Perception – Meaning, Definition, Process and Influencing Factors

Meaning and Definition of Perception

Perception can be defined as a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. Perception is not just what one sees with eyes. It is a much more complex process by which an individual selectively absorbs or assimilates the stimuli in the environment, cognitively organizes the perceived information in a specific fashion and then interprets the information to make an assessment about what people select, organize, and interpret or attach meaning to events happening in the environment. Since perception is subjective process, different people may perceive the same environment differently based on what particular aspects of the situation they choose. For example, some employees may perceive the work place as great if it has favorable working conditions, good pay. Others may perceive it as great if it has challenging assignments and opportunity to grow. Managers should sharpen their perceptual skills so that they are as close to perceiving people, events, and objects as they truly are. When “misperception” occurs due to perceptual errors and distortion, managers are bound to make poor or improper decision.

Perception is process through which short-run changes are made in behavior in response to inputs from work environment. The process itself consists of two major actions – i) attention to incoming stimuli and ii) translation of such stimuli into a message that leads to a meaningful behavioral response. Perception is form of behavior and, therefore, influenced by at least the following factors: i) characteristics of the object or source of incoming stimuli (such as a supervisor issuing work request); ii) the situation or conditions under which the stimuli occur (such as timing of a message) and iii) characteristics of the perceiving person. The last category is extremely important in determining the way incoming stimuli will be interpreted and subsequent response. An individual’s motives, previous learning and personality will influence perception. Managers must take such consideration into account in predicting the way their actions and order will be perceived by others.

Stages of Perception Process

1. Observation Phase – It depicts the environmental stimuli being observed by the fives senses of the perceived
2. Selection of the Stimuli: This is governed both by factors external to the perceived, such as the characteristics of the stimulus, and internal to the individual, such as the personality disposition and motivations of the perceiver.
3. Organizing Stage – In this stage, the perceiver is influenced by figure and ground, grouping, and several perceptual errors such as stereotyping halo effects, projection and perceptual defense.
4. Interpretation Stage: This stage is governed by the perceiver’s assumptions of people and events and attributions about causes of behavior and feelings.
5. Behavior Response: In this stage the response of the perceiver takes on both covert and overt characteristics. Covert response will be reflected in the attitudes, motives, and feelings of the perceiver and overt responses will be reflected in the actions of the individual.

Factors Influencing Perception

Several factors influence how we process the perceptual inputs and transform them into outputs. There are three broad categories:

1. Characteristics of Perceiver,
2. Characteristics of Target, and
3. Characteristics of Situation.

Characteristics of Perceiver:

A person’s needs and motives, self-concept, past experience, emotional state, and personality aspects strongly influence the perceptual process.

