The presentation discusses about perception, the process by which we interpret things around us. It mainly discusses on the meaning, characteristics, process, the perceptual mechanism and also the factors affecting our perception

2. A
PRESENTATION
ON
“PERCEPTION”
Presentation by
Jins Joseph
I MSW

3. PERCEPTION
• 1. MEANING AND THE DEFINITION
• 2. CHARACTERISTICS OF PERCEPTION
• 3. PROCESS OF PERCEPTION
• 4. PERCEPTUAL MECHANISM
• 5. FACTORS AFFECTING PERCEPTION

4. 1. MEANING AND THE DEFINITION
• From the lay man’s perspective, perception is defined as an act of
being aware of “one’s environment through physical sensation, it
means an individual’s ability to understand” (Chambers
Dictionary).
• According to Nelson and Quick “social perception is the process of
interpreting information about another person.”
• The opinions you form about another person depends on the
amount of information available to you and the extent to which you
are able to correctly interpret the information you have acquired.
• In other words, you may be in possession of the same set of
information that other people have on a particular situation, person
or group but still arrive at different conclusions due to individual
differences in the capacity to interpret the information that you all
have.

5. • Perception ranks among the important cognitive factors of
human behavior or psychological mechanism that enable
people to understand their environment.
• Perception is the process whereby people select, organize,
and interpret sensory stimulations into meaningful
information about their environment.
• There can be no behavior without perception.
• Social perception refers to constructing an understanding of
the social world from the data we get through our senses.
• Thus, perception refers to the process by which we form
impressions of other people’s traits and personalities.

6. 2. CHARACTERISTICS OF
PERCEPTION
• There can be Three major characteristics that influence our
perception
• 2.1 PERCEIVER SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTICS:
• One of the perceivers-specific factors that influence perception is
familiarity with the object of perception.
• Familiarity implies that compared to others we are better
positioned to make observations leading to better relative ability
to arrive at superior decisions about a particular situation.
• To perceive someone accurately you must have generated
accurate data on that person during the stage of observation.
• This is because the relationship between familiarity and accuracy
is not always direct.

7. • Our mood is another important factor that affects the
way we perceive. Accordingly, whenever we are in
negative moods we generally tend to form negative
impressions.
• The self-concept of the perceiver is also a critical
determinant of perception. People that possess positive
self-concepts tend to perceive positive attributes in
other people, while, those with negative self-concepts
tend to perceive negative attributes in others.

8. • 2.2 TARGET-SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTICS: One
of the most important target-specific characteristics is the
physical appearance of the perceived. Some of these
characteristics include height, weight, estimated age, race
and gender. Nonverbal Communication contains a lot of
information through which an individual is perceived.
Eye contact, facial expressions, body movements and
posture are features that guide the perceiver’s impression
of the target.
• 2.3 SITUATION-SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTICS:
This is a very significant factor that affects the impression
that is formed about someone by an individual. There are
particular situations that influence the behavior of an
individual, which do not necessarily affect the disposition
of that individual.

9. 3. PROCESS OF PERCEPTION
• THE PERCEPTUAL PROCESS: “the perceptual inputs are first
received, and then processed by the perceiver and the
resulting output becomes the lease of the behavior.”
• INPUTS: Perceived inputs are the objects, events, people,
etc. that are received by the perceiver.
• Process: The received inputs are processed through
selection, organization and interpretation.
• Outputs: Through the processing mechanism, the output
(feelings, actions, attitudes, etc.) is derived.
• Behavior: Behavior is dependent on these perceived
outputs. The perceiver’s behavior, in turn, generates
responses from the perceived and these responses give rise
to a new set of inputs.

10. 4. PERCEPTUAL MECHANISM
• The perceptual process operates repeatedly “between the perceiver
and the reality ” through three well established perceptual
mechanisms. These mechanisms are referred to as the process of
selection, organization and interpretation.
• 4.1 PERCEPTUAL SELECTION: This process occurs because the
perceiver cannot absolve everything that he/she observes about an
individual or group of people. Perceiver is exposed to numerous
stimuli. Perceiver’s first basic approach to the perceptual process is
to select those stimuli that he/she considers relevant. No individual
is capable of assimilating all his/her observations, they prefer to use
only those details that they consider relevant to avoid perceptual
overload.
• The process of selecting the relevant information is shaped by such
factors as the individuals “interests, background, experience, and
attitudes of the perceiver.” it however has the risk of producing
incorrect perceptions. Things that are bright and unusual tend to be
more easily perceived than those things that are dull and familiar.

