PERCEPTION

AJAY SOLKHE
Assistant Professor
University School of Management,KUK
ajay_solkhe@rediffmail.com
What Is Perception, and Why Is It
Important?
The process by which people SELECT, ORGANIZE,
INTERPRET, RETRIEVE, and RESPOND to
information.
It is the mental function of giving significance to
stimuli such as SHAPES,COLOURS,
MOVEMENT.TASTE, SOUNDS,TOUCH, SMELLS, PAIN,
PRESSURES AND FEELINGS.
Perception give rise to individual behavioural
responses to particular situations.
Despite the fact that a group of people may
‘physically see’ the same thing, they each have their
own version of what is seen –their perceived view of
reality.
5–3
Perceptual
Perceptual
information
informationisis
gathered
gatheredfrom:
from:
•• --Sight.
Sight.
•• --Hearing.
••People’s
People’s behavior
behavior isis
Hearing.
based
based on
on their
their
•• --Touch.
Touch. perception
perception of of what
what
•• --Taste.
Taste. reality
reality is,
is, not
not on
on
•• --Smell. reality
Smell. reality itself.
itself.
••The
The world
world asas itit isis
perceived
perceived isis the
the worldworld
that
that isis behaviorally
behaviorally
important.
important.
 What is the PERCEPTUAL PROCESS?

 Stages of the perceptual process.

– Information Attention and Selection.

– Organization of Information.

– Information Interpretation.

– Information Retrieval.
 STAGE 1
Information Attention and Selection
• Why do we attend to certain stimuli not
to others ?
• Two Factors are responsible for this:
– Internal/Psychological Factors (Factors
related with the perceiver)
– External (factors related with the Situation
and Target)
Factors
That
Influence
Perception

5–7
What do you see ?
– Selective screening.
• Lets in only a tiny proportion all the
information that bombards a
person.
– Two types of selective screening.
• Controlled processing.
• Screening without perceiver’s
conscious awareness.
 STAGE 2
Organization of information.
– Schemas.
• Cognitive frameworks that represent
organized knowledge about a given
concept or stimulus developed through
experience.
– Types of schemas.
• Self schemas.
• Person schemas.
• Script schemas.
• Person-in-situation schemas.
 GESTALT’S PRINCIPLES Of ORGANIZING

• Acc to Gestalt School of Psychology led by

Max Wertheimer the following principles are
used for organizing the perceptual information:

– FIGURE AND GROUND

– GROUPING

– CLOSURE
• FIGURE AND GROUND :
– It states that figures are seen against a
background. These relationships is reversible .For
Ex Textiles.
• GROUPING:
– It refers to the tendency to organise shapes and
patterns instantly into meaningful groupings or
patterns on the basis of their proximity/similarity.
• CLOSURE
– This is a tendency to complete an incomplete figure
–to (mentally) fill in the gaps and to perceive the
figure as an whole. This create an overall
meaningful image, rather than an uncorrected
series of lines or blobs.
What do you see ?
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WHICH OF THE CENTRE ,BLACK CIRCLES IS THE LARGER –A/B ?
WHICH OF THE THREE IS THE TALLEST ?
 STAGE 3
Information interpretation.

– Uncovering the reasons behind the ways

stimuli are grouped.
– People may interpret the same information
differently or make different attributions
about information.
 STAGE 4
Information retrieval.

– Attention and selection, organization,

and interpretation are part of memory.
– Information stored in memory must be
retrieved in order to be used.
Response to the perceptual process.

– Thoughts.

– Feelings.

– Actions.
 COMMON
PERCEPTUAL DISTORTIONS
Or
FREQUENTLY USED SHORTCUTS
in Judging Others

– Stereotypes
– Halo effects.
– Selective perception.
– Projection.
– Contrast effects.
– Self-fulfilling prophecy.
 STEREOTYPES
– Combines information based on the
category or class to which a person,
situation, or object belongs.
– Strong impact at the organization stage.

– Individual differences are

obscured/unclear/ not visible.
 HALO EFFECTS.

– Occur when one attribute of a person

or situation is used to develop an
overall impression of the individual or
situation.
– Likely to occur in the organization
stage.
– Individual differences are obscured.
– Important in the performance
appraisal process.
 SELECTIVE PERCEPTION.

– The tendency to single out those aspects of

a situation, person, or object that are
consistent with one’s needs, values, or
attitudes.
– Strongest impact is at the attention stage.
– Perception checking with other persons
can help counter the adverse impact of
selective perception.
 PROJECTION

– The assignment of one’s personal

attributes to other individuals.
– Especially likely to occur in
interpretation stage.
– Projection can be controlled through a
high degree of self-awareness and
empathy.
 CONTRAST EFFECTS.

– Occur when an individual is compared to

other people on the same characteristics

on which the others rank higher or
lower.
 SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY
– The tendency to create or find in another
situation or individual that which one
expected to find.
– Also called the “Pygmalion effect.”
– Can have either positive or negative
outcomes.
– Managers should adopt positive and
optimistic approaches to people at work.
 How can the perceptual
process be managed?
 IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT.
– A person’s systematic attempt to behave in ways
that create and maintain desired impressions in
others’ eyes.
– Successful managers:
• Use impression management to enhance their own
images.
• Are sensitive to other people’s use of impression
management.
 Distortion management.
– Managers should:
• Balance automatic and controlled information
processing at the attention and selection stage.
• Broaden their schemas at the organizing stage.
• Be attuned to attributions at the interpretation
stage.
 PERSON PERCEPTION:
Making Judgments About Others
Attribution Theory
When individuals
observe behavior, they
attempt to determine
whether it is internally
or externally caused.

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 Attribution theory aids in perceptual interpretation by
focusing on how people attempt to:
– Understand the causes of a certain event.
– Assess responsibility for the outcomes of the event.
– Evaluate the personal qualities of the people
involved in the event.
 Internal versus external attributions of causes of
behavior.
– Internal causes are under the individual’s control.

– External causes are within the person’s

environment.
Factors influencing Internal and External Attributions.

Distinctiveness:
Distinctiveness shows
Distinctiveness
Distinctiveness: shows different
differentbehaviors
behaviors
in
indifferent
differentsituations.
situations.
Consensus:
Consensus response
Consensus
Consensus: response isis the the same
same asas
others
otherstotosame
samesituation.
situation.
Consistency:
Consistency responds
Consistency
Consistency: responds in in the
the same
same way
way
over
overtime.
time.
ATTRIBUTION THEORY 5–32
 Errors and Biases in
Attributions
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.

5–33
 Errors and Biases in
Attributions (cont’d)
Self-Serving Bias
The tendency for
individuals to attribute
their own successes to
internal factors while
putting the blame for
failures on external
factors.

5–34
 Specific Applications in
• Organizations
Employment Interview
– Perceptual biases of raters affect the accuracy of
interviewers’ judgments of applicants.
• Performance Expectations
– Self-fulfilling prophecy (PYGMALION EFFECT): The
lower or higher performance of employees reflects
preconceived leader expectations about employee
capabilities.
• Ethnic Profiling
– A form of stereotyping in which a group of individuals
is singled out—typically on the basis of race or ethnicity
—for intensive inquiry, scrutinizing, or investigation .
5–35
 Specific Applications in
Organizations (cont’d)
• Performance Evaluations
– Appraisals are often the subjective
(judgmental) perceptions of appraisers of
another employee’s job performance.
• Employee Effort
– Assessment of individual effort is a subjective
judgment subject to perceptual distortion and
bias.

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