You may have heard the phrase, "Perception is reality."
Perhaps another way to look at it is that perception is the lens through
which we view reality,
as it relates to things, people, concepts, and ourselves.
Ingrid Bergman, a Swedish actress popular in the 1940’s, observed that,
“It’s not whether you really cry. It’s whether the audience thinks you are crying.”
So, in reality, perception is everything.
This lecture focuses on the basics of perception,
specifically some key definitions and the basic stages.
When you perceive something, your five senses gather data,
and then you figure out what that data mean.
When you focus that perceptual process on people,
assigning meaning based upon verbal and nonverbal cues,
it's called "interpersonal perception."
One study that looked at pairs of communicators, however,
concluded that each communicator was able to interpret or explain
just 25 to 50 percent of the other person's behavior,
which is why you may find yourself pleading, "Look at it from my perspective..."
Understanding interpersonal perception can help us become more aware of why
we view and evaluate others,
as well as how they might be evaluating us.
And we might also be able to affect others' perceptions of ourselves.
Perception occurs in the decoding component at the basic communication model.
It could be Passive (you perceive things without conscious effort
because your senses are operating)
or Active (you seek out specific information through
conscious observation and questioning.
Think about the difference as
active perception being based upon motivation, while passive is based upon
your senses doing what they are designed to do.
For example, when you walk around campus, you will likely perceive
other students milling around heading in various directions.
You are engaging in Passive perception.
But if you want coffee and and notice
someone walking out of a building carrying a hot beverage cup,
and you simultaneously sniff the air to see if you can detect the aroma of
freshly-brewed coffee,
you are engaging in Active perception. You are motivated to notice,
or perceive, your surroundings.
There are three basic stages in the perceptual process:
First, your brain selects from among, all the information your senses have gathered,
then your brain has to organize that information so that, finally,
you can interpret that information
or try to make it make sense to you.
Some scholars add additional stages, such as memory, recall, response, and negotiation,
but we will focus on these first three stages.
Think about playing a game of cards:
First you have to get the cards to play. They can be given to you
(passive perception) or you can select them (active perception).
And in some games, such as Hearts, you may do both.
Then you have to organize them to determine what you have.
Depending upon the game, you may group cards of the same denomination together,
set them up in a run such as 3,4,5
or something similar. If you're playing a card game like Rummy, for example,
you may end up constantly rearranging your cards.
Because it is only when you have organized your cards
that you can now interpret them or determine what they mean.
Do you have a good hand or bad hand?
Then you do something with that interpretation,
such as figure out your strategy on how to play that hand.
Let's start with selection,
where your brain pays attention to the information your senses have gathered.
There are a few key terms you should know:
First, selective perception means that we perceive things due to a variety of factors,
such as our personalities, beliefs, cultures, experiences, etc.
As a college professor, for example, my perception of appropriate work attire
is likely different than that of a high-powered IBM executive.
When you focus on specific stimuli while ignoring others,
such as when you're driving, that's selective attention.
We engage in selective exposure when we limit what we allow ourselves to be exposed to.
Many people, for example, are surprised when their favorite political candidate doesn't win
because virtually everyone they talked to said they were voting for that candidate.
Well, we tend to associate with people who hold similar beliefs,
so we select who and what we are exposed to.
Finally, selective recall refers to what we remember--or recall--
and what we do not. Oftentimes we repress bad memories,
but we may also block out or forget the good stuff or things we didn't consider
to be relevant at the time.
There is no way we can pay attention to all the stimuli around us--
there is too much going on--so we select what we will attend to or ignore--
selective attention--based upon several factors:
We tend to notice stimuli that are intense: someone who speaks loudly
or wears bright colors draws our attention.
You likely also notice something or someone, like a classmate,
if you are exposed to it multiple times-- repetition.
Advertisers are aware of this factor ,which is why they air commercials multiple times.
We also select based upon contrast or change.
Unchanging things or people become less noticeable to us.
If you wear cologne, for example ,you likely don't notice it after a while and may
reapply it, thinking that it's worn off.
