Factors Affecting Perception

Question 1

What is individual differences ?

Answer 1

-affected by life experience, people are more likely to perceive things the way they have in the past

Question 2

What is a hallucination?

Answer 2

Things that we perceive in the absence of real sensations, eg, a dream

Question 3

What is a perceptual set ?

Answer 3

The tendency to notice something more than others

E.g if your scared of spiders you will more likely find a spider Compared to someone who isn’t scared of spiders

Question 4

What can a perceptual set be affected by ?

Answer 4

• motivation
• emotion
• expectations

Question 5

Case studies for evidence of perceptual set ?

Answer 5

1) GILCHRIST AND NESBERG, when participants were hungry, they perceived food as brighter and more vivid
2) BRUNER AND MINTURN, shows same ambiguous figure, one group were shown the letter B alongside it and the other were shown 13

Question 6

What is motivation ?

Answer 6

-people are more likely to perceive what they want to perceive
Eg, someone who is a fan of a band will like their new song more

Question 7

What is emotion ?

Answer 7

-fears and worries can affect perception, such as a child thinking a shadow looks like a monster
Eg, Gilchrist and Nesbergs Study

Question 8

What are expectations ?

Answer 8

Having a prediction based on a past experience(s)

Question 9

Hudson’s theory

Answer 9

CULTURE AFFECTS EXPECTATIONS
-villagers in Zambia couldn’t easily perceive occlusion, suggesting that depth perception may depend on culture
HOWEVER IT CANT BE GENERALISED TO PERCEPTION IN EVERYDAY LIFE