• Needs and Motives: Unsatisfied needs or motives stimulate individuals and may exert a strong influence on their perception. For examples, two groups of subjects – One group who is deprived of food for about 24 hours and the other group which had food enough were shown the blurred pictures and asked to explain the contents. The first group perceived the blurred image as food far more frequently than the other group. People needs and motives thus play a big part in the perceptual process.
• Self Concept: It refers how a person perceives himself/herself which in turn influence his or her perception of the world around them. If a person perceives himself as incompetent, then he perceives the world as threatening. On the other hand, if he feels himself as confident and capable, he will perceive everything around as friendly.
• Attitudes: The preferences and likingness affects ones perception. A lecturer, who likes bigger class, feels comfortable in a lecture session which has more than hundred students. Another lecturer, who likes small class with a lot of questions, may not be so comfortable in such big classes.
• Interests: Individual’s focus of attention is also influenced by the interests of people. A plastic surgeon will more likely to notice an imperfect nose than a plumber. Because of our individual interests differ considerably, what one person notices in a situation, can differ from what other person perceives.
• Past experiences: Individuals past experiences also influence in molding ones perception. For example if one has had problem responding to examination questions in the past, he or she will tend to perceive even simple, straightforward examination question as tricky. Likewise, if a person was betrayed by a couple of friends, he or she would never venture to cultivate new friendship in future.
• Psychological or Emotional State: If an individual is depressed, he or she is likely to perceive the same situation differently from the other person who is at the extreme level of excitement or happiness. If a person has been scared of seeing a snake in the garden, she is likely to perceive a rope under the bed as a snake. Thus, the emotional and psychological states of an individual also influence the perceptual process and the different types of interpretation of the situation.
• Expectation: Expectations can also distort the perceptual process. If a person expects police officers to be more authoritative and dictatorial, he or she may perceive them as if they are rough and tough regardless of the Police Officers actual traits.
• New Experience: If a person experiences something new, that is more likely to grab attention than the objects or events that has been experienced before. For example, a person is more likely to notice the operations along an assembly line if this is first time that person has seen an assembly line. In 1970’s women police officers are highly visible because traditionally Police Officers positions were predominantly held by males.
• Personality Characteristics: There is a strong relationship between personality factors and perception. For example, secure people tend to perceive others as warm supportive than those, who are more cold and indifferent. Similarly, self-accepting persons perceive others as lining and accepting them. Those who are not self-accepting tend to distrust others. Insecure, thoughtless or non self-accepting persons are less likely to perceive themselves and those around them accurately. In all probabilities, they are likely to distort, misinterpret or in other ways defensively perceive the situation

Characteristics of Target:

The ways things are organized around us are greatly influencing the perceptual process.

Some of the typical characteristics include bright color, noise; novel objects, bigger unusual size, moving objects, status, appearance, contrast, intensity, repetition etc. catch people attention. For example, an unusual noise raised by a person, a strong beam of light suddenly flashed, a very handsome, attractive person among a group of clumsy people, a red light against the black background, an unusually obese person amidst a group of slim people etc.

• Organization of Target: People tend to organize the various parts of elements in the environment as a meaningful whole. Such organizing activity is a cognitive process and those are based on Gestalt Principles. The following are the six Gestalt Principles – Figure and Ground, Proximity, Similarity, Closure, Continuation.
• Figure and Ground: What a person observes is dependent on how a central figure is being separated from its background. This implies that the perceived object or person or event stands out distinct from its background and occupies the cognitive space of the individual. In a dance programme, the spectators’ tend to perceive the dance performance against the back ground music, backdrop setup etc. The perceiver thus tends to organize only the information which stands out in the environment which seems to be significant to the individual.
• Proximity: People tend to perceive things, which are nearer to each other, as together as group rather than separately. If four or five members are standing together, we tend to assume that they are belonging to same group rather than as separately. As a result of physical proximity, we often put together objects or events or people as one group even though they are unrelated. Employees in a particular section are seen as group.
• Similarity: Persons, objects or events that are similar to each other also tend to be grouped together. This organizing mechanism helps us to deal with information in an efficiently way rather than getting bogged down and confused with too many details. For examples, if we happen to see a group of foreign nationals at an International seminar, Indians are grouped as one group, British as another, Americans as yet another based on the similarity of nationalities.
• Closure: In many situation, the information what we intend to get may be in bits and pieces and not fully complete in all respects. However, we tend to fill up the gaps in the missing parts and making it as meaningful whole. Such mental process of filling up the missing element is called as closure. For example, while giving promotions to the staff members, the managers will try to get full information to make an effective decision, in absence of getting complete information, managers try to make meaningful assumptions and based on that suitable decision will be made.

Characteristics of the Situation:

The context at which the incident is occurring can influence the perceptual process. The physical, social, organizational settings, time etc. can influence how we interpret the stimuli. For example, late coming of subordinate at birthday party may be ignored but treated him as an important guests by the manager, but at same time, the same person’s late coming to an important official meeting will be viewed as seriously and manager may issue a memo seeking his explanation. Thus, the location of an event, the social context in which takes place, timing and the roles played by the actors play a significant part in how we interpret the situation.