Once stimuli become familiar to us, we stop.noticing them,
a process called "habituation."
So we tend to notice things that are different,
even if we can't put our finger on exactly what that difference is,
like when someone gets a haircut or a new pair of glasses.
If you're hungry, you're motivated to notice food. Looking for a relationship?
You are motivated to observe people and the behaviors that hint that they are--
or not--eligible.
Related to motives, we also pay attention information that were interested in.
Notice that, at a party where multiple people are holding conversations,
you switch between who and what you're listening to based upon what you find interesting.
Or you buy a car that you think is unique only to discover that there are
really lots of them on the road--
they were there before; you just didn't select them.
And we select based upon what we think we need to know. When my husband is driving,
I don't pay much attention to what's happening on the road ,
but when my newly-licensed daughter is behind the wheel,
I have to stop myself from hyperventilating because I notice everything.
We may not be able to select some stimuli due to physiological limitations--
humans can't see bacteria, for example, which may lead us to believe our hands
are clean when, in fact, they are not.
But we also have physiological limitations as individuals.
I wear corrective lenses and, without them,
I am not only unable to read certain things, sometimes
I can't even see or select them.
Take the back to a five dollar bill, for example.
Until someone showed me, I was unable to see the names of the states on the top of
the Lincoln Memorial.
I thought they were just decorative lines.
I had to use a magnifying glass, but, lo and behold,
they really are there.
So I was unable to select the stimuli due to my physiological limitations.
And, finally, sometimes we see just what we expect to see.
You may have seen this example before, but read these out loud very quickly:
here's the first ...
and the second ...
... and the third.
if you're like most people. you likely read all of these incorrectly.
"Paris in the the Springtime."
"Once in a a lifetime," and
"Bird in the the hand."
You didn't expect to see the double word, so you didn't.
One more quick example:
How many F's do you see in this?
Stop the video and count.
if you're like most people you likely saw...
...three.
In fact, there are six.
This is what likely happened:
first you saw the two F's in "Finished Files."
In most cases, you would probably stop there.
But this is an exercise in perception so your expectation is that there must be more.
Then you saw the f in "scientific" and stopped there.
You selected what you expected to see...
but you likely missed the three other f's in
"of"...
and "of"...
All of these examples have allowed you the perfect opportunity to select data--
you knew you were being tested, so you were motivated to look
and you had as much time as you needed, and you still likely had difficulties with selection.
Just think about what happens when you select data in interpersonal perception.
In the second stage, organization,
your brain takes the information your senses have selected
and arranges it in a meaningful way, so that in the next stage,
you can interpret it.
We impose the familiar on the unfamiliar.
When you play cards, do you arrange or organize your cards in your hand the same way,
regardless up which game you're playing?
No...
because that makes it difficult for you to take the next step doing something
with that information.
There are certain principles, or rules, our brains follow organizing information.
Let's look first at the concept of figure-ground.
The classical example is Rubin's vase.
When you look at this picture,
you might notice the base first, and
then the two faces, or vice versa.
But notice that, unless you've done this before, when you focus on the vase,
the two faces kinda fade away, becoming the background
In this case, the vases is the figure, while everything else becomes the ground.
Unless we've been trained, it's very hard to pay attention to
both the figure and the ground simultaneously.
Remember we said that you can select based upon interest,
as when you switch which conversation you pay attention to?
The conversation you are currently listening to would be the figure,
while the previous conversation would fade into the ground.
Let me explain why this step is so important.
Remember that the three basic steps in the perceptual process are
selection, organization, and next, interpretation.
How you organize what you've selected
contributes to your interpretation.
Looking at this tree... Would you describe it is as big tree or a little tree?
Okay.. how about now? Is it a big or little?
And now?
Notice that your interpretation of the tree's size depends upon the background
Your interpretation of something may depend upon what you were
not consciously paying attention to.
Let's get back to some other methods we use to organize
With so much stimuli competing for our attention, we tend to group
or categorize so that we can later make sense of it.
