A VERY GOODMORNING TO YOU ALL

PERCEPTION
Concept Of Perception Perception is the cognitive process involving selecting,organising,and interpreting or attaching meaning to the events happening in the environment.

Features
Perception is the intellectual process. Perception is the basic cognitive or psychological process. Different people perceive different things according to their psychological and intellectual behaviour.

PERCEPTUAL PROCESS

Perceptual Organization
Perceptual organization deals with the manner in which selected stimuli are organized in order to make sense out of them. People organize the various stimuli on the principles of figureground,grouping,simplification and closure.

Principles
Figure ground: People tend to organise information on what is known as the figure ground principle.In this more attention is paid to phenomena which have been kept as figure and less attention is paid to phenomena kept in background. Grouping: people have a tendency to group several stimuli into recognisable pattern.people generally group various stimuli on the basis of proximity or similarity.

 Proximity:The proximity or nearness principle of grouping states that a group of stimuli that are close together will be perceived as a whole of parts or pattern of parts belonging together. For eg. All employees working in a particular department may be grouped together because of physical proximity.

 Similarity: The principle of similarity states that the greater the similarity of the stimuli greater is the tendency to perceive them as a common group. For eg All the workers may be perceived to have the same opinions about the management because they are grouped together on the basis of similarity.

 Simplification: whenever people are overloaded with information, they try to simplify it to make it more meaningful and understandable.simplifaction makes the things more understandable because the perceiver has been to reduce the complexity by eliminating some of the things which are less important.

 Closure: When faced with incomplete information,people fill up the gaps themselves to the information meaningful.For eg When managers have to make promotion decisions, they may not have complete information about the suitability of an employee for a higher position. In such cases, they rely more on the past records of the employee.

INTERPERSONAL PERCEPTION
As we discussed perceptual selectivity and perceptual organisation holds true for any stimulus situation, persons or others. This situation puts emphasis on interpersonal perception in which the perceiver perceives another person and the latter becomes a stimulus for perception. There are certain factors which influence the interpersonal perception.

FACTORS OF IMPERSONAL PERCEPTION ARE:

Factors in perceiver, Factors in perceived, Situational factors. FACTORS IN PERCEIVER: the person tries to perceive the other person according to his own personality, his mental set,attribution,first impression, halo effect and stereotyping.

Personality: personality influences perception because of two reasons: The perceiver tries to project his personality attributes in others known as projection. The perceiver tries to fit his attitudes,beliefs,expectations to reality known as the process of selfulfilling prophecies.

 Mental set: The person tries to perceive the other person according to his/her mental set or given situation.Suppose you are contestant in a track meet and are positioning yourself in your starting blocks as you hear the prepratory commands,Get ready,Get set.when you hear the command u take off at once since you are already set.

 Attribution : Attribution is the process by which individuals interpret events as being caused by particular aspects in the setting around them.Attribution of causes for events influences perception.For eg.:If a person is bypassed in promotion,he may attribute the reason of his bypassing in terms that others have been promoted not because of their ability but because of their being close with high ups.

 First impression:It is very common that people evaluate on the basis of first impression.The evaluation based first impression may be correct if it is based on adequate and significant evidence.Since first impression evaluation is not based on adequate information,it may not be true reflection of people being perceived.

 Halo effect:The halo in such a case serves as a screen, keeping the perceiver away from actually seeing the trait he is judging The halo error is very similar to sterotyping except that in sterotyping the person is perceived according to a single category,whereas under the halo effect, the person is perceived on the basis of one trait or event.

 Stereo typing: Stereotyping occurs when the perceiver perceives a person on the basis of characterstics of the group to which he belongs.The person is not perceived as an individual.For eg. There are certain stereotyping at the international level like: Americans are materialistics and ambitious,Japanese are industrious etc.In perception individuals belonging to a particular class are likely to be perceived on the basis of characterstics of the class to which they belong.

FACTORS IN PERSON PERCEIVED

TWO SUCH FACTORS ARE MORE COMMON: Status of the person. Visibility of his traits.

 Status:The target person may be perceived on the basis of his status and not on the basis of his actual characterstics.Thus a person having high status may be perceived to have many desirable qualities as compared to a person having low status.This may not be true.

 Visibility of traits: There are many traits which are not visible on surface,such as Honesty,loyalty etc.In such cases evaluation is to be made on the basis of ones own experience which may not be correct.

SITUATIONAL FACTORS
Situational factors also influence the perception.There may be structured of the place indicating the characterstics of person occupying it.Thus a person is likely to be perceived by a place. For eg.A person is perceived differently if he meets with other in a five star hotel as compared to an ordinary place.