Perception

Perception

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MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE OF PERCEPTION 

Perception may be defined as the process by which an individual selects, organizes and interprets stimuli into a meaningful and coherent picture of the environment in which he lives.

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It is a complex cognitive process and differs from one individual to another, depending on the needs, value and expectations of the individual.

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Sometimes, an individual’s perception may be far removed from the reality.

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Perceptual differences can sometimes lead to conflicts in the organization.

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Perceptions may also differ from organization to organization. 2

SENSATION VS PERCEPTION SENSATION: 

People use their sensory organs to sense.

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The sense receive stimuli both from within and outside the body. Some of the external stimuli are light and sound, mechanical pressure, the taste of food and the smell of chemicals. The internal stimuli include hunger, thirst, pain etc.

PERCEPTION: 

Perception is a more complex concept.

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An individual takes in the raw data through his senses and them, refines, modifies or completely alters it by his cognitive process. 3

The Subprocesses of Perception STIMULUS OR SITUATION

EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT Sensual stimulation

CONFRONTATION of specific stimulus (e.g., supervisor or new procedure)

PERSON

REGISTRATION

of stimulus (e.g., sensory and neural mechanisms)

INTERPERTATION

of stimulus (e.g., motivation, learning and personality)

Physical Environment

FEEDBACK

Office

for clarification (e.g., kinesthetic or psychological

Factory Research laboratory Store etc. Sociocultural Environment Management styles

BEHAVIOR

Climate

BEHAVIOR

(e.g., overt such as rushing off or covert such as an attitude)

Discrimination etc.

CONSEQUENCES

Values

CONSEQUENCE

(e.g., reinforcement/ punishment or some 4 organizational outcome

PERCEPTUAL SELECTIVITY  Though people are exposed to several stimuli, they tend to select only a few at a given point of time.

External Attention Factors Intensity 

The intensity of an external stimulus determines its probability of being perceived.

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A bright light, a strong odor or a loud noise are more likely to be noticed.

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Size  A larger object is more likely to be noticed than a smaller object.

Contrast  The stimuli that contradicts most with the background or the expectations of people receive maximum attention.

Repetition  The more number of times a stimulus is repeated, the more it is likely to be noticed.

Motion 

People give more attention to moving objects than to stationary objects. 6

Novelty and Familiarity  New objects in a familiar situation or familiar objects in a new situation draw the perceiver’s attention.  For example, during job rotation, when an employee is shifted from one job to another, he is likely to give more attention to the new job because he has to perform new duties.

Internal Set Factors  People select those stimuli from the environment that appeal to them and suit them based on their learning, motivation and 7 personality.

Learning and perception  Learning by itself plays a major role in developing the perceptual set.

Learning and Perception

HILLY TERRRAIN AHEAD

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Perceptual set in the workplace  Learning leads to substantial individual differences. Employees may perceive a particular situation or stimulus in completely different ways.  For example, different people in an organization may attribute low production levels to different reasons.  The work environment provided in an organization is perceived as the best by the management while the trade unions perceive the opposite.

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Motivation and perception  The primary motives such as hunger and thirst influence the perception of an individual.  The people in a country affected by drought will give more attention to the sight, mention or aroma of food.  Perceptual set is also influenced by secondary motives, such as the need for power, affiliation or achievement.  A person who has a high need for power, affiliation, or achievement is more attentive to the situations which provide him an opportunity to attain them.

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Personality and perception

 An individual’s personality may also affect his perception of a particular situation.  For example, young managers often complain that senior managers resist change, rely heavily on paperwork and delay decisions. The senior managers often perceive that young managers initiate unnecessary changes, fail to maintain record for future reference and make hasty decisions.

FACTORS INFLUENCING PERCEPTION  The factors which influence perception include the perceiver himself, the object or target being perceived, and the situation in which the perception occurs. 11

The perceiver 

The perceiver’s personal characteristics play a major role in influencing the way he interprets target (stimulus). A person’s attitudes, motives, interests, past experiences and expectations affect his perception.

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An individual’s perception is greatly influenced by his unfulfilled needs and goals.

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People who had not eaten food for a longer time interpreted blurred pictures as images of food more often, than the people who had not eaten only for a shorter time.

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One’s past experiences may also influence a person’s perception.

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Individual perceptions are influenced by expectations as well. 12

The Target 

Perception is affected by the characteristics of the target (stimulus).

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People who are loud or very tall or attractive are more likely to be noticed in a crowd.

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The target is perceived based on its attributes such as motion, sound, size.

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Sometimes, a target is not perceived in isolation but it is grouped or associated with things similar to it.