For example, we may group people or things based upon proximity.
Here your brain likely automatically groups this into three sets of parallel lines,
rather than as six separate lines.
You are organizing based upon proximity.
Scientists have used the term, "Perceptual Schema" to refer to the way we organize
our perceptions about people.
Pretend you're describing your mother to someone.
You might describe her physically, such as young, tall, Hispanic, pretty, etc.
If you mention that she's your mother, you are describing one of the roles that she performs.
You categorize her based upon social positions including, perhaps, her employment status.
If you describe how she interacts with others, or her social behaviors,
you might say that she is friendly, polite, sarcastic, or has a wicked sense of humor.
If you put on your Sigmund Freud hat, you could describe her via
her psychological traits,such as curious, competent, or neurotic.
Once we categorize, we link or connect those categories together.
Another way to look at this is the process of what some scholars have called, "punctuation."
Think of your English classes.
This sentence takes on a completely different meaning
when we add punctuation marks.
Take this series of eleven numbers: you are more likely to interpret it as a telephone number
if you punctuated this way--
especially if you're from the United States.
in England, however, telephone numbers are punctuated differently.
the typical example is a running argument between a husband and a wife.
the husband complains that his wife is nagging him while the wife responds
that she's only nagging because he has been is withdrawing.
Like the chicken-and-egg debate, the determination of what causes a behavior
is based upon how you punctuate it.
When does the event begin?
Or end?
Or, for that matter, what behaviors do you categorize as relevant to the situation?
Most the time we have incomplete data with which to organize.
In order to move to the next step interpretation, we want closure,
so we fill in the gaps.
Look at this group of ink blots.
based upon proximity, and imposing the familiar on the unfamiliar,
you will likely complete the picture in your mind to conclude that it is the dog .
Similarly, depending upon which way you look at this graphic,
your brain will mold this center figure to create closure.
Is it a B?
Or the number 13?
Once we have used a method to classify people, we then use that scheme to
generalize about others who may fit into those categories so that we can predict
what kind of behaviors they may display.
Be careful, here, because if you go too far you may end up stereotyping,
creating an oversimplified image of someone,
often on easily recognizable characteristic such as sex or race.
While in selection and organization, you identify,
in interpretation, you draw conclusions and evaluate.
In a card game, it's when you decide whether you have a good hand or bad hand.
Several factors cause us to interpret an event in one way or another.
Let's say my husband opens a package addressed to me.
If I'm feeling good about our relationship,
I might interpret this is helping me out.
If, however, I feel dissatisfied or unsure of our relationship,
that same behavior would be interpreted much more negatively.
And, let's be honest, I'm not always in a good mood--not my husband's fault--
--usually.
But my personal moods may cause me to view his behavior differently.
Say I've never had the experience have opening the package before.
I might interpret what he is doing as difficult and therefore conclude that
he is being helpful.
We all have different assumptions about humans and human behavior.
If I assume that people are nosy and can’t be trusted,
I might attribute a negative motive to his behavior.
And if I have the expectation that my husband thinks I'm helpless and can't do anything,
I might get defensive because I interpret his opening the package
as verifying that perception:
he thinks I'm helpless,
and that I need his help .
and what we know or don't know
might affect our interpretation.
Maybe the package is from Amazon, where the address on file is under my name.
Perhaps our anniversary was coming up and then, instead of having negative thoughts,
I might smile and think,
"What a wonderful husband! he remembered!"
Quiz Time:
What are the three stages of the perceptual process, in order?
Can your interpretation influence what you select?
Why is understanding the perceptual process important in interpersonal relationships?
Our perceptions may not always be accurate.
Understanding this process, however,
may help you become a better receiver of information.
By minimizing distractions, it may be easier for you to select
important information to, then, organize and interpret.
And, as a source of information, you might be able to modify your behavior to make
it easier for others to select what you want them to
so that they have the information to organize and interpret.
As the French writer Gustave Flaubert observed,
"There is no truth.
There's only perception."