Perception Flashcards
What is perception?
“the dynamic psychological process responsible for attending to, organizing and interpreting sensory data” (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2010
What is the Sensation and perception model made by Buchanan & Huczynski (2010)? bottom up (1-3) top down (3-5)
1) Sensory input = incoming raw data
2) Selective attention = we cannot pay attention to everything
3) Perceptual organisation = we look for order, meaning and patterns
4) Interpretation = sense-making, seeking closure
5) Behavioural response = saying and doing
What are the internal factors that influence perception (selective attention)?
1) Learning –past experiences lead us to the development of perceptual expectations or sets which means we learn to pay attention to some information and ignore others
2) Motivation – this links well with notions of needs and goals and the idea we will pay attention to those aspects which help us achieve our goals and needs
3) Personality – our personality traits mean we pay attention to some bits of information and less to others
4) Attitudes – view you have about a certain group impacts on what information you attend to
What are the external factors that influence perception (selective attention)?
1) stimulus factors- how large, bright, loud, familiar, moving, standing out the sensory information
2) Contextual factors (the setting) = context provides meaning to information and is important part of perception
What is habituation?
the notion that once a stimulus becomes familiar they stop being sensed because the perceptual threshold has been reached e.g. a noisy road at night
What is selective attention?
Filtering relevant information from irrelevant information
Explain the Gestalt perceptual organisation?
. Once we have perceived the information and selectively attended to it, we then need to organise it
. Emerged from Gestalt perspective in psychology (meaning organised whole) who developed principles as to how the brain organises visual input into meaningful holistic objects. Two major principles:
. Figure ground principle
. Closure principle
Explain the Figure and ground principle by the Gestalt perceptual organisation theory
. Disliking uncertainty, we look for solid, stable items. Unless an image is truly ambiguous, its foreground catches the eye first.
. the brain can only process one image as figure and one as ground one at a time
e.g vase in the white figure and faces in black background
Explain the Closure principle by the Gestalt perceptual organisation theory
Complete figures to form meaningful objects. However, sometimes the brain goes too far and creates figures where non actually exist
What is person perception?
How we obtain, store and recall information about other people in order to make judgements about them and others
Apply the gestalt principle to person perception
. Figure/ground = view an employee differently because she/he stands out from the others
. Closure = a decision is made about someone with the belief there is unity
What is the halo effect?
Perception of a person on one quality (e.g. appearance) influences positively the perception of them on another quality (e.g. performance)
What is the horns effect?
Opposite in that perceptions of quality on one feature influences negatively perception of them on another quality
What is the primary and recency effect?
Early or later information is weighed more heavily than other information in forming an impression/perception of an individual e.g. what you say at the start and end at an interview is the most important
What is the similarity effect?
The similarity effect involves gravitating towards people who have similar values, beliefs and
attitude
what is Projection?
Attribution of your own thoughts, feelings, values, attitudes on to others. Project your views onto others without evidence that they share them. e.g., if you are a suspicious person you may project that feeling onto others and regard them as suspicious
What is perceptual defence?
Perceptual defence – tendency to screen out information that we find perceptually threatening or difficult to process e.g. smoker avoids the negative information on the packets
What is the self-fulfilling prophecy of perception?
Our behaviour leads a person to conform to our expectations of that person. Behaving hostile to someone we see as uncooperative leading to them seeming uncooperative
What is priming?
All about the tendency for recently used words, ideas or information to come to mind easily and influence the interpretation of new information
What are stereotypes?
Generalisations about what people in a particular group are like – often based on race, gender, occupation and age
What does attribution theory do?
People make causal attributions about events that happen around them – to understand them
Who came up with the covariation theory of attribution and when?
Kelley’s (1967)
Explain Kelley’s (1967) covariation theory of attribution
Suggests that we are all experimenters and when faced with information we attribute based on three elements:
1) Consensus = is the behaviour different from or similar to the behaviour of most other people in the same situation?
2) Distinctiveness = How different was the behaviour of the person in this situation?
3) Consistency = Is the behaviour associated with an enduring personality characteristic or a one-off event
. Leads to the conclusion of whether to attribute something to internal or external factors
What is the fundamental attribution error?
We are too inclined to see the person (actor) as the cause of their own behaviour. We neglect the influence of other persons involved (observers) and the general situation – especially when bad things happen