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People tend to group objects together because of the physical proximity of the objects.

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Events may be grouped together because they occurred during the same time.

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It is also common to group together persons by profession, age or race.

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People perceive the police as hardhearted, lawyers as liars, young army officers as active and tribal people as innocent.13

The situation • The context or environment, in which objects or events are seen, plays an important role in influencing an individual’s perceptions. • When a person wearing a tracksuit walks into a health club, he will not attract attention from his boss, who may have come to the same health club, but if he does so in office he will attract attention.

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Factors that Influence Perception Characteristics of Perceiver Attitudes Motives Interests Experience Expectations

Characteristics of Target Novelty Motives Sound Size Background Proximity

Perception of the individual

Characteristics of Situation Time Work environment Social environment

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PERCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION  Perceptual Organization emphasizes on the subsequent activities that take place in the perceptual process after a stimulus is received.  A person rarely perceives the extent of color, light or sound associated with objects. Instead he perceives organized patterns, stimuli and identifiable whole objects.

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Figure-ground 

Perceived objects are separated from their general background by the perceiver.

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When a person is given a white paper with something written in black ink in a language unfamiliar to him, he may perceive it as patches of irregular black and white shapes.

Perceptual Grouping 

An individual tends to group several stimuli together into a recognizable pattern.

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When a simple set of stimuli are presented, an individual will tend to group them together on the basis of closure, 17 continuity, proximity or similarity.

Closure A person may sometimes perceive a whole, where it does not exist while sometimes, a person may not be able to perceive a whole although one exists. Example: 

A departmental head who wishes to increase the work load of employees to meet a deadline, may ask them if they would agree with his proposal. Some of the employees may agree with the head although there may also be several who disagree.

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The agreement obtained from some of the employees may cause the head of the department to close the existing gaps and perceive absolute agreement of all employees to his proposal, which in reality, does not exist.

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Continuity 

Continuity principle states that a person tends to perceive the extension of a stimulus.

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It may lead to inflexibility and non-creative thinking in organizational members.

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An employee in a fashion designing firm may come out with a new textile design for customers. If the design becomes popular in the market, the other employee may simply modify and add more colors or shapes to it and release it into the market later. New, innovative ideas or designs may not be perceived by these employees.

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Continuity has a major impact on the systems design of an organizational structure.

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Proximity  A group of stimuli that are physically close to each other are perceived as a set of parts that belong together.  All the members of a particular department or team may be perceived as a single entity by those external to the department or team because of the physical proximity of the members of the department or the team.

Similarity  The greater the similarity of the stimuli, the more they are likely to be perceived as a common group.  All blue-collared workers may be perceived as a single group, though in reality, they are all individual employees with their own unique personalities.  Similarity, women, minorities, student unions and doctors association are all described as common groups because of the similarity in gender, background and profession etc.  Such grouping by similarity causes problems of stereotyping.

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Perceptual Constancy  The perception of elements like size, shape, color, brightness and location of an object remains constant and does not change from one individual to another.  If a photograph of a person is printed in a newspaper and although the photograph measures only 2-3 inches in length, we still perceive the individual to be between 5 to 6 feet in height.  Learning helps individuals perceive certain patterns of cues in a similar way and leads to perceptual constancy.  The image of an apple remains constant in our mind and doesn’t change irrespective of the color of the picture. 21

Perceptual Context  Sometimes, the visual stimuli, by themselves, do not convey any meaning. It is only when they are placed in a certain context that its meaning and value can be perceived.  Though workers and managers may speak the same language within and outside the organization, the words and actions used may have different meaning in the context of the organization.  For example, if a manager pats the back of his two year old son, his gesture conveys love and affection. But if he pats the back of an employee in the organization, it implies his appreciation of the employee for doing a good job.  A verbal order, a memo, a policy, a suggestion, shrugging of shoulders, a raised eyebrow, etc. have different meaning and value, when associated with the context of work organization. 22

Perceptual Defense  A person may establish a defense against some stimuli or situational events because they may be clashing with his personal values or culture or may be threatening, in nature.  People attempt to avoid registering those stimuli that conflict, threaten, or are unacceptable to them.  People resist perceiving information which they believe would disturb their emotions.  People substitute their original perceptions (caused by disturbing stimuli and information) with favorable perceptions to cope with the situation.  For example, a manager may perceive that his workers are happy and satisfied though actually there may be discontent among the workers.  Although some information may actually arouse emotions in an individual, he may distort and direct the emotion elsewhere. For example, if a person is angry with his superior, he tries to vent 23 out his anger on his wife or his son or a machine.

