Perception

Perception is our sensory experience of the world around us and involves both recognizing environmental stimuli and actions in response to these stimuli. Through the perceptual process, we gain information about the properties and elements of the environment that are critical to our survival. Perception not only creates our experience of the world around us; it allows us to act within our environment.

Perception includes the five senses; touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste. It also includes what is known as proprioception, a set of senses involving the ability to detect changes in body positions and movements. It also involves the cognitive processes required to process information, such as recognizing the face of a friend or detecting a familiar scent.

Perceptual Process

The perceptual process is a sequence of steps that begins with the environment and leads to our perception of a stimulus and action in response to the stimulus. This process is continual, but you do not spend a great deal of time thinking about the actual process that occurs when you perceive the many stimuli that surround you at any given moment.

The process of transforming the light that falls on your retinas into an actual visual image happens unconsciously and automatically. The subtle changes in pressure against your skin that allow you to feel objects occur without a single thought.

In order to fully understand how the perception process works, we’ll start by breaking down each step.

Steps in the Perceptual Process

1. The Environmental Stimulus
2. The Attended Stimulus
3. The Image on the Retina
4. Transduction
5. Neural Processing
6. Perception
7. Recognition
8. Action

• The Environmental Stimulus

  The world is full of stimuli that can attract our attention through various senses. The environmental stimulus is everything in our environment that has the potential to be perceived. This might include anything that can be seen, touched, tasted, smelled, or heard. It might also involve the sense of proprioception, such as the movements of the arms and legs or the change in position of the body in relation to objects in the environment.

For example, imagine that you are out on a morning jog at your local park. As you perform your workout, there are a wide variety of environmental stimuli that might capture your attention. The tree branches are swaying in the slight breeze; a man is out on the grass playing fetch with his Golden Retriever; a car drives past with the windows rolled down and the music blaring; a duck splashes in a nearby pond. All of these things represent environmental stimuli and serve as a starting point for the perceptual process.

• The Attended Stimulus

The attended stimulus is the specific object in the environment on which our attention is focused. In many cases, we might focus on stimuli that are familiar to us, such as the face of a friend in a crowd of strangers at the local coffee shop. In other instances, we are likely to attend to stimuli that have some degree of novelty.

From our earlier example, let’s imagine that during your morning jog you focus your attention on the duck floating in the nearby pond. The duck represents the attended stimulus. During the next step of the perceptual process, the visual process will progress.

• The Image on the Retina

Next, the attended stimulus is formed as an image on the retina. The first part of this process involves the light actually passing through the cornea and pupil and onto the lens of the eye. The cornea helps focus the light as it enters the eye, and the iris of the eye controls the size of the pupils in order to determine how much light to let in. The cornea and lens act together to project an inverted image onto the retina.

As you might already be aware, the image on the retina is actually upside down from the actual image in the environment. At this stage of the perceptual process, this is not terribly important. The image has still not been perceived, and this visual information will be changed even more dramatically in the next step of the process.

• Transduction

The image on the retina is then transformed into electrical signals in a process known as transduction. This allows the visual messages to be transmitted to the brain to be interpreted. The retina contains many photoreceptor cells. These cells contain proteins known as rods and cones. Rods are primarily for seeing things in low light, while cones are associated with detecting color and shapes at normal light levels.

The rods and cones contain a molecule called retinal, which is responsible for transducing the light into visual signals that are then transmitted via nerve impulses.

• Neural Processing

The electrical signals then undergo neural processing. The path followed by a particular signal depends on what type of signal it is (i.e. an auditory signal or a visual signal). Through the series of interconnecting neurons located throughout the body, electrical signals are propagated from the receptors cells to the brain. In our previous example, the image of a duck floating in the pond is received as a light on the retina, which is then transduced into an electrical signal and then processed through the neurons in the visual network. In the next step of the perceptual process, you will actually perceive the stimuli and become aware of its presence in the environment.

• Perception

  In the next step of the perception process, we actually perceive the stimulus object in the environment. It is at this point that we become consciously aware of the stimulus.

Let’s consider our previous example, in which we imagined that you were out for a morning jog in the park. At the perception stage, you have become aware that there is something out on the pond to perceive. Now, it is one thing to be aware of stimuli in the environment, and quite another to actually become fully consciously aware of what we have perceived. In the next stage of the perceptual process, we will sort the perceived information into meaningful categories.

• Recognition

Perception doesn’t just involve becoming consciously aware of the stimuli. It is also necessary for our brain to categorize and interpret what it is we are sensing. Our ability to interpret and give meaning to the object is the next step, known as recognition.

Continuing our example, it is at the recognition stage of the perceptual process that you realize that there is a duck floating on the water. The recognition stage is an essential part of perception since it allows us to make sense of the world around us. By placing objects in meaningful categories, we are able to understand and react to the world around us.

• Action

The final step of the perceptual process involves some sort of action in response to the environmental stimulus. This could involve a variety of actions, such as turning your head for a closer look or turning away to look at something else.

The action phase of perceptual development involves some type of motor activity that occurs in response to the perceived and recognized stimulus. This might involve a major action, like running toward a person in distress, or something as subtle as blinking your eyes in response to a puff of dust blowing through the air.

