo Effect is a well documented social-
psychology phenomenon that causes people
to be biased in their judgments by
transferring their feelings about one attribute
of something to other, unrelated, attributes.
 For example, a tall or good-looking person
will be perceived as being intelligent and
trustworthy, even though there is no logical
reason to believe that height or looks
correlate with smarts and honesty.
 The Halo Effect works both in both positive
and negative directions:
 If you like one aspect of something, you'll
have a positive predisposition toward
everything about it.
 If you dislike one aspect of something, you'll
have a negative predisposition toward
everything about it. A negative Halo Effect is
sometimes called the Devil Effect or the
Pitchfork Effect
Why Does the Halo Effect
Exist?
 The Halo Effect allows us to make snap
judgments, because we only have to consider
one aspect of a person or design in order to
"know" about all other aspects.
 We have inherited a tendency to make
(overly) fast judgments based on generalizing
from a small amount of data.
 Later work on the halo effect suggested that it was
highly influenced by first impressions. If we see a
person first in a good light, it is difficult subsequently
to darken that light.
 The old adage that “first impressions count”
seems to be true. This is used by advertisers who
pay heroic actors and beautiful actresses to
promote products about which they have
absolutely no expertise.
 We think positively about the actor because he
played a hero, or the actress because she was
made up to look incredibly beautiful, and assume
that they therefore have deep knowledge about
car engines or anti-wrinkle cream.
Attribution Theory...
 Attribution theory is concerned with how

ordinary people explain the causes of
behavior and events.
 For example, is someone angry because they
are bad-tempered or because something bad
happened?
 “Attribution theory deals with how the social
perceiver uses information to arrive at causal
explanations for events. It examines what
information is gathered and how it is
combined to form a causal judgment”.
 Heider (1958) believed that people are naive
psychologists trying to make sense of the
social world. People tend to see cause and
effect relationships, even where there is
none!
 There were two main ideas that he put
forward that became influential: dispositional
(internal cause) vs situational (external cause)
attributions.
Dispositional Attribution
 Dispositional attribution assigns the cause of

behavior to some internal characteristic of a
person, rather than to outside forces.
 When we explain the behavior of others we
look for enduring internal attributions, such
as personality traits. This is known as
the fundamental attribution error.
 For example, we attribute the behavior of a
person to their personality, motives or beliefs.
Situational Attribution
 The process of assigning the cause of

behavior to some situation or event outside a
person's control rather than to some internal
characteristic.
 When we try to explain our own behavior we
tend to make external attributions, such as
situational or environment features.

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PERCEPTION

• Cognition and cognitive process precede perception.

• Cognition is the act of knowing an item of information.

• Perception is not necessarily just what one

 Perception is the selection and organisation of

 Perception is a complex cognition

Attitude influences a person’s perception.

Unsatisfied needs or motives influence an individual’s

One’s experience in the past can also

What one sees and perceives will generally depend on

At times even physical and time proximity makes one

 Attribution theory is concerned with how

 Dispositional attribution assigns the cause of

 The process of assigning the cause of

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