11. • 4.2 FIGURE GROUP PRINCIPLE: This principle enables a
perceiver to distinguish factors that are significant for further
study from those factors that are unimportant and accordingly
abandoned. The meaningful details are referred to as the
“figure”, and the meaningless portions are classified as the
ground. What becomes figure is largely influenced by our needs
and expectations.
• 4.3. RELEVANCY: perceivers tend to perceive those things that
not only satisfy their “needs and desires”. They pay less
attention to or completely ignore those that threaten these needs
and desire.
• 4.4. PERCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION: This refers to the way
in which the perceiver organizes the information he receives
into meaningful pictures to the perceiver. In order to achieve the
process of organization the perceiver has to go through these
processes like grouping, closure and simplification.

12. • 4.4.1 Grouping: people and events are grouped on the
basis of similarity or proximity. Objects that have close
proximity are also grouped under one head howsoever
they unrelated. But perceptual misrepresentation can occur
when people who relate in only certain ways.
• 4.4.2. Closure: The tendency for people to “fill in the
missing gaps” in a stimuli in order to make it more
meaningful.
• 4.4.3. Simplification: Whenever perceiver receives an
information overload, they strive to simplify then for
better understanding. “Simplification is an important step
because in its absence, received stimuli remain
complicated to the perceiver.
• 4.5. Perceptual Interpretation: it is the most crucial
component of the perceptual mechanism process.
“Interpretation is subjective and judgmental process.”
Interpretation is influenced by the following factors:

13. • 4.5.1. Halo Effect: arriving at a general conclusion
from the analysis of a single personality trait. This
process is usually more often wrong than right.”
• 4.5.2. Stereotyping: (judgment) You are situating
people into categories based on their ethnic,
occupational or characteristics. Stereotyping helps the
perceiver to quickly simplify a complex world of
information. Stereotyping May not be always certain
with the actual facts which informs the basis of judging
others.
• 4.5.3. Attribution: is that attachment of cause-and-
effects to the character of an individual. Attribution is
unique in perception because it makes room for
behaviors that are similar to be viewed differently.

14. • 4.5.4 Impression: people form impressions about other
people that they are probably meeting for the first time
in their lives. Impressions are formed with little or next
to no knowledge of the character of the perceived,
which sometimes results in perceptual inaccuracies. A
well known fact is that first impressions appear to stay
longer in the mind of the perceiver unless new facts
emerge to counteract them subsequently.
• 4.5.5. Inference: the common tendencies for perceivers
to draw conclusions about others without enough
information. For instance, a person working on a
computer all day long may be judged as a focused
member of staff by the manager but this same person
may be chatting on the internet.

15. 5. FACTORS AFFECTING
PERCEPTION
• The perceptual mechanism is basically affected by two factors, namely
the internal and external.
• 5.1. Internal factors:
• 5.1.1. Needs and Desires: the perception of relatively satisfied people
differs significantly from those of frustrated individuals. “People at
different levels of needs and desires perceive the same thing differently.”
The expectations, motivations and desires of people also shape their
perception of other and situations around them.
• 5.1.2. Personality: behavior is another strong influence on what you
perceive about that individual. Optimistic people perceive the things in
favorable terms, pessimistic beings in negative terms.”
• - Thoughtful individuals do not expose by expressing extreme judgment
of others.
• - Persons who accept themselves and have faith in their individuality
perceives things favorably.
• - Self-accepting individuals perceive themselves as liked, wanted and
accepted by others.

16. CONCLUSION
• 1. Our attention, feelings and the way we act are
influenced by our environment.
• 2. Perception helps us to gather data from our
surroundings and process the data and make
sense out of it.
• 3. In perception it is sometimes difficult to
separate the information from the action.
• 4. It is basically a process of gaining mental
understanding.
• 5. Perception guides the perceiver in harnessing,
processing and channeling relevant information
towards fulfilling the perceiver’s requirements.