Halo Effect

The halo effect is a type of cognitive bias in which our overall impression of a person influences how we feel and think about his or her character. Essentially, your overall impression of a person (“He is nice!”) impacts your evaluations of that person’s specific traits (“He is also smart!”). Perceptions of a single trait can carry over to how people perceive other aspects of that person. One great example of the halo effect in action is our overall impression of celebrities. Since people perceive them as attractive, successful, and often likable, they also tend to see them as intelligent, kind, and funny.

The halo effect is also something referred to as the ‘physical attractiveness stereotype’ and the ‘what is beautiful is also good’ principle.

Physical appearance is often a major part of the halo effect. People who are considered attractive tend to be rated higher on other positive traits as well.

However, this effect does not affect our perceptions of people based on their attractiveness. It can also encompass other traits as well. People who are sociable or kind, for example, may also be seen as more likable and intelligent. The halo effect makes it so that perceptions of one quality lead to biased judgments of other qualities.

The term itself uses the analogy of a halo to describe how this can affect perceptions. In religious art, a halo is often portrayed over a saint’s head, bathing the individual in a heavenly light to show that that person is good.

When you see someone through the lens of the halo effect, you are seeing them cast in a similar light. That “halo” created by your perception of one characteristic covers them in the same way.

Stereotyping

Stereotyping was first used by typographers to make blocks of type and was first used to describe bias in person perception by Walter Lip Mann in 1922. The concept refers simply to the way in which we group together people who seem to us to share similar characteristics. Lip Mann saw stereotypes as `pictures in the head’, as simple, mental images of groups and their behavior. So, when we meet an accountant, a nurse, a lecturer, an engineer, a poet or an actor, we attribute certain personality traits to them because they are accountants, or engineers or whatever. There is a consensus about the traits possessed by the members of these categories. Yet in reality, there is often a discrepancy between the agreed-upon traits of each category and the actual traits of the members. In other words, not all engineers carry calculators and are coldly rational, nor are all personnel managers do-gooders who are trying to keep
workers happy. On the contrary, there are individual differences and a great deal of variability among members of these groups. In spite of this, other organization members commonly make blanket perceptions and behave accordingly.

PERCEPTION: ERRORS AND REMEDIES

The main sources of errors in perception include the following:

• Not collecting enough information about other people.
•  Basing our judgments on information that is irrelevant or insignificant.
• Seeing what we expect to see and what we want to see and not investigating further.
• Allowing early information about someone to affect our judgment despite later and contradictory information.
• Accepting stereotypes uncritically.
• Allowing our own characteristics to affect what we see in others and how we judge them.
• Attempting to decode non-verbal behavior outside the context in which it appears.
• Basing attributions on flimsy and potentially irrelevant evidence. Thus, it is clear that errors in perception can be overcome by:
• Taking more time and avoiding instant or `snap’ judgments about others.
• Collecting and consciously using more information about other people.
• Developing self-awareness and an understanding of how our personal biases are preferences affect our perceptions and judgments of other people.
• Checking our attributions – particularly the links we make between aspects of personality and appearance on the one hand and behavior on the other.

Therefore, it can be said that if we are to improve our understanding of others, we must first have a well-developed knowledge of ourselves — our strengths, our preferences, our weaknesses, and our biases. The development of self-knowledge can be an uncomfortable process. In organizational settings, we are often constrained in the expression of our feelings (positive and negative) about other people due to social or cultural norms and to the communication barriers erected by status and power differentials. This may in part explain the enduring emphasis in recent years on training courses in social and interpersonal skills, self-awareness and personal growth.
Adrian Furnham (1997) argues that the process of making evaluations, judgments or ratings of the performance of employees is subject to a number of systematic perception errors. This is particularly problematic in a performance appraisal context.

These are:
• Central tendency: Appraising everyone in the middle of the rating scale.
• Contrast error: Basing an appraisal on comparison with other employees rather than on established performance criteria.
• Different from me: Giving a poor appraisal because the person has qualities or characteristics not possessed by the appraiser.
• Halo effect: Appraising an employee undeservedly on one quality (performance, for example) because s/he is perceived highly by the appraiser on another quality (attractiveness).
• Horn effect: The opposite of the halo effect. Giving someone a poor appraisal on one quality (attractiveness) influences poor rating on other qualities. (performance).
• Initial impression: Basing an appraisal on first impressions rather than on how the person has behaved throughout the period to which appraisal relates.
• Latest behavior: Basing an appraisal on the person’s recent behavior.
• Lenient or generous rating: Perhaps the most common error, being consistently generous in appraisal mostly to avoid conflict.
• Performance dimension error: Giving someone a similar appraisal on two distinct but similar qualities, because they happen to follow each other on the appraisal form.
• Same as me: Giving a good appraisal because the person has qualities or characteristics possessed by the appraiser. Spillover effect: Basing this appraisal, good or bad, on the results of the previous appraisal rather than on how the person has behaved during the appraisal period.
• Status effect: Giving those in higher-level positions consistently better appraisals than those in lower-level jobs.
• Strict rating: Being consistently harsh in appraising performance.