SOCIAL PERCEPTION  Social perception deals with how an individual perceives other individuals. • If an individual understands his own personality well, it becomes easier for him or her to understand others accurately. • Personal characteristics of an individual may affect the way he perceives others. For instance, a person who is scheming and manipulative will perceive everyone else as being scheming and manipulative too. • An individual who has a high self-esteem is more likely to perceive favorable aspects in others as well. • How accurately an individual perceives others is based on not just a single skill but involves many other skills. 24

 Two of these aspects that help categorize the persons being perceived are status of the individual and the role played by the individual in the organization or in the society.  An understanding of the characteristics of both, the perceiver and the perceived, helps managers to understand the vital role these characteristics play in determining the social perception of individuals as well as their resulting behavior both within and outside organizations.  The primary factors that affect social perception are related to psychological processes, such as attributions made by people, stereotyping and the halo effect.

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Attribution  The way in which people explain the cause for their own or other’s behavior is referred to as attribution.  There are two types of attributions made by people – dispositional attributions and situational attributions.  In dispositional attribution, a person’s behavior is attributed to the internal factors that characterize the person such as the personality traits of the individual, his motivation or his ability.  In situational attribution a person’s behavior is attributed to factors external to the person such as the equipment that he may be handling, or the social influence he may be subject to.

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 Attribution is a process of searching for casual factors or attributes that help in interpretation of one’s own as well as others’ behavior.  It helps determine the manner in which supervisors behave towards their subordinates.  Attribution also helps determine one’s attitude towards work and personal satisfaction with one’s work.  Perceptions and the consequent behavior of an individual depends on whether a person makes dispositional attributions or situational attributions.

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Stereotyping 

The term, stereotype, refers to tendency of generalizing the characteristics of all the members of a group.

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When a perceiver judges some person based on his perception about the group to which the person belongs, it is known as stereotyping.

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A person resorts to stereotyping to simplify the process of managing innumerable and complex stimuli that are encountered on a continual basis.

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Stereotyping may attribute favorable or unfavorable traits to the person being perceived.

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In organizations, stereotypes are based on gender, race, ethnicity.

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The Halo Effect  At times people draw a general impression about an individual based on a single characteristic, such as intelligence, sociability, aggressiveness.  In the halo effect perceptions are formed on the basis of a certain (dominant) trait.  Halo effect is more likely to occur under conditions such as (a) the perceiver is not familiar with the traits or doesn’t frequently encounter these traits (b) the traits are ambiguous and cannot be clearly expressed in behavioral terms and (c) and the traits have moral implications.

IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT  It is the process by which people try to manage or control the perceptions formed by other people about themselves.  People like to present themselves in a socially desirable way and impress others.

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The Process of Impression Management  Behavioral scientists have recently identified two new components of impression management – impression motivation and impression construction.  Impression motivation is particularly applicable in organizations where employees try to control the perceptions of their superiors about them.  Impression construction refers to the methods adopted by a person to create the specific impression that he wants.  The impression may be related to various factors such as personal characteristics, attitudes, interests and values.  There are five factors that are particularly relevant to the type of impression people want create – the self-concept, desired and undesired identity images, role constraints, the value of the target and current social image of the individual. 30

Impression Management strategies used by employees Demotion-preventative strategy  The characteristics of demotion-preventative strategies are:

Accounts  The employee attempts to justify the occurrence of a negative outcome giving excuses.

Apologies  When an employee is unable to come up with any excuse to support his action, he will seek to apologize to his superior.

Disassociation  When employees are not directly responsible for a negative outcome, they may try to disassociate themselves from those who were responsible for the outcome and thus from the 31 responsibility for the problem.

Promotion-enhancing strategy  The characteristics of promotion-enhancing strategies are:

Entitlements  Sometimes employees may perceive that due credit has not been given to them for the positive outcome and may try to make this known to their boss through formal or informal channels.

Enhancements  Sometimes, the efforts of an employee may result in an outcome that delivers much more profits than were expected. Apart from this, the outcome may also have scope for improved profits in the future. Although an employee may have been rewarded for a positive outcome, he may perceive that his achievement deserved more than what he received. 32

Obstacle disclosures 

Employees try to impress upon the boss by making him aware of the personal (ill-health or family) and organizational (lack of cooperation or scarcity of resources) obstacles they had to overcome, to achieve the outcome. They try to make their boss perceive that they deserve more credit because they achieved a positive outcome despite facing many obstacles.

Association 

An employee tries to be seen with the right people at the right time. By doing so, he tries to convey the impression that he has contacts and that he is associated with successful projects. 33